peated her story.
He listened wisely, patting her on the head, and then whispered to Sheila:
"Ah, what did I say! These Boches--they get everything--the mothers, the
sweethearts." Then to Madeline: "Listen, ma pauvre; you shall have the
sadness no longer. Monsieur Satan will promise you happiness, ah, such
happiness in the new beautiful world he is preparing for you. Now go. But
'sh ... sh! You must say nothing."

From this moment Sheila became senior partner. It was she who suggested
all the extraordinary horrors Monsieur Satan had overlooked. It was she
who speeded up time and plans. "I have the hospitals and streets all mined
in case the flying bombs should not come thick enough; and I have the
wells poisoned. Isn't that a clever idea?"

The man looked disturbed. "That's as clever as the Boches. But the
children--where will they drink? You must take care of the children."

Then Sheila played her trump card and said the thing she had been waiting
so long to say. Like Monsieur Satan she hissed the words between her
teeth, while her face took on all the diabolical cunning it could muster.
"The children--bah! What do they matter, after all? I have decided--the
children shall be destroyed."

Monsieur Satan sprang from his chair. He pinioned her arms behind her,
forcing her back so he could look deep into her eyes with all the hate
and mercilessness his soul harbored. "Touch Madeline--the children, never!
Let so much as one little hair of their heads be harmed and I--Monsieur
Satan--will kill you!"

She left him with a non-committal shrug, left him panting and swearing
softly under his breath.

From that moment he watched Sheila suspiciously and followed the children
with jealous eyes. For Madeline he called constantly; and she sat on his
knee by the hour while he danced the jumping-jack outrageously and taught
her to sing to the doll a certain foolish berceuse that Poitou mothers
sing to their babies.

Sheila had planned to stage their day of destruction with the craft of a
master manager. She had had to take certain officials into her confidence
and get the chief to sign such orders as had never been issued in a
hospital before. But in the end Fate staged it, and did it infinitely
better than the nurse had even conceived it. The hour of doom struck a
full half-day too soon--the children were playing in the gardens, under
Monsieur Satan's window instead of being in the cellar of the _creche_ as
he had decreed; and