"When?" She still drove steadily through the dark.

"To-day."

She looked up at the stars. So--he would never come blowing in with
the sweet spring winds.

"I'd rather have been--shot--than to have told you that--" the man
beside her was saying, "but, you see, I didn't know you were the girl--"

"Of course you couldn't. You mustn't blame yourself."

She delivered her precious charge at the hospital and put up her car
for the night. Standing alone under the stars she wondered what she
should do next. There was no one to tell--the women who had worked
with her in the town which had since been recaptured by the Germans had
gone to other towns. But she had stayed as near the front as possible,
and she had never felt lonely because at any moment her lover might
come--there had always been the thought that he might come--.

And now he would never come!

She had a room in the house of an old woman, all of whose sons were in
the war. So far two of them had escaped death. But the old woman said
often, fatalistically, "They will not always escape--but it will be for
France."

The old woman had soup on the fire for Drusilla's supper. The room was
faintly lighted. "What is it?" she asked, as the girl dropped down on
the doorstep.

"My Captain is dead--"

The old woman rose and stood over her. "It comes to all."

"I know."

"Will you eat your soup? When the heart fails, the body must have
strength."

Drusilla covered her face with her bands. The room was very still.
The old woman went back to her chair by the fire and waited. At last
she rose and filled a small bowl with the soup--she broke into it a
small allowance of bread. Then she came and sat on the step beside the
girl.

"Eat, Mademoiselle," she said, with something like authority, and
Drusilla obeyed. And when she gave back the bowl, the old woman set it
on the floor, and drew the girl's head to her breast.

And Drusilla lay there, crying softly, a lonely American mothered by
this indomitable old woman of France.

Days passed, days in which men came and men went and Drusilla sang to
them. And now new faces were seen among the tired and war-worn ones.
Eager young Americans, pressing forward towards the front, found a
countrywoman in the little town; and they wrote home about her. "She's
a beauty, by jinks, and when she sings it pulls the heart out of you.
She's the kind you want to say your prayers to."

So her fame went forth and took