My mind made a swift diagnosis of the situation. All exits from Paris carefully watched; suspicion rife everywhere--strangers off in a canoe; a sentinel challenge and a shot from the bank. "Let us first consider------" I began. "We can do that in the canoe to-morrow," she interrupted. And I capitulated, quite as Paris had. We stepped out into the darkness that cloaked the silent city from its aerial ravagers. As we walked I mused upon this modern maiden's Iliad. While a thousand hug the quiet haven, what was it that impelled the one to cut moorings and range the deep? A chorus of croaking frogs greeted our turn into a park. "Funny," said Marie, "but frogs drove me out of Nickleville! There was nothing to do at home but to listen to their eternal noise; to save my nerves I simply had to break away." The prospect of that canoe trip was not conducive to easy slumber. The frog chorus in that Pennsylvania swamp, why had it not been less demonstrative? Still lots could happen before morning. One might develop appendicitis or the Germans might get the city. With these two comforting hopes I fell asleep. Morning realizing neither of them, I walked over to Marie's studio. "Well, then, all ready for the expedition?" I said, masking my pessimism with a smile. For reply she handed this note which read: "Dear Marie: I have been transferred from Corbeille to Melun. It makes me ill to be getting ever farther and farther away.--Robert." With the river trip cancelled, life looked more roseate to me. "And now we can't go after all," I said, mustering this time the appearance of sadness. "Oh, don't look so relieved," she laughed, "because we're going anyhow." "But what's the use? He has gone." "Well, we are going where he has gone, that's all," she retorted. I pointed out the facts that only military trains were running to Melun; that we weren't soldiers; that the river was out of the question; that we had no aeroplane and that we couldn't go overland in a canoe. "But we can with our wits," Marie added. I explained how lame my wits were in French, and that two consecutive sentences would bring on trial for high treason to the language. "Oh, but you don't furnish the wits," Marie retorted. "You just furnish the body." In her plan of campaign I gathered that I was to act as a kind of convoy, from which she was to dart forth, torpedoing all obstacles. I was quite confident of her torpedoing ability but not of my fitness to play a star part as a dour and fear-inspiring background. She packed her bag and presently we were making our way to the station through a blighted city.