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 eyes far apart. He was a student; not of the soldier type. At once we understood each other, at once he trusted me; and while we ate he told me of his plight. He had come back from the front for his three days and had found his wife with a lover. He had not a word of anger for her. He said that he had never satisfied her. He had never been the man she needed. But there was no more home for him, and all the night before, and all that day, he had walked the streets, dazed with grief. And next morning, at dawn, he must return to the war. So I took him back to my room where there was light and warmth and my bed, and there he slept all night, exhausted, and I sat in the chair, and slept a little, too. When the day came, I heated water for him to wash, and made his breakfast for him and went with him to the train, so that he was not alone among all the others who had wives and mothers and sisters to say good-bye to them. He was killed ten days later. I heard it, long afterwards, from a comrade to whom he gave my address.'

'Oh, my dear Marthe,' Jill murmured. 'Of course it was like that.'

'No; not of course,' said Marthe Ludérac, and her softened look hardened again to the haughty solitude. 'I am not a woman of whom "of course" can be said. I am not a woman who would not take a lover for those reasons you gave. Pride might keep me from him; but not the thought of parting. Life is so dark, so short; if the brightness were there, I do not say that