He was exhausted, long past the point of fear, and his weariness had made him philosophical. Little girls as innocent and sweet as this had died for nothing in Malta, in London, in Hamburg, in Warsaw. But they were statistical little girls, children he had never seen himself. He thought of Lemoni, and then of Pelagia. The unspeakable enormity of this war suddenly broke his heart, so that he gasped and fought for breath, and at the identical moment he also knew with absolute certainty that nothing was more necessary than to win it. He touched his lips to his fingers, and then his fingers to the
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