“I don’t mean all that,” Lucy interposed, flushing warmly at having provoked this unexpected praise. “Anyone can be brave once in a while. With me it’s more desperation than courage. If ever you hear that I’ve done anything you think took nerve, you may know I did it because something else frightened me still more.”
“You can’t take your motives to pieces that way,” objected Larry, never good at argument. “You were brave, and that’s all there was to it.”
“But the sort of bravery that I admire,” Lucy continued earnestly, “is the sort that lasts. I was more hopeless after five weeks at Château-Plessis than Michelle after four years. I couldn’t have endured what she did.”
“Oh, perhaps I saw fear and sorrow so often in those years I came to know well their faces and did not mind them,” said Michelle, trying to speak lightly. “My courage was not very great—a prisoner has the same.” She slipped her hand through Lucy’s arm as she spoke. “Do not think I did not sometimes borrow strength from you, mon amie.”
“Both kinds of courage are needed,” said Armand, thoughtfully. “It took both to win the war.”
“You ought to know,” said Lucy to herself, smiling as she looked up at the Frenchman’s thin face, above his wasted frame. She thought of the times he had risked inglorious death as a spy in his country’s service.
“We have a visitor,” said Michelle, as they left the forest and began to ascend the clearing behind the hospital.
She pointed to a gray army motor-car standing in the road. At the same moment Larry exclaimed, “It’s General Gordon’s car. Your father has come, Lucy.”
“Yes, he promised to, as soon as the Christmas celebrations were over in Coblenz.” Lucy quickened her pace and in a minute saw her father coming down the veranda steps to meet her.
“Merry Christmas, Father! I’m so glad to see you!” she cried, hugging him. “You don’t look very gay,” she added, searching his face with her clear eyes. “Father, are you homesick, too?”