Defeat.
March in the country around was rare with jasmine and jonquils and patches of violets in the warming grass. Afterward he remembered especially one afternoon of such a fresh and magic glamour that as he stood in the rifle-pit marking targets he recited “Atalanta in Calydon” to an uncomprehending Pole, his voice mingling with the rip, sing, and splatter of the bullets overhead.
“When the hounds of spring …”
Spang!
“Are on winter’s traces …”
Whirr-r-r-r! …
“The mother of months …”
“Hey! Come to! Mark three-e-e!…”
In town the streets were in a sleepy dream again, and together Anthony and Dot idled in their own tracks of the previous autumn until he began to feel a drowsy attachment for this South—a South, it seemed, more of Algiers than of Italy, with faded aspirations pointing
