avid later. The story had
become so complicated he could not follow it.

"He justified her, and promptly. He took the same pistol and shot
himself through the temples. His orderly, stationed at the edge
of the thicket to keep watch, heard the first shot and ran toward
them. He saw the officer take up the smoking pistol and turn it
on himself. But the Kommandant couldn't believe that one of his
officers had so much feeling. He held an enquete, dragged the
girl's mother and uncle into court, and tried to establish that
they were in conspiracy with her to seduce and murder a German
officer. The orderly was made to tell the whole story; how and
where they began to meet. Though he wasn't very delicate about
the details he divulged, he stuck to his statement that he saw
Lieutenant Muller shoot himself with his own hand, and the
Kommandant failed to prove his case. The old Cure had known
nothing of all this until he heard it aired in the military
court. Marie Louise had lived in his house since she was a child,
and was like his daughter. He had a stroke or something, and has
been like this ever since. The girl's friends forgave her, and
when she was buried off alone by the hedge, they began to take
flowers to her grave. The Kommandant put up an affiche on the
hedge, forbidding any one to decorate the grave. Apparently,
nothing during the German occupation stirred up more feeling than
poor Marie Louise."

It would stir anybody, Claude reflected. There was her lonely
little grave, the shadow of the privet hedge falling across it.
There, at the foot of the Cure's garden, was the German cemetery,
with heavy cement crosses,--some of them with long inscriptions;
lines from their poets, and couplets from old hymns. Lieutenant
Muller was there somewhere, probably. Strange, how their story
stood out in a world of suffering. That was a kind of misery he
hadn't happened to think of before; but the same thing must have
occurred again and again in the occupied territory. He would
never forget the Cure's hands, his dim, suffering eyes.

Claude recognized David crossing the pavement in front of the
church, and went back to meet him.

"Hello! I mistook you for Hicks at first. I thought he might be
out here." David sat down on the steps and lit a cigarette.

"So did I. I came out to look for him."

"Oh, I expect he's found some shoulder to cry on. Do you realize,
Claude, you and I are the only men in the Company who haven't got
engag