“And tell me,” she went on, in her coaxing voice, “tell me just one thing, Jack. Just one, and I will trouble you no more. Is it our brave French soldiers who advance? Or is it your splendid Tommies? With whom will the honour lie?”
“With both.”
“Glorious!” she cried. “I see it all. The attack will be at the point where the French and British lines join. Together they will rush forward in one glorious advance.”
“No,” I said. “They will not be together.”
“But I understood you to say—of course, women know nothing of such matters, but I understood you to say that it would be a joint advance.”
“Well, if the French advanced, we will say, at Verdun, and the British advanced at Ypres, even if they were hundreds of miles apart it would still be a joint advance.”
“Ah, I see,” she cried, clapping her hands with delight. “They would advance at both ends of the line, so that the Boches would not know which way to send their reserves.”
“That is exactly the idea—a real advance at Verdun, and an enormous feint at Ypres.”
Then suddenly a chill of doubt seized me. I can remember how I sprang back from her and looked hard into her face. “I’ve told you too much!” I cried. “Can I trust you? I have been mad to say so much.”
She was bitterly hurt by my words. That I should for a moment doubt her was more than she could bear. “I would cut my tongue out, Jack, before I would tell any human being one word of what you have said.” So earnest was she that my fears died away. I felt that I could