“I’ve got to get back to work,” said Pennell, “worse luck.  It is la guerre, you know!”

“Poor boy!” said she gaily.  “And you?” turning to Peter.

Moved by an impulse, he shook his head.  “No,” he said, “I was only seeing him home.”

“Bien!  See me home instead, then,” said Louise.

“Nothing doing,” said Peter, using a familiar phrase.

She laughed.  “Bah! cannot a girl have friends without that, eh?  You have a fiancee, ’ave you not?  Oh yes, I remember—­I remember very well.  Come!  I have done for to-day; I am tired.  I will make you some coffee, and we shall talk.  Is it not so?”

Peter looked at Pennell.  “Do you mind, Pen?” he asked.  “I’d rather like to.”

“Not a scrap,” said the other cheerfully; “wish I could come too.  Ask me another day, Louise, will you?”

She regarded him with her head a little on one side.  “I do not know,” she said.  “I do not think you would talk with me as he will.  You like what you can get from the girls of France now; but after, no more.  Monsieur, ’e is different.  He want not quite the same.  Oh, I know!  Allons.”

Pennell shrugged his shoulders.  “One for me,” he said.  “Well, good-night.  I hope you both enjoy yourselves.”

In five minutes Peter and Louise were walking together down the street.  A few passers-by glanced at them, or especially at her, but she took no notice, and Peter, in a little, felt the strangeness of it all much less.  He deliberately crossed once or twice to get between her and the road, as he would have done with a lady, and moved slightly in front of her when they encountered two drunken men.  She chatted about nothing in particular, and Peter thought to himself that he might almost have been escorting Hilda home.  But if Hilda had seen him!

She ushered him into her flat.  It was cosy and nicely furnished, very different from that of the afternoon.  A photograph or two stood about in silver frames, a few easy-chairs, a little table, a bookshelf, and a cupboard.  A fire was alight in the grate; Louise knelt down and poked it into a flame.

“You shall have French coffee,” she said.  “And I have even lait for you.”  She put a copper kettle on the fire, and busied herself with cups and saucers.  These she arranged on the little table, and drew it near the fire.  Then she offered him a cigarette from a gold case, and took one herself.  “Ah!” she said, sinking back into a chair.  “Now we are, as you say, comfy, is it not so?  We can talk.  Tell me how you like la France, and what you do.”

Peter tried, but failed rather miserably, and the shrewd French girl noticed it easily enough.  She all but interrupted him as he talked of Abbeville and the raid.  “Mon ami,” she said, “you have something on your mind.  You do not want to talk of these things.  Tell me.”

Peter looked into the kindly keen eyes.  “You are right, Louise,” he said.  “This is a day of trouble for me.”