The other was a young priest. He wore the regulation Red Cross uniform, but kept his cassock hanging on a peg behind his bed. He had pretty frequent occasion to take it down. These small emergency hospitals, within range of the guns, were reserved for only dangerous cases: men whose wounds would not permit of their being carried further; and there never was much more than a sporting chance of saving them. They were always glad to find there was a priest among the staff. Often it was the first question they would ask on being lifted out of the ambulance. Even those who professed to no religion seemed comforted by the idea. He went by the title of “Monsieur le Prêtre:” Joan never learned his name. It was he who had laid out the little cemetery on the opposite side of the village street. It had once been an orchard, and some of the trees were still standing. In the centre, rising out of a pile of rockwork, he had placed a crucifix that had been found upon the roadside and had surrounded it with flowers. It formed the one bright spot of colour in the village; and at night time, when all other sounds were hushed, the iron wreaths upon its little crosses, swaying against one another in the wind, would make a low, clear, tinkling music. Joan would sometimes lie awake listening to it. In some way she could not explain it always brought the thought of children to her mind. He had risen. “Don’t you see,” he said. “It is only by suffering that one can help Him. It is the sword that He has chosen—by which one day He will conquer the world. And this is such a splendid opportunity to fight for Him. It would be like deserting Him on the eve of a great battle.”!

He laughed and put his arm round her. “Poor little woman,” he said. “You’re looking so tired. It was jolly at the end.” He kissed her. “Don’t you be put off by his seeming a bit unresponsive,” Mrs. Phillips would explain. “He’s shy with women. What I’m trying to do is to make him feel you are one of the family.”

They had paused where a group of trees threw a blot of shadow across the moonlit road. Joan looked up. There was something in the eyes looking down upon her that seemed to be compelling her. He wrote her two days later from Ayr, giving her the name of his regiment, and again some six months later from Flanders. But there would have been no sense in her replying to that last.