The remark, made with a strong German accent, was delivered with a little smile, and there was consciousness in his eyes. He finished it with a weary sigh and his hand moved slightly and rested on mine as I bent over him. There was a pool of water beside us in a hole in the hearth and I dipped my not too clean handkerchief in it and wiped some of the mud off his face. If I had felt any enmity against him for killing you, it was gone now. A war of attrition those beautiful war critics term it, and here was the attrition process in miniature. He had killed you and you had killed him, an officer apiece, and the Allies could stand the attrition longer than the Germans. I knew the argument and I have not the slightest doubt it is sound. In the meantime here was a man dying rather rapidly, very weary and only too ready for the last trench of all. I chatted to him and have no notion what I said. I dare say it is a comfort to have, at the hour of death, a human being by you and a human voice speaking to you. He was quite conscious, the water on his face had refreshed him and had revealed clear-cut, aristocratic features, that had nothing bestial or cruel about them. Just as I had thought about you, so I thought about him. Waste! waste! I felt as though I had met him before, and certainly I knew his type if not the individual. Perhaps too, sitting opposite one another week after week, in trenches two hundred yards apart, the spirits bridge a gap the bodies cannot. I do not know, I do not greatly care. His voice was feeble, but he seemed to wish to speak to me and his English was that of an educated man, precise and at times idiomatic. He accounted for that almost in his first words. ‘I have been in England on long visits, twice, three times,’ he said. ‘I like England. Germany and England are worth dying for. Also I am Saxon, and Saxony is a great country. Anglo-Saxons, is it not?’ ‘Anglo-Saxons,’ I repeated lightly. ‘We have the same blood in us.’ ‘Good blood, too,’ he said, glancing down at the little splash of it on his tunic. ‘A pity to spill so much. Will you bathe my face again, it helps me, and I would like to die clean.’ ‘Don’t talk nonsense,’ I said. ‘To-morrow morning you will be in our lines—another man.’ He did not answer for a moment, then he said, almost with humour in his voice, ‘That is quite true, to-morrow morning I will surely be in your lines—a dead man.’ Again there was silence between us. He spoke the truth and knew that I knew it. His arm moved: the fingers of his hand pawed aimlessly at the rubble by his side. I half rose and told him that I was going to our breastworks to bring some bearers with a stretcher. He shook his head and spoke in a voice almost strong. ‘No, please, no! You shall go in half, in a quarter of an hour. I am quite easy here. In no great pain. Death is, sometimes, quite easy. I would like you to stay if you will.’ ‘Of course I will stay if you wish.’