Mrs. Yule in her turn was deeply moved and quick tears of sympathy gathered in her eyes. With an impulse of tenderest pity she bent suddenly forward and kissed the exile's pale cheek.
Like a flash of lightning in the night, it was revealed to Louise that now or never she must make her confession, now or never attempt a supreme, ultimate effort. This must be her last struggle for life. As she looked from Mrs. Yule's kind, tear-filled eyes to the calm, keen face of the physician hope bounded within her like a living thing. The blood rushed to her cheeks and she rose to her feet.
"Doctor!..." she gasped. Then she turned to Mrs. Yule again, it seemed almost easier to say what must be said, to a woman. "I want to say something.... I must speak...." And again turning to the doctor—"Do you understand me if I speak French?"
Doctor Reynolds looked rather like a timid schoolboy, notwithstanding his spectacles and his red beard, as he replied: "Oh ... oui, Madame. Je comprong."
The vicar stepped forward. Looking from Louise to his wife and to the doctor he said: "Perhaps I had better leave you...."
But Louise quickly extended a trembling hand. "No! Please stay," she pleaded. "You are a priest. You are the doctor of the soul. And my soul is sick unto death."
The vicar took her extended hand. "I shall be honoured by your confidence," he said in courtly fashion, and seating himself beside her waited for her to speak.
Nor did he wait in vain. In eloquent passionate words, in the burning accents of her own language, the story of her martyrdom was revealed, her torn and outraged soul laid bare.
In that quiet room in the old-fashioned English vicarage the ghastly scenes of butchery and debauch were enacted again; the foul violence of the enemy, the treason, the drunkenness, the ribaldry of the men who with "mud and blood" on their feet, had trampled on these women's souls—all lived before the horrified listeners, and the martyrdom of the three helpless victims wrung their honest British hearts.
Louise had risen to her feet—a long black figure with a spectral face. She was Tragedy itself; she was the Spirit of Womanhood crushed and ruined by the war; she was the Grief of the World.