It was quite as if the regiment had sailed away under sealed orders.  Metz and Nancy had been broadcasted about as the objective of the 231st.  But that had been just a blind for German informers.  For the next communique mentioning the regiment came from far to the west, where it had been hurried to hold up the grave threat upon Paris.  At Soissons the gray-green advance rolled itself up against the red and blue of the 231st.

Back and forth the battle line surged through the old streets, now lurid with the light of blazing houses.  A shell falling on the town-hall fired this ancient land-mark.  A great flame-fountain burst up from the heart of the city.  “Rescue the archives!” was the cry.  For this, volunteers were called.  The dash of a sergeant and his men into the burning hall and back again through the bullet-spattered streets is related in the Journal Officiel.  It tells of the safe return of the archives, but of few survivors.  For impetuous valor in this exploit, the name of Sergeant le Marchand was changed to Lieutenant le Marchand.

That was my last tidings of Marie and Robert, until a year later a letter came to me in a shaky but familiar hand.  It had the post-mark of Hornell Sanitarium, New York.  It was from Marie, and one glance revealed the tragedy.  Briefly it was this: 

In the attempted Champagne drive of 1915 the 231st regiment was ordered to rush the barbed wire barricade and drive a wedge into the enemy’s line.  At command Lieutenant le Marchand leaped from cover to lead the charge of his men.  Scarcely had he uttered his cry, “En avant!” when he was dropped in his tracks, a bullet through his brain.  Over his body, with revenge adding to their fury, the regiment swept like mad.  The trenches, a quarry of prisoners, and the thrill of high praise from the general were theirs—­a triumph with a bitter taste, for some, creeping back, had found their young lieutenant crumpled where he fell, the moonlight cold upon his blood-stained face.  “In order that France might live he was willing to close his eyes upon her forever.”  Curiously his sword was sticking upright just as it had dropped from his hand.  They buried him where he lay upon the edge of No-Man’s-Land.  Tears were showered on his grave, and on that fatal bullet many bitter curses.

But this does not complete the tale of murder wrought by that slug of lead.  Each plunging bullet blazes its black trail of the spirit-killed.

A month later and three thousand miles away this German missile struck the heart of an American girl with a more cruel impact than it had struck the brain of this lieutenant of France.  She, too, crumpled and fell upon the thorns.  His had been a speedy, painless death; one sharp electric stroke and then the closing night.  A like oblivion would have been sweet to her.  But she had to face it out alone.  Upon her torn heart were beaten a thousand hammer-strokes, and through the endless nights she bore the anguish of a thousand deaths.