The Herr Doktor moved away his chair from the large round table across half of which, amid the remains of a delicious dessert a large-scale map of the surrounding French countryside had been spread out.

On the other half of the table had been pushed a confusion of delicate white-and-gold coffee-cups and almost empty liqueur-bottles—signs of the pleasant ending to the best dinner the five young Uhlan officers who were now gathered together in this French inn-parlour had eaten since 'The Day.'

Although the setting sun still threw a warm, lambent light on the high chestnut trees in the paved courtyard outside, the low-walled room was already beginning to be filled with the pale golden shadows of an August night. A few moments ago the Herr Commandant had loudly called for a lamp, and Madame Blanc, owner of the Tournebride, had herself brought it in. Placed in the centre of the table the lamp illumined the flushed, merry young faces now bent over the large coloured map.

Alone the Herr Doktor sat apart from the bright circle of light, and, although he was himself smoking a pipe, the fumes of the other men's strong cigars seemed to stifle him.

Of only medium height, with the thoughtful, serious face which marks the thinker and worker; clad, too, in the plain, practical 'feld-grau' uniform of a German Red Cross surgeon, he was quite unlike his temporary comrades. And there was a further reason for this unlikeness. The Herr Doktor, Max Keller by name, was from Weimar; the young officers now round him were Prussians of the Junker class. They were quite civil to the Herr Doktor—in fact they were too civil—and their high spirits, their constant, exultant boasts of all they meant to do in Paris—in Paris where they expected to be within a week, for it was now August 27, 1914—jarred on his tired, sensitive brain.

Behind his large tortoise-shell spectacles the Herr Doktor's eyes ached and smarted. He belonged to the generation which had been, even as children, put into spectacles. His present companions, more fortunate than he, had been born into the 'nature-eye' cycle of German oculistic research. Not one of them wore spectacles, and their exemption was one of the many reasons why he, though only thirty-four years of age, felt so much older, and so apart from them in every way.

Alone, of the six men gathered together to-night in that French inn-parlour, the Herr Doktor knew what war really means, and something—as yet he did not know much—of what it brings with it. He had been, if not exactly in, then what he secretly thought far worse, close to, the battle of Charleroi, and for the ten days which had followed that battle he had been plunged in all the stern horrors, and the gaspingly hurried, unceasing work, of an improvised field hospital.

The fine abounding-with-life young officers, with whom a special circumstance had thrown him for some days, had so far escaped even a skirmish with the unfeared enemy; that they loudly lamented the fact, that they cursed, in all sincerity, the chance which had delayed their regiment till the first series of victories—Mons, St. Quentin, Charleroi—which had opened the wide road to Paris, was over, secretly irritated the Herr Doktor. He knew the limitless extent to which they were to be envied. And that knowledge made him hopelessly out of touch with them—out of touch as he could never be with the arrogant by-his-mother-spoilt lieutenant, his Highness Prince Egon von Witgenstein, whose arrival in the luxurious motor ambulance now standing just outside in the courtyard of the Tournebride alone accounted for the Herr Doktor's presence here. It was true that the boastful, childishly vain, fretful-tempered Prince Egon also talked unceasingly of the baser charms of Paris, but he, at any rate, had earned his right to those same base charms by the three wounds from which he was now slowly recovering, thanks to the skill and care of the Weimar surgeon.

Sitting there, apart from the others, puffing steadily, silently, at his pipe, the Herr Doktor's mind, his dreamy, sensitive, imaginative mind, retraced all that had happened in the last two hours.

The taking possession of this charming little town of Valoise-sur-Marne had been carried through with most agreeable ease. The Mayor had blustered a bit, and had expressed his determination to write an account of all that had taken place to his Government. But when he had been told, in language of careful, cold, calculated brutality, that at the slightest disturbance or ill-behaviour of his townsmen or townswomen, he himself would be at once led out and shot, he had come to heel, and promised to do his best to preserve order.

There had been, however, a rather painful scene, one which the Herr Doktor disliked to remember, with the parish priest. The CurÉ of Valoise was an old, white-haired man, and at first he had behaved with considerable dignity—with far more dignity, for instance, than the excitable Mayor. Also he had expressed himself as quite willing to be hostage for his flock's good behaviour.

The scene had occurred when the priest had been ordered off with the guard to the temporary prison he was to share with the Mayor. With what had seemed a most uncalled-for agitation, he had pleaded to be allowed to go and pay a last visit to three dying men. 'Surely you will accept my word of honour to return within one hour?' he had exclaimed, and then, in answer to a natural, if sharply uttered question—'No, I cannot—I will not—tell you where these dying men are! All I can say is that they are well within the limits of the town.' To accede to his request had been, of course, out of the question; and to the Herr Doktor's surprise, and indeed to his disgust, it was plain that the German Commandant's refusal to let the old priest have his way had gratified the Mayor—indeed the only smile any of them had seen on the French Republican official's face was while this discussion, this urgent painful discussion, was going on.

After it was over, the two of them had been marched off to the Tournebride, where a large windowless fruit and tool house, standing isolated in the middle of Madame Blanc's kitchen garden, had been assigned to them as prison.

Everything else had gone quite smoothly, and both officers and men had found delightful quarters in the fine old inn which stood at the top of the hill, taking up all one side of the Grande Place. The Tournebride, so the Commandant informed the Herr Doktor, had been noted among gay Parisians, in the days of peace which now seemed so long ago, as a motoring luncheon and supper resort. Thus the conquerors of Valoise had found there the best of good wine, good food, and good beds.

