One American followed her.
"Can you buzz her round?" he asked kindly, and taking the handle, buzzed her round.
"I bet you don't get any one to do that for you in your army, do you?" he asked, as he straightened himself from the starting handle. She put her gear in with a little bang of anger.
"You're kind," she said, "and they are kind. That you can't see it is all a question of language. Every village is full of bored Americans with nothing to do, and never one of them buys a dictionary!"
"If it's villages you speak of, ma'am, it isn't dictionaries is needed," he answered, "'tis plumbing!"
She had not left him ten minutes before one of her tyres punctured.
"Alas! I could have found a better use for them than arguing," she thought ruefully, regretting the friendly Americans, as she changed the tyre by the roadside under the beam from her own lamps.
When it was done she sat for a few minutes in the silent car. The moon came up and showed her the battlements of the Ardennes forest standing upon the crest of the mountains to her left. "That is to be my home—"
Julien was in Paris by now, divested of his uniform, sitting by a great fire, eating civilised food. A strange young man in dark clothes—she wondered what he would wear.
He seemed a great many difficult miles away. That he should be in a heated room with lights, and flowers, and a spread table—and she under the shadow of the forest watching the moon rise, lengthened the miles between them; yet though she would have given much to have him with her, she would have given nothing to change places with him.