"
But after looking at me, he looked at everything else, as though he
would rather consult them than me.
A transformation was taking place in the sky and on the earth. The
fog was hardly more than a fancy. Distances revealed themselves. The
narrow plain, gloomy and gray, was getting bigger, chasing its
shadows away, and assuming color. The light was passing over it from
east to west like sails.
And down there at our very feet, by the grace of distance and of
light, we saw Souchez among the trees--the little place arose again
before our eyes, new-born in the sunshine!
"Am I right?" repeated Poterloo, more faltering, more dubious.
Before I could speak he replied to himself, at first almost in a
whisper, as the light fell on him--"She's quite young, you know;
she's twenty-six. She can't hold her youth in, it's coming out of
her all over, and when she's resting in the lamp-light and the
warmth, she's got to smile; and even if she burst out laughing, it
would just simply be her youth, singing in her throat. It isn't on
account of others, if truth were told; it's on account of herself.
It's life. She lives. Ah, yes, she lives, and that's all. It isn't
her fault if she lives. You wouldn't have her die? Very well, what
do you want her to do? Cry all day on account of me and the Boches?
Grouse? One can't cry all the time, nor grouse for eighteen months.
Can't be done. It's too long, I tell you. That's all there is to
it.
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