After the first evening spent there, she had shivered and wept all night in her bed; but she had gone back the next evening, with the money she saved by eating bread and apples for her dinner; for of course the sweet chocolate was for the soldiers. She sat there, armed with nothing but her immense ignorance, her immense sympathy. On that second evening she summoned enough courage to give some chocolate to an elderly shabby soldier, taking the train sadly, quite alone; and again to a white-faced young lad accompanied by his bent, poorly dressed grandmother. What happened in both those cases sent her back to the Y. W. C. A. to make up laboriously from her little pocket French dictionary and to learn by heart this sentence: “I am sorry that I cannot understand French. I am an American.” Thereafter the surprised and extremely articulate Gallic gratitude which greeted her timid overtures, did not leave her so helplessly swamped in confusion. She stammered out her little phrase with a shy, embarrassed smile and withdrew as soon as possible from the hearty handshake which was nearly always the substitute offered for the unintelligible thanks. How many such handshakes she had! Sometimes as she watched her right hand, tapping on the typewriter, she thought: “Those hands which it has touched, they may be dead now. They were heroes’ hands.” She looked at her own with awe, because it had touched them. Once her little phrase brought out an unexpected response from a rough-looking man who sat beside her on the bench waiting for his train, his eyes fixed gloomily on his great soldier’s shoes. She offered him, shamefacedly, a little sewing-kit which she herself had manufactured, a pad of writing-paper and some envelopes. He started, came out of his bitter brooding, looked at her astonished, and, as they all did without exception, read in her plain, earnest face what she was. He touched his battered trench helmet in a sketched salute and thanked her. She answered as usual that she was sorry she could not understand French, being an American. To her amazement he answered in fluent English, with an unmistakable New York twang: “Oh, you are, are you? Well, so’m I. Brought up there from the time I was a kid. But all my folks are French and my wife’s French and I couldn’t give the old country the go-by when trouble came.” In the conversation which followed Ellen learned that his wife was expecting their first child in a few weeks ... “that’s why she didn’t come to see me off. She said it would just about kill her to watch me getting on the train.... Maybe you think it’s easy to leave her all alone ... the poor kid!” The tears rose frankly to his eyes. He blew his nose. “Maybe I could do something for her,” suggested Ellen, her heart beating fast at the idea.