“Well,” said Phineas, “to begin at the beginning, we marched into a place called Frélus——”
In his pedantic way he began to tell her the story of Jeanne, so far as he knew it. He told her of the girl standing in the night wind and rain on the bluff by the turning of the road. He told her of Doggie’s insane adventure across No Man’s Land to the farm of La Folette. Tears rolled down Peggy’s cheeks. She cried, incredulous:
“Doggie did that? Doggie?”
“It was child’s play to what he had to do at Guedecourt.”
But Peggy waved away the vague heroism of Guedecourt.
“Doggie did that? For a woman?”
The whole elaborate structure of her conception of Doggie tumbled down like a house of cards.
“Ay,” said Phineas.
“He did that”—Phineas had given an imaginative and picturesque account of the episode—“for this girl Jeanne?”
“It is a strange coincidence, Mrs. Manningtree,” replied Phineas, with a flicker of his lips elusively suggestive of unctuousness, “that almost those identical words were used by Mademoiselle Bossière in my presence. ‘Il a fait cela pour moi!’ But—you will pardon me for saying it—with a difference of intonation, which, as a woman, no doubt you will be able to divine and appreciate.”