"How can you say this is a quiet place?" he said.
"It's quiet enough now."
"It isn't. It's full of noises. Loud, thundering noises going on and on.
Awful noises.... You know what it is? It's the guns in France. I can
hear them all the time."
"No, Colin. That isn't what you hear. We're much too far off. Nobody
could hear them."
"_I_ can."
"I don't think so."
"Do you mean it's noises in my head?"
"Yes. They'll go away when you're stronger."
"I shall never be strong again."
"Oh yes, you will be. You're better already."
"If I get better they'll send me out again."
"Never. Never again."
"I ought to be out. I oughtn't to be sticking here doing nothing....
Anne, you don't think Queenie'll come over, do you?"
"No, I don't. She's got much too much to do out there."
"You know, that's what I'm afraid of, more than anything, Queenie's
coming. She'll tell me I funked. She thinks I funked. She thinks that's
what's the matter with me."
"She doesn't. She knows it's your body, not you. Your nerves are shaken
to bits, that's all."
"I didn't funk, Anne." (He said it for the hundredth time.) "I mean I
stuck it all right. I went back after I had shell-shock the first
time--straight back into the trenches. It was at the very end of the
fighting that I got it again. Then I couldn't go back. I couldn't move."
"I know, Colin, I know."
"Does Queenie know?"
"Of course she does. She understands perfectly. Why, she sees men with
shell-shock every day. She knows you were splendid."
"I wasn't. But I wasn't as bad as she thinks me. ... Don't let her see
me if she comes back."
"She won't come."
"She will. She will. She'll get leave some day. Tell her not to come.
Tell her she can't see me. Say I'm off my head. Any old lie that'll stop
her."
"Don't think about her."
"I can't help thinking. She said such beastly things. You can't think
what disgusting things she said."
"She says them to everybody. She doesn't mean them."
"Oh, doesn't she!... Is that mother? You might tell her I'm sleeping."
For Colin was afraid of his mother, too. He was afraid that she would
talk, that she would talk about the War and about Jerrold. Colin had
been home six weeks and he had not once spoken Jerrold's name. He read
his letters and handed them to Anne and Adeline without a word. It was
as if between him and the thought of Jerrold there was darkness and a
supreme, nameless terror.
One morning at dawn Anne was wakened by Colin's voice in her room.
"Anne, are you awake?"