Slim, straight, hollowed out with fear, but walking delicately ahead, she went back to the house and superintended the babies' supper. Then the grown-ups ate--standing about the table as at the Passover, faces half-averted toward the door--and she marshaled them all to their appointed sleeping-places. Marie and Theophile abdicated their dominion with an uncouth relief. If mademoiselle, so shy, so small, could be so sure of what they ought to do--doubtless hers was a great brain in a frail form. After prayers, in which Miss Stanley herself joined, borrowing a _chapelet_, they went off to snore peacefully in the guardianship of that great brain so opportunely discovered. 'You have not an American flag?' old Marie asked, as she shuffled off. Theophile, past any coherent reflections, was mumbling over the dying fire. 'No, nothing of the sort. I am sorry. I should use it if I had.' 'You could not make one?' 'Impossible, to-night. To-morrow I will see.' Marie apologetically offered a last suggestion to the great brain. 'A white flag? It would do no harm to have it ready. Francoise swears they are in Sezanne to-night.' 'I will see. _Allez vous coucher._' And Miss Stanley turned on her heel and sought the little room where Jeanne was already restlessly dreaming. Save the babies, Andecy found no deep sleep that night. The old people napped and woke and napped again, according to their habit. The mothers rose and walked beside their children's cots, then fell limply back and dozed. Miss Stanley slept from sheer exhaustion until an hour before dawn. Then she rose and dressed herself, and, when dressed, sent Jeanne to wake her grandparents. Whatever the day might bring, it should not find them either asleep or fasting. They would eat, if it was to be their last meal. Alone in her room, by candle-light, Miss Stanley made a white flag out of a linen skirt. She sewed hastily but firmly, that it might be no flimsier than she could help. By the first streaks of daylight, she groped for and found, in a lumber-room, a long stick to fasten it to--probably, it flashed across her, Madam Francoise de Paule's cane, never buried, as Anne Marmont had hoped. When the flag was finished, she loathed it: loathed its symbolism, loathed its uselessness. No: whatever happened, she would have nothing to do with that. What could be more humiliating than to hold up a white flag in vain? Another idea came to her; and while breakfast was preparing and the children were being dressed, she carried it swiftly into execution. Slashing a great cross out of a scarlet cape, she sewed it firmly to the white ground. _That_ she might hang to the dove-cot, after breakfasting.