The apparition and its flight so impressed Volpatte that he lost the thread of his discourse.

“She’s something like, that woman there!”

“No,” said Fouillade, who had misunderstood, “she’s called Eudoxie.  I knew her because I’ve seen her before.  A refugee.  I don’t know where she comes from, but she’s at Gamblin, in a family there.”

“She’s thin and beautiful,” Volpatte certified; “one would like to make her a little present—­she’s good enough to eat—­tender as a chicken.  And look at the eyes she’s got!”

“She’s queer,” says Fouillade.  “You don’t know when you’ve got her.  You see her here, there, with her fair hair on top, then—­off!  Nobody about.  And you know, she doesn’t know what danger is; marching about, sometimes, almost in the front line, and she’s been seen knocking about in No Man’s Land.  She’s queer.”

“Look!  There she is again.  The spook!  She’s keeping an eye on us.  What’s she after?”

The shadow-figure, traced in lines of light, this time adorned the other end of the spinney’s edge.

“To hell with women,” Volpatte declared, whom the idea of his deliverance has completely recaptured.

“There’s one in the squad, anyway, that wants her pretty badly.  See—­when you speak of the wolf—­”

“You see its tail—­”

“Not yet, but almost—­look!” From some bushes on our right we saw the red snout of Lamuse appear peeping, like a wild boar’s.

He was on the woman’s trail.  He had seen the alluring vision, dropped to the crouch of a setting dog, and made his spring.  But in that spring he fell upon us.

Recognizing Volpatte and Fouillade, big Lamuse gave shouts of delight.  At once he had no other thought than to get possession of the bags, rifles, and haversacks—­“Give me all of it—­I’m resting—­come on, give it up.”

He must carry everything.  Farfadet and I willingly gave up Volpatte’s equipment; and Fouillade, now at the end of his strength, agreed to surrender his pouches and his rifle.

Lamuse became a moving heap.  Under the huge burden he disappeared, bent double, and made progress only with shortened steps.

But we felt that he was still under the sway of a certain project, and his glances went sideways.  He was seeking the woman after whom he had hurled himself.  Every time he halted, the better to trim some detail of the load, or puffingly to mop the greasy flow of perspiration, he furtively surveyed all the corners of the horizon and scrutinized the edges of the wood.  He did not see her again.

I did see her again, and got a distinct impression this time that it was one of us she was after.  She half arose on our left from the green shadows of the undergrowth.  Steadying herself with one hand on a branch, she leaned forward and revealed the night-dark eyes and pale face, which showed—­so brightly lighted was one whole side of it—­like a crescent moon.