As I come up with them I hear them enquiring of a sentinel the way to the Hotel de Noble Rose, and with the swift friendliness of War time I stop and ask if I may walk along with them. "Je suis Anglais!" I add. "Avec beaucoup de plaisir!" they cry simultaneously. "We are just arrived from Folkestone," the younger one explains in pretty broken English, as we grope our way along the pitch-black cobbled road. "Ah! But what a journey!" But her voice bubbles as she speaks, and, though I cannot see her face, I suddenly become aware that for some reason or other this girl is filled with quite extraordinary happiness. Picking our way along the road in the dark, with the cannons growling away fiercely some six miles off, she tells me her "petite histoire." She is a little Brussels bride, in search of her soldier bridegroom, and she has, by dint of persistent, never-ceasing coaxing, persuaded her old mother to set out from Brussels, all this long, long way, through Antwerp, to Holland, then to Flushing, then to Folkestone, then to Calais, then to Dunkirk, and finally here, to the Front, where her soldier bridegroom will be found. He is here. He has been wounded. He is better. He has always said, "No! no! you must not come." And now at last he had said, "Come," and here she is! She is so pretty, so simple, so girlish, and sweet, and the mother is such a perfect old duck of a mother, that I fall in love with them both. Presently we find ourselves in the quaint old Flemish Inn with oil lamps and dark beams. The stout, grey-moustached landlord hastens forward. "Have you a message for Madame Louis." The bride gasps out her question. "Oui, Oui, Madame!" the landlord answers heartily. "There is a message for you. You are to wait here. That is the message!" "Bien!" Her eyes flame with joy. So we order coffee and sit at a little table, chattering away. But I confess that all I want is to watch that young girl's pale, dark face. Rays of light keep illuminating it, making it almost divinely beautiful, and it seems to me I have never come so close before to another human being's joy. And then a soldier walks in. He comes towards her. She springs to her feet. He utters a word. He is telling her her husband is out in the passage. Very wonderful is the way that girl gets across the big, smoky, Flemish café. I declare she scarcely touches the ground. It is as near flying as anyone human could come. Then she is through the door, and we see no more. Ah, but we can imagine it, we two, the old mother and I! And we look at each other, and her eyes are wet, and so are mine, and we smile, but very mistily, very shakily, at the thought of those two in the little narrow passage outside, clasped in each others' arms. * * * * * They come in presently. They sit with us now, the dear things, sit hand in hand, and their young faces are almost too sacred to look at, so dazzling is the joy written in both his and hers.