He waited tentatively. Surely if the man were just some simple, sleepy fool he'd say something now to give an inkling of what he was.
"One week ago it was splashed in blood—Soldiers too, in their way, are artists," was all he said.
"Then you're not a soldier?"
"What made you think I was?"
"I don't know what you are," he answered truthfully; and then quite frankly he came back with the man's own question. "Did you say you lived in Chalet Corneille?"
"No—I asked if you knew people there by name of Fornier?"
"Mighty few folk left there now." The picture of the razed town came before him. "Some old men waiting for the lost ones to come back to them; some young children and three or four sisters of charity. And then this morning I saw a woman—she wasn't much more than a girl—she had a face you couldn't forget. They told me about her at the inn, where I breakfasted."
"Tell me," the man suggested grudgingly; "we're comfortable enough. Dawn's a long way off, and I suppose you want to talk."
"There isn't much to tell. She left the town; was driven out of it with the others. Unlike them, she came back. God knows what she wanted to do that for! They told me of her goodness; and her beauty and her kindness. They dwelt on it at great length. Don't know as I blame them for harping on all that. And now it seems the spirit of the war has lit upon even her. She's changed—they say she's absolutely no good these days. Steals—lies—has done everything, as near as I can make out, excepting commit murder. But you ought to have seen her face. I'll wager that once seen, it would rise to haunt any one. I don't care who it'd be. It was beautiful—but—"
He felt the man look up at the sky and the ghostly, gray mass of the crucifix stretching across it.