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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..d7b82bc --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,4 @@ +*.txt text eol=lf +*.htm text eol=lf +*.html text eol=lf +*.md text eol=lf diff --git a/LICENSE.txt b/LICENSE.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6312041 --- /dev/null +++ b/LICENSE.txt @@ -0,0 +1,11 @@ +This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements, +metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be +in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES. + +Procedures for determining public domain status are described in +the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org. + +No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in +jurisdictions other than the United States. Anyone seeking to utilize +this eBook outside of the United States should confirm copyright +status under the laws that apply to them. diff --git a/README.md b/README.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..66e5f70 --- /dev/null +++ b/README.md @@ -0,0 +1,2 @@ +Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for +eBook #57884 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/57884) diff --git a/old/57884-0.txt b/old/57884-0.txt deleted file mode 100644 index 214a6b1..0000000 --- a/old/57884-0.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,14187 +0,0 @@ -The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Little Moment of Happiness, by -Clarence Budington Kelland - -This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most -other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions -whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of -the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at -www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you'll have -to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. - -Title: The Little Moment of Happiness - -Author: Clarence Budington Kelland - -Release Date: September 10, 2018 [EBook #57884] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: UTF-8 - -*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LITTLE MOMENT OF HAPPINESS *** - - - - -Produced by Roger Frank and the Online Distributed -Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was -produced from images generously made available by The -Internet Archive) - - - - - - - THE LITTLE MOMENT OF HAPPINESS - ------------------------------------------------------------------------- - -[Illustration: Kendall regarded her. She was a little thing with clear -eyes and a rather pretty face.] - ------------------------------------------------------------------------- - - - THE LITTLE MOMENT OF HAPPINESS - - By - CLARENCE BUDINGTON KELLAND - - Author of - “_The Source_,” “_The Hidden Spring_,” “_Sudden Jim_,” - “_The Highflyers_,” _etc._ - - FRONTISPIECE - - A. L. BURT COMPANY - Publishers New York - Published by arrangement with Harper & Brothers - ------------------------------------------------------------------------- - - THE LITTLE MOMENT OF HAPPINESS - - - - - CHAPTER I - - -Those low-lying hills were France! - -They had not lifted into view suddenly, but had rather emerged from the -east, solidifying slowly out of a slate-colored blur which to the eyes -of unaccustomed voyagers might or might not have been land. There was no -ebullition of spirits. The two thousand men and women aboard the vessel -crowded to the rail and strained their eyes toward that land in which -great events awaited them, for the most part in utter silence. -Conversation failed. There was an impressiveness about the moment akin -to the impressiveness of entering some great cathedral—there was awe!... -There, rising out of the east was France!... _France_! - -The sentiment that stirred them was more profound than a thrill. The day -had held its thrill for them—a thrill that for many of them had followed -a sleepless night. Those who had slept had done so fully clothed, with -life-jackets within instant touch of the hand. For the kindly ocean had -been made dangerous, not by the elements, which throughout the voyage -had held themselves in restraint, but by men. It had been a morning of -mists which lay upon the placid waters and glowed in response to the -touch of the rising sun. Then, as the luminous grayness dissipated, -there came into view far off to the northward, a spot which grew and -approached until it became a grim and business-like French destroyer to -be greeted with cheers of relief. It was the convoy. There was a thrill. -It spelled safety—that little boat with ready guns—but it spoke of -danger as well. The early passengers who watched the approach of the -little vessel of war warmed with affection toward it. It was their -guardian, come out of nothingness to protect them through the remaining -perilous miles of ocean. - -In the cabin a little party of women had remained through the night, -fearful of the unseen, impressed by the perils which might hide beneath -the dark waters which the bow of the vessel turned up into wonderful -patterns of phosphorescence. They had grouped together to draw what -comfort they could from companionship. Now they