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or later he was likely to be, the professional sceptic was wrong. The village on the floor of the valley was to be their village; the houses with the roofs were to be their houses. The pace quickened as the men slithered down the road to a destination finally in sight. Talk became general, and louder than it had been for many days. What with the slope of the road and its sliminess, the men were going almost at a run in their eagerness to get there. Then suddenly the mass of blue buckled, closed up like an accordion, and came to a dead stop. The colonel, at the head of the column, was talking to the billeting officer who was standing by the roadside with his billeting party drawn up behind him like a guard of honour.
    Soon the line began to move again, slowly and in jerks. As each company came up, a man of the billeting party detached himself from it, saluted the company commander and said: “This way, sir. I’ll show the platoons their billets, and then they can fall in again at once to draw a hot meal from the rolling kitchens. The colonel’s orders are, sir, that the men are off duty till noon tomorrow.”
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    At the Café du Carrefour Langlois wrote a note to his wife. He took some pains to convey his information in such a way that it would be vague enough to ensure the letter a quick passage past the censor.
    Just a line, my dearest, to tell you that I shall not be going up to the front for a week or ten days more at least. So you need not worry about me for a while yet. In fact you need not worry about me at all for, as I have often told you, I have an absolute conviction that I am destined to come through this war alive. Some of us are bound to, you know, and I am certain that I am one of them. There is no German shell or bullet that has my number on it . . .
    He quite knew the fatuousness of writing such stuff, also its futility. But what was a man to do when he caught that look in his wife’s eyes; when he felt those spasmodic pressures of her hand clasped in his; when he saw her, more and more often, suddenly drop whatever she was doing, come to him, take him in her arms and hold him, hold him with terrible tenderness?
    . . . I’m glad we decided as we did last Thursday. [He counted on his fingers.] Perhaps you will have a hint for me by the time we come out of our next trip into the trenches? [He thought for a long time, staring at his letter without seeing it, then decided to risk the phrase, so filled with implications.] I hope it will be a girl. No more now. I’ll write again soon. All my love, my darling . . .
    He sealed the letter and put it away in his pocket-book, intending to mail it at the regimental field post office that evening. “I hope it will be a girl.” He wondered if the censor would consider that as evidence of defeatist tendencies. He wondered what his wife might read into that hope, what conclusions she might draw. Perhaps he shouldn’t have said it after all. It had been her wish, broached unexpectedly two days before his leave was up, to have a child. It was a complete reversal of their previous feeling and agreement about the subject, but he quite understood her change of heart—all the better because she had refrained from giving any reason for it.
    The door of the café opened, and a corporal came in. He was covered with mud, the spattered mud of the roads though, not the caked mud of the trenches. He took in Duval and Langlois at a glance, his eye lighting first on their insignia, then shifting to their faces. He seemed to be in a hurry.
    â€œWhere’s your regiment?” he said, instinctively discriminating between the recruit Duval and the veteran Langlois, and addressing himself to the latter. “I’ve been looking for them all up and down the front.”
    â€œI don’t know,” said Langlois. “I’ve been trailing them myself. The old woman here says a line regiment turned down that road this morning.