"The same," answered Henry, who turned to me and said in his oratorical voice: "The plot thickens." Then the Frenchman told us the story of the raid: How the airmen had come at midnight, dropped their bombs, killing nurses and doctors, and how the discipline of the hospital did not even flutter. He said that the head nurse summoned all her nurses, marched them to the abri at the rear of the hospital, and stood at the door of the abri, while the girls filed in, and just as the last nurse was going into the dugout with the head nurse standing outside, the airmen dropped a bomb upon her and erased her! None of the nurses inside was hurt. Two doctors were killed and a number of patients. Landrecourt was on our way and we hurried to it. [Illustration: He had some trouble lighting his cigarette and was irritated for a second at his inconvenience] Was there ever a martial adventure without a love story in it? Little did it seem to Henry and me as we left our humble homes in Wichita and Emporia to make the world safe for democracy, that we two thick-set, sedentary, new world replicas of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza should be the chaperons and custodians of a love affair. We were not equipped for it. We were travelling light, and our wives were three or four thousand miles away. No middle-aged married man gets on well with a love affair who is out of daily reach of his wife. For when he gets into the barbed wire tangle of a love affair, he needs the wise counsel of a middle-aged woman. But here we were, two fat old babes in the woods and here came the Gilded Youth, the Eager Soul and the Young Doctor--sping! like a German shell--right into our midst, as it were. There at Landrecourt we found the Eager Soul, a badly scared young person--but tremendously plucky! And mad--say, that girl was doing a strafing job that would have made the kaiser blush! And the fine part of it was, that its expression was entirely in repression. There was no laugh in her face, no joy in her heart, and we scarcely knew the sombre, effective, business-like young person who greeted us. And then across the court we saw something else that interested us. For there, walking with his patrician aunt, we saw the Gilded Youth. Evidently he had heard of the raid, had run over from Valaincourt on some sort of military permission. "Oh, yes," answered the Eager Soul to our enquiring eyes. "Mrs. Chesman--this is practically her hospital. I mean she and her group are keeping it equipped and going--a wonderful work. I mean here is a real thing for a woman to do. And, oh, the need of it!" [Illustration: "Oh, yes," answered the Eager Soul to our enquiring eyes. "Mrs. Chessman--this is practically her hospital"] "Nice sort?" This from Henry, observing that there was no move toward us, on the part of the Gilded Youth and Auntie. Henry may have had his theory for their splendid isolation. But it received no stimulus when the Eager Soul answered: