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times. She had had good schooling, and she herself knew all those fine phrases about healths. Her letters were just like the sergeant's. He, Michel, was very proud of the letters, and always showed them to every one. thought letters wonderful things. But it never seemed that Mélanie's letters had anything to do with Mélanie at all. The phrases about healths brought her and the little boys no nearer to the man in the Argonne; they seemed to bring to him, there in the trenches, nothing whatever of the little tawny house. And how in all the world could any thought, any feeling of his, any sense of the thing, and of his part in it, have been given

by his poor fine phrases, or the sergeant's, to the woman who knew nothing, nothing at all, beyond the sheepfold and the olive-pastures, and the hillside of vines?

There were eleven months from the August day when Michel and the others were shepherded down the dusty yellow

road, away out of all they had ever known, to the July day when he tramped the dusty yellow road back again, come home for six days' leave, the journey's three days each way not counting. The eleven months had been so crowded with confusion and helplessness and horror, so beaten and driven and blinded, so maddened with noise, so deadened with fatigue, that of them nothing seemed to be left at all, nothing he could understand, nothing he could tell. The eleven months were a wide, wide gap. He had nothing with which to fill in the gap.

And Mélanie had nothing with which to fill it in. All her life she had worked

in vineyard and sheepfold. She had trained and trimmed and watered the vines, minded their illnesses, and defended them from their enemies. She had taken the sheep out to pasture and watched the nights with the ewes. She had washed the linen of her parents and little sisters and brothers, and then of her husband and her children, in river water, pounding it out on tawny stones and spreading it to dry in the sun on lavender and wild thyme. She had made the soup in the great iron pot of her father's house, and then in the great iron pot of her husband's house.

When her husband had been swept away, with all the men and horses and mules, to the war, she had had to go on doing these things, with only the small boys to help her. She had done well, but there was nothing she had to tell of it. She and her husband had always worked together, but they had never talked together.

There had been nobody to explain to the three little boys what it meant that their father was away at the war. There was nobody who at all knew what it meant. No one told them that the man who came back to them, with a rough beard, in a blue uniform, was a hero.

They stood about and looked at him as if he were a stranger come to the tawny house. They had nothing to say to him. He had nothing to say to them.

He had nothing to say to Mélanie; once he had asked her how she had got through the vintage, and had she had a bad time with the lambs, had the yoke of young oxen worked well, and how had turned out the field they had planted last November with winter wheat?

To all these things she had answered, "Well enough." "Well enough." She questioned him about the war, what was it like, what was it for, when would it be over? And he did not know how to answer.

In July there was not much work. And, anyway, in six days what could he have done?

He slept a great deal. When he halfwaked between dozes on the bench at the door, he sometimes found Mélanie standing in the doorway, staring at him in vague wonder. He ate a great deal. Mélanie cooked meat for him every day. The little boys stared at him while he ate it. The last day he remembered that they had never seen meat before except on Sunday. He had said to Mélanie then, "It must cost very much." She had said, "Never mind," and he had

known he was a guest in his own old place.

There was one thing he had understood in those six days-he and Mélanie understood it very well together. She could manage for herself and the little boys. But if there were to be another child, if she were to be ill and unable to work, in need of help, through months and months, while the farm went to waste and ruin; and after that with another little body to clothe, to feed, to tend, while the sheep needed tending, and the vines and the bits of field-well, then there would be an end of it. So the love there had been between them could not be any more. It seemed as if there were nothing left.

"Better let me get the oxen past there," said Beppe, the biggest boy, to his father; "they are always afraid of crossing the torrent you see, father, and you see they are accustomed to

The smallest little boy explained that the sheep did better in the hill pasture this year; it was

farm. He seemed to have come there from farther away even than before; it seemed as if ages had passed since he had had anything to do with these people of another life. They seemed to have grown yet far more strange to him. April was the time

less burnt than the pastures by the river. The middle-sized boy said, "You don't know, father, but we have not enough wine this year to drink as you drink it; only enough to soak our bread in."

On the sixth day Michel went down the dusty yellow road once more, and back to the life of which this life knew nothing.

His next full leave came in eight months, in April. He had had one leave between of forty-eight hours; he had gone only to a town behind the lines, where he was then, in the Champagne. He had been with a crowd of the copains there, and it was a quite big town with cafés and a cinema.

