"Can this be Lieutenant James Kirkpatrick?"
Kirkpatrick wheeled about and snatched off his cap.
"Mrs. Dwight, by all that's holy! I never expected any such luck as this!"
They shook hands warmly in the deserted square which had been a shambles during the first battle of the Marne, and in the days of Caesar and Attila, of Napoleon the Great and Napoleon the Little. To-day it was as gray and peaceful, its houses as aloof and haughty as if war had never been. It was a false impression, however, for it was the paralysis of war it expressed, not even the normal peace of a dull provincial town.
"I've often wondered about you," said Alexina. "But I've been working with the French Army and had no way of finding out. You don't look as if you had been wounded."
"Nary scratch, and in the thick o
