"It concerns Hermann," he said. "It concerns Hermann and me. The last
morning that I was in the trenches, there was an attack at dawn from
the German lines. They tried to rush our trench in the dark. Hermann
led them. He got right up to the trench. And I shot him. I did not know,
thank God!"
Suddenly Michael could not bear to look at her any more. He put his arm
on the table by him and, leaning his head on it, covering his eyes he
went on. But his voice, up till now quite steady, faltered and failed,
as the sobs gathered in his throat.
"He fell across the parapet close to me," he said. . . . "I lifted him
somehow into our trench. . . . I was wounded, then. . . . He lay at the
bottom of the trench, Sylvia. . . . And I would to God it had been I who
lay there. . . . Because I loved him. . . . Just at the end he opened
his eyes, and saw me, and knew me. And he said--oh, Sylvia, Sylvia!--he
said 'Lieber Gott, Michael. Good morning, old boy.' And then he
died. . . . I have told you."
And at that Michael broke down utterly and completely for the first time
since the morning of which he spoke, and sobbed his heart out, while,
unseen to him, Sylvia sat with hands clasped together and stretched
towards him.
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