“I felt a bit afraid of her,” laughed Joan, “so I made her promise not to part with it. Is he really very ill, her husband?” Suddenly he broke off. “What a fool I’m making of myself,” he said. “I always was a dreamer.”!

She did not want to talk about the war. There was no forgetting those deep, burning eyes, though the face had changed. The thin red lips still remained its one touch of colour; but the unhealthy whiteness of the skin had given place to a delicate pallor; and the features that had been indistinct had shaped themselves in fine, firm lines. It was a beautiful, arresting face, marred only by the sullen callousness of the dark, clouded eyes.

“He’s clever,” laughed Phillips. “I’d enjoy the fight, if I’d only myself to think of, and life wasn’t so short.” After a time, the care of the convalescents passed almost entirely into Joan’s hands, Madame Lelanne being told off to assist her. By dint of much persistence she had succeeded in getting the leaky roof repaired, and in place of the smoky stove that had long been her despair she had one night procured a fine calorifère by the simple process of stealing it. Madame Lelanne had heard about it from the gossips. It had been brought to a lonely house at the end of the village by a major of engineers. He had returned to the trenches the day before, and the place for the time being was empty. The thieves were never discovered. The sentry was positive that no one had passed him but two women, one of them carrying a baby. Madame Lelanne had dressed it up in a child’s cloak and hood, and had carried it in her arms. As it must have weighed nearly a couple of hundred-weight suspicion had not attached to them. “No,” Joan admitted. “I went to Rodean at Brighton when I was ten years old, and so escaped it. Nor were you,” she added with a smile, “judging from your accent.”