It all looks to be there, the contents of his haversack, everything that he had lost: his drawings, his notes, her letters, his diary. Harry sees his own life splayed before him, illustrated in a progression of caught instants—in ink, graphite, watercolor, and words. There is Will, at eighteen, in sepia pencil, and Edie with cerulean-blue eyes. There are sketches of smashed woods and broken towns, dugouts, cellars, billets, groups of once-familiar faces, and her face everywhere. He had found comfort in the repetition of her faraway features, like verse rote-learned. It all looks long ago and terribly near.

“Do you remember what you wrote?” asks Edie. She stands up and walks toward him with his diary in her hands. “Do you remember what you put down on paper?”

He tries—and fears—to recall. Her face is fierce. He has never drawn her like that. He watches as she riffles through pages of his words.

“How did Dillon have my bag?”

“Don’t you know?” Her fingers still. Her eyes lift from the page.

The truth is suddenly all too obvious. “Francis,” he says.

“Did you never guess that it was him that took it? Was it not obvious? He gave the bag to Dillon,” she replies with a matter-of-fact tone. “Francis must have gone back into the camp and taken it from you, then he came back here with it, learned what he wanted to know, and told Dillon to do what he would with the rest.”

“He told you that?”

She nods but doesn’t look up from the notebook. He thinks of Francis reading the words that she’s now riffling through. Of course, he had suspected that it might be Francis who had taken his bag, but he didn’t want to believe that could be true. Did this, then, account for those missing days at the start of October? Was this what he did in the Blue Angel? Had Francis seen the ribbon around Harry’s neck on Poperinghe station and known that it was hers? There’s a pencil portrait of him on the bed—Francis in gallant profile, put down by Harry’s hand so that he might post himself back to Edie. The thought of Francis going through all his papers, of him knowing everything, makes Harry want to crouch in a corner.

“‘How I wish that it were otherwise,’” Edie reads. She clears her throat and arches her eyebrows. For a moment she’s an actress reciting lines. “‘For a few minutes this afternoon I thought how things might be if he didn’t make it back. Am I a wretch that I even for a moment consider that?’” She looks up from the diary and her eyes scan across his face. She’s the dispassionate actress no longer.