He explained that he had been listening to the band in the gardens, returning by the Quai d’Orsay. “Thank you,” she said, “for being so kind—and wise. I shall always love and honour her.”!

“I like him,” said Joan. “Oh, you needn’t look so scared,” laughed the girl, “I haven’t come down to that.” Her voice had changed. It had a note of shrillness. In some indescribable way she had grown coarse. “I’m a kept woman,” she explained. “What else is any woman?”

The lonely woman touched her lightly on the hand. There shot a pleading look from the old stern eyes. 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. “You’re not playing the game,” whispered Joan, shaking her head. “I only promised on condition that you would try to get well.”