"Oh, it is very sad," said Mme. de Blauve; "my future son-in-law is one of those most deserving of interest, who have received face wounds. His face--how can I tell you?--lacks almost everything except the passages that are necessary for eating and breathing----" Odette uttered an inarticulate exclamation and rang the bell. But she did not faint until Mme. de Blauve was gone. The case of Mlle. de Blauve evoked more criticism than admiration. According to some it was absolutely too terrible and not to be thought about. In most cases, however, sensitiveness had been so dulled by the constant hearing of war-stories that very little attention was paid to this act of superhuman devotion. Some said: "The mother is crazy and the young girl does not realize what she is doing. One may do violence to nature, or may dupe it for a short time; this is a time when we ought to resolve upon any sacrifice, even to throwing ourselves into the arms of death; but death is either the end or the beginning of the unknown. The idea of marrying a superb girl of sixteen to a man without a face!" Yet every one knew that far from bringing pressure to bear upon her daughter, Mme. de Blauve had made every possible effort to prevent her marrying another wounded man, an unlucky fellow who, approaching a trench with a grenade in each hand, had had both eyes burned at the very moment when a bursting shell had set off the two grenades and shattered both hands. What she was now doing was a slight thing in comparison with the thing that she had prevented. Odette felt that she must know La Villaumer's opinion on this matter. They had no regular engagement for meeting, and met only by chance. She decided to go to his house shortly before the luncheon hour. An old servant ushered her into a room where, to her great surprise, she heard the tones of a harmonium mingled with a man's voice entirely untrained. It proceeded from the neighboring room, separated from her by a glass door partly screened by a curtain of Chinese silk. The thing was so unusual and so puzzling that she could not refrain from peeping around the edge of the curtain. She saw at the instrument an organist whom she knew, and standing beside him a man bereft of both arms, and the pose of whose head was that of a blind man trying to catch the notes which the teacher was patiently repeating. All around them were soldiers wearing black glasses, with closed eyes or with bandaged faces, and Villaumer in his dressing-gown coming and going among them. He suddenly disappeared and came into the room where Odette was standing. "I have caught you!" said she. "Try now to convince me that what I have been told of you is not true! You are no longer in your own home!" "My good friend," he replied, "I am having lessons given to the most unfortunate of those unhappy ones whom evil fortune and inaction are driving to despair. They are being taught the rudiments of music; they are trying to sing; it occupies them."