But the bells began and never
finished. At the instant when Liane de St. Pol and Jean de Visgnes
became man and wife a bomb fell on the chapel roof. The tiles collapsed
like cards, and all the bridal party was killed as by a lightning
stroke. Only the soldier-priest was spared. Strangely, he was not even
touched. But horror had driven him mad. Since then he spoke only to rave
of Liane and Jean; how beautiful they had looked, lying dead before the
wrecked altar.
"The doctors say it is like a case of shell-shock," the Captain
finished. "They think he'll recover. But at present, as I said--it is a
sad affair. Sad for _him_--not for those who died together, suffering no
pain. One of the Cure's favourite sayings used to be, they tell me,
'Death is not an end, but a beginning.'"
"You know him well?" I asked.
"Yes. I was stationed in Rheims before the war. I used to dance with
Liane when she came home from school."
"Ah, if only her family hadn't stayed here till too late!" I cried.
The captain with the scarred face shrugged his shoulders. "Destiny!" he
said. "Besides, the best people do not run away easily from the homes
they love. Perhaps they have the feeling that, in a home which has
always meant peace, nothing terrible can happen. Yet there's more in it
than that--something more subtle which keeps them in the place where
they have always lived: something, I think, that binds the spirits of us
Frenchmen and women to the spirit of their own hearths--their own soil.
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