"Perhaps. I'd like to try."
"Then do try, both of you," said Phil. "There's no telling how much we shall be kept awake when the Germans come. And I am going to exact a promise from you," he added, as they rose from the table, "that you do not leave the house or run any further risk to-day."
"And you?" the girls exclaimed together. There was something more than the usual start of surprise on the part of both when two people find that they have the same thought and have given utterance to it. Helen slipped out of the room, leaving the scene to Henriette.
"There is no dodging those big shells," she said, "so you must agree to take care, too. You see," she lowered her lashes thoughtfully and then looked up at him with a world of frank solicitude, "as you saved my life I feel an interest in yours."
"Not to mention that I have an interest in yours!" he interjected.
"I'm glad if you feel that way," she said; then added, as he bent toward her, under the spell of her beauty, "I promise! You promise!" She gave him her hand in sealing the bargain, but drew it away before his closed too tightly and smiled over her shoulder, saying, "I'm really sleepy," as she withdrew.
Phil was left with this vision of her to compare with that of her as she rested in his arms while he carried her from the roadside to the gully. Then he marvelled once more at the situation. How long should he be here with these two cousins? What was going on out there amidst the sound of the guns? With all the world around in action, it was not in his nature to remain still.
"Jacqueline, if any more shells come," he said, putting his head in at the kitchen door, "will you see that those two girls go into the cellar and stay?"
"I'll take a saucepan to them if they don't!" Jacqueline replied. "As for you, I suppose you are going out to try to be killed, like all the other foolish men in the world," she added, without any effort to restrain him.
On reaching the terrace Phil found himself with the last line of the French. In wait as for game, dust-laden figures were lying behind trees and in the open behind little banks of earth which they had spaded. They were firing and the rattle of rifles and the penetrating rat-tat of a French machine-gun from the woods at the other side of the village joined in the refrain. A thousand yards away he saw something as green as the fields, but visible on the grey ribbon of the road, melt into the earth under this burst of bullets. These must be the Germans. Sharp whistles and cracks about his ears—the answer from the rifles of the German skirmish line—made him leap to the cover of the largest tree-trunk in sight.