In his arms she had cried:  “But how did we know—­how did we know?”

He had found no answer.  Holding her fiercely as he did, it seemed enough that they did know.  He had surrendered, but could not reason—­was even incurious.

At the last she had said:  “But if it shouldn’t be true; if it’s only because we’re both worn down and saw someone from home.  Suppose it’s mere—­”

She had broken off to thump his shoulder in reassurance, to cling more abjectly.  It was then she had wept, shakingly, in a vast impatience with herself for trying to reason.

“It is true!  It is true—­it’s true, it’s true!” she had told him with piteous vehemence, then wilted again to his support, one hand stroking his dusty cheek.

When the command had come down the line she seemed about to fall, but braced herself with new strength from some hidden source.  When he released her she stood erect, regarding him with something of the twisted, humorous quirk about her lips that for an instant brought her back to him as the little girl of long ago.  Not until then had he been able to picture her as Patricia Whipple.  Then he saw.  Her smile became surer.

“You’ve gone and spoiled the whole war for me!” she called to him.

* * * * *

The war, too, had been spoiled for Private Cowan.  He was unable to keep his mind on it.  Of the Second Battle of the Marne he was to remember little worth telling.

Two nights later they came to rest in the woods back of St. Eugene, in the little valley of the Surmelin, that gateway to Paris from the farthest point of the second German drive.  It was a valley shining with the gold of little wheat fields, crimson-specked with poppies.  It recalled to Private Cowan merely the farmland rolling away from that old house of red brick where he had gone one day with Sharon Whipple—­yesterday it might have been.  Even the winding creek—­though the French called theirs a river—­was like the other creek, its course marked by a tangle of shrubs and small growths; and the sides of the valley were flanked familiarly with stony ridges sparsely covered with second-growth timber.  Newbern, he kept thinking, would lie four miles beyond that longest ridge, and down that yellow road Sharon Whipple might soon be driving his creaking, weathered buggy and the gaunt roan.  The buggy would sag to one side and Sharon would be sitting “slaunchwise,” as he called it.  Over the ridge, at Newbern’s edge, would be the bony little girl who was so funny and willful.

They moved forward to the south bank of the Marne.  Beyond that fifty-yard stream lay the enemy, reported now to be stacking up drive impedimenta.  The reports bored Private Cowan.  He wished they would hurry the thing through.  He had other matters in hand.  A woman clothed with the sun, and under her feet the moon, and upon her head a crown of—­he could not make the crown of stars seem right.  She was crowned with a nurse’s cap, rusty hair showing beneath, and below this her wan, wistful, eager face, the eyes half shutting in vain attempts to reason.  The face would be drawn by some inner torment; then its tortured lines melt to a smile of sure conviction.  But she was clothed with the sun, and the moon was under her feet.  So much he could make seem true.