“It makes a man cold with that kind of cold a supper-fire don't help.”
“Peter, you've got me stopped with your moods—like a woman. Women were always too profound for Mr. B. B. Boylan—”
“Sorry. You've been a prince. I'll do better now. I'll get out of it. Little shock—that's all. I think it wasn't so much physical. Something changed all around. I've been taking things as I found them so long. That helps to bring on a war—”
Boylan glanced at him narrowly.
Peter laughed. “I'm all right. Head's working.”
Big Belt sighed. “I loved that little guy, too. God, I'd run east to Asia and keep on running rather than meet his girl.”
Peter drank hot soup and slept. Next morning it was like a hard problem that one has slept upon and awakened with the process and answer straight-going. They had not searched ten minutes (calling “Samarc” softly among the cots where the faces were bandaged) before a hand came up to them. It was Peter who took it; and as their hands met, the whole fabric of the man on the cot broke into trembling. They understood. Samarc had been lying there rigid with his tragedy. Peter's touch had been enough to break the dam of his misery.
“I have ceased to kill,” he said.
The head was twice as big with bandages; yet under that effigy, so terrible was the intensity of the moment, Peter became conscious of ruin there, also of a sudden icy cold in the morning air. Samarc's powerful hand still clutched his. The voice that had emerged from under the cloths was still in his ears. It had seemed to come as water from a pipe—loosely, the faucet gone. The hand was unhurt.
“...He came in the night. I did not speak—but my heart was fighting against the guns. He was moving here and there. He turned to me, as if I had suddenly cried out, 'What shall I do?'...'You can cease to kill,' he said.”