Eudore's wan face winced.
"My wife? Yes, I saw her, sure enough, but only for a little while—there was no way of doing any better—but no luck, I admit, and that's all about it."
"How's that?"
"How? You know that we live at Villers-l'Abbaye, a hamlet of four houses neither more nor less, astraddle over the road. One of those houses is our cafe, and she runs it, or rather she is running it again since they gave up shelling the village.
"Now then, with my leave coming along, she asked for a permit to Mont-St-Eloi, where my old folks are, and my permit was for Mont-St-Eloi too. See the move?
"Being a little woman with a head-piece, you know, she had applied for her permit long before the date when my leave was expected. All the same, my leave came before her permit. Spite o' that I set off—for one doesn't let his turn in the company go by, eh? So I stayed with the old people, and waited. I like 'em well enough, but I got down in the mouth all the same. As for them, it was enough that they could see me, and it worried them that I was bored by their company-how else could it be? At the end of the sixth day—at the finish of my leave, and the very evening before returning—a young man on a bicycle, son of the Florence family, brings me a letter from Mariette to say that her permit had not yet come—"
"Ah, rotten luck," cried the audience.
"And that," continued Eudore, "there was only one thing to do.—I was to get leave from the mayor of Mont-St-Eloi, who would get it from the military, and go myself at full speed to see her at Villers."
"You should have done that the first day, not the sixth!"
"So it seems, but I was afraid we should cross and me miss her—y'see, as soon as I landed, I was expecting her all the time, and every minute I fancied I could see her at the open door. So I did as she told me."