The Return of the Soldier

by Rebecca West

When we had played together as children in that wood he had always shown great faith in the imminence of the improbable.

He had exchanged his expectation of becoming a red Indian for the equally wistful aspiration of becoming completely reconciled to life.

It was his hopeless hope that some time he would have an experience that would act on his life like alchemy, turning to gold all the dark metals of events, and from that revelation he would go on his way rich with an inextinguishable joy.

We were not, perhaps, specially contemptible women, because nothing could ever really become a part of our life until it had been referred to Chris's attention.

I heard, amazed, his step ring strong upon the stone, for I had felt his absence as a kind of death from which he would emerge ghostlike, impalpable. And