Vance, Louis Joseph, 1879-1933 / 2008-05-23 00:00:00


So that, when abruptly a man moved from behind a rock some thirty or
forty paces ahead, Duchemin stopped short, with jangled nerves and a
barely smothered exclamation. Possibly a shape of spectral terror would
have been less startling; in that weird place and hour humanity seemed
more incongruous than the supernatural. It was at once apparent that
the man had neither knowledge of nor concern with the stranger. For an
instant he stood with his back to the latter, peering intently down the
aisle which Duchemin had been following, a stout body filling out too
well the uniform of a private soldier in the American Expeditionary
Forces--that most ungainly, inutile, unbecoming costume that ever
graced the form of man.
Then he half turned, beckoned hastily to one invisible to the observer,
and furtively moved on. As furtively his signal was answered by a
fellow who wore the nondescript garments of a peasant. And as suddenly
as they had come into sight, the two slipped round a rocky shoulder,
and the street of monoliths was empty.


III
MEETING BY MOONLIGHT

Now granting that a soldier should be free to spend his leave where he
will, unchallenged, it remained true that the last of the A.
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