“Where do these wounded men come from?” Claude asked.  “I just got in on the Anchises yesterday.”

“They come from various evacuation hospitals.  I believe most of them are the Belleau Wood lot.”

“Where did you lose your arm?”

“Cantigny.  I was in the First Division.  I’d been over since last September, waiting for something to happen, and then got fixed in my first engagement.”

“Can’t you go home?”

“Yes, I could.  But I don’t want to.  I’ve got used to things over here.  I was attached to Headquarters in Paris for awhile.”

Claude leaned across the rail.  “We read about Cantigny at home, of course.  We were a good deal excited; I suppose you were?”

“Yes, we were nervous.  We hadn’t been under fire, and we’d been fed up on all that stuff about it’s taking fifty years to build a fighting machine.  The Hun had a strong position; we looked up that long hill and wondered how we were going to behave.”  As he talked the boy’s eyes seemed to be moving all the time, probably because he could not move his head at all.  After blowing out deep clouds of smoke until his cigarette was gone, he sat down to his ledger and frowned at the page in a way which said he was too busy to talk.

Claude saw Dr. Trueman standing in the doorway, waiting for him.  They made their morning call on Fanning, and left the hospital together.  The Doctor turned to him as if he had something on his mind.

“I saw you talking to that wry-necked boy.  How did he seem, all right?”

“Not exactly.  That is, he seems very nervous.  Do you know anything about him?”

“Oh, yes!  He’s a star patient here, a psychopathic case.  I had just been talking to one of the doctors about him, when I came out and saw you with him.  He was shot in the neck at Cantigny, where he lost his arm.  The wound healed, but his memory is affected; some nerve cut, I suppose, that connects with that part of his brain.  This psychopath, Phillips, takes a great interest in him and keeps him here to observe him.  He’s writing a book about him.  He says the fellow has forgotten almost everything about his life before he came to France.  The queer thing is, it’s his recollection of women that is most affected.  He can remember his father, but not his mother; doesn’t know if he has sisters or not,—­can remember seeing girls about the house, but thinks they may have been cousins.  His photographs and belongings were lost when he was hurt, all except a bunch of letters he had in his pocket.  They are from a girl he’s engaged to, and he declares he can’t remember her at all; doesn’t know what she looks like or anything about her, and can’t remember getting engaged.  The doctor has the letters.  They seem to be from a nice girl in his own town who is very ambitious for him to make the most of himself.  He deserted soon after he was sent to this hospital, ran away.  He was found on a farm out in the country