"How about a bath?" said one of them. "It is about the last chance, I
reckon."
They took turns to the bathroom, thinking of the mud and vermin of
the trenches which would soon be their home. Among those who
stayed in the sitting-room until the patron turned out the lights were
several officers who had been on forty-eight hours' leave from the
front. They had made a dash to London and back, they had seen the
lights of Piccadilly again, and the crowds in the streets of a city which
seemed to know nothing of war, they had dined with women in
evening-dress who had asked innocent questions about the way of a
modern battlefield, and they had said good-bye again to those who
clung to them a little too long outside a carriage window.
"Worth it, do you think?" asked one of them.
"Enormously so. But it's a bit of a pull--going back to that--
beastliness. After one knows the meaning of it."
"It's because I know that I want to go back," said another man who
had sat very quietly looking at the toe of one of his riding-boots. "I had
a good time in town--it seemed too good to be true--but, after all, one
has to finish one's job before one can sit around with an easy mind.
We've got to finish our job out there in the stinking trenches.
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