One June morning Tod walked out of his hotel in Abbeville and took the train for Eu. He had reached Abbeville the evening before, and had spent an hour wandering round the familiar old town that had been so savagely bombed during his month at Myonville. He was very much the young English civilian, brown lounge suit, brown boots, fawn-coloured velour hat, wash-leather gloves. His old military cane was the only soldierly thing left to him, save, of course, all that soldierliness that he carried in his heart and head. It was not the Tod Western of Shaston thrown back into civilian clothes, but a man who had the _bel air_ and the eyes of a master.

Tod sat in the train and watched the country go by. He was excited, a little afraid, the boy lover utterly absorbed in the life of the moment. No one expected him in Myonville, nor did he know what he would find there, how they would welcome him, whether the day of days would not end in some tragic anticlimax.

“Claire—why Claire married Jules Loubet six months ago.”

Tod tried to keep such words as these constantly in his ears.

He tested his French by chatting to an old farmer opposite him.

“Monsieur was in the war.”

Yes, Tod was in the war. He found his French flowing freely, but he kept an eye on the landscape, and watched for the green valley and the cliff of trees that meant Myonville and romance.

The great flat fields, the poplars, the straight roads, the little white-walled houses stirred him most profoundly. He was back in France, France that was so unforgettable, so full of poignant memories; and then he sighted that old sugar factory among the beeches on the road to Abbeville. Myonville was less than a mile away, and Tod began to fidget.

The train ran into Myonville through fields of wheat, beetroot and crimson clover. There was the familiar level-crossing, with the red brick Café de la Gare, and its skittle alley in the garden. The church spire seemed to hold up a beckoning finger above the elms and beeches.

The train stopped. Tod raised his hat to the old Frenchman and got out. Myonville had always been a quiet station, and it was so quiet on that June morning that Tod felt the one notorious person on earth, a stranger to be stared at. The station-master took the tickets, and Tod wished him good morning. He had once had a slight altercation with the station-master.

“Bonjour, monsieur.”

He gave Tod a surprised look and then re-examined Tod’s ticket.

“You don’t remember me,” said Tod.

“No, monsieur. The English are so much alike.”

It was an unpromising prelude.

Tod walked up the dusty road from the station to the little Place de l’Eglise. Myonville looked exactly the same, only there were no English soldiers in it. Women were chatting under the shade of the limes. Tod saw the old curé toddling across the cobbles to the church, the identical, rather snuffy and grey-chinned old gentleman. The same brown dog was lying in the same doorway. The fat woman at the baker’s shop had her hair in curling pins, and was arguing as usual, her hands on her hips. From the doorway of the Papillon d’Or the young demoiselle who used much “Fleur de Trèfle” and was Parisian in her atmosphere, looked out questioningly at Tod with eyes that were black and big and alluring. She had troubled the hearts of one or two of Tod’s subalterns. Tod raised his hat to her and blushed.

“Tiens, it is Monsieur le Colonel!”

He passed on and found himself in that quiet and familiar street running softly westwards in the sunlight towards the high shade of an avenue of beeches. And suddenly Tod was afraid, for so much hung on the happenings of the next few minutes. All the dreams of a year were walking with him down that sunlit village street, and for a moment Tod’s courage turned to water. Supposing she had left the place, or was married, or his coming should prove of no meaning to Claire Vignard?

The street curved slightly, so that the Café de la Paix and the schoolhouse next to it were hidden from Tod until he reached the big pond where the peasants watered their horses. He noticed that there were no children to be seen. It was the hour for them to be at school. Walking very fast Tod rounded the curve, and saw the schoolhouse with its iron railings and queer little belfry, and next to it the house of the Lorellards all brown in the sunshine, just as he had seen it when he had walked for the first time to his billet.

Both the sidewalk and the roadway were deserted, save for a figure in light blue standing at its ease outside the Café de la Paix. This French soldier seemed to belong there. Bareheaded, a pipe in his mouth, and his hands in his pockets, he had the air of a man in possession, a man standing on his own doorstep and surveying the world.

“Damn that chap!” said Tod.

He was absurdly interested in the figure of the Frenchman, absurdly afraid of it. Did the man belong to that particular house, or was he a mere chance loafer? He was standing squarely in front of the café doorway, and he stared hard at Tod as the Englishman came up, nor did he offer to move.

It was obvious that the Frenchman did belong to the house of the Lorellards, and his thick-set blue figure closed the doorway.

“Bonjour, monsieur.”

