one brightly over the rich vinelands, beyond which
stretched what was once the German Empire.

Madame Le Pontois, a slim, dark-eyed, good-looking woman of thirty, was
still at table in the _salle-a-manger_, finishing her breakfast in the
English style with little Ninette, a pretty blue-eyed child of nine,
whose hair was tied on the top with wide white ribbon, and who spoke
English quite well.

Her husband and her father had gone out upon the _terrasse_ to have their
cigarettes prior to their walk up the steep hillside to the fortress.

Life in that rural district possessed few amusements outside the military
circle, though Paul Le Pontois was a civilian and lived upon the product
of the wine-lands of his estate. There were tennis parties, "fif'
o'clocks," croquet and bridge-playing in the various military houses
around, but beyond that--nothing. They were too far from a big town ever
to go there for recreation. Metz they seldom went to, and with Paris far
off, Madame Le Pontois was quite content, just as she had been when Paul
had been stationed in stifling Constantine, away in the interior of
Algeria.

But she never complained. Devoted to her husband and to her laughing,
bright-eyed child, she loved the open-air life of the country, and with
such a commodious and picturesque house, one of the best in the district,
she thoroughly enjoyed every hour of her life. Paul possessed a private
income of fifty thousand francs, or nearly two thousand pounds a year,
therefore he was better off than the average run of post-war men.

He was a handsome, distinguished-looking man. As he lolled against the
railing of the _terrasse_, gay with ivy-leaf geraniums, lazily smoking
his cigarette and laughing lightly with his father-in-law, he presented a
typical picture of the debonair Frenchman of the boulevards--elegance
combined with soldierly smartness.

He had seen service in Tonquin, in Algeria, on the French Congo and in
the Argonne, and now his old company garrisoned Haudiomont, one of those
forts of enormous strength, which commanded the gate of France, and had
never been taken by the Crown Prince's army.

"No," he was laughing, speaking in good English, "you in England, my dear
beaupere, do not yet realise the dangers of the future. Happily for you,
perhaps, because you have the barrier of the sea. Your writers used to
speak of your 'tight little island.' But I do not see much of that in
London journals now. Airships and aer