"There isn't much good talking, of course. On the other hand, you may as well know what I feel. I've had tremendous luck in one way and another. I never expected to get the regiment, for instance—and your coming out here and all that. I've seen how jolly things could be."
"You haven't had them," said Lionel in a low voice. "The things you wanted most, I mean. Your pitch was queered too soon."
"I don't know," said Winn, painstakingly. "In a sense, of course, you haven't had things if you've only seen 'em. Still when you come to think of it, you partly have. Look at the Germans; we've worked considerably into them without seeing 'em, haven't we? What I mean is that I appreciate goodness now; I see its point. Not that I'd have kept clear a moment by myself. I hope you quite understand that? I've been a blackguard and I'd have been a worse one if I'd had the chance. But I'm glad I hadn't the chance now. I don't know that I'm putting the thing straight—but you know what she's like? Thank God I couldn't alter her!"
They listened for a moment to the night. Their ears were always awake, registering sounds from the sodden, death-ridden fields beneath them, and above, but they heard nothing beyond the drip of the rain, an occasional groan from a man tortured by rheumatism, and the long-drawn scream of a distant shell.
"You can call yourself what you like," said Lionel at last. "I know what you are, that's enough for me, and she knew it; that's one reason I got to caring for her.
"I dare say that seems a rummy thing to you, to care for a woman because she cares for another man. But it's a fact."
Winn moved uneasily. Then he said abruptly, "Look here, young 'un, I was wrong before when I asked you to step in instead of me, but I'm not wrong now. You can take it from me she'll marry you in the end. She's young; be patient. I dare say she'll think for a time she's had enough, but she hasn't. There's no good living a lonely life. We may both get done in, of course. But I don't fancy we shall. I want you to promise me not to get killed if you can help it.
"Keep away from me if you think I'm getting into trouble, because I sha'n't be getting into trouble, I shall be getting out of it, d'you see?"
The guns sounded nearer, a machine gun rattled sharply in their ears, as if it had been let off in their dug-out.
"I sha'n't care for anybody else," said Lionel, quietly, "and I shall wait all my life for her. As for not being killed—you don't want me to shirk my job, of course; bar that, I sha'n't ask for trouble."