2

At last the Herr Doktor got up from his chair. Unnoticed by the others, he slipped out into the cooler air outside. The courtyard, shaded by high horse chestnut trees, was now crowded with good-humoured German cavalry-men waiting, patiently enough, for the savoury meal which Madame Blanc and her two anxious-faced young daughters were engaged in preparing for them.

As the Herr Doktor walked quickly over to the other side of the quadrangle, the soldiers respectfully made way for him, and he stood, for a few moments unnoticed, on the threshold of the big kitchen of the Tournebride. To eyes already war-worn it was a pleasant sight.

To and fro in her low, arch-roofed, spacious domain, the landlady came and went, busily intent on her considerable task of feeding over a hundred men. There were huge copper cauldrons on the steel top of the fourneau, and Madame Blanc herself constantly stirred and inspected their contents. But when she became suddenly aware of the German doctor's presence at the kitchen door, she stayed her labours and came towards him.

Silently she waited, a stern look of heavy-hearted endurance on her face, for him to speak; and at last, in a French which was somewhat halting, he put the question he had come to ask, and on the answer to which, as he well knew, depended a good deal of the future comfort of his illustrious, tiresome patient, Prince Egon von Witgenstein. Was there a hospital in Valoise?

'There is no hospital in Valoise.' Madame Blanc's voice was very, very cold. But after a moment's pause she added: 'The nuns were chased away four years ago, and the Government have not yet decided what to do with their convent.'

As there came a look of disappointment on his mild face she went on, as if the words were being dragged from her reluctant lips: 'But M. le MÉdecin will find a Red Cross barge on the river.'

Madame Blanc's powerful, swarthy face was set and grim; she did not look as if she had ever smiled, or if she had, would ever smile again. Yet the man now standing opposite to her remembered that, when he had first arrived with his patient, she had shown a certain maternal interest in the inmate of the Red Cross motor ambulance which now stood in a corner of her large paved courtyard, also that within a few minutes of the peaceful assault of her inn she had herself cooked for the wounded officer a delicate little meal.

The Herr Doktor smiled conciliatingly, but she gave him no answering smile. Her heart was still too full of wrath, of surprise, of agonised, impotent rage, at the happenings of the last two hours.

A troop of the abhorred, dreaded Uhlans had suddenly appeared, clattering along the wide Route Nationale which followed the right bank of the river Marne. Without drawing rein they had ridden up the steep, central street of Valoise, and then they had turned straight into the courtyard of the Tournebride.

Madame Blanc had been amazed at the extent and particularity of the Prussians' knowledge of the town, and of her inn. Not only had they greeted her, with a strange mixture of joviality and sternness, by name, but the golden-haired, pink-cheeked commanding officer had actually alluded to the spÉcialitÉ of the Tournebride—a certain chicken-liver omelette which Parisians motored out to enjoy on all fine Sundays from each May to each October! And then, perhaps because she had tacitly refused to fall in with his pleasant humour, the young Uhlan officer, after his first roughly jovial words, had suddenly threatened her with mysterious and terrible penalties if she disobeyed, in any one particular, his own and his comrades' confusing orders.

Yes, they had only arrived two hours ago, and yet already Madame Blanc hated these arrogant Uhlan officers with all the strength of her powerful, secretive French nature. Quite willingly, had she thought it would have served the slightest good purpose, would she have put a good dose of poison in the excellent soup they, in the company of the man now talking to her, had just eaten.

She also hated, but in an infinitely lesser degree, their men—those big, bearded, splendidly equipped soldiers clad in the grey-green cloth which her strong common sense had at once told her must be so far more serviceable, because blending with nature's colouring, than the bright blue and red uniforms of her own countrymen. But for the wounded youth, who now lay straight and still in the huge grey motor-car, bearing on its side a painted Red Cross which she could almost touch from where she stood at her low kitchen door, she felt a thrill of motherly pity and concern....

'A Red Cross barge on the river?' repeated the Herr Doktor doubtfully.

For a man who had never been in France before, and who had been taught French by a German who, in his turn, had never been in France save during the brief, glorious-and-ever-victorious-campaign of 1870, the Herr Doktor spoke very fair French. But while he spoke, and even more while he listened to Madame Blanc's quick, short utterances, he blamed himself severely for having wasted so much time on the English language. English was now never likely to be of much use to him, save perhaps during the coming Occupation of London. If only he had spent as much time and trouble over French as he had done over English, not only would it have been useful here and now, but it would have been invaluable a little later on—when he took up his quarters, as he hoped to do within the next two or three weeks, at the Pasteur Institute in Paris.

'Yes,' said Madame Blanc, with a touch of irritation in her even, vibrating voice, 'as I have just had the honour of explaining to M. le MÉdecin, there is a Red Cross barge on our river. Mademoiselle RouannÈs is there all day, from six in the morning till nine o'clock each night.'

'Is Mademoiselle'—he had not really caught the curious name, 'is she'—he hesitated for the right phrase—'is she a Sister of Compassion?'

'I have just told M. le MÉdecin that all our good sisters were chased away by the Government four years ago. Mademoiselle RouannÈs is our doctor's daughter.'

And then, as the man standing before her uttered a quick guttural exclamation of relief, she added sharply, 'You cannot see Doctor RouannÈs, for he is very ill—some say he is dying.' As again she saw a look of disappointment overcast his face, she added—'But his daughter is a very serious demoiselle. The wounded have every confidence in Mademoiselle RouannÈs.'

