In all his later life André never forgot the next few minutes.
Mme. Gagnon called, “Pierre! Pierre, please come with me.”
And just then Raoul Cotein bicycled briskly up, shouting, “Mon Dieu, Gagnon, what are you up to now?”
He set his bicycle against the wall and stared into the open end of the ambulance.
“What’s the trouble here?” he demanded loudly as his eyes rolled toward the strange nun.
“Get on with your business, Raoul,” M. Gagnon ordered. “My wife is ill, as you well know, and you are not needed here.”
Father Duprey’s black eyes were traveling swiftly from the hunched figures in the dimness of the ambulance to the Germans only two or three hundred yards away.
André boosted Marie in beside her mother, and M. Gagnon closed the door upon them. Father Duprey said calmly, “You may as well come along, Pierre. It will comfort your wife. I’ll see that you and Marie get home tonight.”
“But André—” Pierre whispered.
André tugged at his arm. “Go. Go, Papa,” he urged. “I can take care of everything—only go.”