Enthusiasm had not diminished behind the lines, and Clerambault persisted in vibrating like an organ pipe, but Maxime no longer gave back the echo he sought to evoke.

All at once, without warning, Maxime came home for a week’s leave.  He stopped on the stairs, for though he seemed more robust than formerly, his legs felt heavy, and he was soon tired.  He waited a moment to breathe, for he was moved, and then went up.  His mother came to the door at his ring, screaming at the sight of him.  Clerambault who was pacing up and down the apartment in the weariness of the long waiting, cried out too as he ran.  It was a tremendous row.

After a few minutes there was a truce to embraces and inarticulate exclamations.  Pushed into a chair by the window with his face to the light, Maxime gave himself up to their delighted eyes.  They were in ecstasies over his complexion, his cheeks more filled out, his healthy look.  His father threw his arms around him calling him “My Hero”—­but Maxime sat with his fingers twitching nervously, and could not get out a word.

At table they feasted their eyes on him, hung on every word, but he said very little.  The excitement of his family had checked his first impetus, but luckily they did not notice it, and attributed his silence to fatigue or to hunger.  Clerambault talked enough for two; telling Maxime about life in the trenches.  Good mother Pauline was transformed into a Cornelia, out of Plutarch, and Maxime looked at them, ate, looked again....  A gulf had opened between them.

When after dinner they all went back to his father’s study, and they saw him comfortably established with a cigar, he had to try and satisfy these poor waiting people.  So he quietly began to tell them how his time was passed, with a certain proud reserve and leaving out tragical pictures.  They listened in trembling expectation, and when he had finished they were still expectant.  Then on their side came a shower of questions, to which Maxime’s replies were short—­soon he fell silent.  Clerambault to wake up the “young rascal” tried several jovial thrusts.

“Come now, tell us about some of your engagements....  It must be fine to see such joy, such sacred fire—­Lord, but I would like to see all that, I would like to be in your place.”

“You can see all these fine things better from where you are,” said Maxime.  Since he had been in the trenches he had not seen a fight, hardly set eyes on a German, his view was bounded by mud and water—­but they would not believe him, they thought he was talking “contrariwise” as he did when he was a child.

“You old humbug,” said his father, laughing gaily, “What does happen then all day long in your trenches?”

“We take care of ourselves; kill time, the worst enemy of all.”

Clerambault slapped him amicably on the back.

“Time is not the only one you kill?”—­Maxime drew away, saw the kind, curious glances of his father and mother, and answered: