She paused with the door in her hand, and a faint smile played round the thin red lips. “Yes,” she answered. “I won’t try to hold you back, dear, if you think you can do that.”!

“I said that,” answered Joan. “I wanted to do it and I talked and talked, so hard. I said everything I could think of. But that was the only answer: I mustn’t do it.” Space did not allow of any separation; broken Frenchmen and broken Germans would often lie side by side. Joan would wonder, with a grim smile to herself, what the patriotic Press of the different countries would have thought had they been there to have overheard the conversations. Neither France nor Germany appeared to be the enemy, but a thing called “They,” a mysterious power that worked its will upon them both from a place they always spoke of as “Back there.” One day the talk fell on courage. A young French soldier was holding forth when Joan entered the hut.

“Tell me,” she said. “What is God?” The girl flushed with pleasure. It was a striking face, with intelligent eyes and a mobile, sensitive mouth. “Oh, yes,” she said, “I could act all right. I feel it. But you don’t get out of the chorus. Except at a price.” Joan’s present lay on the table near to her, as if she had just folded it and placed it there: the little cap and the fine robe of lawn: as if for a king’s child.