“It is the only Temple I know,” he continued after a moment. “Perhaps God, one day, will find me there.” There was but one other woman at the hospital. It had been a farmhouse. The man and both sons had been killed during the first year of the war, and the woman had asked to be allowed to stay on. Her name was Madame Lelanne. She was useful by reason of her great physical strength. She could take up a man as he lay and carry him on her outstretched arms. It was an expressionless face, with dull, slow-moving eyes that never changed. She and Joan shared a small grenier in one of the barns. Joan had brought with her a camp bedstead; but the woman, wrapping a blanket round her, would creep into a hole she had made for herself among the hay. She never took off her clothes, except the great wooden-soled boots, so far as Joan could discover.!

“I must try,” agreed Mrs. Phillips, looking up. “What sort of things ought I to talk to him about, do you think?” “But quite seriously,” she added, “give it a little more thought—the enlisting, I mean. The world isn’t too rich in kind influences. It needs men like you. Come, pull yourself together and show a little pluck.” She laughed.

“You thought I would take advantage of it,” she suggested. “Well, he talked more amusingly than he wrote,” explained Joan. “Get Boswell’s Life of him. Or I’ll lend you mine,” she added, “if you’ll be careful of it. You’ll find all the passages marked that are best worth remembering. At least, I think so.” She had risen while he was speaking. She moved to him and laid her hands upon his shoulders.