I had the luck to be billeted in Lille at the house of Madame Chéri, in the rue Esquermoise.
This lady was the mother of the girl with the pig-tail and the two children with whom Wickham Brand had made friends on this morning of liberation—the wife of that military officer whom Pierre Nesle had known at Verdun and knew to be killed. It was my luck, because there were children in the house—the pig-tailed girl, Hélène, was more a woman than a child, though only six-*teen—and I craved for a touch of home-life and children's company, after so long an exile in the war-zone always among men who talked of war, thought of it, dreamed of it, year in, year out.
Madame Chéri was, I thought when I saw her first, a beautiful woman, not physically—because she was too white and worn—but spiritually, in courage of soul. Pierre Nesle, our liaison officer, told me how she had received the news of her husband's death—unflinchingly, without a cry. She knew, she said, in her heart, that he was dead. Some queer message had reached her one night during the Verdun battles. It was no ghost, or voice, but only a sudden cold conviction that her man had been killed. For the children's sake she had pretended that their father might come back. It gave them something to look forward to. The little ones were always harping on the hope that when peace came this mysterious and glorious man whom they remembered only vaguely as one who had played bears with them, and had been the provider of all good things, would re-
