In the trenches and at the hospitals, Hilda had met a race of prophets, men who carry about foreknowledge and premonitions. Sturdy bearded fellows who salute you as men about to die. They are perfectly cheery, as brave as the unthinking at their side, but they tramp firmly to a certain end. War lets loose the rich life of subconsciousness which most mortals keep bottled up in the sleepy secular days of humdrum. Peril and sudden death uncork those heady vapors, and sharpen the super-senses. This race of men with their presciences have no quarrel with death. They have made their peace with it. It is merely that they carry a foreknowledge of it--they are sure they will know when it is on the way. No man of the troops was more smitten with second-sight, than this friend of the Pervyse women, this courageous Commandant. His eyes were level to command, but they grew distant and luminous when his mood was on him. This gift in him called out the like in other men, and his pockets were heavy with the keepsakes of young soldiers, a photograph of the beloved, a treasured coin, a good-bye letter, which he was commissioned to carry to the dear one, when the giver should fall. With little faith that he himself would execute the commissions, he had carefully labelled each memento with the name and address of its destination. For he knew that whatever was found on his body, the body of the fighting Commandant, the King's friend, would receive speedy forwarding to its appointed place. It was an evening of spring, but spring had come with little promise that way. Ashes of homes and the sour dead lay too thickly over those fields, for nature to make her great recovery in one season. The task was too heavy for even her vast renewals. Patience, she seemed to say, I come again. The Commandant was sitting at ease enjoying his pipe. "Mademoiselle Hilda," said he. Hilda was sitting at the piano, but no tunes were flowing. She was behaving badly that evening and she knew it. She fumbled with the sheaves of music, and chucked Scotch under the chin, and doctored the candles. She was manifesting all the younger elements in her twenty-two years. "Mademoiselle Hilda," insisted the Commandant. He was sentimental, and full of old-world courtesies, but he was used to being obeyed. Hilda became rapt in contemplating a candlestick. "Mademoiselle Hilda, a little music, if you please," he said with a finality. "You play," said Hilda to Scotch, sliding off the soap-box which served to uphold the artist to her instrument. "Hilda, you make me tired," chided Scotch. "The Commandant has given you his orders." "Oh, all right," said Hilda. She played pleasantly with feeling and technique. More of her hidden life came to an utterance with her music than at other times. She led her notes gently to a close. "Mademoiselle Hilda," said the Commandant from his seat in the shadows on the sofa, "parlez-vous francais?"