'Thank you, Madame, I will now the barge of the Red Cross go and seek,' he said, and bowed courteously.

'It is just at the bottom of the hill, this side of the lock. But wait a minute—I can show you the exact place from the abreuvoir.'

She stepped across the threshold of her kitchen, and walked, with a good deal of simple dignity, through the groups of tall soldiers who stood at ease, contentedly smoking their big pipes under the chestnut-leaves canopy of her courtyard. They made way for her pleasantly enough—some even smiled the foolish, fond smile of the big man-child, for she reminded more than one of these burly giants of his own mother. But Madame Blanc gave no answering smile, as, gazing straight before her, she hurried on towards the high gilt gates of her domain—a domain which till a hundred years ago, and for more than a hundred years before that, had kennelled royal staghounds, and housed their huntsmen.

The Herr Doktor stopped for a moment to speak to a non-commissioned officer, a good fellow who came from his own town of Weimar. 'Keep an eye on the motor ambulance,' he muttered. 'You might, in fact, go and ask His Highness if he requires anything further just now. Tell him I have gone out to look for quiet quarters. It would be impossible to have the Prince here to-night; the house won't settle down for a long time.'

The other grinned, broadly. 'These are comfortable, greatly-to-be-commended quarters, nevertheless, Herr Doktor.' And the Herr Doktor, nodding, hastened after his guide.

He followed her through the wrought-iron gilt gates, now wreathed with white jessamine and orange-coloured trumpet flowers, and so to the great open space which formed the apex, not only of the hill, but of the little town, of Valoise-sur-Marne.

A moment later they stood before the oval abreuvoir, a stone-rimmed pool at which the timid does sometimes came, even now, to quench their thirst at night.

For a few moments Madame Blanc gazed dumbly over the dear familiar scene, and the German surgeon respected her silence.

Lit by the afterglow of the setting August sun, the little town of Valoise lay spread before them ... a picturesque, gaily charming cluster of white, grey, and red roof-trees, full of the peaceful stateliness of aspect which is a distinguishing mark of so many of the old villages and towns set amid chestnut groves, and on river banks, within easy reach of Paris.

From the days of Henri IV, the Kings of France had possessed a favourite hunting lodge on the edge of the wooded uplands stretching behind the town, and though the Pavillon du Roi had been destroyed during the Revolution, the avenue of high forest trees which had once bounded the royal demesne still remained, faithful witness to a vanished glory, while a fragmentary survival of what had been a grandiose and splendid whole remained in the stone abreuvoir.

And yet, as following his companion's example, the Herr Doktor gazed over what was in truth a singularly pleasing and soothing scene, a sense of chill, even of discomfort, crept over his kindly heart.

Valoise looked, on this fine summer evening, as might look a place stricken with the plague. Some melancholy-looking dogs had been shut out of doors: they, and a few cats who leapt furtively out of their way, seemed the only living things in the town.

Why were the French civilian population so sullen? The great, generous-hearted, all-conquering German army did not war on children and women—not, that is, so long as these women and children behaved in a reasonable, civilised manner.

The Herr Doktor had already heard rumours of certain painful, frightening things which had had to be done, and which were still being done, in Belgium. But the French were a more civilised people than the Belgians—or so the cultured Max Keller had persuaded himself to believe. Further, the Germans had no real quarrel with the French, the foolish, impulsive, chivalrous French, who had allowed themselves to be dragged into a quarrel with which they had no concern, in order to support barbarous Russia and lawless, savage Servia!

Standing by the side of the sensible, clean housewife who had just served him so admirably cooked a meal, the Herr Doktor reflected complacently that very soon some sort of peace would be signed in Paris, after which the French and Germans, friends as they had never been before, would join together to break the might of the now decadent, nerveless, and treacherous English.

He would have liked to have expressed some of this comfortable, so-friendly-to-the-French feeling to the woman who now stood, her hands clenched together, as if absorbed in painful, far-away thoughts, by his side. But he knew that his French was too halting to convey these cultured-and-so-humane and German sentiments. He started slightly when Madame Blanc suddenly turned to him with the words, 'It is getting rather too dark to see the place clearly from here, but if M. le MÉdecin will go straight down to the river, and across the wall, he will see the Red Cross barge just in front of him.'

Before he had time to utter the words aloud, 'Very truly, Madame, do I thank you,' she had left his side, and was halfway across the Grande Place, on her way towards the Tournebride.

Feeling a little discomfited by her abrupt departure, the Herr Doktor stepped forward, and started walking briskly down the hill.

How pleasant it was to be alone—alone with his own exciting and, yes, glorious thoughts! The absence of solitude had been the thing which had tried Max Keller the most in this amazing-and-ever-victorious campaign. During the last three days he had found the conversation of Prince Egon's brother officers particularly wearing, as also very, very—he hardly knew what phrase to use even in his inmost mind, but at last he found it—very-lacking-in-culture-and-seriousness.

The Paris of which these Junkers talked incessantly was not the Paris to which he, the Herr Doktor, looked forward so eagerly, the Paris, for instance, of the Pasteur Institute, and of the SalpÉtriÈre. The Paris of these young officers—and he regretted indeed that it was so—was the Paris which, as every good German knew, so aroused the anger and contempt of God as to cause France to be once more crushed and humiliated to the dust. Of this Paris there existed a very fair imitation in what had been euphemistically called 'the night life of Berlin,' but Berlin, to the Herr Doktor at any rate, did not stand for his Fatherland as Paris stands for France.

