ame Lelanne would go out, to return a little later with a wounded
man upon her back; and when one died, she would throw him across her
shoulder and disappear again up the steps. Sometimes it was a Frenchman
and sometimes a German she brought in. One gathered that the fight for
the village still continued. There was but little they could do for them
beyond dressing their wounds and easing their pain. Joan and the little
chemist took it in turns to relieve one another. If Madame Lelanne ever
slept, it was when she would sit in the shadow behind the stove, her
hands upon her knees. Dubos had been in the house when it had fallen.
Madame Lelanne had discovered him pinned against a wall underneath a
great oak beam that had withstood the falling debris. His beard had been
burnt off, but otherwise he had been unharmed.

She seemed to be living in a dream. She could not shake from her the
feeling that it was not bodies but souls that she was tending. The men
themselves gave colour to this fancy of hers. Stripped of their poor,
stained, tattered uniforms, they were neither French nor Germans. Friend
or foe! it was already but a memory. Often, awakening out of a sleep,
they would look across at one another and smile as to a comrade. A great
peace seemed to have entered there. Faint murmurs as from some distant
troubled world would steal at times into the silence. It brought a pang
of pity, but it did not drive away the quiet that dwelt there.

Once, someone who must have known the place and had descended the steps
softly, sat there among them and talked with them. Joan could not
remember seeing him enter. Perhaps unknowing, she had fallen to sleep
for a few minutes. Madame Lelanne was seated by the stove, her great
coarse hands upon her knees, her patient, dull, slow-moving eyes fixed
upon the speaker's face. Dubos was half standing, half resting against
the table, his arms folded upon his breast. The wounded men had raised
themselves upon the straw and were listening. Some leant upon their
elbows, some sat with their hands clasped round their knees, and one,
with head bent down, remained with his face hidden in his hands.

The speaker sat a little way apart. The light from the oil lamp,
suspended from the ceiling, fell upon his face. He wore a peasant's
blouse. It seemed to her a face she knew. Possibly she had passed him
in the village street and had looked at him without remembering. It was
his eyes t