Paula's eyes, keen as a knife-point, were upon the V. A. D.'s face.

"I'm glad to know you," she said frankly, offering her hand.

"Principally," she added, with a little laugh, "because you know Barry."

The V. A. D. bowed with the slight reserve characteristic of her, and took Paula's hand.

"I, too, am pleased," she said, "to meet a friend of Captain Dunbar."

Then she added with increased cordiality, "and I'm glad to meet an American in France. I know your matron, and some of the nurses."

"Good!" cried Paula. "Now, then, you'll both of you take lunch with me."

The V. A. D. demurred.

"Of course you will," cried Paula. "Oh, Barry, I'm just ready to die from seeing you again. Come along!" she cried, impulsively, catching the V. A. D. by the arm. "Come along and park your buzzwagon here beside mine."

She ran to her car, sprang in and whirled it into place before the V. A.

D. had hers well started.

Barry waited where they had left him. The sudden appearing of Paula had stirred within him depths of feeling that almost overpowered him. His mind was far away in Athabasca, once more he was seeing the dark pool, the swiftly flowing water, the campfire, and his father bending over it.

His heart was quivering as if a hand had been rudely thrust into a raw wound in it.

The V. A. D. held Paula a few moments beside her car, speaking quickly and earnestly. When they rejoined Barry, Paula's eyes were soft with unshed tears, and her voice was very gentle.

"I know, Barry," she said. "Miss Vincent just told me. Oh, what terrible changes this war brings to us all. We see so many sad things here every day. It's terribly sad for you, Barry."

"Yes, it is sad, Paula, and it is going to be lonely. You have brought back to me that bright day on the Athabasca. But," he added earnestly, "after all, in this war everything personal is so small. Besides, he was so splendid, you know, and the boys told me he played the game up there right to the end. So I'm not going to shame him; at least, I'm trying not to."

But bright as was Barry's smile, Paula caught the quivering of his lips, and turned quickly away from him.

After a moment or two of silence, she cried, with her old impulsiveness, "Now you will both lunch with me. I'm the quartermaster of this outfit, and have a small parlour of my own. We shall have a lovely, cosy time, just Miss Vincent, you and myself together."

"But," replied the V. A. D., "I have just arranged with the matron to lunch with her."

"Oh, rubbish! I'll cut that out, all right. What's the use of being quartermaster if I can't arrange a lunch party to suit myself?"

Still the V. A. D. demurred. With her, breaking an engagement for lunch was a serious affair--was indeed taking a liberty which no English girl would think of doing.

"Oh, that's nonsense!" cried Paula. "I'll make it perfectly all right.

Look here," she cried, wheeling upon the V. A. D., "you Britishers are so terribly correct. I'll show you a little shirtsleeve diplomacy.

Besides, if you don't come in on this you can have the matron, and I'll take Barry," she said with a threatening smile. "Watch me!" she added, as she ran away.

"What a splendid girl!" said the V. A. D. "And that captivating American way she has. Perfectly ripping, I call it. I do hope we shall be friends."

In a short time Paula came rushing back into the room, announcing triumphantly that arrangements had been made according to her programme, with the matron in hearty accord.

"And she sends her love," she said to the V. A. D. "She would not have you on any account miss this party. She is desperately grieved that she cannot accept my invitation to join us. Of course, I knew the old dear couldn't. And we are to meet her afterwards."

The little lunch party was, on the whole, a success. To the conversation Paula contributed the larger part, Barry doing his best to second her.

But in spite of his heroic efforts, his mind would escape him, far away to the sunny Athabasca plains, and the gleaming river and the smooth slipping canoe, and then with swift transition to the little British plot in the cemetery at Boulogne.

At such times, Paula, reading his face, would momentarily falter in her gay talk, only to begin again with renewed vivacity. On one topic, however, she had no difficulty in holding Barry's attention. It was when she told of the organising and despatching of the American Red Cross units to France, and more especially of her own unit, organised and financed by her father.

"I am awfully sorry he is not here to-day. He would have loved to have seen you again, Barry."

"And I to have seen him," said Barry. "He is a big man, and it is fine of him to do this thing. It's just like the big, generous-hearted Americans--they are so unstinted in their sympathies, and they back them up for all they are worth."

"And how efficient they are," added the V. A. D. in warm admiration.

"This hospital, you know," turning to Barry, "is perfectly wonderful.

Its equipment! Its appliances! I have often heard our O. C. speak in the most rapturous envy of the Etaples American Red Cross unit."

