"You're not hurt?" His lungs pumped hard, and his reddened eyes ran water. He blinked it away and caught her hands, crushing them in his grip. "You're sure you're not?"
"Quite, quite sure! And you're all right, aren't you?"
"As right as rain, except for a bump on the head!" He freed a hand and rubbed it. "When the shell came over—and the ground rose up and hit me. How did it happen?"
"I—hardly know. Oh, Alan! God has been good to us! Hasn't He?"
There was no immediate response. Sherbrand's lean face was working. He rose to his knees and thus remained an instant, in silence that gave thanks. Then he got lightly on his feet, reached down and lifted Patrine. And thus they stood, the girl clinging to the young man's broad shoulders as he held her, the tears from her own still smarting eyes tracing white channels in the dust that masked her quivering face.
"You and I! ... My hat!—" she gasped—"what a precious pair of scallawags! You lose nothing in not being able to see, my Flying Man!—just now. Oh! but the station! And the park——"
She stopped in sheer astonishment. For the deadliest fury of the High Explosive had wreaked itself on the bit of municipal woodland. With the electric train-station that had neighboured it, and the abattoirs in its vicinity, it had been clean wiped out.
"Come," said Sherbrand, tightening his clasp as he felt her sway against him. He was supporting—he was guiding as they turned their faces south.
Here the Death that had passed by had left more traces of its passage. The rent carcase of a gaunt cow that had grazed upon the Plaine d'Amour, lay in a steaming crimson pool among the frosty grasses; and beyond, some thirty paces from the Rue d'Elverdinghe, where the automobiles waited near the ruins of the prison, Monseigneur in his flowing black cloak knelt over a stained bundle of ragged blue clothing and shattered humanity, and the Belgian and his fellow-chauffeur were bringing a stretcher from the Red Cross car....
"The poor orderly has been wounded ... No! ... killed!" flashed through Patrine's mind as Monseigneur glanced towards her, gesturing with a supple hand in a swift expressive way. "I must go over there—I may be wanted," she mentally added, controlling her sick shudder and reached back to take again the hand of her blind man. But a sudden exclamation from Sherbrand brought round her head, and the strange look stamped upon the face she loved, arrested movement and checked utterance.