, and over her
withered cheeks the soft bloom came and faded--that pretty colour which
Breton women usually retain until the end.

"Thou knowest, Monsieur Jacques," she said, with a curiously quaint
mingling of familiarity and respect, "that I do not counsel caution
because I love thee and dread for thee again the trenches. But with thy
leg hanging there like the broken wing of a _vanneau_----"

He replied good humouredly:

"Thou dost not know the Legion, Marie-Josephine. Every day in our trenches
we break a comrade into pieces and glue him together again, just to make
him tougher. Broken bones, once mended, are stronger than before."

He was looking down at her where she sat by the hearth, slicing vegetables
and herbs, but watching him all the while out of her lovely, faded eyes.

"I understand, Monsieur Jacques, that you are like your father--God knows
he was hardy and without fear--to the last"--she dropped her head--"Mary,
glorious--intercede--" she muttered over her bowl of herbs.

Wayland, resting on his crutches, unslung his ducks, laid them on the
table, smoothed their beautiful heads and breasts, then slipped the
soaking _bandouliere_ of his gun from his shoulder and placed the dripping
piece against the chimney corner.

"After I have scrubbed myself," he said, "and have put on dry clothes, I
shall come to luncheon; and I shall have something very strange to tell
you, Marie-Josephine."

He limped away into one of the two remaining rooms--the other was
hers--and closed his door.

Marie-Josephine continued to prepare the soup. There was an egg for him,
too; and a slice of cold pork and a _brioche_ and a jug of cider.

In his room Wayland was whistling "Tipperary."

Now and again, pausing in her work, she turned her eyes to his closed
door--wonderful eyes that became miracles of tenderness as she listened.

He came out, presently, dressed in his odd, ill-fitting uniform of the
Legion, tunic unbuttoned, collarless of shirt, his bright, thick hair, now
of decent length, in boyish disorder.

Delicious odours of soup and of Breton cider greeted him; he seated
himself; Marie-Josephine waited on him, hovered over him, tucked a sack of
feathers under his maimed leg, placed his crutches in the corner beside
the gun.

Still eating, leisurely, he began:

"Marie-Josephine--a strange thing has happened on Quesnel Moors which
troubles me.... Listen attentively. It was while waiting for ducks on the
Eryx Rocks