He wanted very much to go to England, and yet his chief feeling was that of apathy. Now that his orders had come, he felt he would just as soon have stopped where he was. Why prolong the agony? If he stayed, he would either be hit sooner or later, or become a Battalion Runner, a much better and less anxious job than that of an Infantry subaltern. Still, it might be worth while, just to see Elizabeth and Fanny again.... It was hot midsummer weather. He wandered out along the straight French road, with its ceaseless up and down of mechanical transport and military traffic. The Military Police and armed pickets suspiciously turned him back. He found a little hedgeless field of poppies and yellow daisies, and sat down there. The heavies were firing with regular deliberation; overhead the white shrapnel bursts pursued an enemy plane; from the far distance came a very faint “claaang!” as a shell smashed into M——. It was so strange to have unmuddy boots, to sit on grass in the sun and look at wild flowers, to see one or two undamaged houses, not to be continually on the alert. He sat with his elbows on his knees, and his doubled fists under his chin, staring in front of him. His body was rested, but he felt such an apathetic weariness of mind that he would have been glad to die painlessly there and then, without ever going back to England, without ever seeing Elizabeth and Fanny again. His mind no longer wandered off in long coherent reveries, but was either vaguely empty or thronged with too vivid memories. It seemed incredible that only seven months or so had passed since he had left England—more like seven years. He felt, not so much self-contempt, as self-indifference. He did not despise George Winterbourne, he merely wasn’t interested in him. Once he had been extremely interested in himself and the things he wanted to do; now, he didn’t care, he didn’t want to do anything in particular. Directly the military yoke was lightened and he was left to himself for a few hours, he was aimless, apathetic, listless. If he had been told there and then that he was discharged from the Army and could go, he wouldn’t have known what to do except to stay there and stare at the poppies and daisies. The night before he left, the Runners and officers’ servants got rum, and beer and champagne, and made him drink with them. They exhorted him not to forget his old pals, and not to be a swine to his men when he was an officer. He promised, regretting all the time the subtle difference which was already dividing him from them. “Fancy ’avin’ to salute old George,” said one of them. Fancy indeed! He wished so much he had stayed with them. He drank a good deal, and for the first time in his life went to bed tight. * * * * *