who had taken her away and told her something horrid. The door of the
shed stood ajar. John half led, half pushed her in.

"Look there--" he said.

The dead men were laid out in a row, on their backs; greyish-white,
sallow-white faces upturned; bodies straight and stiff on a thin litter
of straw. Pale grey light hovered, filtered through dust.

It came from some clearer place of glass beyond that might have been a
carpenter's shop, partitioned off. She couldn't see what was going on
there. She didn't see anything but the dead bodies, the dead faces, and
John's living face.

He leaned against the wall; his head was thrown back, his eyes moved
glistening under the calm lids; the corners of his mouth and the wings of
his nostrils were lifted as he laughed: a soft, thin laugh breathed out
between the edges of his teeth. He pointed.

"There's your man. Shows how much they wanted him, doesn't it?"

He lay there, the last comer, in his uniform and bloody bandages, his
stiff, peaked mouth open, his legs stretched apart as they had sprung in
his last agony.

"Oh, John--"

She cried out in her fright and put her hands over her eyes. She had
always been afraid of the dead bodies. She didn't want to know where they
put them, and nobody told her.