tch up. Can I give you a lift back on my private
stink machine? . . ."

They strolled up the road together to where the tractor was waiting.

"Man no longer the master of his destiny, you mean?" said his companion.

"Don't make me laugh too loud," returned Vane, "or the Boche might
hear; unless you've killed 'em all . . ."

"You're wrong, my friend--utterly wrong." They came to where the
railway track crossed the road and he halted to pull out his pipe,
before getting on to the little engine.

"I tell you, Vane . . ."

And at that moment a flight of cockchafers seemed to sweep down the
road. Vane felt the stinging pain in his right shoulder, and then he
looked foolishly at the gas expert . . .

"You were saying," he began . . .

But his late companion had taken a machine-gun bullet through his heart.

CHAPTER I

The beach at Paris Plage is associated in the minds of most people who
went there before the war with a certain amount of gaiety. There were
bands, and fair ladies, and various other delights generally connected
with popular French watering-places. Incidentally the beach is a
beach--not a collection of sharp boulders. There is real sand--lots of
it; the sort that gets hot and comforting in the sun, and invites
people who have eaten too much luncheon to sleep. And during the war,
though the bands and other delights have departed, the sand has
remained a source of pleasure to hundreds of people in need of a
temporary rest cure. They have come from the big hospitals at Etaples;
they have come from the officers' rest-house. Some have even come in
motor cars from the trenches just for the day, and one and all they
have lain on the beach and slept and then departed the better for it.

On a certain afternoon during the height of the German offensive in the
spring of 1918 a girl was sitting on the beach staring out to sea. On
the horizon a black smudge of smoke stood up against the vivid blue of
the sky; while, close in shore, a small sailing boat was barely making
headway in the faint breeze.

The girl was a V.A.D., and the large French family which had planted
itself close by cast little curious glances at her from time to time.
And she was worth looking at, with her fair hair, deep blue eyes and
that wonderful complexion which seems to be the exclusive property of
the British. Madame remarked on it to Monsieur, glancing at the white
faces of her own daughters three, and Monsieur grunted