aid to love. He gives his life for
his friend. Do you jeer at him? Do you say he is a fool for his pains?
No, it is his honour, his glory."

"God is love. Why are you afraid to let Him in? Hate knocks also at
your door and to him you open wide. Why are you afraid of love? All
things are created by love. Hate can but destroy. Why choose you death
instead of life? God pleads to you. He is waiting for your help."

And one answered him.

"We are but poor men," he said. "What can we do? Of what use are such
as we?"

The young man looked at him and smiled.

"You can ask that," he said: "you, a soldier? Does the soldier say: 'I
am of no use. I am but a poor man of no account. Who has need of such
as I?' God has need of all. There is none that shall not help to win
the victory. It is with his life the soldier serves. Who were they
whose teaching moved the world more than it has ever yet been moved by
the teaching of the wisest? They were men of little knowledge, of but
little learning, poor and lowly. It was with their lives they taught."

"Cast out self, and God shall enter in, and you shall be One with God.
For there is none so lowly that he may not become the Temple of God:
there is none so great that he shall be greater than this."

The speaker ceased. There came a faint sound at which she turned her
head; and when she looked again he was gone.

The wounded men had heard it also. Dubos had moved forward. Madame
Lelanne had risen. It came again, the thin, faint shrill of a distant
bugle. Footsteps were descending the stairs. French soldiers, laughing,
shouting, were crowding round them.

CHAPTER XVIII

Her father met her at Waterloo. He had business in London, and they
stayed on for a few days. Reading between the lines of his later
letters, she had felt that all was not well with him. His old heart
trouble had come back; and she noticed that he walked to meet her very
slowly. It would be all right, now that she had returned, he explained:
he had been worrying himself about her.

Mrs. Denton had died. She had left Joan her library, together with her
wonderful collection of note books. She had brought them all up-to-date
and indexed them. They would be invaluable to Francis when he started
the new paper upon which they had determined. He was still in the
hospital at Breganze, near to where his machine had been shot down. She
had tried to get to him; but it would have m