“We’re outnumbered in France this spring as never before,” he informed her soberly. “It’s not generally--discussed; but, since Russia’s absolutely out, that’s the fact.” “I know,” she said. “But what I meant was that you, and just a few others, aren’t the only Americans here now. Oh, I’ve been able to understand why you’ve flown and fought as you have, why your friends are almost all fallen now and you, only by the grace of our God, are left! I think I understood some of your feeling even before I knew you and heard you speak. You and your friends whom you thought I insulted--you, for a while, had to do the fighting for all America; a score or so of you had to do, you felt, for a hundred million of us who wouldn’t come in! But we’re coming now; a good many of us are here!” “Many?” he repeated. “A couple of hundred thousand among millions. And the German millions are almost ready to strike! Forgive me, I didn’t mean to scold you ever again for America; but--oh, you’ll see! The husbands, and fathers, and the boys of France, the husbands, and fathers, and the boys of England taking the blow again, giving themselves to the guns to save us all while our young men watch!” She gazed up at him, but stayed silent now. Terror seized her that she had done only harm, that she had stirred him to greater regardlessness. His anger against her people, whom she defended, had--as at that first time--banished his feeling for her. When he gave her his hand again, he barely touched her fingers; and he was gone. Returning that night to his squadron at the front, he wrote her an apology; but, after reading it over, tore it up. His squadron was stationed far to the east and south of Roisel; and there was at that time nothing in the military situation to give him greater concern for that particular sector. Yet when news arrived he scanned it quickly for report of operations about Roisel. However, though he twice got leave of a day, he did not on either occasion penetrate farther into Picardy than the little city where Lady Agnes now lived. All along the front, from Switzerland to the sea, the calm continued; but few on either side of that line held illusions as to the nature of that calm. Then, as all the world knows, suddenly upon a morning the storm broke. Gerry Hull received the bulletins which came over the military wire which brought him also his orders. These orders were for his squadron at once to move and report for service at the earliest possible moment at a certain point in Picardy--which orders, as orders usually go, were unexplained except as the news bulletins gave them meaning.