where there are now so many girls, he is a shade more of a dog. The
brave, you know, can't be wholly unconscious of the fair, and as I
pass through I catch the same words, but spoken with a slightly more
heroic ring.

"Lord, yes, you get used even to going over the top. A rotten feeling
the first time, but you get used to it. That's one of the rum things
about war, it teaches you what you can get used to. You get apathetic,
you know. That's the word--apathetic: used to anything. Standing for
hours in water up to your knees. Sleeping among rats." (Here some
pretty feminine squeals.) "It is a fact," he swears to them. "Rats
running over you half the night, and now and then a shell bursting
close by."

Standing at his own old desk as he talks, he looks even taller and
stronger than before--by way of contrast, I suppose, and as I pass
out I wonder if he will ever be able to bring himself to resume it.

Having occasion, a little while later, to go downstairs among the
warehousemen, where female labour has not yet penetrated. I hear him
again, and notice that his language has become more free. Safely
underground he extends himself a little.

"Over the top?" he is saying. "Yes, three blinking times. What does it
feel like the first time? Well--" and he tells them how it feels, in a
way that I can't reproduce here, but vivid as lightning compared with
his upstairs manner. And still he remains the clean forthright youth
who sees his duty a dead sure thing, and does it, even though he may
be perplexed now and then.