perfume from a vaporizer.
We seemed to pass through endless halls supported by white marble
pillars, which were really spaces between trees, magically transformed
by our blazing headlight. Always in front of us hovered an archway of
frosted silver, moving as we moved, like a pale, elusive rainbow; and
when we put on extra speed for a long, straight stretch, poplars
carelessly spared by the Boches spouted up on either side of us like
geysers. Then, suddenly, across a stretch of blackness palely shone
Compiegne, as Venice shines across the dark lagoon.

CHAPTER XXV

Little did I think, Padre, to write you from Soissons! When last I spoke
to you about it, we were gazing through field-glasses at the single
tower of the cathedral, pointing out of purple shadows toward the
evening star of hope. Then we lost ourselves in the Ravin de Bitry, and
arrived thankfully at Compiegne two hours later than we had planned. We
expected to have part of a day at Soissons, but--I told you of the
dreadful flies in that ravine of death, and how Mother Beckett was stung
on the throat. The next day she had a headache, but took aspirin, and
pronounced herself well enough for the trip to Soissons. Father Beckett
let her go, because he's in the habit of letting her do whatever she
wants to do, fancying (and she fancies it, too) that he is master. You
see, we thought it was only a fatigue-headache. Foolishly, we didn't
connect it with the sting, for Julian O'Farrell was bitten, too, and
didn't complain at all.

Well, we set out for Soissons yesterday morning (I write again at night)
leaving all our luggage at the hotel in Compiegne. It was quite a safe
and uneventful run, for the Germans stopped shelling Soissons
temporarily some time ago, when they were obliged to devote their whole
attention to other places. The road was good, and the day a dream of
Indian summer, when war seemed more than ever out of place in such a
world. If Mother Beckett looked ill, we didn't notice, because she wore
her dust-veil. The same officer was with us who'd been our guide last
time, and we felt like friends, as he explained, with those vivid
gestures Frenchmen have, just how the Germans in September, 1914,
marched from Laon upon Soissons--marched fast, singing, yelling, wild to
take a city so important that the world would be impressed. Why, it
would be--they thought--as if the whole Ile-de-France were in their
grasp! The next step would be to Paris, goal