But even in Saint Mihiel I don’t believe that there was any greater joy than the joy that was here in our own kitchen. Madame who helps us with the dishes at the hut is the daughter of the refugee schoolmaster, a shy, sensitive, appealing little woman, girl-like in spite of her half-grown daughter. When we told her that the salient had been taken she went white and trembled. And what of Vieville? she begged; Vieville, her own little village? We got the map and showed it to her. Sure enough, there was Vieville and the new line stretching the other side of it! It was true past doubting. Madame shivered. “I don’t know whether to laugh or to cry,” she told us and there were sobs in her voice while she smiled at us. She tried to go on with scrubbing the floor, but she couldn’t. Would we mind if she ran home for a minute? She must tell the news to Papa and Maman. But certainly, stay as long as you like! we told her. In an hour she was back again, to go about her work in a dazed uncertain fashion, smiling tremulously while the tears stood in her eyes. We must get someone to take her place at the canteen, she told us,—they would be going back to Vieville right away. It was plain to see that she would have liked to start that very moment. We said nothing. Of course it was impossible. Vieville though liberated was close to the lines. When I looked at Madame so happy, so confidently eager to return to her home, I sickened to think of the ruin that probably awaited her. How do they have the courage to face it, these French people? I thought of the words of the old schoolmaster: “We are living under tension now, it is the strain that keeps us up. When the war is over there will be a terrible reaction.” They have been brave, so brave, these peasant villagers, but how will they bear the future? Where will they be swept when they are caught in the fearful ebb of that reaction? Already odd-looking little German narrow-gauge engines and freight cars have begun to appear in the yards, part of the Saint Mihiel booty. It does the eyes good to look at them. One doesn’t want to hope too greatly, but is it possible that this may be the beginning of the end? Abainville, September 18.