The troops going up, who sometimes passed Belinda on the road as she trudged to and from Minerva's, did not at first betray the feeling that disaster was in the air. Though they were marching in coats already saturated by the rain and knew they might remain in that condition during their entire "stage" in the trenches, they seemed not to be daunted.
They plodded on, singing gaily, unmindful of rain and wind, weighted down by their equipment. They hailed the women they passed with: "Good-morning, Margot!" "Chère Is'belle!" "By the old mill site, to-night, Marie!"
But the men who came back!
They did not march back from the trenches at first. Sandwiched in with the ambulances along the crowded roads were motor-busses containing the dumb, stupid creatures that for a week had held back the enemy.
They looked scarcely human—brown with mud from head to foot, faces masked with dirt and a week's growth of beard. They looked at the passer-by with a faraway, half-unconscious expression, so utterly stupefied by the terrible bombardment and their miseries that they scarcely appreciated their escape.
The attack by the French along this front had not been a success, or so it seemed to the layman. If it had been a thrust to call German reserves from other places and center them here, to make the real attack by French and British more potent, as some said, perhaps it was a well-conducted piece of strategy.
But the enemy poured down upon the devoted soldiers holding the front of this sector and by mere weight of numbers—and weight of guns—forced the French to retreat. It went on so for several days. The French gave only a few yards at a time; but it was retreat!
Belinda had seen nothing of Sanderson since the night he had come to her window. Nor had she heard anything definite of him. Stories were rife that the American escadrille of flying men had conducted themselves with great honor in the raid over the German lines. One of their number had been killed.
Through Erard, who was the recipient of much gossip and who took a vivid interest in everything pertaining to the flying escadrilles, she tried to learn who the lost aviator was.
This was impossible. Bulletins sent out for general consumption are seldom read so near the battlefield.