"I don't think the war will ever be over," he laughed. "It's no good looking ahead. For the present one has to regard soldiering as a permanent pursuit."
"I thought so," said Bakkus. "He'll cry when it's over and he can't move his pretty soldiers about."
"That is true?" asked Elodie, in the tone of one possessed of insight.
Andrew shrugged his shoulders, a French trick out of harmony with his British uniform.
"Perhaps," said he with a sigh.
"I too," said Elodie, "will be sorry when you become Petit Patou again."
He touched her cheek caressingly with the back of his hand, and smiled. Strange how the war had brought her the gift of understanding. Never had he felt so close to her.
"All the same," added Elodie, "it is very dangerous là-bas, mon chéri--and I don't want you to get killed."
"All the glory and none of the death," said Bakkus. "Conducted on those principles, warfare would be ideal employment for the young. But you would be going back to the Middle Ages, when, if a knight were killed, he was vastly surprised and annoyed. Personally I hate the war. It prevents me from earning a living, and insults me with the sense of my age, physical decay and incapacity. I haven't a good word to say for it."
"If you only went among the wounded in the Paris hospitals," replied Andrew, with some asperity, "and sang to them--"