different since then--and a good _deal_ different since the
night we met Jack Curtis with Sirius."

"I know," I admitted. "But if Brian wanted to change his mind about
marrying, he couldn't. Neither he nor Dierdre O'Farrell have a
penny----"

"Brian's got as much as we have," the dear woman assured me.

"Do you think he'd take your money to marry on? No, dearest! Brian's
very unworldly. So far, he hasn't worried about finances for the
present. The future is different. If he doesn't get back his sight----"

"But he will--he must!" she urged. "That great specialist you saw in
Paris gave him hope. And then there's the other one that your doctor
friend recommended----."

"He's somewhere at the front. We can't get at him now."

"We'll get at him later," Mother Beckett persisted. "In the
meantime--let's give those two hearts the chance to draw together, if
it's best for them."

I could not go on objecting. One can't, for long, when that little angel
of a woman wants a thing--she who never wants anything for herself, only
for others! But I thought Fate might step between Brian and
Dierdre--Fate, in the shape of Puck. I wasn't at all sure that Julian
O'Farrell could be contented to leave his sister and continue his own
wanderings. The Red Cross taxi had in truth been only a means to an end.
I didn't fancy that his devotion to duty would carry him far from the
Chateau d'Andelle while Dierdre was comfortably installed in it. Unless
he were invited to _embusquer_ himself there, in our society, I
expected a crash. Which shows how little I knew my Julian!

When the plan was officially suggested to him, he agreed as if with
enthusiasm. It was only when he'd consented to Dierdre's visit at the
chateau on the other side of the Somme, and promised to drop in now and
then himself on his way somewhere else, that he allowed himself a second
thought. To attract attention to it, he started, ran his hand through
his hair, and stopped in the middle of a sentence. "I am heaven's own
fool!" he exclaimed.

Of course Father Beckett wanted to know why. (This was two days before
we started for Amiens.) Julian "registered reluctance." Father Beckett
persisted, and drew forth the information that Julian _might_ have to
cut short his career as a ministering Red Cross angel. "If it hadn't
been for you," he said, "my funds and my supplies would have run short
before this. You've helped me carry on. But I'm getting pretty close to
the bone agai