And on and on he talked, over his wine and soda.  He was not conceited —­he was not showing off—­far from it.  It was the same thing here in this officer as it was with the privates, and the same with this Englishman as with a Frenchman or a German or an Italian.  Lilly had sat in a cowshed listening to a youth in the north country:  he had sat on the corn-straw that the oxen had been treading out, in Calabria, under the moon:  he had sat in a farm-kitchen with a German prisoner:  and every time it was the same thing, the same hot, blind, anguished voice of a man who has seen too much, experienced too much, and doesn’t know where to turn.  None of the glamour of returned heroes, none of the romance of war:  only a hot, blind, mesmerised voice, going on and on, mesmerised by a vision that the soul cannot bear.

In this officer, of course, there was a lightness and an appearance of bright diffidence and humour.  But underneath it all was the same as in the common men of all the combatant nations:  the hot, seared burn of unbearable experience, which did not heal nor cool, and whose irritation was not to be relieved.  The experience gradually cooled on top:  but only with a surface crust.  The soul did not heal, did not recover.

“I used to be awfully frightened,” laughed Herbertson.  “Now you say, Lilly, you’d never have stood it.  But you would.  You’re nervous—­and it was just the nervous ones that did stand it.  When nearly all our officers were gone, we had a man come out—­a man called Margeritson, from India—­big merchant people out there.  They all said he was no good—­not a bit of good—­nervous chap.  No good at all.  But when you had to get out of the trench and go for the Germans he was perfect—­ perfect—­It all came to him then, at the crisis, and he was perfect.

“Some things frighten one man, and some another.  Now shells would never frighten me.  But I couldn’t stand bombs.  You could tell the difference between our machines and the Germans.  Ours was a steady noise—­drrrrrrrr!—­but their’s was heavy, drrrrRURUrrrrRURU!—­ My word, that got on my nerves. . . .

“No I was never hit.  The nearest thing was when I was knocked down by an exploding shell—­several times that—­you know.  When you shout like mad for the men to come and dig you out, under all the earth.  And my word, you do feel frightened then.”  Herbertson laughed with a twinkling motion to Lilly.  But between his brows there was a tension like madness.

“And a funny thing you know—­how you don’t notice things.  In—­let me see—­1916, the German guns were a lot better than ours.  Ours were old, and when they’re old you can’t tell where they’ll hit:  whether they’ll go beyond the mark, or whether they’ll fall short.  Well, this day our guns were firing short, and killing our own men.  We’d had the order to charge, and were running forward, and I suddenly felt hot water spurting on my neck—­” He put his hand to the