Everything was clear now, horribly clear. "Vignerte's going to know at last!" I thought, in a transport of joy. Then suddenly an icy sweat broke out from my temples. What price was he going to pay for that knowledge! Fool that I was, I had forgotten that she, too.... "He mustn't! He mustn't!..." I muttered. Too late. "There's Vignerte," said my chief, gazing out from the door of his dug-out. It was all over. The fatal step had been taken. Day dawned, suffusing the earth with pink and blue tints. A thrush sang on a shattered tree. I soon saw Vignerte in the ravine below. He was coming up slowly. I could see his tall, elegant form and, little by little, distinguish his dark, clean-cut features. "O God!" I cried. "Come, sir," said my chief, "have you gone mad?" And now Vignerte was only a hundred yards away. I saw him stride out as he got to that open slope which still separated him from the Commanding Officer's dug-out. Then, from the clear depths of infinite distance a horrible sound came out of nothing, and swelled to a great shriek. In the pallid sky an invisible mass was approaching with the noise of a train entering a station. The shriek grew louder and louder and we realized that the hellish journey was to end on us. We saw the men skip into their holes like so many frogs. Surprised in the very middle of the bare slope, Vignerte had stopped. Should he go on, or go back? We felt his fatal hesitation. The shriek was now a roar of thunder. "Vignerte!" I screamed frantically. "Lie down! For God's sake, lie down!" I saw him for one second more. He had not moved. Drawn to his full height, and facing the approaching storm with a gentle smile of acquiescence and ecstasy, he was gazing in rapt attention towards the dawn. Then came the crash. A shower of stones and steel fragments fell on the roof of the dug-out into which my chief had hastily pulled me at the last moment. When the dreadful rain had ceased, we looked out, our eyes starting from our heads with horror. At the edge of the slope an enormous black crater now yawned with some pathetic red and blue fragments on the far side. Thus died Lieutenant Vignerte on October 31st, 1914, for love of the Grand Duchess Aurora of Lautenburg-Detmold. THE END