"Flaming idealism be blowed! I came out with blood-*lust in my heart, and having killed until I was sick of killing—German boys who popped their heads over the parapet—I saw that the whole scheme of things was wrong, and that the grey men had no more power of escape than the brown men. We had to go on killing each other because we were both under the same law, thrust upon us by those directing the infernal machinery of world-politics. But that's not the point, and it's old and stale, anyhow."
"The point is," I said, "that you will be looked upon as a traitor by many of your best pals, that you will smash your father and mother, and that this girl Elsa and you will be profoundly miserable."
"We shall be enormously and immensely happy," he answered, "and that outweighs everything."
He told me that he needed happiness. For more than four years he had suffered agony of mind in the filth and mud of war. He craved for beauty, and Elsa fulfilled his ideal. He had been a lonely devil, and Elsa had offered him the only cure for the worst disease in life, intimate and eternal love.
Something prompted me to say words which I deeply regretted as soon as they were spoken. It was the utterance of a subconscious thought.
"There is a girl, not German, who might have cured your loneliness. You and Eileen O'Connor would have made good mates."
For some reason he was hit rather hard by that remark. He became exceedingly pale, and for a moment or two did not answer me. I thought he would blurt out some angry reply, damning my impudence, but when he spoke it was in a grave, gentle way which seemed to me more puzzling.
