But Noyon was not dead.  We of the Red Cross knew that.  We knew that in cellars and nooks of this labyrinth of ruin already hundreds of hearts were beating.  On this calm September morning the newly cleared streets resounded with the healthful music of hammer and saw, and cartwheels rattled over the cobblestones, while workmen called to each other in resonant voices.  Pregnant sounds, these, the significance of which we could estimate.  For we had seen Noyon in the early months of the armistice:  tangled and monstrous in her attitude of falling, and silent with the bleeding silence of desertion.  Then, one memorable day, the stillness had been broken by the first clatter of sabots—­that wooden noise, measured, unmistakable, approaching.  Two pairs of sabots and a long road.  Two broad backs bent under bulging loads; an infant’s wail; a knock at the Red Cross Door—­but that was nearly eight months before.

The Poste de Secours was closed for the first time since Madame de Vigny and her three young infirmieres had come to Noyon.  Two women stood without, one plump and bareheaded, the other aged and bent, with a calico handkerchief tied over her hair.  They stared at the printed card tacked upon the entrance of the large patched-up house that served as Headquarters for the French Red Cross.

“Tiens! c’est ferme,” exclaimed Madame Talon, shaking the rough board door with all her meagre weight, “and I have walked eight kilometers to get a jupon, and with rheumatism, too.”

“Haven’t you heard the news?” asked her companion with city-bred scorn.

“Ah?  What news?” The crisp old face crinkled with anticipation.

“Why, Mademoiselle Gaston is to be married today.”

“Tiens, tiens! est-ce possible? What happiness for that good girl!” and Madame Talon, forgetful of the loss of her jupon, smiled a wrinkled smile till her nose nearly touched her chin, and her eyes receding into well worn little puckers, became two snapping black points.

“Is it really so?  And the bridegroom—­who is he?”

There followed that vivacious exchange of questions and answers and speculations which accompanies the announcement of a marriage the world over.

Mademoiselle Gaston was the daughter of an ancient family of Noyon.  But now, her ancestral home was a heap of debris, a tomb for men of many nations, which she did not like to visit.  She took me there once, and we walked through the old tennis court where a little summer house remained untouched, its jaunty frailty seeming to mock at the desolation of all that is solid.

“Ah, I have had good times here,” she said in the expressionless voice of one who has endured too much.

For now she was alone.  Tennis tournaments for her were separated from the present by a curtain of deaths, by the incomparable space of those four years.