"Yes."
"When?" She still drove steadily through the dark.
"To-day."
She looked up at the stars. So—he would never come blowing in with the sweet spring winds.
"I'd rather have been—shot—than to have told you that—" the man beside her was saying, "but, you see, I didn't know you were the girl—"
"Of course you couldn't. You mustn't blame yourself."
She delivered her precious charge at the hospital and put up her car for the night. Standing alone under the stars she wondered what she should do next. There was no one to tell—the women who had worked with her in the town which had since been recaptured by the Germans had gone to other towns. But she had stayed as near the front as possible, and she had never felt lonely because at any moment her lover might come—there had always been the thought that he might come—.
And now he would never come!
She had a room in the house of an old woman, all of whose sons were in the war. So far two of them had escaped death. But the old woman said often, fatalistically, "They will not always escape—but it will be for France."
The old woman had soup on the fire for Drusilla's supper. The room was faintly lighted. "What is it?" she asked, as the girl dropped down on the doorstep.