It was about a fortnight after Hondebecq had been plunged in its unnatural silence. She was going home in the long July twilight. She no longer waited to serve late dinners, her only customers being occasional passing troops during the day. No local people used the “Lion of Flanders,” it was essentially an English restaurant. She was stopped at the level-crossing by the evening train from Calais going southward. As the smoke and noise faded away, she ran into Blanquart, the schoolmaster and communal secretary, stumbling over the platform-edging, wiping his eyes. The sight of that familiar figure in tears gave her pause. “Why, Monsieur Blanquart, what is it?” “It is my little Cécile!” “What has she got, Cécile?” Monsieur Blanquart blew his nose and said: “I ought not to complain. She was a good girl. Naturally she has got a good job.” “What job has she got? Where has she gone, then?” “But to Amiens! You haven’t seen the discourse of M. Paul Deschanel on the Recruitment of Women? It is hanging in the Mairie if that gives you any pleasure.” Madeleine, gray-eyed, her mouth a straight line, her hands crossed over the little bag that contained the day’s takings, stared at him between the eyes a full half-minute. Then she said: “Ah, I sympathize with you. Good evening, Monsieur Blanquart.” She went away thinking, and thought to some effect. * * * * * First, a refugee Belgian family was installed in the derelict “Lion of Flanders,” where they all lived in the dining-room round the stove, boarded up the big windows, and got jobs in the village. Then Madeleine was seen in earnest consultation with Blanquart. Finally it was known that she had got a job in a Government office at Amiens, from which the men had just been combed out. “Tiens!” said the gossips. “Cécile Blanquart first, now Madeleine Vanderlynden. Who next?” The formalities took a week. Then Madeleine emerged with the papers of her appointment in her hands. She went first to the “Lion of Flanders” and told the refugee family in no equivocal terms, how, when and where to pay their rent to Marie. Leaving them in a state of guttural exclamation, half gratefulness, half apprehension, she turned for a moment into the church, and stood by the high-backed prie-Dieu that bore the initials V.D.--Vanderlynden-Del-place--staring at the gimcrack ornaments of the altar, the eternal childish innocence of the Catholic Church decoration. Old Justine Schact was fidgeting about her verger’s duties. Birds scuffled in the belfry as the chimes played their verse and a half of hymn tune that marked the quarter hour.