There came a series of loud, excited rappings on the door. It burst open, and a little girl—a child to whom in the past, which now seemed æons away, she had been kind—stood breathless, smiling, 'Mamselle! Mamselle! Our soldiers are here! Come and see them. I ran away from mother to tell you! They said you were here.'
Jeanne Rouannès put a finger to her lips. She gave a swift look at the unconscious form stretched stiffly out on the narrow bed. If only she could get a surgeon now, at once—
Putting on her cap, she followed the child up the wooden steps leading to the deck of the barge, and even as she did so, she heard the steady, rhythmic sound of marching, broken across by confused, shrill cries of joy and welcome.
Her heart began to beat; she hastened across the sunlit deck of the barge, and ran swiftly down the narrow stone jetty, with the excited little girl clinging to her hand.
'Les voilà! Les voilà!'
And through a mist of tears Jeanne Rouannès gazed on a sight she will never forget.
They came swinging along, the familiar, active, red-trousered figures looking so slight, so short, so old-fashioned after the huge, splendidly-equipped Germans. But though war-worn, shabby as their predecessors had never been shabby even at their worst, these countrymen of hers wore their hot, short blue jackets, their wide poppy-coloured trousers with an air—that most inspiring air of all airs—the air of victory.
How ecstatically happy the sight would have made Jeanne Rouannès a month ago! Now, they simply seemed to her oppressed heart and brain a pageant which brought vague shadowy fears, and a need on her part for thought and action, for which she felt unfit, inadequate.
At last there rode up a regiment of Dragoons. Above their silver helmets—still silver, for these were the early days of war, and the French had not yet learnt the wise and cunning tricks of their enemies—black plumes nodded. Suddenly they were halted, and their commander turned his horse, and rode up under the trees to the spot where the Red Cross nurse was standing. He lifted his helmet off his head, and showed a young, brave, happy face.
'Madame?' he said courteously. 'Can you tell me when the Germans left Valoise? Have they had time to go far? Did they leave in order or in disorder? Is it true that the upper part of the town is in ruins?'