"_Bon soir, mademoiselle_," he said. "_Bon soir, monsieur_," she answered demurely. Her eyes were lowered shyly, and her fingers played over the stick she was carrying, like a flute-player caressing his instrument. The officer bowed slightly and tried to recall his French vocabulary, though it must be admitted he was never loquacious in any tongue when conversing with a daughter of Eve. As for her, since it is a woman's _rôle_, she waited. Would he speak again or would he pass on, leaving the memory of yet one more meeting with a gentleman of adventure--one more roadside drama in which the dialogue consisted only of an exchange of salutations. Most men who have returned from France will recall for years to come how, a few kilometres back from Hell, they often caught a glimpse of two dark eyes and a tender smile. Just that and-- "_Bon soir, mademoiselle._" "_Bon soir, monsieur._" Commonplace, perhaps, in the telling, but in France it was the commonplace that became romance. A smile crept into the officer's eyes, which were blue and kindly, though they had a glint in them--something like metal--a look that a mother always noticed first when her son returned from the line. "_Où est le village?_" he ventured. "Le Curois?" "_Oui!_ Le Curois." "_Mais, monsieur_"--her eyes widened and her hands indicated the village dwellings--"_c'est ici Le Curois_!" He breathed deeply and ventured again. "_Connaissez-vous un billet pour dix officiers?_" He felt rather pleased with the sentence; it was true he had intended to get accommodation for eleven officers, but it was moderately accurate for a foreign tongue. For answer Simunde led him, preceded by the four cows, to her domicile as "Madame," like all French housewives had received billeting instructions in the first year of the war. In conjunction with her neighbors on either side, she speedily arranged accommodation for eleven officers in their cottages, and for the officers' _domestiques_ in the barns. One hour later the guests of war, their battalion having come out for a rest, were dining comfortably in the home of Petite Simunde, while a sow, attended by ten small pigs, snorted approvingly outside the door. Less than an hour afterwards Private Des Rosiers, acting as temporary batman to Major Douglas Campbell, was sitting on a chair in the farm-yard, in the glittering moonlight, regaling Simunde and her mother with grossly exaggerated stories of the mining country of Cobalt. He told them of his misdeeds, not in humility, but with much _braggadocio_, and his auditors listened, lost in gesticulatory admiration. Simunde was thrilled from her ill-shod feet to her braided brow. Jacque Des Rosiers was the first really wicked man she had met, and, woman-like, she was fascinated; also he had nice teeth and flashing eyes.