y toward the German and the thing he
had been asked to watch. Terror shook her. It seemed as if she could never
look at what she knew would be waiting for her, and yet no power on earth
could have held her back.

As she reached the prisoner she saw in bewilderment a strange scattering
of things on the floor about him--forceps, some knives, a roll of gauze,
and a syringe. There was an odor of a strange antiseptic which made her
faint. She tottered and would have fallen had the German not helped the
chief to steady her.

"He has not gained consciousness, madam. He has lost too much blood for
that." The German spoke in English. He also spread his hands in mute
apology for what he had done. "I have stanched his wounds with what poor
supplies I had with me. It has merely kept him alive. He will require more
care, better dressing."

No one answered. Words seemed the most impossible and absurd means of
expression just then.

The German smiled at the look Sheila gave him, and the smile was arrogant.
"You Americans have always made such a fuss over what you have been
pleased to call our brutalities. What is war if it isn't a consistent
effort to exterminate the enemy? The women are the wives of the enemy and
the breeders of more; the wounded are still the enemy--if they recover,
they fight again. But a German knows how to honor a brave act. And when
you go back, madam, you can tell how Carl Tiefmann, a German surgeon,
wounded and taken prisoner, so far forgot his Prussian creed as to spare
an enemy for a brave woman."

He bowed and went back to the church doors. Sheila watched him go through
a trailing of mist; then she dropped through the chief's arms,
unconscious, on the floor beside Peter's stretcher.

The Germans never reached the little town, and by some merciful stroke of
luck neither did any more of the shells. So it came to pass that on the
11th of November a very white nurse, holding fast to the hand of a man
unconscious on a stretcher, followed Peace across the threshold of the
American Military Hospital No. 10. It was days before Sheila spoke above a
husky whisper or smiled, for it was days before Peter was out of
danger, but there came a morning at last when a shaven and shorn Peter,
looking oddly familiar, opened clear, sane eyes and saw the woman he loved
bending close above him.

[Illustration: "He will require more care, better dressing"]

He gave the same old cry that he had given ages before when h