“Yes,” he said, “we were caught right in the war zone. By Jove, I never want to go through again what I went through.”
With that, he sank back into the chair in the pose of a man musing in silence over the recollection of days of horror.
I let him muse. In fact I determined to let him muse till he burst before I would ask him what he had been through. I knew it, anyway.
Presently he decided to go on talking.
“We were at Izzl,” he said, “in the Carpathians, Loo Jones and I. We’d just made a walking tour from Izzl to Fryzzl and back again.”
“Why did you come back?” I asked.
“Back where?”
“Back to Izzl,” I explained, “after you’d once got to Fryzzl. It seems unnecessary, but, never mind, go on.”
“That was in July,” he continued. “There wasn’t a sign of war, not a sign. We heard that Russia was beginning to mobilize,” (at this word be blew a puff from his cigarette and then repeated “beginning to mobilize”) “but we thought nothing of it.”
“Of course not,” I said.