rom America are going to build us a
new home in it. We have seen the plan. It is more beautiful than the
old!"

Wherever we passed a house on the road to Luneville, and in town itself,
as we came in, we saw notices--printed and written--to remind us that we
were in the war-zone, if we forgot for an instant. "_Logement
militaire_," or "_Cave voutee, 200 places--400 places_." Those
hospitable cellars advertising their existence in air raids and
bombardments must be a comforting sight for passers-by, now and then;
but no siren wailed us a warning. We drove on in peace; and
I--disappointed at Vitrimont--quietly kept watch for a tall, thin figure
of a man with a slight limp. At any moment, I thought, I might see him,
for at Luneville he lives--if he lives anywhere!

I was so eager and excited that I could hardly turn my mind to other
things; but Brian, not knowing why I should be absent-minded, constantly
asked questions about what we passed. Julian O'Farrell had exchanged his
sister for Mr. and Mrs. Beckett, whom he had persuaded to take the short
trip in his ramshackle taxi. His excuse was that Mother Beckett would
deal out more wisely than Dierdre his Red Cross supplies to the returned
refugees; so we had the girl with us; and I caught reproachful glances
if I was slow in answering my blind brother. She herself suspects him as
a _poseur_, yet she judges me careless of his needs--which I should find
funny, if it didn't make me furious! Just to see what Dierdre would do,
and perhaps to provoke her, sometimes I didn't answer at all, but left
her to explain our surroundings to Brian. I hardly thought she would
respond to the silent challenge, but almost ostentatiously she did.

She cried, "There's a castle!" when we came to the fine and rather staid
chateau which Duke Stanislas loved, and where he died. She even tried to
describe it for Brian, with faltering self-consciousness, and the old
streets which once had been "brilliant as Versailles, full of Queen
Marie's beautiful ladies." Now, they are gray and sad, even those
streets which show no scars from the three weeks' martyrdom of German
rule. Soldiers pass, on foot and in motors, yet it's hard to realize
that before the war Luneville was one of the gayest, grandest garrison
towns of France, rich and industrious, under Diana's special protection.
Just because she was away in her moon-chariot, one dark and dreadful
night, all has changed since then. But she'll come back, a