Very well, we've got war, haven't we ?" In our room I said to Marie, "Only three days left." Marie came and went and talked continually round me, all the time sewing zinc buttons onto the new pouch, stiff with its dressing.

She seemed to be making an effort to divert me.

She had on a blue blouse, well-worn and soft, half open at the neck.

Her place was a great one in that gray room.
She asked me if I should be a long time away, and then, as whenever she put that question she went on, "Of course, you don't a bit know." She regretted that I was only a private like everybody.

She hoped it would be over long before the winter.
I did not speak.