To Sheila it seemed diabolically logical. What was more natural in this business of war than that when one's reason went over the top it should grip the mad desire to kill? But the horror of it! She turned back to the day's work white and sick at heart. For twenty-four hours she accepted it as inevitable. At the end of that time her memory was harkening back to the bashful boy of the French liner, the boy who could smile like a lost cherub, who looked at her with the fineness of soul that made her companionship a willing gift. Had that fine, simple part of him been blown to eternity and could eternity alone bring it back? And what of the years before him, the years such a physique was bound to claim? Did it mean a mad-cell with a keeper? At the end of a third day the old Leerie of the San was walking through the wards of the hospital with her lamp trimmed and burning, casting such a radiance on that eager face that the men turned in their cots to catch the last look of her as she passed; and after she had gone blinked across at one another as if to say: "Did you see it? Did you feel it? And what was it, anyway?" She was looking for some one; and she found him with a leg shot off, playing a mouth-organ in the farthest corner of one ward. He was a Chasseur Alpin; he had been wounded in the same charge as Monsieur Satan. Sheila was searching for cause and effect and she prayed this man might help her find them. As she sat down on the edge of the cot she thanked her particular star for a speaking knowledge of French. "Bon jour, mon ami. I have come for your help. C'est pour Capitaine Fauchet." The mouth-organ dropped to the floor. The eyes that had been merely pleasantly retrospective gathered gloom. "Mais, que voulez-vous? All the others say it is hopeless. Tell me, ma'am'selle, what can I do?" "I don't know--I hardly know what any of us can do. But we must try something. We know so little about shell shock, so often the impossible happens. Tell me, were you with him?" The soldier hitched himself forward and leaned over on one elbow. "Toujours, ma'am'selle, always I am with him. Listen. I can tell you. I was born in the little town of Tourteron where Bertrand Fauchet was born--and where Nanette came to live with her brother Paul and their uncle, the good abbé. I was not of their class; but we all played together as children and even then Bertrand loved Nanette. The year war came they were betrothed. I am not tiring ma'am'selle?" "No. Go on."