The corps did not have a horse show every day, but the one just passed had been a good advertisement for the “Lion of Flanders,” and Madeleine began to do a quiet, regular business in luncheons and teas for the officers that incessantly circled round and about Corps Head-quarters. To be busy soothed her feeling of helplessness, and the necessity for this soothing kept her polite, skilful, attentive. Some weeks passed, and then again, far away, and high up, undreamed of by her, things began to happen. The English offensive in the Somme, heralded as a great victory, had in reality made infinitesimal gains at the cost of enormous loss. The British Great Head-quarters, then still functioning in complete disunity with Great Head-quarters of France, and often in good-humored disregard of the advice given it, went on butting, like an obstinate ram, at the same place. This, though it surprised the Germans more than the most subtle strategy would have done, cost the lives of many a thousand English soldiers. It was necessary to economize and economize again. The reserve corps would have to disappear, the line northward be more sparsely held. Here the long chain of action and reaction touched Madeleine. For two days she was feverishly busy, officers wanting meals at all hours in great numbers. On the third morning, as she came down in the blaze of July seven-o’clock weather, she found a long string of lorries, grinding and jolting, behind them officers’ servants with led horses, mess-carts, police. They went. A silence as of peace-time settled on the remote Flemish village, lost in the undulating fertile plateau between Dunkirk and Lille. Twenty kilometers eastward was the line, full of troops. Twenty kilometers west were the great manœuver areas where men learned to kill and not be killed more and more scientifically. At Hondebecq, nothing. It took nearly a week to convince Madeleine, who was interested in the more general aspects of the War. She was not really convinced until the Baron walked into her empty dining-room. “Good day, Madeleine, you have lost all your clients.” Looking up from her knitting, she said gravely: “It seems so!” But secretly she now believed it. If it were not true he would not have come. He disliked the crowd of junior officers who joked about his beard. What was to be done? Not retain an empty restaurant where no one ever came. She saw enough at home in the evenings to know that Marie was firmly settled in, and didn’t want her. The situation was beyond her. Her practical mind focussed on the immediate was baffled. But things went on happening and once again the long arm of chance touched her.