Barque is
standing up. He stoops over a sheet of paper flattened on a
note-book upon a jutting crag in the trench wall. Apparently in the
grip of an inspiration, he writes on and on, with his eyes in
bondage and the concentrated expression of a horseman at full
gallop.
When once Lamuse--who lacks imagination--has sat down, placed his
little writing-block on the padded summit of his knees, and
moistened his copying-ink pencil, he passes the time in reading
again the last letters received, in wondering what he can say that
he has not already said, and in fostering a grim determination to
say something else.
A sentimental gentleness seems to have overspread little Eudore, who
is curled up in a sort of niche in the ground. He is lost in
meditation, pencil in hand, eyes on paper. Dreaming, he looks and
stares and sees. It is another sky that lends him light, another to
which his vision reaches. He has gone home.
In this time of letter-writing, the men reveal the most and the best
that they ever were. Several others surrender to the past, and its
first expression is to talk once more of fleshly comforts.
Through their outer crust of coarseness and concealment, other
hearts venture upon murmured memories, and the rekindling of bygone
brightness: the summer morning, when the green freshness of the
garden steals in upon the purity of the country bedroom; or when the
wind in the wheat of the level lands sets it slowly stirring or
deeply waving, and shakes the square of oats hard by into quick
little feminine tremors; or the winter evening, with women and their
gentleness around the shaded luster of the lamp.
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