or slammed
behind her, the young man drew a deep breath. On his face was the
expression of ineffable relief.

In the hall Marie met her elderly companion, Bertha, now her aunt,
Madame Benet.

"I heard you quarrelling," Bertha protested. "It is most indiscreet.
It is not in the part of the Countess d'Aurillac that she makes love to
her chauffeur."

Marie laughed noiselessly and drew her farther down the hall. "He is
imbecile!" she exclaimed. "He will kill me with his solemn face and
his conceit. I make love to him--yes--that he may work the more
willingly. But he will have none of it. He is jealous of the others."

Madame Benet frowned.

"He resents the others," she corrected. "I do not blame him. He is a
gentleman!"

"And the others," demanded Marie; "were they not of the most noble
families of Rome?"

"I am old and I am ugly," said Bertha, "but to me Anfossi is always as
considerate as he is to you who are so beautiful."

"An Italian gentleman," returned Marie, "does not serve in Belgian
Congo unless it is--the choice of that or the marble quarries."

"I do not know what his past may be," sighed Madame Benet, "nor do I
ask. He is only a number, as you and I are only numbers. And I beg you
to let us work in harmony. At such a time your love-affairs threaten
our safety. You must wait."

Marie laughed insolently. "With the Du Barry," she protested, "I can
boast that I wait for no man."

"No," replied the older woman; "you pursue him!"

Marie would have answered sharply, but on the instant her interest was
diverted. For one week, by day and night, she had lived in a world
peopled only by German soldiers. Beside her in the railroad carriage,
on the station platforms, at the windows of the trains that passed the
one in which she rode, at the grade crossings, on the bridges, in the
roads that paralleled the tracks, choking the streets of the villages
and spread over the fields of grain, she had seen only the gray-green
uniforms. Even her professional eye no longer distinguished regiment
from regiment, dragoon from grenadier, Uhlan from Hussar or Landsturm.
Stripes, insignia, numerals, badges of rank, had lost their meaning.
Those who wore them no longer were individuals. They were not even
human. During the three last days the automobile, like a motor-boat
fighting the tide, had crept through a gray-green river of men,
stained, as though from the banks, by mud and yellow clay. And for
hours