Marie-Josephine continued to prepare the soup. There was an egg for him, too; and a slice of cold pork and a brioche and a jug of cider.
In his room Wayland was whistling "Tipperary."
Now and again, pausing in her work, she[pg 73] turned her eyes to his closed door—wonderful eyes that became miracles of tenderness as she listened.
He came out, presently, dressed in his odd, ill-fitting uniform of the Legion, tunic unbuttoned, collarless of shirt, his bright, thick hair, now of decent length, in boyish disorder.
Delicious odours of soup and of Breton cider greeted him; he seated himself; Marie-Josephine waited on him, hovered over him, tucked a sack of feathers under his maimed leg, placed his crutches in the corner beside the gun.
Still eating, leisurely, he began:
"Marie-Josephine—a strange thing has happened on Quesnel Moors which troubles me.... Listen attentively. It was while waiting for ducks on the Eryx Rocks, that once I thought I heard through the roar of wind and sea the sound of a far cannonading. But I said to myself that it was only the imagination of a haunted mind; that in my ears still thundered the cannonade of Lens."
"Was it nevertheless true?" She had turned around from the fire where her own soup simmered in the kettle. As she spoke again she rose and came to the table.
He said: "It must have been cannon that I heard. Because, not long afterward, out of the fog came a great aëroplane rushing inland from the sea—flying swiftly above me—right over me!—and staggering like a wounded duck—it had one aileron broken—and sheered away into the fog, northward, Marie-Josephine."
Her work-worn hands, tightly clenched, rested now on the table and she leaned there, looking down at him.