emerged on deck -relieved, almost jubilant, until one of their number said, suddenly, “I -am told it is the last ten miles which is most dangerous.” - -The destroyer ran alongside, and a sailor with two little flags waved a -long message to the bridge; then she dropped back astern, and with her -passed that thrill which had stirred the ship’s company. - -No, it was no thrill that moved the passengers on the vessel as the -hills of France arose before them; the emotion was more profound, more -impressive. To many of them it was the first sight of a foreign shore, -but, more than that, it was their first sight of France—of that France -which by the greatness of her spirit during three years of peril, of -suffering, of horrors, had become not a country, but a _symbol_. - -For the most part the passengers were in uniform. In these days there -were no tourists, none who traveled abroad for amusement or recreation -or to accomplish that object so dear to Americans—to improve the mind. -These voyagers went as servants, to take their part, great or small, in -that war which America had come to see at last was _her_ war. - -There were many young officers among the first-class passengers, boyish -lieutenants proud of unaccustomed uniforms, a little set up because they -were not as other men; but all eager to be at their grim work. In a -month their swanking would be a thing of the past, for they would have -encountered reality, and out of the reality they would emerge as men. -There was a captain or so, themselves boyish; there were Red Cross men -who, before assuming their uniforms, had been lawyers, merchants, -brokers. Older men there were, wearing well-tailored uniforms and -carrying themselves with assurance. There was a considerable company of -Y. M. C. A. workers, on their way to do what came to hand. They were not -certain yet what it was to be, but they would learn. Their uniforms were -not so well tailored, their puttees were not of expensive leather like -those of the officers and Red Cross men. As one reviewed them he saw -that all but a few were not members of the _executive_ class, but -workers. They were coming to drive trucks, to sell meager supplies over -the makeshift counters of huts and canteens, to serve the soldier in -such ways as offered. - -And there were women—Red Cross women, Y. M. C. A. women, a few musicians -and entertainers come to lighten the tedium of the boys in khaki. There -were a few civilians, French people, returning from America for purposes -important only to them. And there was a sprinkling of French officers, -among them a boyish hero much followed by women’s eyes because he was a -handsome boy made more handsome by the splendor of his uniform—trousers -of red, long coat of black, and most of all, perhaps, by the cluster of -medals upon his breast. He was only a youth, but he was France’s most -famous aviator. - -There were third-class passengers. Forward were six hundred Poles in -vivid red coats, recruited in the United States and Canada for the -Polish Legion, going to fight for their country, which could only be a -member of the family of nations if the Allies succeeded in crushing the -enemy. Aft there were six hundred American boys—machine-gun men and a -signal-corps unit. - -All of them—officers, men, women—knew that those hills concealed -something, something tremendous. Resident in each individual was a -consciousness that beyond there lay a new world, but how new and how -different none was capable of realizing. The old life, the old ways, the -accustomed rules of the game of life, had been left behind and few had -the vision to perceive that they were left behind forever, that nothing -could again be as it had been, and that they were standing poised for a -step through a doorway which led into a new era. - -They were about to find contact with another civilization, with another -philosophy, another method of life. It was not alone that they were to -be set down in an alien land, amid a people speaking a tongue which was -meaningless to them, and living their lives according to a manner which -seemed good to them—and which _was_ good to them and to all who saw it -with clear eyes and open mind—but because they were about to become a -part of events through which no soul can pass without being so modified -and molded as to emerge a different soul, detached, unrelated, cut off -by experience and knowledge from the soul that had been. - -Behind those low-lying hills lay France.... What was France? It was, for -every man and woman aboard that vessel, the great adventure of the soul. -Just that. Each one of them was to be born again. With the touch of the -soil of France beneath their feet would come a new birth, the entrance -into a new life in which each would find much to wonder at, much to -admire, much to puzzle over.... But they would find _themselves_. -Moreover they would find a world which had resolved itself into -genuineness, a world which was true, because war had stripped it of -pretense. - -The American soul is a peculiar affair. It is circumscribed by -environment, by inherited prejudices. It is, for the most part, -incapable of comprehending