Winter. Mud. A light fall of snow that was split into festers by the guns before it could anneal the ancient sores. Hugo shivered and stared into no man’s land, whence a groan had issued for twenty hours, audible occasionally over the tumult of the artillery. He saw German eyes turned mutely on the same heap of rags that moved pitifully over the snow, leaving a red wake, dragging a bloody thing behind. It rose and fell, moving parallel to the two trenches. Many machine-gun bullets had either missed it or increased its crimson torment. Hugo went out and killed the heap of rags, with a revolver that cracked until the groans stopped in a low moan. Breaths on both sides were bated. The rags had been gray-green. A shout of low, rumbling praise came from the silent enemy trenches. Hugo looked over there for a moment and smiled. He looked down at the thing and vomited. The guns began again.

Another winter. Time had become stagnant. All about it was a pool of mud and suppuration, and shot through it was the sound of guns and the scent of women, the taste of wine and the touch of cold flesh. Somewhere, he could not remember distinctly where, Hugo had a clean uniform, a portfolio of papers, a jewel-case of medals. He was a great man—a man feared. The Colorado in the Foreign Legion. Men would talk about what they had seen him accomplish all through the next fifty years—at watering places in the Sahara, at the crackling fires of country-house parties in Shropshire, on the shores of the South Seas, on the moon, maybe. Old men, at the last, would clear the phlegm from their skinny throats and begin: “When I was a-fightin’ with the Legion in my youngest days, there was a fellow in our company that came from some place in wild America that I disrecollect.” And younger, more sanguine men would listen and shake their heads and wish that there was a war for them to fight.

Hugo was not satisfied with that. Still, he could see no decent exit and contrive no better use for himself. He clung frantically to the ideals he had taken with him and to the splendid purpose with which he had emblazoned his mad lust to enlist. Marseilles and the sentiment it had inspired seemed very far away. He thought about it as he walked toward the front, his head bent into the gale and his helmet pitched to protect his eyes from the sting of the rain.