Chapter 6
The light was gray that came down through the skylight. Abel and Poltneck and Fallows sat on the floor in the front end, because there were not chairs for all. Back in the shadows sat Berthe and Peter.
“...I think we will be a little bewildered,” she was saying, “as one awakening from a dream, as one awakening in the sunlight. One stirs, you know, and shuts the eyes again. The reality dawns slowly—if the house is quiet.... It will be very quiet. We have been used to the cannonading so long, and the cries in the night. It will take us a moment to realize that it is all over. I think I see just how it will be then. I will have that sense of the glad unknown—that something long anticipated is about to happen. You know how it comes to one upon awakening, when something perfect is to happen—the presence of it, before one remembers just what it is?”
Peter nodded in the shadow.
“And then I will remember. It will be you. I will really open my eyes—and you will be there!”
Something of her fire came to him.
“You are sure it will be like that—afterward?” he repeated.
Her voice and lips trembled. “You ask just like a little child, Peter. It is the little child in you that strikes the heart. Don't you really believe in the afterward?”
“Yes, but I can't see it quite clearly, you know, as you do.”
“You don't think it is all wayward and stupidly arranged as the army would like to do it—do you?”