Sometimes she wondered whether the danger was not a mere fixed idea of the foolish peasants who had all been touched in the wits by '70. True, the able-bodied men were gone, but the reports these people brought her made no sense. Their quality verged on folk-lore. Something gigantic was going on, somewhere, but it had nothing to do with Edmund Laye in the Argentine, or with her at Andecy. Paris in danger? Perhaps: but how to take it on their word? Belgium flowing with blood? Just what did it mean? An aeroplane over Sezanne at dawn? It must often have happened, _allez_! The air was never free, nowadays. The Germans in France? They had been seeing Germans behind every bush for forty years. So she talked with old Marie, scarcely sure whether she or old Marie were the fool. Since the household no longer drove the fat donkey to Sezanne, none of them knew even what the War Office said--unless what old Seraphine from the next farm reported that her granddaughter had heard in Champaubert from a woman whose married daughter had been to Sezanne two days before, could be called a War Office report. And never, from the first, on the plain of Andecy, had anyone understood _why_. According to the plain, all things were to be believed of the German Emperor, who was usually drunk; but, on the other hand, who could trust an atheist government? The soil of the Hundred Days had never recovered from Bonapartist tendencies, Miss Stanley had often noted; and even old Marie would sometimes mix up '15 and '70. The White Paper--which Miss Stanley had never heard of--would have been wasted on Champaubert and Montmirail. Wonder stirred at last even in old Marie's fatalistic mind at the lack of panic in this shy young foreigner--who could not chaffer, who could not bully, who could not endure even the mimic urbanity of Sezanne. Strange that she should be willing to stay quietly pacing up and down the cobbled courtyard of Andecy for sole exercise! Past mid-August, Marie put a vague question. 'When I hear from him, I shall go, Marie,' Miss Stanley answered. 'But I leave everything here to you and Theophile. The British fleet holds the sea, they say, and I shall be better off in England. I shall surely come back when the war is over, and perhaps I shall bring my husband with me.' Some dim muscular effort deepened the wrinkles in the old woman's face. It was as if a knife had cut them in the living flesh. 'I hope so--if Theophile and I are here. To be sure, you must go where it is your duty. We will keep such of the provisions as can be kept--' 'Keep nothing. It is all for you who have been so kind to me--you and yours. Not a child, not a creature, for a dozen miles about that I would not wish to share with, as you know. But--listen, Marie.' Miss Stanley blushed faintly as she bent her head nearer Marie's good ear.