After Jean’s departure Paulette went back to her work, but because of her son’s insistence she shortened her hours and reached home while it was still daylight. “I shall not have a happy moment if I know you are out after dark,” he said. “With those Zeppelins about I shall not be satisfied to have you exposed at night.”
“But they may come in daylight, and one is not safe in one’s own home,” protested Paulette.
“Just the same I shall not be satisfied,” returned Jean doggedly, and Paulette yielded.
Perhaps it was just as well that she did, for along in March came a disaster which, literally, struck near home, and which affected each one of the little group occupying the rooms overlooking the old convent garden. It was poor old Amelie Durand who was the victim. She was coming home when the Zeppelin swooped down upon Paris to do its deadly work, and with others she was killed. Lucie, trembling and terrified at the news, cowered in a corner of her room till Paulette should come. In the next room, Odette, pale and shivering, but outwardly calm, did what she was told to do. She had no great love for this aunt of hers, old Amelie Durand, but she was her nearest of kin and this stroke of fate seemed even more ghastly than the others which had taken the ones most beloved. It was a time of fear, of dread, of confusion. Curious visitors came and went. There were footsteps on the stairs going up or down all day long. Officials of the government came to investigate. Old Henriette Jacquet, Amelie’s friend and companion, worked up to a state of excitement which made her ill, talked incessantly in a shrill, high key, to any one and every one who came in.
Lucie, who heard and saw most of all this, felt as if she were in worse case than upon that dreadful journey to the city. She started at every sound, dreading that she would next hear the threatening hum of another Zeppelin. Paulette listened to the tale of the disaster with set lips and lowering brows. “And I said I would not work in a munition factory, because of the danger,” she said nodding meditatively. “Where is one safe these days, surely not here in Paris. If those Boches can get here once, they can again.” She did not go out the next day, but she spent much time with old Henriette while Odette stayed with Lucie.
One morning Odette announced that Henriette had declared that she would not remain another week in the city. She had relatives near Poitiers and to them she would go.
“And what will you do, Odette?” asked Lucie with concern. This question had been in her mind ever since Amelie’s death.
“I do not know,” Odette answered after a moment. “I think I shall go into a munition factory. One can get work very easily, they tell me.”
“Oh, but Odette, I don’t want you to go into a munition factory. I am afraid you will be killed.”
“One may as well be killed that way as by a Zeppelin, and the pay is excellent.”