need to understand, for I had a full heart, which is better than a full brain. And I cried, as I walked back, “_Domine Deus, Rex Celestis, Pater omnipotens_,” and left it all—the soft love and the hard death—where it belongs. And I was glad to have walked for a few moments alone by the green Marne. When I got back I found Joseph of the 71st _Chasseurs à pied_ sitting with Miss N. Joseph thinks we are friends; he _knows_ we are friends, so different from “world’s” people, who are suspicious and think nobody loves them, or fatuous and think everybody does. We sat in the 1860 dining-room. There is a pressed-bronze clock on the mantelpiece, representing a mild and smiling Turk with a drawn sword—and there is a sideboard you could find in Barnesville, Maryland, or Squedunk (I forget _where_ Squedunk is), and the extremely “distant” Guido Renis decorate the brown walls, without, however, enlivening them. And this is Joseph’s story—Joseph of the grateful heart, Joseph with two years and a half of service, Joseph who won’t be twenty till December, Joseph with his young, round face and flat nose, dark under his pleasant eyes, and a bit hollow under his cheek-bones, and with decorations on his chest: “I never knew my parents; the Fathers brought me up. I have had only good from them, and when they were _chassés_ I was taken with them to Pisa. I was going to continue my studies, _mais la guerre, que voulez-vous_? They call me ‘_le gosse_,’ I was the youngest in the regiment. Now I am alone in the world since my brothers were killed, one at Verdun three weeks ago, the other last year on the Somme. I miss the letters,” he added, simply. “But, Joseph, tell us how you got your _Croix de Guerre_.” “Oh, I only happened to save the life of my captain at Verdun. We were making a reconnaissance, and he fell with a ball in the hip. I started to bring him in, with a comrade who was hit by a piece of shrapnel in the head and killed instantly. I caught ‘mine’ in the arm, but I was still able to drag my captain in by his feet. It was quite simple, and since then he is very good to me.” Joseph is _en perm_, his regiment is at Reims, but he spits blood and his voice is hoarse—he was gassed a few weeks ago. “It smelt of violets,” he said, “and we didn’t know that anything was the matter till an officer rushed toward us. Eight of us never got up. I’ll never speak clearer than this.” Joseph stayed to supper with us—a supper of _soupe à l’oseille_, scrambled eggs, and salad, but the brown, dull, little room gradually seemed to fill with a sifted glory, and we left our meal and went out to find the whole world dipped in transparent pink, and the great Light of Day about to disappear, a reddish ball, in a mass of color of an intenser hue. The delicate willows were like silver candelabra reflected in the Marne, which now was a satiny pink. The wheat-fields were seas of burnished gold.