"And why should not it be?" cried Paula. "It's a question of money after all. We are not at war. We put in a few little hospitals here in France.

We have more money thrown at us than we can use. And you talk about efficiency," she added, turning to the V. A. D. "Good Lord! My pater has just come back from London, where he was rubbering around with lords and dukes and things in a disgustingly un-American way I told him, and now he raves from morning until night over the efficiency of the British.

He's been allowed to see some of their munition works, you know. I simply had to declaim the American Declaration of Independence to him three times a day to revive his drooping Democratic sentiments, and I had to sew Old Glory on to his pajamas so that he might dream proper American dreams. No, to tell you the truth," here Paula's voice took a deeper note, "every last American of us here in France is hot with humiliation and rage at his country's attitude,--monkeying with those baby-killing, woman-raping devils."

As she ended, her voice shook with passion, her cheeks were pale, and in her eyes shone two bright tears. Impulsively the V. A. D. rose from her place, ran around to Paula, and putting her arm around her neck, said:

"Oh, I do thank you, and I love you for your words," while Barry stood at attention, as if in the presence of his superior officer. "I salute you," he said with grave earnestness. "You worthily represent your brave and generous people."

"Oh, darn it all!" cried Paula, brushing away her tears. "I'm a fool, but you don't know how we Americans feel--real Americans, I mean, not the yellow hyphenated breed."

After lunch, Barry went to look up his chief, the assistant director of chaplain service, while Paula took charge of the V. A. D., saying:

"Run away, Barry, and see your Brass Hat. I'll show Miss Vincent how a quartermaster's department of a real hospital should be run."

His hour with the A. D. C. S. was a most stimulating experience for Barry. He found himself at once in touch with not an official thinking in terms of military regulations and etiquette, but a soldier and a man.

For the A. D. C. S. was both. Through all the terrible days at Ypres, where the Canadians, in that welter of gas and fire and blood, had won their imperishable fame as fighting men, he had been with them, sharing their dangers and ministering to their wants with his brother officers of the fighting line. Physically an unimpressive figure, small and slight, yet he seemed charged with concentrated energy waiting release.

As Barry listened to his words coming forth in snappy, jerking phrases, he was fascinated by the bulldog jaw and piercing eyes of the little man. In brief, comprehensive, vigorous sentences, he set forth his ideals for the chaplain service in the Canadian army.

"Three things," he said, "I tell my men, should mark the Canadian chaplain service. The first, Unity--unity among themselves, unity with the other departments of the army. Two words describe our chaplains--Christian and Canadians. I am an Anglican myself, but on this side of the channel there are no Anglican, no Presbyterian, no Methodist chaplains, only Christian and Canadian chaplains. I have had to fight for this with high officials both in the army and in the church. I have won out, and while I'm here this will be maintained. The second thing is Spirituality. The Chaplain must be a Christian man, living in touch with the Divine--alive toward God. Third, Humanity. He must be 'touched with the feeling of our infirmity,' sharing the experiences of the men, getting to know their feelings, their fears, their loneliness, their misery, their anxieties, and God knows they have their anxieties for themselves and for their folks at home."

As Barry listened, he heard again his father's voice. "They need you.

They are afraid. They are lonely. They need God."

"And remember," said the A. D. C. S., as he rose to close the interview, "that I am at your back. If you have any difficulty, let me know. If you are wrong, I promise to tell you. If you are right, I'll back you up.

Now, let us go and look over the hospital. There are some of our fellows there. If you feel like saying anything in the convalescent ward, all right, but don't let it worry you."

As they went through the wards, Barry could not but notice how the faces of the patients brightened as his chief approached, and how their eyes followed him after he had passed.

They moved slowly through those long corridors, sanctified by the sufferings and griefs and hidden tears of homesick and homelonging men, to many of whom it seemed that the best of life was past.

When they had gone the length of the convalescent ward, the A. D. C.

S. turned and, after getting permission of the medical superintendent, briefly introduced Barry to the wounded men, as "a man from the wild and woolly Canadian west, on his way up the line, and therefore competent to tell us about the war, and especially when it will end."

Beside them stood a piano, and on it lay a violin in its open case.

Barry took up the violin, fingered its strings in an absent-minded way, and said:

"I don't know anything about the war, men, but I do know when it will end, and that is when we lick those Huns good and plenty, as our American friends would say," bowing to the doctor at his side. "I'm an awfully poor speaker, boys," he continued in a confidential tone, "but I can make this thing talk a bit."