So musing, so thankful for even a few moments of peace and solitude, the mildest of the conquerors of Valoise reached the bottom of the hill.

Across the paved Route Nationale was an avenue, or mall, of lime trees which formed a green wall between the road and the river. He crossed the street as he had been directed to do, and then, when actually under the dense arch formed by interlacing branches of green leaves, he uttered an exclamation of relief; for there before him, close to the entrance of the lock, and only to be reached by a narrow stone jetty, lay on the placid, slow-moving waters of the river a broad, white barge, on the side of which was painted a large Red Cross. The small, square, white curtained windows just above the dimpling water line were all open, and, set amidships, was a round porthole, on whose edge stood a pot of brilliant scarlet geraniums.

On the deck of the barge stood a woman. She wore the loose, unbecoming white overall which forms the only uniform of a French Red Cross nurse, and there was a red cross on her breast. From where he stood the German surgeon could see that she was young, straight, and lithe. The gleams of the sun, which was now resting, like a huge scarlet ball, on the horizon, lit up her fair hair, which was massed, in the French way, above her forehead. He saw her in profile, for she seemed to be gazing, through the waning light, down the river beyond the lock.

With a queer thrill at the heart the Herr Doktor told himself that so might Wagner have visioned his Elsa in war-time. Since the Herr Doktor had left Weimar, he had not seen a so awakening-to-the-better-feelings and pleasant-to-the-senses-of-man sight as was this French golden-haired girl.

Taking off his cap—for Max Keller was aware that Frenchwomen are curiously punctilious, and he did not wish her to suppose that a cultured German could be lacking in even unnecessary courtesy—he started walking along the narrow stone jetty.

And then, when at last he stood just opposite to the barge, and as suddenly the Red Cross nurse became aware of his presence, he saw a dreadful look of aversion and dread flash into her face and she turned and hastened away, down what he concluded must be a stairway leading to the interior of the barge.

For what seemed to him a considerable time the Herr Doktor stared at the now empty deck with a feeling of sharp exasperation and disappointment.

In the little town where had come that awful rush of wounded after the battle of Charleroi he had already been in contact with the French Red Cross. There had been several Frenchwomen—two countesses, so he had been told, and a duchess—middle-aged ladies who had treated him with suave, if distant, courtesy, and who had always deferred, most politely and sensibly, to his professional knowledge. In the same hastily improvised Feld-Lazaret there had also been three English nurses; them he had naturally disliked, the more so that they had a sharp, short way with them, and always seemed to disapprove of his methods—methods which, being German, were of course in every way superior-and-more-truly-scientific than anything likely to issue from the English Army Medical Service.

3

For some time, perhaps for as long as five minutes, the Herr Doktor stood on the stone jetty. He did not like to step down upon the barge and at once take possession of it, as it was his undoubted right, almost his duty, to do. Also, though in no way a coward, his nerve had been shaken by the terrible things he had seen, and by the long fatiguing hours of desperately hard work he had lately gone through. Horrible stories were whispered as to what the French were capable of doing to an unarmed enemy. The inside of this big, roomy barge might contain youths and old men armed with knives and scythes.... Perhaps his wisest course would be to go up the hill again, and, together with his patient, return with an armed escort who would deal in summary fashion with any evil-intentioned inmates of the Red Cross barge.

While he was thus hesitating, there suddenly floated towards him the stifled sounds of hurried whisperings. They were followed, a moment later, by the lady of the barge herself. But her fair hair was now almost entirely hidden by the severe, unbecoming head-dress of a French Red Cross nurse; and the hard white coif and flowing veil obscured the free, graceful, rather haughty poise of her head.

As at last she faced him squarely, he became painfully aware of the mingled terror and anger which made her face turn from white to red, and filled her blue eyes with a dreadful look of haunting fear.

The Herr Doktor was well read in the great Romantics of the world, and quite involuntarily he thought of Rebecca and a certain scene in 'Ivanhoe.'

Just behind the tall, slender figure, forming at once a guard and an escort to the Red Cross nurse, came a short, sturdy-looking, elderly woman, clad in a dark blue-and-white check gown, and an old man, dressed in a shabby black suit.

Stepping forward alone, Mademoiselle RouannÈs stood close to the plank which connected the stone jetty with the barge, and while the Herr Doktor was trying to compose the right form of words, at once firm and conciliatory, with which to address her, she suddenly spoke.

'How many wounded have you?' she asked, in a low, clear voice. 'I must tell you, Monsieur, that we have not room for many here, for we already have eighteen.' As he remained silent, she went on, a little breathlessly, and he saw that her under-lip was quivering, 'We have one empty cabin, but it is not very large; it will not hold more than six.'

And then at last the Herr Doktor found the French words he wanted with which to answer and to reassure her.

'I have but one wounded man, gracious demoiselle. It is his Highness Prince Egon von Witgenstein. You may of him have heard?'

She shook her head with a touch of scorn, and he saw with relief that, for some difficult-to-understand reason, she was now no longer as afraid of him as she had been.

'Is he very badly wounded?' she asked in the clear, grave voice which already kindled his heart.

