Suddenly Europe was aflame. France stood still and waited. And as he waited, with Europe, Raoul for a moment forgot his torment. War is a great destroyer, but among other things it destroys the smaller emotions. Its licking flame shrivels up personal loves and hates. When war was declared, old hates were blotted out, and hopeless lovers trembling on the brink of suicide were cured overnight. Small human atoms were drowned in the larger hate and the larger love. Men ceased to have power over their own lives since their lives belonged to France.
So when war was declared, choice was taken from Raoul’s hands. A high feeling of liberation possessed him. He walked along the street, and suddenly he realized that instead of going toward his home he was seeking his other half, the dark shadow to whom he had been so bound.
On Hazelton’s door a note was pinned, addressed to him.
“My friend,” it said, “you have luck! You will have your regiment, while nothing better than the ambulance, like a sale embusque, for me. If harm comes to you, don’t fear for your mother.”
This letter made him feel as though Hazelton had clasped his hand. He no longer felt toward Hazelton as an enemy, since France had also claimed him.
Madness had brushed him with its dark wings. By so slender a thread his life and Hazelton’s had hung! Yes—and his honor!
“Thank God!” he said, “for an honorable death!” It was the last personal thought that was his for a long time. War engulfed him. Instead of an individual he was a soldier of France, and his life was broken away from the old life which now seemed illusion, the days which streamed past him like pennants torn in the wind.
Later, in the monotony of trench warfare, he had time to think of Hazelton. He desired two things—to serve France, and to see Hazelton. Raoul wanted a word of friendship to pass between them, and especially he wanted to tell Hazelton that he need not worry about his wife. He wrote to him, but got no answer. Life went on; war had become the normal thing. The complexities of his former life receded further and further from him, and became more phantasmal, but the desire to see Hazelton before either of them should die remained with Raoul.
When he was wounded it was his last conscious thought before oblivion engulfed him. There followed a half-waking—pain—a penumbral land through which shapes moved vaguely; the smell of an anesthetic, an awakening, and again sleep. When he wakened fully he was in a white hospital ward with a sister bending over him.