She thanked him and again found herself by Bigourdin’s bedside. The moment of her first sight of him was the happiest in her life. She had wrought a miracle. He was a different man inspired with the supreme will to live. The young doctor had spoken truly. A spasm of joy shook her. At last she had been of some use in the world. . . . She saw too the Bigourdin whom she had known. His great, black beard had vanished. One of the _camarades_, with two disposable arms, had hunted through the kits of the patients for a razor and had shaved him. “They tell me I am getting on magnificently,” said he. “This morning there is no longer any danger. In a few months I shall be as solid as ever I was. It is happiness that has cured me.” They talked. She told him of her conversation with the _aide-major_. He reflected for a moment. Then he said: “Do you wish to please me?” “What am I here for?” asked Corinna. “You are here to spoil me. Anyhow—if you wish to please me, go to Brantôme, and await me. To know that you are there, _chez-moi_, will give me the courage of a thousand lions, and you will be able to console my poor Félise who every night is praying for Martin by the side of her little white bed.” And so it was arranged. After two days extraordinary travel, advancing from point to point by any train that happened to run, shunted on sidings for interminable periods, in order to allow the unimpeded progress of military trains, waiting weary hours at night in cold, desolate stations, hungry and broken, but her heart aglow with a new and wonderful happiness, she reached Brantôme. She threw her arms round the neck of an astonished, but ever urbane elderly gentleman in the vestibule of the Hôtel des Grottes and kissed him. “He’s getting well,” she cried a little hysterically. “He sent me here to wait for him. I’m so happy and I’m just about dead.” “But yet there’s that spark of life in you, my dear Corinna,” said Fortinbras, “which, according to the saying, distinctly justifies hope. Félise and I will see to it that you live.” * * * * * It was winter before Bigourdin was well enough to return. By that time Corinna had settled down to her new life wherein she found the making of _foie gras_ an enticing mystery. Also, in a town where every woman had her man—husband, brother, son or lover—either in hourly peril of death, or dead or wounded, there was infinite scope for help and consolation. And when a woman said: “_Hélas! Mon pauvre homme. Il est blessé là-bas_,” she could reply with a new, thrilling sympathy and a poignant throb of the heart: “And my man too.” For like all the other women there, she had “_son homme_.” Her man! Corinna tasted the fierce joy of being elemental.