"There is a short cut across that meadow," said the young girl, raising a rounded, sun-tinted arm, bare to the shoulder."You are very kind," said I, looking at her steadily."And, after that, you will come to a thicket of white birches.""Thank you, mademoiselle.""And after that," she said, idly following with her blue eyes the contour of her own lovely arm, "you must turn to the left, and there you will cross a hill. You can see it from where we stand-"She glanced at me over her outstretched arm. "You are not listening," she said.I shifted a troubled gaze to the meadow which stretched out all glittering with moist grasses and tufts of rain-drenched wild flowers.The girl's arm slowly fell to her side, she looked up at me again, I felt her eyes on me for a moment, then she turned her head toward the meadow.A deadened report shook the summer air-the sound of a cannon fired very far away, perhaps on the citadel of Strasbourg. It was so distant, so indistinct, that here in this peaceful country it lingered only as a vibration; the humming of the clover bees was louder.Without turning my head I said: "It is difficult to 22 believe that there is war anywhere in the world-is it not, mademoiselle?""Not if one knows the world," she said, indifferently."Do you know it, my child?""Sufficiently," she said.She had opened again the book which she had been reading when I first noticed her. From my saddle I saw that it was Molière. I examined her, in detail, from the tips of her small wooden shoes to the scarlet velvet-banded skirt, then slowly upward, noting the laced bodice of velvet, the bright hair under the butterfly coiffe of Alsace, the delicate outline of nose and brow and throat. The ensemble was theatrical."Why do you tend turkeys?" I asked."Because it pleases me," she replied, raising her eyebrows in faint displeasure."For that same reason you read Monsieur Molière?" I suggested."Doubtless, monsieur."