'He has very badly wounded been, but now on the way to recovery is,' said the Herr Doktor decidedly. He felt more at ease with this serious, beautiful maiden now that they were discussing his patient. 'What the Prince requires rest and care and quiet is. There could not a better place for him than your Red Cross barge be. Perhaps will you me allow with your doctor the arrangements to discuss?' His eyes sought uncertainly the man in the background, the thin, frightened-looking old man dressed in seedy black. Could this be a French physician?

Even while speaking he had edged cautiously down the plank footway. 'Have I your gracious permission to advance?' he asked politely.

And she bent her head.

A moment later he was standing close to her, gazing with an earnest, conciliating gaze into her sad blue eyes. She looked pale and worn, but it was only the transitory pallor and fatigue of youth unaccustomed to the strain of anxiety, and the wear of work and sorrow.

'We have no doctor,' she said and, sighing, looked away. 'My father, who is a doctor, would be here were it not that'—her voice broke suddenly—'he was terribly wounded—wounded when himself tending the wounded!'

'Sorry am I to hear that!' exclaimed the Herr Doktor, and he was indeed sorry. 'But who attends the eighteen men you tell me you on this barge have?'

'I attend them,' she said, and a little more colour came into her face. 'I and my two friends whom you see here. Most of them were only slightly wounded, but we have three serious cases.'

'Perhaps you will allow me to visit them, and see how helpful I to your three serious cases may be?' He spoke deferentially, and the rigid lines in which her soft mouth was set relaxed.

'I thank you,' she said quietly, 'but I fear they are beyond your help.'

She turned, and preceded him down the narrow, shaftlike stairway. It terminated in a square passage place, lighted by a porthole, on the ledge of which stood the pot of geraniums the Herr Doktor had noticed when standing under the lime tree mall.

Opening a narrow door to her right, the French girl led him into a large, low, cabin-room which looked the larger and the barer because here too everything was white—the walls, the floor, the curtains drawn across each small square window, and even the coverlets of the pallet beds in which lay the eighteen wounded men.

And as he followed the young Red Cross nurse from bed to bed, as he divined what had once been the condition of most of the young soldiers there, and saw what it was now, the Herr Doktor paid his guide a secret, involuntary tribute of respect. She had not exaggerated, as the amateur nurse so often does, the state of three of her patients. The German surgeon saw with concern that two out of the three were indeed beyond his help—they were even now dying.

'The lad over there might by skilled attention benefit. Has no doctor him seen?' he asked abruptly. He had not raised his voice, but his companion's hand shot out; she touched his arm.

'Don't speak so loudly,' she whispered, 'or he will hear you. The poor fellow does not know how ill he is!'

The Herr Doktor felt at once a little irritated and a little moved. Apparently all Frenchwomen were like that! The only time he had had the slightest unpleasantness with one of those French noblewomen at the Feld-Lazaret was when he had suddenly spoken, in front of a certain wounded boy, of the fact that he could not last many hours. But whereas he had felt very much annoyed, annoyed and angry, with the rebuke uttered so sharply by the Red Cross nurse on that former occasion, this time irritation was merged in indulgent amusement. This fair-haired, blue-eyed girl—this French Elsa—was after all only a novice, though a most capable, conscientious, hard-working novice!

It was good to know that very soon—perhaps as soon as another fortnight or three weeks—the awful cloud of war would be lifted off beautiful, prosperous, frivolous France. She would be conquered for her own good, and would of course have to pay in treasure, as she was now paying in lives, heavily, for her lesson. But after the coming peace France would become, not only a peaceful, but what she had never before been, an affectionate neighbour to wise, masculine, masterful Germany. Already the Herr Doktor found himself celebrating the peace with France by planning a return visit to this charming, peaceful, little town of Valoise-sur-Marne.

It was a good thing for him as well as for Jeanne RouannÈs that, while she busied herself with the lighting of a hand lamp, she had no clue to his exultant, disconnected thoughts.

More and more as she accompanied him to each bedside, and as he listened to her low, harmonious voice explaining the various cases of those poor human wrecks—flotsam and jetsam of cruel war—for whom she showed such pitiful concern, he felt the surprise he had not thought to feel, and the admiration he was ready to encourage, grow and grow. Glad indeed was the Herr Doktor to know that there were certain things which he could do to ease that last, losing conflict with death now being waged by two of the Frenchmen lying there before him. Impulsively he turned to her—Ah! if only he could express himself adequately in her difficult, attractive language!

And then there came to him a sudden inspiration.

'Do you speak English?' he asked in the language which, however much he hated it in theory, came yet so far more easily to his tongue than did that of France.

In a surprised tone the Red Cross nurse answered, in the same uncouth tongue, with the one word, 'Yes.'

And then, as she listened to his now quick, clear, intelligent explanation of what might at least bring the ease bred of oblivion to her dying patients, the look of anxious, almost agonised, strain faded from her blue eyes and delicately chiselled face; while as for the Herr Doktor, he felt as though they two had suddenly glided into a harbour of that happy, innocent No Man's Land where the gigantic absurdities, the incredible inhumanities of war had never been, and never could take place.

Only an hour ago Max Keller would have fiercely denied that anything connected with England or with the English could be anything but hateful to him—yet how thankful was he now for that sudden inspiration! It reversed the rÔles, gave him the advantage, and that most agreeably, of this Red Cross nurse, for though he did not speak English nearly as correctly as did Mademoiselle RouannÈs, he expressed himself more fluently.

'Have you ever to England been?' he ventured at last.

She shook her head. 'No, but for some time I had an English lady for a governess. And now—now I love England!' She looked at him quite straight as she spoke, and he felt a sudden sense of unease. It was as if the tide had turned. They were drifting away from that pleasant harbour of No Man's Land....

