“Senator Duval wishes to see if a friend of his lies here, Aunt Patricia,” Mrs. Burton explained.
She then turned to Senator Duval:
“No, I would rather not look with you if you don’t mind. Some of the others in the party will wish to. I find it too saddening to see more than one must.”
Just beyond the hallowed ground there was a little hill, which by some strange freak of circumstance was covered with a group of young fruit trees which had escaped the surrounding devastation.
Mrs. Burton, Miss Lord, Yvonne Fleury and the two French officers moved over toward this hill and climbed to its summit.
The others followed Senator Duval upon his quest. Purposely Bettina Graham had separated herself from David Hale, allowing him to take charge of the young French girl, Marguerite Arnot. Several times Bettina had believed they seemed unusually interested in each other and it was not her idea in any way to demand too much of the young man’s attention.
“From here one has a surprising view of the French country,” Captain Lamont, who had been Miss Patricia’s guide, explained.
“Over there toward the southeast is Château-Thierry and not far off the Forest of Argonne. I wonder if you know that until the American soldiers fought so gallantly and so victoriously in this same forest of Argonne it had been thought throughout all French history an impossible place of battle. So you see you came, saw and conquered,” the French officer finished gallantly.
“Nonsense!” Miss Patricia returned in her fiercest manner. “The one thing I am most weary of hearing discussed is which of the allied nations won the war, as if one had a greater claim than the rest, save the claim that France has of having lost more of her men.”
“Polly Burton,” suddenly Miss Patricia seemed to have forgotten the rest of her audience, “I have been thinking not only today but for many days what character of monument I should like to be allowed to build in France. Probably the government may not permit me to do what I wish, but the idea I have been looking for has come to me, come from that resting place of the allied soldiers over there.”