"I have nothing to forget—everything to remember. Let me pass." She touched the blood-stained cross on her breast. "Do you not see? That was white once. So was my soul."
"It is now," he said, gently. "Come back."
A wounded man somewhere in the smoke called, "Water! water! In the name of God!—my sister—"
"I am coming!" called Alixe, clearly.
"To me first! Hasten, my sister!" groaned another.
"Patience, children—I come!" called Alixe.
With a gesture she passed Jack; a flurry of smoke hid her. The pungent powder-fog made his eyes dim; his ears seemed to split with the terrific volley firing.
He turned away and went back across the lawn, only to stop at the well in the garden, fill two buckets, and plod back to the firing-line again. He found plenty to do there; he helped Alixe, following her with his buckets where she passed among the wounded, the stained cross on her breast. Once a bullet struck a pail full of water, and he held his finger in the hole until the water was all used up. Twice he heard cheering and the splash of cavalry in the shallow river, but they seemed to be beaten off again, and he went about his business, listless, sombre, a dead weight at his heart.
He had been kneeling beside a wounded man for some minutes when he became conscious that the firing had almost ceased. Bugles were sounding near the Château; long files of troops passed him in the lifting smoke; officers shouted along the river-bank.
He rose to his feet and looked around for Alixe. She was not in sight. He walked towards the river-bank, watching for her, but he could not find her.