When they had finished their round, she led him through the little square passage room into the other and smaller half of the hold. This cabin was empty, save for a row of pallet beds. 'Will this be suitable for your wounded officer?' she asked him gently.

'Yes, very well it will do,' he said hastily. 'And now with your permission, gracious miss, my two orderlies I will send for the Prince to prepare.'

'Cannot my servants make what preparation is needed?' she asked, and there was a tremor of fear and of revolt in her voice.

'I fear not. First these beds must moved out be. But do not be afraid—they will great care take you not in any way to trouble. Indeed, you will not here be, it must now the time be when you away go.' And as she looked at him in surprise, he added awkwardly, 'The hostess of the Tournebride—I think Madame Blanc her name is—told me that you the barge at nine o'clock always left.'

'When there are soldiers dying,' she said in a low voice, 'I arrange to stay here all night'; and then, looking at him pleadingly, she added, 'Could you wait just one little hour before bringing your patient to the barge?'

Reluctantly he shook his head. 'I must as soon as possible the Prince here bring. It is bad for him in a courtyard full of noisy men to be.'

But she went on, making an evident effort to speak calmly, conciliatingly. 'Our curÉ is on his way to administer these poor dying. I cannot think why he has delayed so long—I sent for him at five o'clock——'

'But—but'—and now it was the Herr Doktor's turn to hesitate—'your curÉ cannot come here to-night, gracious miss—at least the old priest who lives in the house next the church cannot do so. He has been taken as a hostage for the good behaviour of the population of this town. Temporarily is he prisoner. A sad necessity of war such things are.' He looked at her deprecatingly—for the first time it occurred to him that the Herr Commandant might have contented himself with locking up the truculent mayor, and letting the old priest alone.

He saw her wince, he saw the colour rush into her face. 'But surely Monsieur le CurÉ will be allowed to administer the last Sacraments to dying soldiers!' she exclaimed.

He shook his head solemnly. It was indeed unfortunate for him that war, and the cruel, grotesque inhumanities of war, were invading the stretch of neutral country on which he and this—this so refined and zierliches Madchen had glided so pleasantly but a short half-hour ago. Full of very real concern he nerved himself to reject the personal appeal he felt sure she was about to make to him. But Mademoiselle RouannÈs did nothing of the kind. Instead she turned, and looking up the shaft of the stairway, called out sharply 'Jacob!' and then 'ThÉrÈse!'

The thin man and the stout woman both came hurrying down, and at once she spoke to them in quiet, dry, urgent tones. 'The Prussian doctor of the Red Cross is going to bring a wounded Prussian officer on to the barge. He will occupy the smaller cabin. Two orderlies are coming to help you to prepare the cabin; and you, Jacob, will have to show the Prussians how the crane is worked.'

The Herr Doktor, himself much ruffled by hearing himself described as a Prussian, saw a look of sullen ill-temper come over Jacob's face. But Mademoiselle RouannÈs put out her hand and laid it on the old fellow's shoulder. 'My good friend,' she said, and her voice quivered for the first time, 'pray do what I ask of you without discussion. And you, ThÉrÈse, I must ask to go home and tell my father that I am taking the watch here to-night.'

Jacob was the first to respond to the appeal. He looked fiercely at the German Red Cross surgeon. 'At your orders, M'sieur,' he said gruffly. As for the woman, she turned away with a sullen 'Bien, Mademoiselle,' and started walking up the ladder-like stairway.

The Red Cross nurse bowed distantly. 'Bon soir, Monsieur,' she said coldly.

The Herr Doktor also bowed stiffly. It was disconcerting, even strange, to find himself once more in enemy country.

She slipped through the narrow door of the larger ward, and he heard her draw the bolt.

Again he felt irritated, and surprised as he had been surprised at seeing that strange look of aversion and horror flash into her face when her eyes had first rested on him....

True, she was young, divinely compassionate, and very delightful to the eye, but she evidently misunderstood the situation! It was he, Herr Doktor Max Keller, who was now in command of the Red Cross barge, and that by the rules of the International Red Cross Society. He might, however, so far humour her as not to bring his orderlies to-night on board what had been her Red Cross barge. He had noticed with sincere annoyance that his men—who, by the way, were Prussians—were rough, not to say brutal, in their manner to those French people with whom they were perforce brought into contact.

So after he had made the old Frenchman understand what he wanted done, he asked him, in his halting French, 'Is there an hotel close by where sleep I can?'

'There's a kind of cabaret yonder'—and then, as if rather ashamed of his ungraciousness, the man added, 'I will come and show Monsieur le MÉdecin where it is.'

Together they climbed up on to the deck of the barge, and there the Herr Doktor stopped a moment, and looking round about him, drew a deep, long breath. The falling of the shade of night was singularly beautiful on this quiet stretch of slow-moving waters. Across the river a line of poplars looked like a row of ghostly, giant sentinels....

The two men, the Frenchman in front, the German behind, stepped off the barge on to the narrow stone jetty, and then they walked for a few yards in darkness along the leafy mall. None of the street lamps had been lit on this, the evening of the most tragic day in the life of Valoise, but dim lights twinkled in the house across the roadway to which old Jacob now led his enemy.