itself, much less the soul of another people -of another temperament and genius, ripened by plenitude of years and by -a hundred generations of genius which has studied the art of living. The -American soul is a living thing imprisoned in a cage of concealments. It -was to come into intimate contact with a people who do not believe in -imprisoning the soul, who have sought for and discovered the essentials, -and have cut away—perhaps have never found the necessity for cutting -away—the shame, the self-deceptions, the glossings-over, the -self-imposed blind spots, which make us what we are. The American soul -recognizes food and admits it to thought’s decent society, but it -declines to recognize the existence of processes of digestion. The -French soul knows that food must be digested as well as eaten. To the -French soul digestion is respectable. - -So the American soul was to meet the French soul—a meeting of the poles. -From such a meeting must result something worth while to the world.... - -From that day, the 18th of May, A.D. 1918, those men and women would -calculate the events of their lives. It was the beginning of a new -dispensation. As the world dates events as A.D. or B.C., so these -Americans would date their events as, “Before I landed in France,” or, -“After I landed in France.” - -It was from the port side of the vessel that the best view of the now -distinct land was to be obtained, and the rail was crowded from end to -end of the long deck with men and women who looked and looked as if land -were a new and tremendous curiosity, a something which they had never -seen before and might miss altogether if their attention wavered for an -instant. Tea and wafers had just been served by the deck stewards. Well -forward stood a young man with the bars of a captain on his shoulders; -he stood back from the rail, alone, looking over the heads of the other -passengers, as his height made it practicable for him to do. He held in -his right hand a cup of tea and was eating one of a handful of square -wafers. Not as a man eats who is dallying with the quaint foreign custom -of afternoon tea did he bear himself, but as a young man who is honestly -hungry. He addressed himself to those biscuits and washed them down with -tea because it had been long hours since the midday meal and because his -big young body was demanding food. - -In his uniform he presented a figure to admire, as did most of the young -officers aboard. His back was broad, his legs straight, and, though not -bulky, gave one the impression that he was graciously and strongly made. -One may read much from a man’s legs. More especially is this so in -uniform and leather puttees. Indications of character are resident in a -calf, but more especially in knees and ankles. These things are -concealed by the trousers of civilian life. Some day an astute judge of -character will write a monograph on masculine legs and revolutionize the -appraisal of men. The captain’s legs were a credit to the United States, -the army, and himself. - -He was not handsome, nor was his face delicate with overmuch -intellectual labor. If you had met him in a crowd you would have said -immediately that here was a young man who could play a bully game of -football. That was the impression his features gave—of ability to play a -rough game splendidly. It was not the face of a pugilist nor of a -society man. It was the face of an average young American of the class -which goes to college, acquires enough education to make him easy in the -presence of gentlemen, and upon which to base a greater success in life -than had been possible to his father who came before him. When you -looked at him you thought in physical terms before you considered his -possible mentality. There was nothing dull about him; there were -indications of a reasonable amount of good nature, and some intolerance, -and much of boyishness. His attention was equally divided between France -and biscuits. - -A young woman just in front of him turned and looked up at him. “Here -comes something,” she said, pointing. - -“Dirigible,” he replied, following the direction of her finger. - -The dirigible buzzed out to the vessel, looked it over, and evidently -with satisfied mind turned and hurried away toward shore again.... - -“There’s a convoy or something,” said the young woman. - -The captain was interested. “Probably coastwise ships coming down from -England. Six of them, aren’t there?... And see all those other little -boats in there. Must be close to the harbor.” - -“We’re slowing down.... See, there’s that little boat like a tug with a -cannon up in front. It’s signaling us.” - -“Pilot, probably.” - -The vessel lost headway and everybody watched the pilot come aboard as -if it were some strange phenomenon—as it was to all but a few. - -“I wonder if we’ll be allowed to cable home that we have arrived?... -What do you think, Captain Ware?” - -“Haven’t the least idea in the world. Don’t see why not, though, Miss -Knox.... War Department ’tends to it for us.” - -“My people will be terribly worried until they hear I am safe, and then -they’ll keep on being worried until I’m back in New York again.... I’m -going to sit down. Come on.” - -Maude Knox’s tone approached the proprietary, not that she had asserted -any permanent claim to Captain Ware, but only those property rights _in -transitu_ which arise even in war-time aboard a transatlantic liner. She -had promenaded with him, had played bridge with him, and had sat out on -deck—the lightless decks—with him as other young men and women aboard -ship had embarked on friendly alliances for the voyage. These two had -talked, or rather Miss Knox had talked and Captain Ware had listened, -and rather liked each other—that was all. There had been nothing -sentimental in their relations, even under the moon and in the not -unromantic precautionary darkness enforced by the peril of the -submarine. They were recognized by the passengers as having paired off, -just as a dozen other young couples were similarly indulgently -recognized. It was youth making the best of its every moment. That was -all. - -“I simply can’t imagine what it is going to be like—living over here,” -she said. “It must have been terribly interesting for an American to -live in France before the war—but now, with all the effects of war to -see, it will be like living in a thrilling book, don’t you think?” - -Ware had thought of France mostly in terms of war, of ruined villages, -lines of trenches, strategic positions. The romance of going to war in -France had not missed him; he felt it, but he felt it with a vagueness, -an ignorance of what he was to find, and a chaotic conception of the -French people that, perhaps, but made the adventure the more romantic to -him. He was aware that something great, something that was going to -interest him as he had never been interested before, was about to happen -to him. But what it would be like he could not picture, did not try to -picture. He knew he wanted to see Paris, because he had heard tales of -Paris. Most of them he was inclined to discount, but enough remained to -make him feel that the city was well worth his investigation. That is as -far as he had thought of civilian France.... What his thoughts and -sensations were, now that he was nearing those shores, he was unable to -put into words, and if he had been able the natural reticence of the -young man afraid of appearing sentimental would have caused him to -remain silent. Not so Maude Knox. - -Maude was the daughter of a professor of philosophy in a Mid-Western -university. From her babyhood she was accustomed to the dissection of -souls. She had seen her own soul on her father’s mental operating-table, -and, somehow, the reserves which are inherent in the common run of girls -seemed to be what she called _piffle_. She had grown up with her father -and a housekeeper, and theories and philosophies and iconoclasms had -been the commonplace staple of her mental diet. A great many of them, -too, she catalogued in her small head as piffle. On the whole, she was a -bit _queer_, or so her girl friends said, but by no means unwomanly or -otherwise than girlish. She had a way of liking to look facts in the -face, and of discussing them critically. That made her queer. She liked -to talk about things, and inquire into things, and was fairly capable of -analysis. She fancied she knew a great deal about life and the -complexities of human conduct—because she had heard them discussed and -had discussed them herself. Actually she was an exceedingly unworldly -young person, with more than the usual amount of tolerance for the -peculiarities of other folks.... She was rather small, with hair that -crinkled close to her head and which no amount of breeze seemed ever to -disarrange; her eyes, when she laughed, closed to twinkling slits, and -tiny wrinkles ran out from their corners in a droll sort of way; her -cheek-bones were high, and her cheeks not at all rounded. She was -pretty, but she was also undoubtedly _chic_ and agreeable-looking.... -She wore a leather coat, and when she walked she thrust her hands into -the side pockets and strode with a swing of the shoulders from side to -side that was almost a boyish swagger. One might have been excused for -concluding that she had only recently emerged from tomboyhood. She had a -certain confidence of bearing that was at once attractive and a -safeguard. There was something about her which seemed to say to young -men who looked at her with interest, “No nonsense here.” - -There are girls who are advertised by their appearance as amenable to -shaded porches, moonlit nights, and sentimental interludes. Maude Knox -was not one of these. Yet she did not impress one as being exempt from -emotions and sensations; she gave no warning that one must expect no -warmth. It was rather that emotions, sensations, warmth were there, but -surely controlled, not to be manifested lightly or frivolously. Somehow -it was easier to think of her as a wife than as a sweetheart.... - -Ware was thinking how his father would enjoy all this, the arrival in a -strange land, the sights, the anticipation of events to come. His mother -would not have enjoyed it. There was too much bustle and confusion for -her, too much to upset the nerves. In all likelihood she would be -confined to