as many of him as I can."

She smiled. "Sufficient for the day is the good thereof. Go on killing
them, monsieur. The more you kill the fewer there will be for your
children and your grandchildren to lie down with."

She left him and tried to puzzle out his philosophy. For the ordinary
French philosophy of the war is very simple. They have no
high-falutin, altruistic ideas of improving the Boche. They don't care
a tinker's curse what happens to the unholy brood beyond the Rhine, so
long as they are beaten, humiliated, subjected: so long as there is no
chance of their ever deflowering again with their brutality the sacred
soil of France. The French mind cannot conceive the idea of this
beautiful brotherhood; but, on the contrary, rejects it as something
loathsome, something bordering on spiritual defilement....

No; Jeanne could not accept the theory that we were waging war for the
ultimate chastening and beatification of Germany. She preferred
Doggie's reason for fighting. For his soul. There was something which
she could grip. And having gripped it, it was something around which
her imagination could weave a web of noble fancy. After all, when she
came to think of it, every one of the Allies must be fighting for his
soul. For his soul's sake had not her father died? Although she knew
no word of German, it was obvious that the Uhlan officer had murdered
him because he had refused to betray his country. And her uncle. To
fight for his soul, had he not gone out with his heroic but futile
sporting gun? And this pragmatical sergeant? What else had led him
from his schoolroom to the battlefield? Why couldn't he be honest
about it, like Doggie?

She missed Doggie. He ought to be there, as she had often seen him
unobserved, talking with his friends or going about his military
duties, or playing the flageolet with the magical touch of the
musician. She knew far more of Doggie than he was aware of ... And at
night she prayed for the little English soldier who was facing Death.

She had much time to think of him during the hours when she sat by the
bedside of Aunt Morin, who talked incessantly of Francois-Marie who
was killed on the Argonne, and Gaspard who, as a _territorial_, was no
doubt defending Madagascar from invasion. And it was pleasant to think
of him, because he was a new distraction from tragical memories. He
seemed to lay the ghosts ... He was different from all the Englishmen
she had met. The young officers wh