"I admire their happy nonchalance," he said. "Unconsciously they are very good philosophers. They take life as it comes to them and gauge it at its true value."
"Yes," she said; "they are happy enough now. But it must be terrible in war-time, to have to march straight to death."
"Do you think so?" he replied. "I doubt whether they perceive the terror of it. It is part of their business to die."
"Do you not fear death?" she asked him afterwards.
He was silent for a moment. Then he said slowly: "I can quite imagine circumstances in which death would be preferable to life."
"It is because life has been so unjust to him that he disdains it," she thought.
Another evening, as they sat together, looking on to the square where the women were selling flowers, he began, casually, to talk of himself. He spoke impassively of the time, eight years before, when he had fallen by accident, in the winter. For months he had lain in agony; and then slowly he had returned, almost from the grave. In three years he had regained his strength, but deformed for the rest of his life.
Her lips quivered ominously as she listened.
"It makes my heart ache to think of it," she said. "I could not have borne it."