Corps units that formed the Air defence of Paris. And she had better opportunity now. Paris was by no means the town-just-behind-the-line that Madeleine was used to. Information was to be had, people got to know things and talked of them. Her Ministry, engaged in rationing one of the necessities of life, rationed Flying Corps troops among other people. She missed nothing. At last she found what she was looking for. * * * * * In one of those innumerable lists of men that were being produced by Government Departments all over the world, as well as in her particular Ministry, she saw the name Georges d’Archeville. It was a list of those young men designated, with the picturesque appropriateness of the French language, as “aspiring aviators” who were “directed towards the Front,” that is, being sent into the line of battle. Madeleine and another girl were crossing them off the lists of the garrison of Paris. She stared so long and heavily that her companion bent over her: “What! You can’t find it--but there it is!” Madeleine ticked the beloved name and went on, as in a stupor. This was really a blow. To come to Paris had seemed to her, somehow, the satisfactory culmination of her long vigil. She felt sure she would be successful in finding him. She had found him indeed. What now! The Paris garrison was not concerned with the fate of “aspiring aviators” once they were struck off its rolls. Their fate was not indeed in much doubt, but there remained the horrible uncertainty as to which of the graveyards behind the four hundred miles of Front would hold his grave. At this point her common-sense and practical knowledge of affairs deserted her. She just wanted him, that was all. Feigning a headache, she excused herself and got leave to go home; but instead of going, she lingered about the quays and bridges, never lovelier than in winter twilight, with golden wraiths of leaves spinning in the bitter wind along the severe, well-proportioned gray lines of masonry. The fresh air calmed her; hunger at length drove her back to the Petits’ apartment. She did not notice at first anything in the manner of her hosts. The only thing that she noticed was that M. Petit, as he handed her a letter, used the phrase: “It came about four o’clock!”