her cabin with one of those nervous headaches.... But his -father—his father was one of those men who never grow beyond their -enthusiasms nor beyond naïve manifestations of their enthusiasms. - -“Yes,” he said, in answer to Miss Knox, “the folks will worry, of -course.... Dad won’t worry so much, but mother’ll be in a stew. She’s -usually in a stew.” - -“I had a _time_ to get father to let me come. He said a war was no place -for a young lady.... But this seems to be a different kind of a war, -doesn’t it. Women are going to it.” - -“I can understand nurses....” he said, hesitatingly. - -“But not the rest of us. That’s because you’re old-fashioned and -Middle-Western.... The army wouldn’t let us come if we weren’t useful.” - -“What, exactly, are you going to do?” - -“Why, ... _something_—something _useful_.” - -“There’s that girl that plays the harp, and a choir-singer, and a couple -of actresses. I can understand them more or less, but you ... I really -don’t. You’re not a stenographer, nor anything like that, nor an -entertainer, nor a nurse, nor an ambulance-driver.” - -“Maybe I’ll be a chaperon,” she said, taking refuge in lightness, for -she really did not know what she _was_ going to do. She was classified -as a canteen worker. Her uniform was that of the Y. M. C. A., and she -had remarked with feeling that the hat was already beginning to fade.... - -“I presume you know as much about it as any of us do.... I wish you -could hear dad on the war and on Germany. He reads the papers to the -last punctuation mark, but, somehow, he never seems to grasp it. -Possibly most folks are that way, but father always says what he thinks, -and goes ahead pronouncing the names of French towns, and has opinions -about everything. He gets excited and pounds on the table.... Dad’s all -right. We’ve always done things together since I was a kid. He’s that -kind.” - -She was able to see that a very real affection for his father was stated -in those phrases. She wondered about the father—if he resembled his son -in appearance or character.... He did not. The father was a middle-sized -man of no education except what an undirected reading of many books had -given him. He was a great reader of novels, especially of historical -romances, and his knowledge of the past of the nations came from these. - -His idea of France was Athos, Porthos Aramis, and d’Artagnan, with -Miladi and a few cardinals and intriguing duchesses thrown in.... He -owned a grocery in Detroit which did moderately well. His soul was -filled with admiration and love for his son. He had a temper given to -sudden, brief flashes ... and he had no bad habits except that he chewed -tobacco surreptitiously. People liked him, especially children. He was -good personally, but had no vindictive attitude toward evil. Every -Sunday he went to church without complaint and without thought of it; -though he would have enjoyed himself much more in a boat with a -fish-line. When Captain Ware was younger and got into difficulties which -his mother magnified into crimes and wept and foresaw disgrace, Mr. Ware -would say, “Now don’t you worry, mother; that boy’s coming out all -right....” - -“Mother’s more worried about my coming to wicked France than about my -being shot up,” he said, presently, and smiled. - -His mother was the dominant member of the family. She was the last word -in orthodoxy and was stubbornly dogmatic. She was religious after the -manner of a zealot, but in her life economy took place just before -religion. One had to save money and be economical to enter the kingdom -of heaven; she could even overlook a few moral lapses in an individual -who was frugal and laid by systematically for a rainy day.... All his -life Captain Ware had been afraid of pulling down on his head what he -privately called his mother’s “tantrums.” These were hysterical -outbursts following some escapade of his, or possibly following a mere -argument in which economy or religion was mentioned. She could cast -stinging darts with her tongue, and when she was opposed, it did not -much matter where, she was reckless in dispensing them. Anybody who -stood near was likely to be wounded. - -But she loved her son savagely and jealously, and lived her life and -practised her economies for him. Anything which appertained to the -perpetuation of the species was somehow abhorrent to her. Here, as -everywhere, she was an extremist. Before her son was ten years old she -was already in a state of mind, and embarrassed him so that he exerted -himself to avoid being alone with her, by questioning him and by very -frank warnings.... At ten she gave him a book to read entitled _Plain -Facts_. She worked as she thought, frantically, without sparing herself -or anybody else ... and the result was that she was burning herself -out.... She was a remarkable woman, sometimes a lovable and -companionable woman, but so intense, so intolerant of any belief which -did not agree perfectly with hers, that people always felt the necessity -of being on their guard with her so as not to “set her off.” - -It was from these parents that Captain Ware inherited, and he was like -neither of them.... But traces of