ll used up. Twice he heard cheering and the splash of
cavalry in the shallow river, but they seemed to be beaten off
again, and he went about his business, listless, sombre, a dead
weight at his heart.

He had been kneeling beside a wounded man for some minutes when
he became conscious that the firing had almost ceased. Bugles
were sounding near the Chateau; long files of troops passed him
in the lifting smoke; officers shouted along the river-bank.

He rose to his feet and looked around for Alixe. She was not in
sight. He walked towards the river-bank, watching for her, but he
could not find her.

"Did you see a Sister of Mercy pass this way?" he asked an
officer who sat on the grass, smoking and bandaging his foot.

A soldier passing, using his rifle as a crutch, said: "I saw a
Sister of Mercy. She went towards the Chateau. I think she was
hurt."

"Hurt!"

"I heard somebody say so." Jack turned and hastened towards the
stables. He crossed the lawn, threaded his way among the low sod
breastworks, where the infantry lay grimy and exhausted, and
entered the garden. She was not there. He hurried to the stables;
Lorraine met him, holding a basin and a sponge.

"Where is Alixe?" he asked.

"She is not here," said Lorraine. "Has she been hurt?"

"I don't know."

He looked at her a moment, then turned away, coldly. On the
terrace the artillerymen were sponging the blood from the breech
of their gatling where some wretch's brains had been spattered by
a shell-fragment. They told him that a Sister of Mercy had passed
into the house ten minutes before; that she walked as though very
tired, but did not appear to have been hurt.

"She is up-stairs," he thought. "She must not stay there alone
with Sir Thorald." And he climbed the stairs and knocked softly
at the door of the death-chamber.

"Alixe," he said, gently, opening the door, "you must not stay
here."

She was kneeling at the bedside, her face buried on the breast of
the dead man.

"Alixe," he said, but his voice broke in spite of him, and he
went to her and touched her.

Very tenderly he raised her head, looked into her eyes, then
quietly turned away.

Outside the door he met Lorraine.

"Don't go in," he murmured.

She looked fearfully up into his face.

"Yes," he said, "she was shot through the body."

Then he closed the door and turned the key on the outside,
leaving the dead to the dead.

XXIII

LORRAINE SLEEPS

The next day th