had written telling of the madman's last words:
Anfos had said they were killing God, that was why
he had wanted to stop the troop-train. He, Christophe,
had many times pictured God's wounds, the more
agonizing because God was immortal. God's wounds
. . . but supposing God could, in fact, die, could be
wounded to death by His merciless creatures? Even
now it might well be that God was dead, that the
world was abandoned to this horror of war "because
it had slain the one source of mercy. If that source
had been slain then the world was doomed, he was
doomed, Jan was doomed, and this man who whispered.
And Christ . . . what of Christ? He also had died;
He had died on the Cross . . . yes, but had He risen?
Queer to harbour such doubts and yet remain sane,
sane enough to be valuable to one's Colonel —but
perhaps the taind could disguise its real self; or per-
haps every creature possessed two minds, one acutely
self-conscious, the other automatic. Back there in
Lydda that letter had come. . . . What had he been
doing back there in Lydda? He had found an olive
grove close to the town; he had walked to it all alone
one evening, and had suddenly felt an anguish of soul
for which there had seemed no discernible reason.
Round Saint Loup there were many such olive groves,
but this one in Judea had struck him as different.
Then Ramleh where Jan had become all on fire at
the sight of that ruined church of the Crusaders —
Jan had actually knelt down and kissed the stones
surreptitiously, when he thought no one was looking.
It was clearing now, his brain felt less dazed, he
could see quite a number of clear little pictures.
The Colonel's horses; they had both been abandoned,
the one dead of sand fever, the other gone sick and
left to die with the Veterinary Section. It had been
very hard to leave that sick horse, for its filming eyes
had reproached and questioned. But the time was