"Sometimes," the other broke the silence, "I ask myself why I joined up. Don’t see how it could have been patriotism; England hadn’t been anything to me for years. My sister died soon after I left it and I hadn’t any one else. So far as I can make out it never was much to me; I was always unhappy in England, hated school and office and towns—I lived in a town. Never knew what life could be till I got away from it. Say the Germans had won and dominated the earth! They wouldn’t have dominated my earth. I could always have made myself a camp-fire where they wouldn’t have wanted to follow me. If they’d sacked London and swallowed up New York I could have lain out under the stars at night and laughed at ’em. So what made me? ... Some say man’s a fighting animal." He pulled a fresh grass-blade to chew and rolled over on his chest till his chin rested on his hands. "I knew I should hate soldiering—I made no mistake about that. The regularity—shipboard’s too regular for me. I’ve tried it more than once for the sake of getting somewhere, and before the voyage was half over I’d always had more than enough. I knew I should hate it, but I joined up straight and away.... I’ve lost everything that made life good to me. Other chaps—blind chaps and crippled—might think I’d got off easily. So I have, I daresay; but then it isn’t every one whose life was in moving on. Often when I was alone I’ve shouted and laughed just to feel how my legs moved under me.... It’s the devil—this compound—but even if I were out of it, I’m a lame thing. When the war ends I’m a lame thing. Not what most people would call crippled, of course; I can walk a few miles and feed myself, and to look at me you wouldn’t know there was anything at all the matter. If I were a townsman it wouldn’t make very much difference; if I’d stayed a clerk I could go on being a clerk. But I can’t be ... what I was. I’ve lost everything that made life good to me. What for? "I can’t remember exactly the feeling I had about it when I enlisted—what made me do it. So many things have happened since then. But I know I didn’t think about it long; so far as I remember I didn’t hesitate, not for a minute. I went straight off the morning after war was declared. Midnight, fourth, we were at war, and midday, fifth, I was a soldier. Must have been some sort of instinct.... Sometimes I tell myself what a blazing fool I am. "That’s sometimes. Other times——" He was silent for so long that William concluded the flow of his confidence had ceased. "When you live in a crowd," he said at last, "you can always make excuses for yourself. Most likely you don’t need to. If you’re a fool or a coward you herd with a lot of other fools and cowards, and you all back each other up. So you never come face to face with yourself."