Troy was left by the roadside. Hour after hour he sat there waiting and cursing his fate. When would Jacks be back again? Not at all, most likely; it was ten to one he would be caught on the way and turned into some pressing job. He knew, and Troy knew, that their ambulance was for the time being a hopeless wreck, and would probably have to stick ignominiously in its ditch till someone could go and fetch a new axle from Paris. And meanwhile, what might not be happening nearer by?

The rumble and thump of the cannonade grew more intense: a violent engagement was evidently going on not far off. Troy pulled out his map and tried to calculate how far he was from the front; but the front at that point was a wavering and incalculable line. He had an idea that the fighting was much nearer than he or Jacks had imagined. The place at which they had broken down must be about fifteen miles from the Marne. But could it be possible that the Germans had crossed the Marne?

Troy grew hungry, and thrust his hand in his pocket to pull out a sandwich. With it came a letter of his mother's, carried off in haste when he left Paris the previous morning. He re-read it with a mournful smile. "Of course we all know the Allies must win; but the preparations here seem so slow and blundering; and the Germans are still so strong . . ." (Thump, thump, the artillery echoed: "Strong!") And just at the end of the letter, again, "I do wonder if you'll run across Sophy . . ."

He lit a cigarette and shut his eyes and thought. The sight of Miss Warlick had made Sophy Wicks' presence singularly vivid to him; he had fallen asleep thinking of her the night before. How like her to have taken a course at the Presbyterian Hospital without letting anyone know! He wondered that he had not suspected, under her mocking indifference, an ardour as deep as his own, and he was ashamed of having judged her as others had, when, for so long, the thought of her had been his torment and his joy. Where was she now, he wondered? Probably in some hospital in the south of the centre: the authorities did not let beginners get near the front, though of course it was what all the girls were mad for . . . Well, Sophy would do her work wherever it was assigned to her: he did not see her intriguing for a showy post.