"Pauli," the shadow was followed by a light in Corinne's face as she spoke the name lingeringly, "Pauli," she repeated, "wants you to go to Anna's on Tuesday. It's one of their meat days--when they can get it." "Perhaps I better not go there then. It looks," she hesitated and there were sudden tears in her eyes, "so greedy." "Not at all," cried Corinne. "Pauli wants you to go on Tuesday just because of that. He said he'd try to be there himself, that first time anyway. Anna and Hermine are quite worked up about it and wondering what they can give him to eat." "Poor Anna," said her aunt very gently. Corinne flushed. Again they were silent. Frau Stacher bewildered at her own fate, felt quite incapable in that moment of picking up the threads of any other life, even of Corinne's. But her confidence awakened warmly at mention of Pauli. Pauli had a heart and was always showing it. Pauli understood, she felt sure, anything, everything.... Even poverty-stricken old aunts by marriage who had lived too long. Even to such Pauli was kind. * * * * * Pauli Birbach, the husband of her eldest niece Anna, had got through the war without a scratch or an illness,--of an unbelievable luck. When a bomb burst where he and his comrades were sitting or lying, he was certain to be unhurt and soon to be seen carrying the wounded in gently or burying the dead deeply. Typhus and dysentery alike avoided him. He was naturally a debonair and laughing soul, and his easy resourcefulness had endeared him to both officers and men. "As lucky as Pauli Birbach" was a phrase among his comrades. And even in little ways. Wasn't he always turning up with a handful of cigarettes or a bottle of wine or a chicken, got, heaven knew how, in a country picked bare as a bone? An excellent cook, too, he could instruct the warrior presiding over the pot how to make the very most of what little he had. Hot water and an onion under Pauli's direction became a delectable if not nourishing soup. And the way he played the zimbalon he discovered in a castle they were quartered in during an interminable winter in the Carpathians, the Russians, millions of them it seemed, just opposite,--only half hidden by the snowy hill that some dark morning they must charge.... He had seen terrible things, terrible things to a laughing, soft-hearted man, things that knocked the laughter out of him like a blow on the chest.... The time he went out with a patrol at day break, the thermometer 40 below, and they thought they were coming to a tent or a little hovel in the grey half light.... But it was a dozen Kossacks huddled together, frozen stiff, their heavy boots sticking out....