both were easy to find in him. When -one looks for explanations of his acts, one would do well to study his -parents and to see if his acts did not spring from inherited -characteristics and tendencies, or were not the result of a revulsion -against parental characteristics which had irked him as a boy. - -Now, for the first time in his life—and he was twenty-six years old—he -was cutting loose from family contacts, and cutting loose in this total -and revolutionary manner. His first adventure in freedom was into a new -world which would not understand him and which he was not equipped to -understand himself.... He had always lived at home, except for his four -years in college, and his mother’s figure had been always present, for -she had made it her business to keep it ever present.... In a few hours -he would set his foot on the soil of France.... With one sudden wrench, -war had snatched him from an environment dominated by his mother—and set -him down in France. - -“I wonder if we’ll get ashore to-night,” said Miss Knox. - -That question presently answered itself. After a short progress up the -river, the vessel dropped her anchor, there to remain until morning.... -That night Captain Ware sat late on deck with Maude Knox, watching the -strange river thick with anchored craft which busied themselves by -sending flashing signals to each other—mysterious signals that seemed to -say: “You have arrived at the war. We are busy about the war....” - -The Polish volunteers forward sang the weird songs of their land; the -Americans aft manifested their relief at a safe arrival by wildly -cheered boxing-bouts followed by enthusiastic, if somewhat ragged, -singing of many popular songs.... There was a preference for that -sentimental type of song which had to do with weeping sweethearts left -standing on the pier, and with mothers dedicating their boys to death -for the flag.... - -In the morning came the distress of customs examination and the woes of -finding and identifying baggage. Ware assisted Miss Knox as other young -officers were assisting their partners of the voyage.... The vessel tied -up to the dock. Miss Knox shook hands and said good-by, marching down -the steep incline of the gangplank with the members of her party. - -“I wonder if I’ll ever see him again?” she thought. - -As for Captain Ware, the girl passed completely from his mind. He had -other things to think about and a great curiosity to satisfy.... So far -as he was concerned, she had passed out of his life. - -He stood at the rail, looking down upon the wharf. Below him an American -soldier thrust his head out of a port-hole, looked about him sternly, -and then demanded of a Frenchman below, “Say, mister, where’s all this -trouble, anyhow?” - -His attitude was typical of those boys. There was trouble some place and -they wanted to get to it and settle it with promptness. It was the -attitude of a policeman a little late at the scene of a fight.... - -Kendall Ware arrived in Paris early on the evening of May 19th and -alighted from the crowded train in the Gare d’Orléans. He was excited. -It was impossible that he should actually be in Paris, but he was -unmistakably there. It rather astounded him and he wanted to rush out of -the gray old station to see it at once.... To arrive in Paris was a -fitting climax for such a day as he was completing, a day that had given -him his first glimpses of beautiful France, glimpses from a rapidly -moving train that had caused him to say to himself, “It’s no wonder the -French will fight for such a country.” Already he was impressed by -France; already admiration for it was beginning to grow within him.... -That beautiful, smiling, rich, clean expanse of hills and fields and -vineyards, punctuated by little red-tiled villages and by ancient -sprawling stone farm buildings, had touched the sentimental in him. He -thought he understood why Frenchmen love their land ... but he had not -scratched the outer husk of that reason yet. It would require weeks for -him to discover that it was not the material, not land nor soil nor the -structures reared by men, that caused the Frenchman’s passionate love; -it was, he would discover, the imponderables, the immaterial—it was the -soul that resided in the material.... - -He climbed the stairs from the train-shed into the station proper, and -paused a moment to regard with boyish interest the crowd composed of -women and soldiers, of _poilus_ carrying full equipment—sturdy little -men whose age seemed greater than it was by reason of four years given -to such affairs as Verdun, the Marne, the battles in the Champagne. -These men had been in it. They had heard cannon roar with deadly intent; -they had taken part in charges and in retreats; the trench and the -dugout were more their homes to-day, through years of custom, than their -own farms or cottages.... They were _soldiers_, and they looked to be -soldiers. - -There were uniforms of other nationalities, too: of the British, the -brown and tasseled caps of the Belgians, the gray and peaked caps of the -Italians—and the khaki of Americans. There was a boy with an arm-band -bearing the letters M P, with which