mittes, because they were Marie's neighbours; Merc
Melanie, gladly preparing to weep, and with her the
little hump-backed violinist. The fat Monsieur Bled
had also arrived, and the Doctor who never pressed
for his payments, and Monsieur Roland who had
hurried so much that he felt himself bound to unfasten
his collar, and Kahn's new apprentice, very humble
and shy, and wishful that they should ignore his
existence. And last but not least, the kind-hearted
woman who had. used to give Jan of her choicest
peaches for the sake of that boy of hers who had died,
but who now for his sake gave Jan cigarettes, since
the boy had he lived would have been a man
also.
Marie thought: clt is odd to feel so much alone,
here are many good friends yet they seem like stran-
gers.' For she }iad not yet learned that the bitterest
thing about grief is its sense of complete isolation.
But Christophe divined her thought and he said,
taking care that his voice should reach her only:
'Distance does not exist, it is all here and now; there
is neither time, separation nor distance. Where you
are I am; where I go you shall come . . .' What was
he saying? Whose words were these? And to whom
had he spoken such words before . . . where you are
I am . . . had it been to Anfos?
She looked at him with her good faithful eyes in
which there was love but no understanding.
Far away down the line a white curling cloud;
then a dull, thudding sound that came nearer and
nearer; then shouts and a huddle of grinning masks
as the poilus crowded up to the windows, struggling
like cattle for a breath of fresh air, but still ribald,
light-hearted, good-tempered and long-suffering. Jan
kissing his mother. Everyone pressing forward to
shake the extended hands of the poilus, to shake
Jan's and Christophe's hands in farewell.
466