His regiment was before Verdun through all the defense. It was from the trenches before Verdun that he went hom for a second leave to the tawny

sold the yoke of oxen for a price Michel had never dreamed of. She told him that oxen brought a very high price now because of the war. A man had come from Barrême and bought all the oxen in the countryside. She and Beppe were to go in to Barrême to the market these days and buy two yokes of young oxen to break in and resell. Mélanie said, like that they had the use of two teams for the spring plowing; the oxen cost nothing to feed in summer, and could be sold at a gain at the moment of the vintage. She had arranged with a vinegrower of Barrême to take all her autumn vintage. He had sent up a man to teach her and Beppe some new treatment of the young vines.

The two smaller boys had worked all winter at Senez for the old carpenter, and now he was to come up and help them with the sheep-shearing and with

getting down the sheep and lambs to market.

The day Michel left to go back to the trenches before Verdun was the day of the yearly cattle-market at Barrême. Mélanie had to go in and take Beppe with her. They had to start long before dawn.

In the darkness Michel waked to hear Mélanie groping about the room where they slept over the sheep. She had not lit the candle, but was trying to dress in the dark. He knew it was for fear of waking him. The sheep were not yet stirring in their pen underneath the room. He did not tell Mélanie that he was awake. He lay there quite still, thinking, "I may be going back to be killed." He thought: "Every one else is killed, and probably I shall be killed, and she does not think of it at all. She is going to Barrême to the cattle-market. She thinks of the two yokes of young oxen she is going to buy."

He heard Beppe in the next room, getting ready also. "And Beppe does not think of it," thought the man; "he does not think of anything except about the oxen."

He was going to speak to Mélanie in the darkness. Then he thought, "It is better that she does not know." He thought: "She has got to think about the oxen. If she must think about the

oxen it is better she does not know of men being killed. She could not have her head clear to judge of the oxen and bargain for them if she were thinking that her man was going away to be killed."

He lay, waiting to hear her move to the door, to open it and go. But when he thought she was at the door she came back and came close to the bed and stood there. He felt her standing there, looking down at him in the darkness of the room.

After a moment she said, "You are awake, Michel?" "Yes."

"I must be off."

"I know."

"I wish you could have seen the oxen."

"I will be gone by noon."

"I have left you the soup to warm over, and some cold meat and cheese.' She stooped and kissed him.

"You have to work. to work very hard, Mélanie," he said, and kissed her in the dark. He listened to her going to the door.

At the door she stopped, and said again, "I wish you could have stayed and seen the oxen."

He heard Beppe clumping down the stairs after her, and then the opening and shutting of the door, and their steps in the path.

He lay there a long time. After a while he heard a nightingale singing in the dark; then all the nightingales of the countryside began to sing. After a while the old red cock waked and called up all the day birds with his crowing. All the birds of the day began their chatter, and the nightingales stopped singing. Michel heard the sheep stirring and beginning to bleat in their pen under his room. It was light then. He heard one of the small boys open the door of the sheep-pen and call to the sheep. Then he heard them all troop out into the morning.

When he left at noon both little boys were off at the plowing. There were some almond-trees in the fields, and they were in flower, drifts of rose-color against all the wild-beast color of the overturned earth. The tawny house was empty in noon stillness when Michel went out of it, going back to the war.

The regiment of Michel was terribly cut up before Verdun. Leave came round more quickly because so few were left to have their turn of it. He had leave in autumn, but he did not go home. He went to a town behind the lines where he was then, in the Somme. It was full of copains, as had been the town behind the lines in the Champagne, and there was a cinema, and there were many cafés. People in that town all talked about Paris. His next leave he took in Paris.

"There are many people," he said. The boulevard was swarming with permissionaires, coming and going.

He said: "The train coming was so crowded with all of us that there was no room in the wagons. We hung on to the platforms and the steps of the wagons

The soldier on the bench sat with his elbows on his knees and his head in his hands and told me many things. "So you see," he said at the end, "of what use is it?"

I tried to explain to him, but he scarcely listened. He sat straight and looked about him while I talked.

and some climbed up on to the roofs. Two boys were thrown from the roof of a wagon and both of them killed."

"Oh!" I said. "Oh, how horrible! Just when they were coming on leave.

"Yes," he said after me, "just when they were coming on leave.'

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