"A rich lady who can afford it. The richest family in Charleville. She has turned _méchante_. She will abuse me when she comes here to see this--as though _I_ could have saved it. Her husband and her son were killed. Georges et Phillippe. Georges was killed the first day of the war, and Phillippe ... I don't know when, but somewhere near here."
"Sometimes I think it. She has such a sense of property. But her daughter writes that it would kill her to come. Phillippe was the sun ... was the good God to her."
"I must go back to my work," said the lieutenant. "Can you be happy here in this empty house? There will be rats...."
"I can be very happy--and so grateful. I will move my things across to-day. My companions ... that is to say six more of us arrive in convoy from Chantilly to-morrow."
"Six more! Had you told me that before ... But what more simple! I can put them all in here. There is room for twenty."
"Oh...." Her face fell, and she stood aghast. "And you gave me this house for myself. And I was so happy!"
"You are terrible. If my business was to lodge soldiers of your sex every day I should be grey-haired. You cannot lodge with an owl, you cannot lodge with your compatriots!..."
"Yet you were joking when you said you would put us all here?"
"I was joking. Take the house--the rats and the rubbish included with it! No one will disturb you till the owner comes. I have another, a better, a cleaner house in my mind for your companions. Now, good-bye, I must go back to my work. Will you ask me to tea one day?"
"I promise. The moment I have one sitting-room ready."
He left her, and she explored the upper storey with the _concierge._
"I should have this for your bedroom and this adjoining for your sitting-room. The windows look in the street and you can see life." Fanny agreed. It pleased her better to look in the street than into the garden. The two rooms were large and square. Old blue curtains of brocade still hung from the windows; in the inner room was a vast oak bed and a turkey carpet of soft red and blue. The fireplaces were of open brick and suitable for logs. Both rooms were bare of any other furniture.
"I will find you the mattress to match that bed. I hid it; it is in the house opposite."