These considerations did not weigh heavily with her, however. She slipped away as soon as she could, and read her letter through again and then again. There was much in it that she did not come within a long way of understanding--descriptions of the life of decent civilized men in camp and billet, not to mention trench and dugout. These simply conveyed nothing and did not interest her. Then there was an involved scrupulousness that she had no means of sharing. But the main motive that had caused the writing of those four sheets was clear enough--Skene really wanted her. And if she did not admit it to herself, she wanted to be wanted. She did not reply to the letter, but put it away in a safe place, a little lock-up box in which she kept her immediate savings and a trinket or two, and went to her work in the morning, a changed woman. She had regained in a breath her old sureness. She now saw herself again the woman she desired to be. “If I can only see him face to face” still ran in her mind, but this time it was Skene whom she hoped to see. Insensibly the symbol had changed, the emotions remained. She thought the matter over in her cautious way. He had supposed her still to be in Amiens and had written there. By good luck she had sent a card (one of those war postcards, all khaki and azure and sentiment) to Cécile Blanquart, having it in her mind that Cécile would describe to the full, in her next letter home (for Cécile was the sort that wrote once a week), anything that she, Madeleine, did. It had been an act of petty pride. It now seemed like the work of Providence--Cécile had redirected the letter, and here it was. Madeleine did not mistake what it meant. He wanted a week, like the few hours he had had, in Amiens. That was natural enough; she saw nothing in it. In her experience men were like that, and she secretly approved. For a week, at least, she would have some one belonging to her; beyond that she did not look. After twenty-four hours’ consideration she took the letter from its hiding-place, replied to it in most measured terms--judging to a nicety, by some instinct, what would make him say a little more and say it a little plainer, without committing her in any way. A week passed, and back came a further letter. It filled her with a sort of steady glow. There was no mistaking it. He had written for a room in an hotel he knew of at the other end of the city, on the steep hill that leads from behind the big stations to Montmartre. She did not reply until old M. Petit, looking at her over his spectacles, asked her: “Well, and your brother?” She gathered herself together mentally. Of course, she had to fend off all that sort of thing. She replied briefly: “I am going home for a week!”