“You know,” he began, “it’s getting on my nerves the way those swine from the Rhine are turning this decent green world into a bloody wallow! Unless we do something about it pretty soon, I think I’ll go over.”
She looked up:
“Where?”
“To France.”
She remained silent for a while, merely lifting her dark eyes to him at intervals; then she grew preoccupied with other thoughts that left her brows bent slightly inward and her mouth very grave.
He gazed reflectively out over the fields and woods:
“Yes, I can’t stand it much longer,” he mused aloud.
“What would you do there?” she inquired.
“Anything. I could drive a car. But if they’ll take me in some Canadian unit—or one of the Foreign Legions—it would suit me.... You know a man can’t go on just living in the world while this beastly business continues—can’t go on eating and sleeping and shaving and dressing as though half of civilisation were not rolling in agony and blood, stabbed through and through——”
His voice caught—he checked himself and slowly passed his hand over his smoothly shaven face.