Five minutes passed, and no one had moved except the little boy. With furtive glances and trembling hands he had crept to the old well in the corner and drunk a cup of the poisoned water. Then he crept back to his place.

The second old man now rose, drew a deep breath and climbed the cellar stair. For a time he stood blinking, and mouthing his scattered teeth. He was trying to speak and could not.

"What is it?" they called up to him. "What has happened?" He did not answer. He made inarticulate sounds, and suddenly with incredible speed, darted forward into the smoke and the sunlight.

A little hand cold and wet crept into Jeanne Bergère's. She was vexed. She wished to go out of the cellar with the others; but the little hand clung to her so tightly that she could not free herself.

Except for the old woman who had drunk from the well, and the old man, all in a heap at the foot of the cellar stair, they were alone. She and the little boy.

"It is true," said the little boy, "at least I think it is true about the water... when . . . nobody was looking. . . . Please, please stay with me, Jeanne Bergère."

"You drank when it was forbidden? That was very naughty, Charlie. . . . Good God, what am I saying-you poor baby-you poor baby." She snatched him into her arms, and held him with a kind of tigerish ferocity.

"It hurts," said Charlie. "It hurts. It hurts me all over. It hurts worse all the time."

"I will go for help," she said. "Wait.”

"Please do not go away."

"You want to die?"

The child nodded.

"If I grow up, I should not be a man," he said. "You know what the doctor did to me?"

"I know," she said briefly, "but you shan't die if I can help it." She could not help it. A few minutes after she had gone, his back strongly arched became rigid. His jaws locked and he died in the attitude of a wrestler making a bridge.

The village street was full of smoke and Frenchmen. These were methodically fighting the fires and hunting the ruins for Germans. Jeanne Bergère seized one of the little soldiers by the elbow.

"Come quickly," she said, "there is a child poisoned!"

The Idiot turned, and she would have fallen if he had not caught her. She tore herself loose from his arms with a kind of ferocity. "Come! Come!" she cried, and she ran like a frightened ani

mal back to the cellar door, the Idiot close behind her.

The Idiot knelt by the dead child, and after feeling in vain for any pulsation, straightened up and said:

"He is dead."

"He drank from the well," said Jeanne. "We told him that it was poisoned. But he was so thirsty."

They tried to straighten the little boy, but could not. The Idiot rose to his feet, and looked at her for the first time. He must have made some motion with his hands, for she cried suddenly: "Don't! You mustn't touch me!"

"We have always loved each other," he said simply.

"You don't understand."

"What you have been through? I understand. Kiss me.' She held him at arm's length.

99

“Listen,” she said. "The old people would not leave the village,-your father and mother . . . so I stayed. At that time it was still supposed that the Germans were human beings. . ."

"And my father and mother?" asked the Idiot.

"Some of the people went into the street to see the Germans enter the village. But we watched from a window in your father's house They were Uhlans, who came at first. They were so drunk that they could hardly sit on their horses. Their lieutenant took a sudden fancy to Marie Lebrun, but when he tried to kiss her, she slapped his face. . . That seemed to sober him . . Old man Lebrun had leapt forward to protect his daughter. 66 6 'Are you her father?" " asked the Lieutenant.

"'Yes,'

said the old man.

"Bind him,'" said the lieutenant, and then he gave an order, and some men went into a house and came out dragging a mattress They dragged it into the middle of the street. . . They held old man Lebrun so that he had to see everything . . . for some hours, as many as wanted to . . . Then the lieutenant stepped forward and shot her through the head, and then he shot her father. . . Your father and mother hid me in the cellar of their house, as well as they could . . But from the Germans nothing remains long hidden .. Your father and mother tried to defend me . tied them to their bed... and

to the house."

set fire

The Idiot's granite-gray face showed no new emotion. "And you?"

She shook her head violently.

"What you cannot imagine," she said. "I have forgotten

No street-walker has ever been

through what I have been through . . . There's nothing more to

say I wanted to live . . . to bear witness against them

For you and me everything is finished . . ."

"Almost," said the Idiot. "You talk as if you no longer loved

me."

The granite-gray of his face had softened into the ruddy, sunburned coloring of a healthy young soldier, long in the field, and

she could not resist the strong arms that he opened to her.

"They have not touched your soul," said the Idiot.

Я либиси

They hang in the dew for the bard who fetched

A sprig of them once for his brother

When he lay cold and dead.

And forever now when America leans in the dooryard

And over the hills Spring dances,

Smell of lilacs and sight of lilacs shall bring to her heart these

brothers.

Lilacs shall bloom for Walt Whitman

And lilacs for Abraham Lincoln.

Who are the shadow-forms crowding the night?

What shadows of men?

The stilled star-night is high with these brooding spirits— Their shoulders rise on the Earth-rim, and they are great presences in heaven—

They move through the stars like outlined winds in young.

leaved maples.

Lilacs bloom for Walt Whitman

And lilacs for Abraham Lincoln.

Deeply the nation throbs with a world's anguish

But it sleeps, and I on the housetops