"_Fat Fritz went out, all camouflaged, like a beautiful bumble-bee, With daffodil stripes and 'airy legs to see what he could see, By the light of the moon, in No Man's Land, he climbed an apple tree And he put on his big round spectacles, to look for gay Paree._
_But I don't suppose he'll do it again For months, and months, and months; But I don't suppose he'll do it again For months, and month, and months; For Archie is only a third class shot, But he brought him down at once,_
_I don't suppose he'll do it again For months, and months, and months._"
Soon afterwards, with all these themes interchanging in her bewildered mind, May Margaret heard Julian Sinclair calling through the dark from the car ahead: "Take a good look at the next village; it's called Crécy." The stars that watched the ancient bowmen had nothing new to tell her; but a few minutes later, as another body of troops came tramping through the dark to another stanza of their song, there seemed to be an ancient and unconquerable mass of marching harmonies within the lilt of the Cockney ballad; like the mass of the sea behind the breaking wave:
"_'E called 'em the Old Contemptibles, But 'e only did it once, And I don't suppose 'e'll do it again, For months, and months, and months._"
They dined at the château, and she slipped away early to the house of the curé. Before she slept, she took out Brian's last letter and read it. She sat on the narrow bed, under the little black crucifix with the ivory Christ looking down at her from the bare wall. She was glad that it was there; for it embodied the master-thought of that day's pilgrimage. Never before had she realized how that symbol was dominating this war; how it was repeated and repeated over thousands of acres of young men's graves; and with what a new significance the wayside crosses of France were now stretching out their arms in the night of disaster.
In Brian's letter there was very little about himself. He had always been somewhat impatient of the "lyrical people," as he called them, who were "so eloquently introspective" about the war, and he had carried his prejudice even into his correspondence. She was reading his letter again to-night because she remembered that it expressed something of her own bewilderment at the multiplicity of ways in which people were talking and thinking of the international tragedy. "I have heard," he wrote, "every possible kind of opinion out here, with the exception of one. I have never heard any one suggest any possible end for this war but the defeat of the Hun. But I _have_ heard, over and over again, ridicule of the idea that this war is going to end war, or even make the world better.