Ashamed of himself, Big Belt waited to see if Peter would turn in to their quarters, as he approached carrying the hospital steward's blouse across his arm. Boylan would not call. It was like a woman's way—to learn if a man had forgotten her; still he would not call.... Clean-shaven, very straight and full of life, Peter approached, smiling at packers and soldiers, a smile for all the world. “Why not?” Boylan thought. Peter did turn in, and came toward him, hand out.  
“Tomato with duck's eggs. Draw up a chair,” said Boylan. He appeared just now to see the steward's blouse.
 
“Samarc takes the field to-day. It's for him,” Peter explained.... “He's going out to kill himself. Only one reservation—that he kill no one else.”
 
Boylan seemed staring at Peter's knees.
 
“You're letting the ketchup burn,” Peter said mildly.
 
“I suppose that's what he really means to do,” Big Belt observed, after a moment. “And what are we to do about it?”
 
“I thought I would stand by a little—not so as to be a nuisance, you know—”
 
“Naturally not. Of course.”
 
They ate in silence—a thousand things to say.
 
“I won't be very far from the staff,” said Peter, hurrying back to the hospital. “Poor old Samarc has two wounds, you know—”
 
It wasn't a day to explain things—not a day to talk. Men afield can never tell what they are doing; some devilish is in the air. They laugh; they listen; they hope—only a jest comes. The most thrilling and stupendous situations bring but a curse or a roar. Human throats are inarticulate, afield; the reality that voices heroic and makes it is not at work in man-fabric; splendid faces and brave actions—but the words are the revealers of emptiness. For the animal is awake and upstanding; the spirit that quickens reality is apart.
 
The battlefield opened to Mowbray's eyes that day with abnormal clearness, as if he had brought rest and reflection to a problem that long had him, He felt singularly light and full of ease—as one does sometimes in the first hours of the day after a night. The day was wild with west wind, a touch of south still clinging. The east arrayed itself again and again in all the delicate blends of pink and gray, yellow, rose, and ; a different arrangement at each glance, as if separate groups of followed each around a Roman bath.
 
Samarc was given a seat in an , with orders to join his battery. Peter found his horse, already saddled by Boylan, and overtook the wagon train as it left the town. In a halt for the way to clear, Kohlvihr and his staff passed, Dabnitz and Boylan riding together. The General sat soft and lumpy in the saddle, his eyes small and , his face hotly red. The staff passed on, all except Boylan believing that the correspondent had fallen in behind. Riding with the , Peter frequently turned to the terrifying bandage above the steward's blouse. When the light was right, he caught a glint of the eyes beneath.
 
The way became steep for the wagons as they neared the emplacements. Peter swung off and led his . was already engaged down in the hollows; the of powder began to cut the air at , but the strong wind as often it away, and the of woods came up startlingly, with the warmth of the sun upon the ground—the sweet healing breath of drying .
 
He was sorry now he had roughed it with the young doctor; that sort of thing was very far from him. He had no memory of another episode like it. On occasion, dropping into the queerest abstractions, he fancied her near.... It had been like a soldier leaving his lady for the battle—the precious few minutes less than an hour ago. She had promised to be with him. There had been no talk nor thought of the terrifying day she faced in the hospital; everything had to do with his taking the field. She would follow him with her thoughts. Perhaps he would find his soul out there, she suggested, as he had never found it before. Peter wondered now just what she meant by that. It was not his way to fall back upon any such abstraction.
 
He reflected how her presence always changed him, gave him strength of a different sort, and directness of aim.... It was true that she seemed near—on the other side from Samarc—a part of the mountain that would not be overpowered in the gun-reek. He felt if he could turn quickly enough he would catch the gleam of her colors. This was her country. She was of the north and the cold lands; she belonged to the purity of the .
 
He played with the thought that she was near; and from the thought, because it was good, a glimpse of the future came to him—the peace to come, when men would dwell again with their loves, and the dream of superb would come true. All this madness of men would pass, as the rising powder-reek would pass from these Galician hills, and leave them their silence and their natural ............