'M'sieur will find this place quite clean,' he observed, vigorously pulling the bell of a narrow door. There was a long delay—then a young woman, opening her door a few inches, looked timorously out at them. But Jacob now took everything on himself. With what seemed to his companion an unnecessary torrent of words, he explained that 'Monsieur' was a doctor of the Red Cross, who had come to look after the wounded on the Red Cross barge, and that therefore a room must at once be prepared for him. The woman's face cleared, she opened her narrow door widely, and led the way up to a large, clean bedroom on the first floor, of which the windows overlooked the mall, the river, and—the barge.

As a few moments later they left the house the Herr Doktor could not help feeling grateful to old Jacob. Jacob? Why 'twas almost a German name!

4

Half an hour later the great grey ambulance, drawn up close to the gates of the Tournebride, was ready to start down the hill, and the Herr Doktor waited impatiently while the five hale and whole officers bade their wounded comrade a hearty, lengthy, and jovial good-night.

They were all ÜbermÜtig—bubbling over with wild spirits—and still talking of their Mecca—Paris—now only some thirty miles away. Any hour might come the longed-for order to advance thither!

The Herr Doktor's illustrious patient seemed the most eager of them all. But he hoped the order to advance would be delayed till he himself were well enough to be in time for the solemn entry into the conquered city—that entry through the Arc de Triomphe which was to be a more superb replica of that which had taken place in 1871. Some days must surely elapse before that glorious pageant could take place, although everything was ready for it—in Luxembourg. In Luxembourg, so Prince Egon now told his comrades—for he alone among them was in touch with the Court—the Kaiser was waiting impatiently for the glad news that Paris had fallen or surrendered. There too, even now, the Imperial Master of the Horse had everything prepared—the state chargers, even, had been brought from Potsdam....

At last the Herr Doktor went up to the youthful commanding officer. 'A word with you in private,' he said hurriedly, and the other allowed himself to be drawn aside. He was curious to know what the Herr Doktor could possibly have to say, 'in private.'

'I know well your humane sentiments towards the unfortunate population of this conquered country'—the words came quickly, almost breathlessly—'and your good heart, Herr Commandant, will perhaps remember the curious request made to you by the old French priest when taken hostage. I have discovered that what he said was true—that there are indeed three wounded soldiers dying on the Red Cross barge where I am about to take Prince Egon. Two of the men will not outlast the night, and the Red Cross Sister, a French lady of distinction, is most anxious they should receive religious consolation. That being so I thought I might promise her that this pious wish should be gratified. With your permission the priest can go in the ambulance, and I myself will bring him back within an hour or so!'

The Herr Commandant looked at the Herr Doktor doubtfully. He did, it was true, hold the unusual theory that benignant justice, rather than 'frightfulness,' was the right way to deal with a conquered population. He remembered, too, that, unlike his four lieutenants, his own instinct had been to believe the CurÉ of Valoise when the old man had pleaded that he might be allowed to attend 'trois mourants,' and that, though it had seemed almost impossible that there could be three dying people desiring priestly ministration in this little town, the more so that, as all the world knew, France was now an utterly godless country.

Still he waited a few moments before answering. It was not proper that the Herr Doktor should take too much upon himself. But his mind was already made up, and at last he took a large key out of one of his pockets, and handed it to the Herr Doktor. 'You must be personally responsible for the hostage's safe return!' He laughed rather huskily. 'The responsibility is not great, Herr Doktor, or perhaps I would not put it upon you! That old man could not hobble away very far. The Mayor—ah, that is another matter! He is what they call here un fort gaillard.' He uttered the three French words without any accent, and the other envied him.

The Herr Doktor hastened across the courtyard and found the arch in the wall which he knew led through into Madame Blanc's well-stocked kitchen garden. In the centre of the large open space there rose, in the moonlit darkness, the square building lit only by a skylight, which had been chosen as making an ideal prison for the two hostages. Putting the key the Herr Commandant had handed him in the door, he turned it, and walked into the sweet-smelling fruit-room of the old inn.

There a curious sight met his eyes. The two Frenchmen, companions in misfortune though they were, had placed themselves as far the one from the other as was possible. The priest sat on his truckle bed, reading his breviary by the light of a candle, while the Mayor of Valoise, also sitting on his bed—for the Tournebride had naturally proved very short of the chairs required for the accommodation of so many hosts—was busily writing what he intended to be the official account of his amazing and disagreeable adventures.

As the door opened the Mayor leapt to his feet, and a look of apprehension shot over his dark, southern-looking face. The priest looked up, but remained seated, and went on reading his prayer-book with an air of ostentatious indifference.

The Herr Doktor walked across to the old man. 'Will you please at once come?' he said haltingly. 'Permission for you obtained I have to attend the French wounded on the Red Cross barge.'

The priest closed his book, and rose from his seat; but at the same moment the Mayor came forward towards the German Red Cross doctor, but there was a curious lack of firmness about his footsteps. It was as if he hardly knew where his legs were bearing him. His voice, however, was strong and defiant. 'I protest!' he cried loudly. 'I strongly and vigorously protest against this favour being shown to the priest! It is on me, as Mayor of Valoise, that there reposes the duty of transmitting to their families the wishes of our dying soldiers!'

The Herr Doktor brought his two feet together and bowed. 'Your protest, Monsieur le Maire, duly registered will be,' he said coldly. 'Meanwhile I must ask Monsieur le CurÉ my instructions to obey.' Motioning the old man to precede him, he walked out of the door, and, shutting it, turned the key in the lock.

