make the bed. Though fresh to the work she believed that she had been
there for ever, yet the women with whom she shared her life had driven
the roads of the Meuse district for months before she came to them, and
their eyes were dim with peering into the dark nights, and they were
tired past any sense of adventure, past any wish or power to better
their condition.

On and on and on rolled the days, and though one might add them together
and make them seven, they never made Sunday. For there is no Sunday in
the French Army, there is no bell at which tools are laid aside, and not
even the night is sacred.

On and on rolled the weeks, and the weeks made months, till all November
was gone, and all December, and the New Year broke in fresh torrents
of rain.

Fanny made friends all day and lost them again for ever as she passed on
upon the roads. Sometimes it was a sentry beside whom her "clients" left
her for an hour while they inspected a barracks; sometimes it was an old
woman who called from a doorway that she might come and warm her hands
at the fire; sometimes an American who helped her to change a tyre.

There were times, further up towards Verdun, where there were no old
women, or young women, or villages, when she thought her friends were
mad, deranged, eccentric in their loneliness.

"My sister has a grand piano ..." said one American to her--opening
thus his conversation. But he mused upon it and spoke no further.

"Yes?" she encouraged. "Yes?"