‘I must stay in billets tonight and keep an eye on things,’ he said quietly. ‘There’s a lot to do, one way an’ another; an’ I’ll just ’ave a drink with Sergeant Gallion and the sergeant-major in the comp’ny office before turnin’ in. ’ow are you keepin’, pretty fit?’

Bourne’s assent was somewhat qualified, and the sergeant smiled quietly.

‘Got the bloody wind-up, eh? Well, we all ’ave. You’re goin’ over the top wi’ us again, ol’ son; comin’ back to the comp’ny for the show, the three o’ you. Don’t let on as I said anythin’ about it to you, you know; but that’s what I ’eard. It’ll be all right. You know the comp’ny, an’ it’ll be a dam’ sight better than messin’ about with the runners or sigs as a spare man.’

Bourne agreed, and his relief was quite apparent. Captain Malet had hit on one cause of weakness, when he said that Bourne looked at a question upside down and inside out, and then did exactly what the average man would do in similar circumstances. It did not, as a matter of fact, delay him in action: it was only that he experienced a quite futile anxiety as to whether he were doing the right thing, while he was doing the only possible thing at that particular moment; and it troubled him much more in the interval before action. He had worried for some time as to what his job would be in the attack, and, the moment he knew he would be with the company, his mind cleared.

‘I ’eard you were puttin’ in for a commission,’ the sergeant continued irrelevantly. ‘We’ll ’ave a spree in Bus, after the show’s over. I’m sorry I can’t get down tonight.’

They parted; and Bourne walked back to his billet in a quieter frame of mind. He was not very confident, or very cheerful, but for the moment at least he was free from doubt, and was not groping forward apprehensively into the future. He had noticed recently in himself an increasing tendency to fall into moods, not of abstraction or of rapture, but of blankness; and in a moment of solitude he seemed to become a part of it, his mind reflecting nothing but his immediate surroundings, as the little puddles in the road reflected whatever lees and dregs of light lingered in the sky.

But this mood was not dreaminess, he did not rouse himself out of it with any effort, or with a start, as one wakes again after lapsing into a moment’s sleep. He was instantly aware of the presence of another in his neighbourhood, and always very keenly and definitely. After a few minutes, he met a couple of men in the twilit street.

‘Good night, chum,’ they called out to him, softly.

‘Good night.’

And they were gone again, the unknown shadows, gone almost as quickly and as inconspicuously as bats into the dusk; and they would all go like that ultimately, as they were gathering to go now, migrants with no abiding place, whirled up on the wind of some irresistible impulse. What would be left of them soon would be no more than a little flitting memory in some twilit mind.