The day ended at last. She would have remained, but Madame la Directrice came herself, supplied a night nurse, and ordered the girl to go home for the rest she so badly needed.
"There is another day," said the woman sharply. "Or, if there is not—if this is the end of the world—all the better! The good God will attend to these blessés in that case.
"If you wear yourself out to-night, how will you do all these dressings to-morrow? And with only that little ape of a man, Erard, to help you? For there will be more, and yet more wounded. Hear the guns?"
As though one could shut the sullen roar of the guns out of one's ears! The hut shook and everything inside was in a tremor from the rolling discharges of the artillery on both sides. Under cover of this continual bombardment the infantry was trying to advance.
All day, Belinda learned, the aeroplanes had been flying above the smoke of the battle. Occasionally she had gone to the door of the ward for a breath of air and had peered each time into the clouds. But she could see none of the flying escadrilles serving on this sector.
She had not heard from Aunt Roberta regarding Frank Sanderson. Whether he had joined the French Flying Corps or not, she had no way of knowing. He might, even had he joined what was now called the Lafayette Escadrille, be assigned to this locality and be engaged in this very battle which seemed now so very terrible.
Her way home through the half-ruined village was lit by the glare of distant rockets and flares. The rain-drenched air shook with the heavy, sullen reports of big guns. Minerva's habitation, poor as it was, seemed a haven of refuge to the girl on this night. She was worn out in body and spirit.
She feared she would not be able to sleep; not, however, entirely because of the thundering of the cannon. The sights and sounds of the day had strongly affected her mind. With the horror and pity she felt for the torn and broken bodies of the men brought in from the trenches, had grown in Belinda Melnotte's heart a bitter hatred for the enemy that had caused their wounds.
For the time she was all French. These were her people—bound to her by ties of blood and ancestry. They were beating an invading foe back from the soil of their forefathers. With the vituperative Erard she was ready to call them Huns and barbarians.
Her heart was hot charged with these thoughts when she went to bed. And then, as her head touched the pillow, exhausted nature asserted itself. Almost instantly Belinda fell asleep; nor did she awaken at her usual early hour.