‘I wonder,’ said the girl gravely.  ’I don’t think there’s any discharge in this war.  Dick, have you news of the battle?  This was the day.’

‘It’s begun,’ I said, and told them the little I had learned from the French General.  ’I’ve made a reputation as a prophet, for he thought the attack was coming in Champagne.  It’s St Quentin right enough, but I don’t know what has happened.  We’ll hear in Paris.’

Mary had woke with a startled air as if she remembered her old instinct that our work would not be finished without a sacrifice, and that sacrifice the best of us.  The notion kept recurring to me with an uneasy insistence.  But soon she appeared to forget her anxiety.  That afternoon as we journeyed through the pleasant land of France she was in holiday mood, and she forced all our spirits up to her level.  It was calm, bright weather, the long curves of ploughland were beginning to quicken into green, the catkins made a blue mist on the willows by the watercourses, and in the orchards by the red-roofed hamlets the blossom was breaking.  In such a scene it was hard to keep the mind sober and grey, and the pall of war slid from us.  Mary cosseted and fussed over Peter like an elder sister over a delicate little boy.  She made him stretch his bad leg full length on the seat, and when she made tea for the party of us it was a protesting Peter who had the last sugar biscuit.  Indeed, we were almost a merry company, for Blenkiron told stories of old hunting and engineering days in the West, and Peter and I were driven to cap them, and Mary asked provocative questions, and Wake listened with amused interest.  It was well that we had the carriage to ourselves, for no queerer rigs were ever assembled.  Mary, as always, was neat and workmanlike in her dress; Blenkiron was magnificent in a suit of russet tweed with a pale-blue shirt and collar, and well-polished brown shoes; but Peter and Wake were in uniforms which had seen far better days, and I wore still the boots and the shapeless and ragged clothes of Joseph Zimmer, the porter from Arosa.

We appeared to forget the war, but we didn’t, for it was in the background of all our minds.  Somewhere in the north there was raging a desperate fight, and its issue was the true test of our success or failure.  Mary showed it by bidding me ask for news at every stopping-place.  I asked gendarmes and Permissionnaires, but I learned nothing.  Nobody had ever heard of the battle.  The upshot was that for the last hour we all fell silent, and when we reached Paris about seven o’clock my first errand was to the bookstall.

I bought a batch of evening papers, which we tried to read in the taxis that carried us to our hotel.  Sure enough there was the announcement in big headlines.  The enemy had attacked in great strength from south of Arras to the Oise; but everywhere he had been repulsed and held in our battle-zone.  The leading articles were confident, the notes by the various military critics were almost braggart.  At last the German had been driven to an offensive, and the Allies would have the opportunity they had longed for of proving their superior fighting strength.  It was, said one and all, the opening of the last phase of the war.