If she called, would he come? But, then, all
of life was one call now, for her. She went on slowly.
After that it was not unusual for her to go to the trenches, on such
nights as no men could come to the little house. Always she was joyously
welcomed, and always on her way back she turned to send from the poplar
trees that inarticulate aching call that she had come somehow to
believe in.
January, wet and raw, went by; February, colder, with snow, was half
over. The men had ceased to watch for Henri over the parapet, and his
brave deeds had become fireside tales, to be told at home, if ever
there were to be homes again for them.
Then one night Henri came back--came as he had gone, out of the shadows
that had swallowed him up; came without so much as the sound of a
sniper's rifle to herald him. A strange, thin Henri, close to
starvation, dripping water over everything from a German uniform, and
very close indeed to death before he called out.
There was wild excitement indeed. Bearded private soldiers, forgetting
that name and rank of his which must not be told, patted his thin
shoulders. Officers who had lived through such horrors as also may not
be told, crowded about him and shook hands with him, and with each other.
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