In a few moments they were conversing with the ease of those who have known each other for long years. Wartime, and particularly the kaleidoscopic wartime of those early days, is a great ripener of acquaintance. None might venture to forecast the circumstances of the morrow, to predict continued life for self or other. The actual moment must be snatched. The colonel with his quiet assured poise, his alert intelligence; the countess, polished grande dame and yet something more, a being of exquisite intuitions, would have set, naturally, to partners whatever the circumstances of their meeting. Each of the pair offered interest to the other. He, soldierly, his massive intellectual head on the broad shoulders, the glowing soft eyes so strangely set in the cold face, the Oriental Zouave uniform emphasising their hint of romance, claimed the eye not less than her slender figure, gowned with the refinement of a consummate civilisation, her supple yet strong carriage of the auburn glory that crowned the pale oval face, the flowing, delicate curve from rounded chin to the gently mobile breast. Her eloquent eyes were long-lashed, downcast towards the fire. He was asking the reason of her stay here in the danger zone. She turned them upon him. "This is my own house--my family's house--the château of Lysboisée. Since my husband's death three years ago I have always inhabited it for a great part of the year. I have always loved it. I was a child in this dark ravine, among the birches of the water-meadows. My own life--that I have never shared with anyone--is here. I am of the country. All the peasant people know me, love me. And when the war came I felt that I must be among them, that I could not leave my house, my own dear house, alone, unprotected against anything that might happen. So I hurried here at a time when everybody was hurrying the other way. But the servants had gone. Only old Marie remained, and she and I have lived here all these black weeks, only Roland," she patted the dog's head smilingly, "to watch over us. We have had many visits from the German cavalry, but no violence. They saw, perhaps, that I was not afraid. Now the people are beginning to creep back to their homes." He nodded his head sympathetically, described how the peasants of the Aisne valley crept back to their farms, continued their field-tasks close behind the trenches, apparently indifferent to the shrapnel and the _marmites_. "Yes," she murmured, gazing thoughtfully into the fire, "amidst so much death the flame of life burns ever higher, will not, must not be extinguished."