Tacked to the wall was the portrait of a woman. He said goodbye to her at Victoria Station. How long ago? Surely more than seven hours, or seven years⁠ ⁠… Outside there were the old noises. The guns were at it again. That was a trench-mortar. The enemy’s eight-inch howitzers were plugging away. What a beastly row that machine-gun was making! Playing on the same old spot. Why couldn’t they leave it alone, the asses?⁠ ⁠… Anyhow, there was no doubt about it⁠—he had come back again. Back to the trenches and the same old business.

There was a mine to be blown up that night and it would make a pretty mess in the enemy’s lines. The colonel was very cheerful about it, and explained that a good deal of sapping had been done. “We’ve got the bulge on ’em,” he said, referring to the enemy’s failures in this class of work. In the mess all the officers were carrying on as usual, making the same old jokes.

The man who had come back got back also the spirit of the thing with astonishing rapidity. That other life of his, away there in old London, was shut up in the cupboard of his heart.