He lay very still, with his eyes closed, listening to the stir of the ward, the voices of men talking and the fits of coughing that shook the man next him. The smarting pain throbbed monotonously. He felt hungry and wondered vaguely if it were supper time. How little they gave you to eat in the hospital! He called over to the man in the opposite cot: “Hay, Stalky, what time is it?” “It's after messtime now. Got a good appetite for the steak and onions and French fried potatoes?” “Shut up.” A rattling of tin dishes at the other end of the ward made Andrews wriggle up further on his pillow. Verses from the “Shropshire Lad” jingled mockingly through his head: “The world, it was the old world yet, I was I, my things were wet, And nothing now remained to do But begin the game anew.” After he had eaten, he picked up the “Tentation de Saint Antoine,” that lay on the cot beside his immovable legs, and buried himself in it, reading the gorgeously modulated sentences voraciously, as if the book were a drug in which he could drink deep forgetfulness of himself. He put the book down and closed his eyes. His mind was full of intangible floating glow, like the ocean on a warm night, when every wave breaks into pale flame, and mysterious milky lights keep rising to the surface out of the dark waters and gleaming and vanishing. He became absorbed in the strange fluid harmonies that permeated his whole body, as a grey sky at nightfall suddenly becomes filled with endlessly changing patterns of light and color and shadow. When he tried to seize hold of his thoughts, to give them definite musical expression in his mind, he found himself suddenly empty, the way a sandy inlet on the beach that has been full of shoals of silver fishes, becomes suddenly empty when a shadow crosses the water, and the man who is watching sees wanly his own reflection instead of the flickering of thousands of tiny silver bodies. John Andrews awoke to feel a cold hand on his head. “Feeling all right?” said a voice in his ear. He found himself looking in a puffy, middle-aged face, with a lean nose and grey eyes, with dark rings under them. Andrews felt the eyes looking him over inquisitively. He saw the red triangle on the man's khaki sleeve. “Yes,” he said. “If you don't mind, I'd like to talk to you a little while, buddy.” “Not a bit; have you got a chair?” said Andrews smiling. “I don't suppose it was just right of me to wake you up, but you see it was this way.... You were the next in line, an' I was afraid I'd forget you, if I skipped you.” “I understand,” said Andrews, with a sudden determination to take the initiative away from the “Y” man. “How long have you been in France? D'you like the war?” he asked hurriedly. The “Y” man smiled sadly. “You seem pretty spry,” he said. “I guess you're in a hurry to get back at the front and get some more Huns.” He smiled again, with an air of indulgence. Andrews did not answer.