his grave, and on that fatal bullet many bitter curses.

But this does not complete the tale of murder wrought by that slug
of lead. Each plunging bullet blazes its black trail of the spirit-killed.

A month later and three thousand miles away this German missile
struck the heart of an American girl with a more cruel impact than it
had struck the brain of this lieutenant of France. She, too,
crumpled and fell upon the thorns. His had been a speedy,
painless death; one sharp electric stroke and then the closing
night. A like oblivion would have been sweet to her. But she had to
face it out alone. Upon her torn heart were beaten a thousand
hammer-strokes, and through the endless nights she bore the
anguish of a thousand deaths.

The death-lists of Europe hold 5,000,000 other names besides
Lieutenant le Marchand's. Behind each name there marches with
springless steps one or more figures shrouded in black.

A year later one of these figures arose from her burial alive, a
whitened shadow of her former self.

"I know that I ought not to have collapsed, just as I know that I
ought not to hate the Germans," Marie wrote. "I'm pulling myself
together now, and I am trying to work and to forgive. But my
thoughts are always wandering out to just one spot--that is where
Robert lies. When peace comes I'm going straight over there and
with my own hands I shall dig through every trench until I find him."

Tragic futility indeed! One recompense for the colossal slaughter
and the long war; few shall ever find their dead.

On a recent Sunday morning I stepped into a church of a Lake
City of the West. The organ was filling the large structure with its
sounds; gradually out of the dim light came the face of the player.

A hard road had she traveled since last I saw her, a trim little blue-
clad figure waving good-by from that balcony in Melun. It was not
strange that her face was white. There was nothing strange either
in the passion of that music.

These experiences of Gethsemane and Calvary had been first
enacted in her own soul. The organ was but giving voice to them.
There was a plaintive touch in the minor chords, as if pleading for
days that were gone. It climbed to a closing rapture, as if two who
had parted here had, for the moment, hailed each other in the
world of Souls.

Afterword

It seems sometimes as if the torch of civilization had been almost
extinguished in this deluge of blood. This darkening of the