They had finished dinner and Monsieur Dellahousse signalled to Fanny that she might rise. She rose, and at the full sight of her uniform he remembered her duties and said stiffly: "Be good enough to wait up till ten to-night. I may need you."
They passed out again down the length of the tables. Near the door the Russian paused to speak with his countrymen, who rose and stood respectfully round him. Fanny and the lieutenant went on alone to the corridor.
"You have travelled with him before?" she asked.
"Oh, yes. I am lent to him to help him through the country. He is on a tour of inspection for the Red Cross; he visits all the camps of Russian prisoners liberated from Germany."
"Thousands. You will see to-morrow. And be prepared for early rising. If he doesn't send for you by ten to-night I will tell the orderly to let you know the hour at which you will be wanted to-morrow morning. The car is all ready to start again?"
He turned away to join the Russian, and Fanny passed the sentry at the tunnel's mouth, and stood in the road outside.
Verdun by night, Verdun by starlight, awaited her.
Up the slopes of the hill, every spar, brick and beam, carried its bristle of gold. At her own head's imperceptible movement flashes came and went between the ribs of the Bishop's Palace. The sentry by the tunnel stood between the upper and the underground:--with his left eye he could watch the lights that strung back into the hollow hill, with his right, the smiling and winking of the stars in the sky.
"Fait beau dehors." His voice startled her. She turned to him, but he stood immobile in the shadow as though he had never spoken. She could not be sure that he had indicated to her that every man has his taste and his choice.
She set to work on her car which stood in the shelter of an archway opposite, and for half an hour the sky trembled unregarded above her head. When she had finished she stood back and gazed at the Rochet with an anxious friendly enmity--the friendship of an infant with a lion. "The garage is eighty miles away," she sighed, "with its friendly men who know all where I know so little.... Ah, do I know enough? What have I left undone?" For she felt, what was the truth, that the whole expedition depended on her, that the stately Russian had perhaps never known what it was to have a breakdown--that in Moscow, in Petrograd, in his faraway life, he had sat in town cars behind two chauffeurs, unaware of the deadly traps in rubber and metal.
