ar--I'm
glad she had the flowers. It was a mercy I didn't call out that Max was
coming!" And from the floor she picked up one "angels' tear" she had
dropped, and set it in a glass of water, where the sunlight fell. She
was still gazing at it, pale, slender, lonely in that coarse tumbler,
when she heard a knock on the parlour door, and went to open it. There
stood her man, with a large brown-paper parcel in his hand. He stood
quite still, his head a little down, the face very grey. She cried out;
"Max!" but the thought flashed through her: "He knocked on the door!
It's _his_ door--he knocked on the door!"

"Dollee?" he said, with a sort of question in his voice.

She threw her arms round him, drew him into the room, and shutting the
door, looked hard into his face. Yes, it was his face, but in the eyes
something wandered--lit up, went out, lit up.

"Dollee," he said again, and clutched her hand.

She strained him to her with a sob.

"I'm not well, Dollee," he murmured.

"No, of course not, my dearie man; but you'll soon be all right
now--home again with me. Cheer up, cheer up!"

"I'm not well," he said again.

She caught the parcel out of his hand, and taking the "angels' tear"
from the tumbler, fixed it in his coat.

"Here's a spring flower for you, Max; out of your own little hothouse.
You're home again; home again, my dearie. Auntie's upstairs, and the
girls'll be coming soon. And we'll have dinner."

"I'm not well, Dollee," he said.

Terrified by that reiteration, she drew him down on the little horsehair
sofa, and sat on his knee. "You're home, Max, kiss me. There's my man!"
and she rocked him to and fro against her, yearning yet fearing to look
into his face and see that "something" wander there--light up, go out,
light up. "Look, dearie," she said, "I've got some beer for you. You'd
like a glass of beer?"

He made a motion of his lips, a sound that was like the ghost of a
smack. It terrified her, so little life was there in it.

He clutched her close, and repeated feebly:

"Yes, all right in a day or two. They let me come--I'm not well,
Dollee." He touched his head.

Straining him to her, rocking him, she murmured over and over again,
like a cat purring to its kitten:

"It's all right, my dearie--soon be well--soon be well! We must look on
the bright side--My man!"

V

"CAFARD"

The soldier Jean Liotard lay, face to the earth, by the bank of the
river Drome. He lay where the grass