of
the world like Captain Chariot."

"Yes, very lucky. It's odd, though, his having a French name."

"Very. It probably accounts for his breeding," she answered placidly;
and left me marvelling at the happy remoteness of old age.

VI

The next morning early Jean de Rechamp came to my room. I was struck
at once by the change in him: he had lost his first glow, and seemed
nervous and hesitating. I knew what he had come for: to ask me to
postpone our departure for another twenty-four hours. By rights we
should have been off that morning; but there had been a sharp brush a
few kilometres away, and a couple of poor devils had been brought to
the chateau whom it would have been death to carry farther that day and
criminal not to hurry to a base hospital the next morning. "We've simply
_got_ to stay till to-morrow: you're in luck," I said laughing.

He laughed back, but with a frown that made me feel I had been a brute
to speak in that way of a respite due to such a cause.

"The men will pull through, you know--trust Mlle. Malo for that!" I
said.

His frown did not lift. He went to the window and drummed on the pane.

"Do you see that breach in the wall, down there behind the trees?
It's the only scratch the place has got. And think of Lennont! It's
incredible--simply incredible!"

"But it's like that everywhere, isn't it? Everything depends on the
officer in command."

"Yes: that's it, I suppose. I haven't had time to get a consecutive
account of what happened: they're all too excited. Mlle. Malo is the
only person who can tell me exactly how things went." He swung about on
me. "Look here, it sounds absurd, what I'm asking; but try to get me an
hour alone with her, will you?"

I stared at the request, and he went on, still half-laughing: "You
see, they all hang on me; my father and mother, Simone, the cure, the
servants. The whole village is coming up presently: they want to stuff
their eyes full of me. It's natural enough, after living here all these
long months cut off from everything. But the result is I haven't said
two words to her yet."

"Well, you shall," I declared; and with an easier smile he turned to
hurry down to a mass of thanksgiving which the cure was to celebrate
in the private chapel. "My parents wanted it," he explained; "and after
that the whole village will be upon us. But later--"

"Later I'll effect a diversion; I swear I will," I assured him.

*****

By daylight, decidedly, Mll