the plumed helmet, the breastplate. It seems unbelievable now, doesn't it? May I see that photo of you again?"

He did not reply at once. Then, suddenly, just as I was wondering whether he had heard me, he said:

"I've got another one."

"And you want to show it to me?"

Again he waited for a bit, then got up, went over to the chest of drawers, and brought back another frame, smaller than the first. The picture was only about five inches by seven and showed two soldiers a cuirassier (himself, obviously) and a footsoldier. I couldn't make out what branch of the service the latter belonged to; he wasn't wearing the blue blouse and red trousers of the preWorld War One metropolitan infantry. He looked young and slight beside his big friend, whose heavy hand was resting on his shoulder, and he had a glowing expression like the faces of apostles in some religious paintings. "You used the word 'Marie-Louise' a little while ago. It seems to me your friend here . . . eh? He's really a nice-looking boy. But how old was he?" "Just twenty and I was twenty-three."

"Twenty! I'd have thought younger. A relative of yours? What branch was he in?

"Your own, Lieutenant. The Colonials. Naval Infantry they used to call them. You see I know something about all this, maybe more than you do."

I wondered again whether I should resent his manner. Without a change of expression, but in a suddenly toneless voice, he went on:

"He's the one who told me all about it. A good kid. He had no father, you might say. You see, his father had gotten a girl into trouble. He was a noncom, nearly always somewhere overseas in the colonies. You know the kind. Maybe he didn't forget the kid entirely, but he never acknowledged him. Once he wrote the mother, 'Put him in the Government school with the other army kids and let him join the Colonials like me.' The boy's name was Louis." He paused and I could see that he was deeply moved. "Poor little Louis! We got to know each other at the Chalons camp during the big maneuvers, the combined maneuvers they used to call 'em." Again he paused, as if memories were crowding upon him. "I was a mounted courier. He was liaison man. One day he tripped jumping over a ditch and sprained his ankle. I happened to come along. I got him onto my horse and carried him back to his barracks. Holding him in my arms, you might say. Well, we were pals from then on. I liked the kid. In the army, good pals, that's something, isn't it? But with this boy it wasn't the same. It was more, somehow. He used to call me 'Big Fellow.' I always thought he could spend his furlough with us here." He looked around the room and shook his head slowly. "In those days the house wasn't like it is now. Well, everything was all set for him to come. And then the war broke out. He wrote me a goodbye letter, a letter When I read it, I guess I understood better what I'd meant to him and him to me — I felt I might have God! I don't know. Only by the time I got it, well, everything was all over. I didn't hear about it till later. So you see.

He made a gesture toward Yvon and shook his head again. Yvon was sleeping, slumped sideways, head resting on the back of the chair, one foot still in its galoche, the other out.

Monsieur Issarles," I said -but, as though he were deep in the past, he did not seem to hear. I had to repeat his name before his eyes turned toward "Monsieur Issarles! A while ago you asked me if I'd have the heart to lead such a young kid out to get killed in war. Well, unfortunately, that wouldn't be up to me to decide. But this evening I want to ask you to do something for him. We're not going to send him back to the village in this rain. You might have had to find room for two officers. I'm going to take him in with me, but I don't want to do it without your permission. After what you've told me, I think we're agreed about this, aren't we? Good! I'll wake him up."

Issarles stopped me with a gesture of authority. He glanced at one of the two beds farther back in the room, then at Yvon, finally at me. He seemed to

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