Toward noon a mounted gendarme, who seemed to know him personally, shouted, as he rode by, that his class had been called. The little glazier nodded, smeared the last strip of putty under the last window pane to be replaced, climbed down from the sill, lifted his hat to the three people on the wall—possibly including Ariadne in his politeness—and trotted away across the fields to tie up a few possessions in a large red handkerchief, and then trot away toward Chalons, where France needed even the humblest and most obscure of the children she had nourished through many years for such an hour as was sounding now.
Philippa, looking after him, was unconsciously stirred to express her thoughts aloud:
"There must be _something_ I can do," she said.
"You have been among the very first to do something," rejoined Warner.
"Oh, _that_? That was nothing." She pursed up her lips and stared absently at the troops across the Récollette. "I can knit socks, of course.... I don’t know what else to do.... If anybody wants me I am here."
"_Mon ami_, Warner——" She gave him a swift, adorable smile and laid her hand lightly on his arm for an instant.
Such candid gratitude for friendship he had never read in any eyes before; the quick response of this friendless girl touched him sharply.
"Of course I want you," he repeated. "Never forget, Philippa, that where I am you are welcome—not tolerated—_wanted_!"
She continued to knit, looking down steadily. Halkett lowered his field glasses and glanced at her, then with an odd look at Warner leveled the glasses again and resumed his study of the distant column.
After a few minutes’ silence the girl raised her eyes, and Warner caught the glint of unshed tears in them.
"It is only happiness," she said in a low voice. "I am not accustomed to it."
He did not know what to say, for the grey eyes were stirring him very deeply, and her attitude and their new relationship touched him and confused him, too.
The responsibility which he had assumed so impulsively, so lightly yet warmly, began to wear a more serious aspect to him.
Every few moments some new vein of purest metal was unconsciously revealed in her by her own transparent honesty. He began to understand that she had not only right instincts, but that her mind was right, in spite of what she had been since released from school—that her intelligence was of a healthy order, that she thought right, and that, untaught or taught otherwise, her conclusions were as direct and sane as a child’s.