felt that he must touch her, that his hand on hers
might help her somehow.

At last, deadly weary, he sat down on the stairs by her door to
try to think out the problems that to-morrow would bring.

His aunt and uncle had gone on to Paris; Lorraine's father was
dead and her home had been turned into a fort. Saint-Lys was
heavily occupied by the Germans, and they held the railroad also
in their possession. It seemed out of the question to stay in
Morteyn with Lorraine, for an assault on the Chateau was
imminent. How could he get her to Paris? That was the only place
for her now.

He thought, too, of his own danger from the Uhlans. He had told
Lorraine, partly because he wished her to understand their
position, partly because the story of his capture, trial, and
escape led up to the tragedy that he scarcely knew how to break
to her. But he had done it, and she, pale as death, had gone
silently to her room, motioning him away as he stood awkwardly at
the door.

That last glimpse of the room remained in his mind, it
obliterated everything else at moments--Lorraine sitting on her
bedside, her blue eyes vacant, her face whiter than the pillows.

And so he sat there on the stairs, the dawn creeping into the
hallway; and his eyes never left the panels of her door. There
was not a sound from within. This for a while frightened him, and
again and again he started impulsively towards the door, only to
turn back again and watch there in the coming dawn. Presently he
remembered that dawn might bring an attack on the Chateau, and he
rose and hurried down-stairs to the terrace where a crowd of
officers stood watching the woods through their night-glasses.
The general impression among them was that there might be an
attack. They yawned and smoked and studied the woods, but they
were polite, and answered all his questions with a courteous
light-heartedness that jarred on him. He glanced for a moment at
the infantry, now moving across the meadow towards the river; he
saw troops standing at ease along the park wall, troops sitting
in long ranks in the vegetable garden, troops passing the
stables, carrying pickaxes and wheeling wheelbarrows piled with
empty canvas sacks.

Sleepy-eyed boyish soldiers of the artillery were harnessing the
battery horses, rubbing them down, bathing wounded limbs or
braiding the tails. The farrier was shoeing a great black horse,
who turned its gentle eyes towards the hay-bales piled in front
of the