the French were helpless? Possible that the American army, which now was admitted to have arrived in some force, had proved so utterly unfit for European warfare that the allies dared not send it into the battle line?
The few words spoken to her by the man who attended her boasted that such were the facts. She thought of that front from Soissons to Reims, where the French lay unaware, perhaps, that upon them was soon to come the final, overwhelming attack. It must be in the last stages of preparation, with the hundreds of thousands of reserve troops secretly concentrated by night marches; with the thousands of guns and millions of shells secreted and in place for another such surprise attack to be delivered in some amazing, unforeseen manner as that assault which two months ago swept over the plains of Picardy and broke the English line. Perhaps already the attack was begun; perhaps
Such terrors held her when she lay sleepless or only half drowsing in the dark; they formed the background for more personal affrights visualizing her own friends—Hubert and Milicent and Mrs. Mayhew, French girls whom she had known, and many others. Most particularly her terror dwelt upon Gerry Hull. She had ventured to inquire of the Germans regarding his fate; at first they refused information, then they told her he was dead, next that he was a prisoner; and they even supplied her with a paragraph from one of their papers boasting of the fact and making capital of his capture.
He was in one of their camps, to be treated by the Germans—how? Her dismay would dwell with him; then, suddenly considering her own fate, she would sit up,
