“What are these blue flowers that grow about everywhere?” Claude asked suddenly, pointing to a clump with his foot.

“Cornflowers,” said the other.  “The Germans call them Kaiser-blumen.”

They were approaching the village, which lay on the edge of a wood,—­a wood so large one could not see the end of it; it met the horizon with a ridge of pines.  The village was but a single street.  On either side ran clay-coloured walls, with painted wooden doors here and there, and green shutters.  Claude’s guide opened one of these gates, and they walked into a little sanded garden; the house was built round it on three sides.  Under a cherry tree sat a woman in a black dress, sewing, a work table beside her.

She was fifty, perhaps, but though her hair was grey she had a look of youthfulness; thin cheeks, delicately flushed with pink, and quiet, smiling, intelligent eyes.  Claude thought she looked like a New England woman,—­like the photographs of his mother’s cousins and schoolmates.  Lieutenant Gerhardt introduced him to Madame Joubert.  He was quite disheartened by the colloquy that followed.  Clearly his new fellow officer spoke Madame Joubert’s perplexing language as readily as she herself did, and he felt irritated and grudging as he listened.  He had been hoping that, wherever he stayed, he could learn to talk to the people a little; but with this accomplished young man about, he would never have the courage to try.  He could see that Mme. Joubert liked Gerhardt, liked him very much; and all this, for some reason, discouraged him.

Gerhardt turned to Claude, speaking in a way which included Madame Joubert in the conversation, though she could not understand it:  “Madame Joubert will let you come, although she has done her part and really doesn’t have to take any one else in.  But you will be so well off here that I’m glad she consents.  You will have to share my room, but there are two beds.  She will show you.”

Gerhardt went out of the gate and left him alone with his hostess.  Her mind seemed to read his thoughts.  When he uttered a word, or any sound that resembled one, she quickly and smoothly made a sentence of it, as if she were quite accustomed to talking in this way and expected only monosyllables from strangers.  She was kind, even a little playful with him; but he felt it was all good manners, and that underneath she was not thinking of him at all.  When he was alone in the tile-floored sleeping room upstairs, unrolling his blankets and arranging his shaving things, he looked out of the window and watched her where she sat sewing under the cherry tree.  She had a very sad face, he thought; it wasn’t grief, nothing sharp and definite like sorrow.  It was an old, quiet, impersonal sadness,—­sweet in its expression, like the sadness of music.