"That beast!" the corporal muttered. "Has he made you work in that shambles all this time? Paul said he would."
"Hush!" begged his cousin. "Then you and Paul are friends again?"
"Ach!" growled Carl, "we have arranged a truce. For one purpose only, perhaps. But we will keep it. Never mind. You are under my care now, Cousin Belinda."
"What do you mean, Carl?"
"I am to take you to a new lodging. You will be safe there and may sleep soundly. Come."
It was to a cottage near by in which the wife of a brother corporal had set up housekeeping amid the abandoned lares and penates of its former French occupant. The woman had an honest face, and the Red Cross nurse felt safe with her.
As for sleeping, that was another matter. Aside from the thundering discharge of the heavy guns—seemingly at every round coming nearer—which shook the atmosphere so that their eardrums seemed almost to crack under the strain, the Red Cross nurse had a heart and mind too full for slumber to be a welcome visitor.
Yet she could scarcely meditate consecutively in a single line of thought as she lay on her mattress. So many, many topics—all hateful—seemed scurrying through her mind. And between these rose scenes of horror from her day's work.
She could not even cling to the thought of Sanderson's peril. For when she considered him at all there seared her conscience the thought that she had irrevocably given her love, her confidence, all that was best and greatest in her, to a man who had no right to accept the sacrifice.
She did not blame him now. She was too fair to the facts, too honorable by nature, to accuse Frank Sanderson of being the more guilty of the two.