she
bent her willing back to the labor: "Moi, that is what I say, too. The
Lord will send my Jacques home to comfort my old age."

As Sheila listened, it epitomized for her the tragedy of the mothers of
France, this antiphonal chorus of the mothers who had lost all and those
who had yet one son left. To the girl's mind there came in almost cruel
contrast that chorus of Maeterlinck's mothers raised in rapturous
expectancy to the unborn; she knew she was hearing now the agonized
antithesis of it. Throughout the first day it rang incessantly, until she
could have hummed the haunting melody of it. Then night came. The patches
of reds and greens and blues that had sifted through the stained-glass
window in the chancel and played all day in grotesque patches on the white
cheeks of the wounded faded alike to gray, and the nurse lit the tall wax
candles on the altar that the work might go on without stopping.

The next day--and the next--passed much the same. There was no end to the
wounded. Griggs fainted twice the second day, and the chief and Sheila
carried the work alone for a few hours. Each of them was acutely conscious
of the strain on the other and did what he and she could to ease the
tension. For the girl her greatest comfort was in the scrap of paper
crumpled over her breast. It told her Peter was near, coming to her soon.
It seemed to transmit some of his strength and optimism. There were
moments when, but for his reassurance, the girl would have doubted every
normal, happy phase of life and acknowledged only the unending torture and
renunciation. Sometimes the horror seemed to wrap them in like an
impenetrable fog. As for the chief, it took every ounce of will and sanity
to keep him going, and he wondered how the girl beside him could brave it
through without a whimper.

Always about them roared the great guns like the last booming of a
judgment day, and under that noise the moaning chorus of the French
mothers. When the strain reached the breaking-point Sheila closed her eyes
and looked for the light on the hilltop that Peter had promised would be
there--and there it always was. Moreover, she could feel Peter's vital
presence and the marvelous reality of his love reaching nearer and nearer
to her through the darkness. So she kept her head clear and her hands
steady and forced a smile whenever the chief eyed her anxiously. She never
failed a boy "going west." To the last breath she let him see the
radiating faith