, while the car was blocked, and in fury the engine raced and
purred, the gray-green river had rolled past her, slowly but as
inevitably as lava down the slope of a volcano, bearing on its surface
faces with staring eyes, thousands and thousands of eyes, some fierce
and bloodshot, others filled with weariness, homesickness, pain. At
night she still saw them: the white faces under the sweat and dust, the
eyes dumb, inarticulate, asking the answer. She had been suffocated by
German soldiers, by the mass of them, engulfed and smothered; she had
stifled in a land inhabited only by gray-green ghosts.

And suddenly, as though a miracle had been wrought, she saw upon the
lawn, riding toward her, a man in scarlet, blue, and silver. One man
riding alone.

Approaching with confidence, but alert; his reins fallen, his hands
nursing his carbine, his eyes searched the shadows of the trees, the
empty windows, even the sun-swept sky. His was the new face at the
door, the new step on the floor. And the spy knew had she beheld an
army corps it would have been no more significant, no more menacing,
than the solitary chasseur a cheval scouting in advance of the enemy.

"We are saved!" exclaimed Marie, with irony. "Go quickly," she
commanded, "to the bedroom on the second floor that opens upon the
staircase, so that you can see all who pass. You are too ill to
travel. They must find you in bed."

"And you?" said Bertha.

"I," cried Marie rapturously, "hasten to welcome our preserver!"

The preserver was a peasant lad. Under the white dust his cheeks were
burned a brown-red, his eyes, honest and blue, through much staring at
the skies and at horizon lines, were puckered and encircled with tiny
wrinkles. Responsibility had made him older than his years, and in
speech brief. With the beautiful lady who with tears of joy ran to
greet him, and who in an ecstasy of happiness pressed her cheek against
the nose of his horse, he was unimpressed. He returned to her her
papers and gravely echoed her answers to his questions. "This
chateau," he repeated, "was occupied by their General Staff; they have
left no wounded here; you saw the last of them pass a half-hour since."
He gathered up his reins.

Marie shrieked in alarm. "You will not leave us?" she cried.

For the first time the young man permitted himself to smile. "Others
arrive soon," he said.

He touched his shako, wheeled his horse in the direction from which he
had co