Quickly the two men walked through the dark garden, and when they were close to the arch which led into the courtyard of the Tournebride, the priest abruptly broke silence. 'Am I to be allowed to administer these dying men?' he asked.

'That may you do,' replied the Herr Doktor shortly.

'Then, Monsieur, I must ask permission to go round by my house and by the church.'

Now this was not exactly in the bond, yet, rather to his own surprise, the Herr Doktor gave his orderly-driver the command. Why not do this thing graciously and thoroughly while he was about it? Thoroughness has always been one of the great German virtues—so he reminded himself while sitting in the rather airless ambulance, and listening to his high-born patient's fretful remarks.

As the motor ambulance at last drew up on the road opposite to where the barge was moored, there arose a sudden stir in the houses facing the mall. Windows were flung cautiously open, and dark forms leaned out of them.

Curtly instructing the priest to follow him, and requesting his orderlies to await his return, the Herr Doktor preceded the priest down the stone gangway, and on to the deck of the barge. In spite of the stars it was a very dark night, and suddenly he turned on the electric torch strapped to his breast. As he did so his companion uttered a sharp exclamation of surprise. Monsieur le CurÉ had never seen, he had never even heard of such an invention! It made him realise, as he had not yet done, what terrible, ingenious, irresistible fellows these Germans were.

The big trap-door in the deck had been opened, and the crane for lowering the wounded man was already in position. Mademoiselle RouannÈs had been true to her word, everything had been made ready for the new patient, and the Herr Doktor felt suddenly very glad that he had followed his kindly so-truly-German-and-humane impulse about the priest.

Carefully the two went down the stairs now open to the star-powdered sky, and then the one in command knocked at the door of what he already called in his own mind 'Her ward.'

There followed a moment or two of delay—long enough for the Herr Doktor to become rather impatient. Then, slowly, the door opened, and the electric torch flashed for a moment over Mademoiselle RouannÈs' head and breast. She no longer wore the Red Cross cap and veil, and her fair hair formed an aureole above her delicately-tinted face and deep blue eyes. 'If you will ask Jacob, he will tell you everything, Monsieur le MÉdecin. I have told him to put himself entirely at your disposal. I cannot come just now, for I must not leave my wounded. Two of them are even now dying.'

She spoke in a quick whisper and in her own language. But the Herr Doktor answered in English. 'Gracious miss, I have to you the priest brought,' he said eagerly.

'I thank you—oh! how I thank you!' There was a thrill of real, heartfelt gratitude in her voice—and something in the Herr Doktor's heart thrilled in answer, as she opened wide the narrow door to let them both come through.

Most of the men, lying stretched out there, on those narrow pallet beds, were asleep, but only the two now so near to death seemed really at peace. The others moved uneasily, and from their bloodless lips there issued painful mutterings and groans. One very young soldier kept counting over and over again—from one to thirty-seven. When he came to trente-sept, he always broke off, and began again. In answer to a mute, questioning glance from the Herr Doktor, the Red Cross nurse whispered, 'The thirty-eighth shot struck him. But he only counts like that when he is asleep.' A lad in the farthest corner, the third man in the danger zone, asked again and again, with a terrible, monotonous reiteration, 'Mais pourquoi? Pourquoi suis-je ici?'

Again the doctor turned questioningly to Jeanne RouannÈs. 'He also always begins asking that question as soon as he falls asleep,' she said sighing; 'when awake he seems quite happy.'

The Herr Doktor was strangely reluctant to leave the mournful scene. He felt an uneasy curiosity as to what was going to take place. Even now the Red Cross nurse was turning a little table, which had been covered with various odd French medicaments, into an altar. But his duty to his own patient called him insistently away, and slowly he backed towards the door. Once there, however, he called out, but in a low voice, 'Miss? Miss? A word with you.'

She came and stood by him, a lovely vision of health, purity, and strength, in that piteous, pain-bound place.

'When the priest finished has,' he murmured, 'again back him I will take. I have myself responsible for him made.'

'I promise you that he will not be very long!' And then she added softly, 'I thank you again, sir, for having done this good action. The good God will reward you.'

She opened the door, and after she had closed it again, the Herr Doktor lingered for a moment outside in the little passage which was now open to the stars and cool night air.

And during the hour he spent in the low-ceilinged, white-washed cabin where Prince Egon now lay comfortably settled in a real bed, the Herr Doktor, though his body was by his patient's side, in his spirit dwelt in the other half of the Red Cross barge—where was taking place the ever august and awe-inspiring transit from life to death of two young, sentient, human beings. So little indeed was he present in mind where his body was, that he experienced a feeling of astonishment, as well as of discomfort, when he suddenly realised that a quick, amicable conversation was going on between the young Prussian officer and Mademoiselle RouannÈs' old French man-servant.

'Herr Doktor!' cried Prince Egon joyfully, 'this fellow was once a valet—valet to a Prince de Ligne! I have told him that henceforth he is commandeered by me! He will be my valet. I would far rather be waited on by him than by that tiresome Fritz of yours. This one is a thoroughly intelligent fellow; he knows a house in this town where there is a great store of those unanstÄndige Parisian comic papers. He will bring them here to-morrow morning—so I now have something pleasant to dream about!'

'That is good,' said the Herr Doktor absently. 'I felt sure your Highness would prefer this place to the Tournebride. I hope you will not be disturbed by the French wounded. There is a passage room between.'

'The French wounded will not disturb me!' The young man lifted himself slightly in his bed and smiled. 'It is not as if they were our brave fellows, after all!'