I hope, too, that you'll go through this war without getting killed, although the chances are three or four to one against it, and go back home and win her." John smiled once more and was silent, but when Carstairs held out his hand he could not keep from shaking it.

Then Paris, the modest house beyond the Seine, and the girl within it, floated away like an illusion, driven from thought in an instant by a giant shell that struck within a few hundred yards of them, exploding with a terrible crash and filling the air with deadly bits of flying shell.
There was such a whistling in his ears that John thought at first he had been hit, but when he shook himself a little he found he was unhurt, and his heart resumed its normal beat.

Other shells coming out of space began to strike, but none so near, and the Strangers went calmly on.

On their right was a Paris regiment made up mostly of short, but thick-chested men, all very dark.

Its numbers were only one-third what they had been a week before, and its colonel was Pierre Louis Bougainville, late Apache, late of the Butte Montmartre.