“I’d give the world to be going with him.”

Her hands were clasped tightly.  “Would you give me up?”

“You?  I should never have to give you up, thank God.  You would never hold me back.”

“Shouldn’t I, Derry?”

“My precious, don’t I know?  Better than you know yourself.”

Drusilla and the Captain were standing by the wide window which looked out over the city.  The snow came down like a curtain, shutting out the sky.

“Do you think she loves him?” Jean asked.

“I hope so,” heartily.

“But to send him away so—­easily.  Oh, Derry, she can’t care.”

“She is sending him not easily, but bravely.  Margaret let her husband go like that.”

“Would you want me to let you go like that, Derry?”

“Yes, dear.”

“Wouldn’t you want me to—­cry?”

“Perhaps.  Just a little tear.  But I should want you to think beyond the tears.  I should want you to know that for us there can be no real separation.  You are mine to the end of all eternity, Jean.”

He believed it.  And she believed it.  And perhaps, after all, it was true.  There must be a very separate and special Heaven for those who love once, and never love again.

Drusilla came away from the window to sing for them—­a popular song.  But there was much in it to intrigue the imagination—­a vision of the heroic Maid—­a hint of the Marseillaise—­and so the nations were singing it—.

  “Jeanne d’Arc, Jeanne d’Arc,
  Oh, soldats! entendez vous? 
  ‘Allons, enfants de la patrie,’
  Jeanne d’Arc, la victoire est pour vous—­”

There was a new note in Drusilla’s voice.  A note of tears as well as of triumph—­and at the last word she broke down and covered her face with her hands.

In the sudden stillness, the Captain strode across the room and took her hands away from her face.

“Drusilla,” he said before them all, “do you care as much as that?”

She told him the truth in her fine, frank fashion.

“Yes,” she said, “I do care, Captain, but I want you to go.”

“And oh, Derry, I am so glad she cried,” Jean said, when they were driving home through the snow-storm.  “It made her seem so—­human.”

Derry drew her close.  “Such a thing couldn’t have happened,” he said, “at any other time.  Do you suppose that a few years ago any of us would have been keyed up to a point where a self-contained Englishman could have asked a girl, in the face of three other people, if she loved him, and have had her answer like that?  It was beautiful, beautiful, Jean-Joan—­”

She held her breath.  “Why do you call me that?”

“She lived for France.  You shall live for France—­and me.”

The snow shut them in.  There was the warmth of the car, of the fur rugs and Derry’s fur coat, Jean’s own velvet wrap of heavenly blue, the fragrance of her violets.  Somewhere far away men were fighting—­there was the mud and cold of the trenches—­somewhere men were suffering.