ing far away to the fields
of battle, making their petitions with that confidence in divinity which
accompanies every distress. Among the kneeling mass were many soldiers
with bandaged heads, kepis in hand and tearful eyes.

Up and down the double staircase of the basilica were flitting women,
clad in white, with spotless headdresses that fluttered in such a way
that they appeared like flying doves. These were the nurses and Sisters
of Charity guiding the steps of the injured. Desnoyers thought he
recognized Marguerite in every one of them, but the prompt disillusion
following each of these discoveries soon made him doubtful about the
outcome of his journey. She was not in Lourdes, either. He would never
find her in that France so immeasurably expanded by the war that it had
converted every town into a hospital.

His afternoon explorations were no more successful. The employees
listened to his interrogations with a distraught air. He could come back
again; just now they were taken up with the announcement that another
hospital train was on the way. The great battle was still going on
near Paris. They had to improvise lodgings for the new consignment of
mutilated humanity. In order to pass away the time until his return,
Desnoyers went back to the garden near the grotto. He was planning to
return to Pau that night; there was evidently nothing more to do at
Lourdes. In what direction should he now continue his search?

Suddenly he felt a thrill down his back--the same indefinable sensation
which used to warn him of her presence when they were meeting in the
gardens of Paris. Marguerite was going to present herself unexpectedly
as in the old days without his knowing from exactly what spot--as though
she came up out of the earth or descended from the clouds.

After a second's thought he smiled bitterly. Mere tricks of his desire!
Illusions! . . . Upon turning his head he recognized the falsity of his
hope. Nobody was following his footsteps; he was the only being going
down the center of the avenue. Near him, in the diaphanous white of a
guardian angel, was a nurse. Poor blind man! . . . Desnoyers was passing
on when a quick movement on the part of the white-clad woman, an evident
desire to escape notice, to hide her face by looking at the plants,
attracted his attention. He was slow in recognizing her. Two little
ringlets escaping from the band of her cap made him guess the hidden
head of hair; the feet shod in white we