hat was very
definite and was not vague at all!

Marie-Louise sighed a little. She did not understand. Everything was
so hard to understand. She sighed again--and then, walking slowly
across the room, she parted the portieres and stepped into the
_atelier_.

Here, for an instant, she stood hesitant, just inside the archway,
looking about her. How bright the moonlight was, and how it poured in
and bathed everything in its soft luminous glow, except that,
strangely, there seemed to be a shadow on the white-wrapt statue of the
girl that puzzled her for a moment--ah, yes, it was the door of the
dressing-room, the room where Hector said the models prepared for their
poses, that was wide open and kept the moonlight from the statue. She
moved forward, closed the door quietly, and went then and uncovered the
clay figure and stood before it. She could look her fill now--yet it
seemed that she could never do that, for her craving and her longing
were insatiable. All other things in this life of Jean's, in this life
of hers that she was living for a little while, filled her with dismay
and confusion; but this, this work of Jean's, this figure before her
was real, it seemed somehow to bring her closer to her own world, to
those things she could understand. She did not know why--only that it
was so, and that it was perhaps because of that the girl with the drum
had been haunting her so constantly.

She sat down at last on the little platform that served Jean to stand
upon for his work. It thrilled her, made her pulse leap, this strong,
magnificent figure of womanhood, this torn and tattered soldier-girl;
and one sensed and felt and lived, it seemed, the battle-wrack around
the figure; one saw, it seemed, the stern, set-faced, shot-thinned
ranks that followed to the beating of the drum; one listened to catch
the tramp of feet, the hoarse cheers, the roar of guns. It seemed to
be the call of France, the call to victory and glory, or to death
perhaps, but to dishonour never; it seemed to breathe the love of
country that was beyond all thought of self, fearful of no odds; it
seemed to mean that in the heart of France itself lived the courage
that had never measured sacrifice; it seemed as though those clay lips
parted, and above the din of conflict, of battle and of strife she
could hear the voice ring out in deathless words: "Forward--for France!"

But it was not only that alone that held her enthralled. It was the
face