Tod came to a standstill. The Frenchman looked surprised. He was young and rather sallow, the laconic and inexpansive type of peasant.

He took his pipe out of his mouth, but he did not move from the doorstep.

Tod tried a sniper’s venture.

“It is Monsieur André Lorellard—perhaps?”

The Frenchman looked still more surprised.

“That is so, monsieur.”

And Tod laughed.

“We never met, Monsieur André. Your mother and your father were so very kind to me a year ago. You may have heard them speak of me, Colonel Tod Western.”

The French boy’s impassive face changed instantly. He stood aside; he put out a hand, and his rather hard blue eyes became laughing and friendly.

“Monsieur—but what a surprise! I have heard of you so often.”

Tod gave André’s hand an almost savage grip.

“We were friends before we met. You are on leave?”

“I am home to be married, monsieur.”

“Felicitations,” said Tod, seriously scared.

“Perhaps you may have met my fiancée, monsieur?”

“It is possible.”

“Mademoiselle Yvonne Frangonard, of the Petite Folie Farm.”

Tod could have kissed Master André. That gentleman’s figure had become one of cloudless blue.

“Yes, I think I remember Mademoiselle Frangonard. Are your parents at home, André? I have come to see them.”

André smiled queerly at Tod. Then he went into the café and shouted excitedly.

“Josephine! Josephine! Un ami!”

He turned again and laughed in a brotherly way at Tod.

“Wait, monsieur. Such a surprise for them all! They will be so delighted!”

Josephine came into the long room, polishing a glass with a cloth. She looked at André and then at Tod, seemed lost for a moment, and then exclaimed as only a Frenchwoman can exclaim:

“Monsieur Tod!”

She came forward and kissed him. André had disappeared.

Tod sat on one of the deal tables, left foot swinging, smiling shyly at Josephine.

“Yes, I have come back. I said I might come back, you know. And how are Monsieur and Madame?”

“Very well, monsieur,” said Josephine, sitting on the table opposite him.

“And you?”

She laughed.

“It is for monsieur to say.”

“Always charming—and my friend?”

“Perhaps.”

Josephine was waiting the question that mattered, the question that was burning there in Tod’s eyes.

“And Claire?”

Josephine picked up her apron and examined a frayed edge.

“She is—at the school, monsieur.”

“And well?”

“And well.”

“And?”

“She is still Claire Vignard,” said Josephine, dropping her apron and smoothing it with her hands.

Tod got off the table with a flushed and intense face.

“Josephine, I’m free; I’m free. Do you understand?”

She raised her dark eyes to his.

“Monsieur has——?”

“It was not my fault,” he said quickly. “I waited till it was all over before coming here. I have all the necessary papers to prove——”

“Do you think I do not believe you?” she asked, almost sharply; “of course I believe you. Monsieur does not tell lies.”

She glanced over his shoulder at the clock.

“Claire will be here in ten minutes.”

Tod was also looking at the clock.

“Do you think that I have anything of a chance, Josephine?”

The French girl smiled.

“It is a good thing, monsieur, that Claire is not religieuse. It will not matter.”

Tod pondered those words, and Josephine slipped from off her table.

“I will go to the schoolhouse and meet Claire,” she said, “if monsieur will wait in the kitchen.”

“Could I see her——?”

“No one will come into the kitchen for an hour. I will tell her there is a friend—just a friend.”

Tod went and kissed Josephine.

“I can hardly believe it all,” he said.

He sat in the Lorellards’ kitchen, in the place that had always been his, between the stove and the window. Claire’s wooden workbox stood as usual on the window-sill, and Tod lifted the lid and looked at all its neatness with the eyes of a lover. He remembered the way she had pricked her finger on the morning when he told her that the battalion was leaving Myonville. Through the window he could see the neat red bricks of the yard, a washing tub tilted to dry against the wall of the wash-house, the green tops of the orchard trees.

Suddenly Tod stood up. She had come in by the orchard gate and was crossing the yard, the Claire of a year ago, in her daintily shabby black dress, and her hair like a pale brown wreath touched with sunlight. It was the same calm, frank-faced Claire, with her mouth and her grey eyes, more serious, perhaps a little sad. She looked quite innocent and unsuspecting, just a woman who had her work to do, a woman who had come to speak with some casual friend.

A pair of clean shoes were standing against the wall. Claire picked them up, entered the kitchen, and saw Tod.

She dropped the shoes on a chair, and stood looking at him with round grey eyes.

“Monsieur—you!”

And Tod, the man, did not move, for he saw something that his dream had never shown him. Claire was afraid.