him for a few minutes, Claude descended the slope, swishing the tall ferns.
“Will I be in the way?” he asked as he stopped at the foot of the rocks.
“Oh, no!” said the other, moving a little and unclasping his hands.
Claude sat down on a boulder. “Is this heather?” he asked. “I thought I recognized it, from ‘Kidnapped.’ This part of the world is not as new to you as it is to me.”
“No. I lived in Paris for several years when I was a student.”
“What were you studying?”
“The violin.”
“You are a musician?” Claude looked at him wonderingly.
“I was,” replied the other with a disdainful smile, languidly stretching out his legs in the heather.
“That seems too bad,” Claude remarked gravely.
“What does?”
“Why, to take fellows with a special talent. There are enough of us who haven’t any.”
Gerhardt rolled over on his back and put his hands under his head. “Oh, this affair is too big for exceptions; it’s universal. If you happened to be born twenty-six years ago, you couldn’t escape. If this war didn’t kill you in one way, it would in another.” He told Claude he had trained at Camp Dix, and had come over eight months ago in a regimental band, but he hated the work he had to do and got transferred to the infantry.
When they retraced their steps, the wood was full of green twilight. Their relations had changed somewhat during the
