More than any close examination, her instinct told her, Georges was not there. A sort of numbness came over her, she felt it almost like a physical sensation. It seemed to be in her legs. She fought against it, would not give in to it. Then, all of a sudden, too suddenly for her strong, resolute, unimaginative nature, she did give in. The corps officials had hardly begun judging the riding-horses when she slipped from her place, round behind the stand, out between the wagon-teams, waiting their turn, with cunning drivers of all arms surreptitiously dabbing metal and leather with handkerchiefs, looking stolidly over the exhibits they belonged to, speaking gently to them in low voices. She found a well-known gap in the hedge and got through into the back lane that ran towards Verbaere’s mill. Up this, picking her way in the mud to save her best boots, she came into the village by the yard of the “Lion of Flanders.” The numbness was gone from her legs. Instead, her pulse beat in her temples so loud that she hardly heard the band playing “Watch your Step,” and the cheering as the riding-horses, classed by the judges, filed round the ring, and out. * * * * * She let herself into the “Lion of Flanders” by the back door, which she shut with a clang. She looked magnificent and just a bit desperate, so that, of her waiting-women, one said to another, “She’s in fine fettle this morning, our young patronne!” But she was not the woman to do the more ordinary desperate things. No--yes. A stitch of her close-sewn self-control had parted. She was not going to stand it. Her mental attitude contained nothing of an English suffragette’s logical, theoretical stand upon “rights.” Her pride was hurt. Georges was Georges, dearer than life, but there now glimmered behind him something dearer than that--her dignity, what was due to her--Herself, of course, in reality. She swept a glance round the neat, well-laid tables, sniffed the redolent preparation of the kitchen. She--dragged about behind a man’s shadow that ever eluded her! Of course, her feeling was incoherent, ill-defined, just a sense of resentment against something she did not trouble to identify, but it was there. Reckless, she went down the stone steps into the cellar. Among the casks of weak beer and carefully “lengthened” wine she had taken over from Podevin, was a bottle marked “Chambertin,” which she recognized as an oversight. It was good stuff. She had hidden it with the English Expeditionary Force canteen whisky and the rum she had got out of Sir Montague. Now her thought was, “They shan’t have it, those English!” She took it up, glanced at the coating of the bottle neck, and mounted the stairs with it. “Berthe,” she cried--she had borrowed the girl from the farm for the day--“four glasses and some bread!”