“Of course,” he explained with a weary smile, “as long as you can tot up your daily bag in the trenches it’s a sort of satisfaction--though I don’t quite know why; anyhow, you’re so dead-beat at night that no dreams come. But lying here staring at the ceiling one goes through the whole business once an hour, at the least: the attack, the slaughter, the ruins...and worse.... Haven’t I seen and heard things enough on _this_ side to know what’s been happening on the other? Don’t try to sugar the dose. I _like_ it bitter.” I was three days in the neighbourhood, and I went back every day to see him. He liked to talk to me because he had a faint hope of my getting news of his family when I returned to Paris. I hadn’t much myself, but there was no use telling him so. Besides, things change from day to day, and when we parted I promised to get word to him as soon as I could find out anything. We both knew, of course, that that would not be till Réchamp was taken a third time--by his own troops; and perhaps soon after that, I should be able to get there, or near there, and make enquiries myself. To make sure that I should forget nothing, he drew the family photographs from under his pillow, and handed them over: the little witch-grandmother, with a face like a withered walnut, the father, a fine broken-looking old boy with a Roman nose and a weak chin, the mother, in crape, simple, serious and provincial, the little sister ditto, and Alain, the young brother--just the age the brutes have been carrying off to German prisons--an over-grown thread-paper boy with too much forehead and eyes, and not a muscle in his body. A charming-looking family, distinguished and amiable; but all, except the grandmother, rather usual. The kind of people who come in sets. As I pocketed the photographs I noticed that another lay face down by his pillow. “Is that for me too?” I asked. He coloured and shook his head, and I felt I had blundered. But after a moment he turned the photograph over and held it out. “It’s the young girl I am engaged to. She was at Réchamp visiting my parents when war was declared; but she was to leave the day after I did....” He hesitated. “There may have been some difficulty about her going.... I should like to be sure she got away.... Her name is Yvonne Malo.” He did not offer me the photograph, and I did not need it. That girl had a face of her own! Dark and keen and splendid: a type so different from the others that I found myself staring. If he had not said “_ma fiancée_” I should have understood better. After another pause he went on: “I will give you her address in Paris. She has no family: she lives alone--she is a musician. Perhaps you may find her there.” His colour deepened again as he added: “But I know nothing--I have had no news of her either.”