he was to become very familiar—the -everywhere present and remarkably efficient military police of the -American Army.... - -Presently he was in the dark street. The darkness came as a surprise to -him until he recalled that Paris nights slept under the constant threat -of German _Gothas_. The street lights—casting a dim-blue glow—were -shaded above so that no light might rise to tell hostile raiders that a -great city lay here.... Strain his eyes as he would, he could not see -Paris, only a vague hint of buildings that might be palaces or -warehouses, for all that he could see.... He looked for a taxicab. - -Then it occurred to him that when he found a conveyance he had scant -language with which to direct the chauffeur. He was going to the -University Union, once the Palais Royal Hôtel, now taken over by -American universities and colleges as both club and hotel for American -university men in the army.... A tiny taxicab rattled up to the curb—all -Paris taxicabs rattle in this way—and he approached it with some -embarrassment. - -“University Union,” he said to the chauffeur. - -“_Comment?_” - -“U-ni-versity Union,” said Kendall, speaking very slowly and distinctly. - -“_Comment?_” repeated the chauffeur, waggling his head. - -Out of the crowd stepped a Frenchman, smiling. “What is it monsieur -desires? May I be of assistance to monsieur?” - -“I want to go to the University Union, and I don’t know how to tell this -man.” - -“The University Union? I do not know it. Is it that it is an hotel, -monsieur? Do you know its location?” - -Kendall searched for a note-book and read the address. “Number eight rue -Richelieu,” he said. - -“_Huit rue Richelieu_,” the Frenchman said to the chauffeur. - -“Thank you,” Kendall said, and took the hand which the Frenchman -extended cordially. - -“It makes nothing, monsieur. I am delighted to serve _Monsieur -l’Officier Américain.... Bon soir, monsieur! Bonne chance!_” - -Kendall’s heart was warmed by the little courtesy. It was a sort of -welcome to him. It surprised him, rather, for in America one does not -expect assistance to leap to one from a crowd of strangers. He was soon -to learn that it was different in France; that all Paris seemed to be on -the lookout to be of service to American soldiers, on the lookout almost -to the point of embarrassment. He was to discover that the heart of -France had a very special niche set aside for Americans. Even though it -had already a saying, “_Tous les Américaines sont fous_,” it loved them -for their very madness.... - -The little taxi rattled and strained at breath-taking speed around the -corner, across the Pont Royale, under the arches which allow a street to -pass through the Louvre (though he did not know it was the Louvre), past -the Comédie Française, and finally brought up with a lurch before the -building that had been the Palais Royal Hôtel before the coming of the -Americans. - -Here he registered, passed through a lobby filled with American officers -and sergeants and corporals and privates—for in this one spot in all -France military rank ceases to exist and men are not soldiers, but -university men—and up-stairs to the Bureau of the University of -Michigan.... In half an hour he was in a comfortable room with windows -which opened upon a balcony facing toward the east.... He stepped out -upon it and gazed into the darkness. Scarcely a hundred feet away, -across a narrow street, was the dark bulk of a mammoth building, and the -black silhouettes of a multitude of quaint chimney-pots.... It was the -ancient Royal Palace. Kendall did not realize this, nor that his eyes -were gazing at a spot rich in history, in intrigue, in romance—and not -unbaptized with blood.... But one thing he knew—at last he was in the -heart of Paris.... - - - - - CHAPTER II - - -Captain Ware felt singularly young, boyishly exhilarated, as he walked -out early next morning for his first view of Paris. It was not yet eight -o’clock, but the day was beautiful, promising warmth; the skies were -clear; the whole appearance of things one of perfect peace and quiet. -The city did not seem one threatened by war. The streets, as he walked -up the rue de Rivoli, were almost deserted. It was early for Parisians -to be abroad. - -The city astounded him, captivated him, gave him a feeling of humility. -He was familiar with Detroit, had seen Chicago and New York, but -Paris—Paris was different. His experience gave him nothing with which to -compare it. Chicago and New York were unsightly upheavals; the fantastic -work of tremendous industrial forces in irresistible motion. They -reared. Paris did not rear; it reposed; it had not been upheaved -tumultuously—it had been dreamed and dreamed by genius which -comprehended beauty. - -The city affected him almost to breathlessness as it opened before him -when he passed the ancient grayness of the Louvre. He turned to the left -and stood between the wide jaws of the Louvre, the mouth of the Place du -Carrousel, and, standing there, looked westward through the reaches of -the Tuileries and beyond to where, silhouetted with massive grandeur, -uprose Napoleon’s Arc de Triomphe.... It was impossible—incredibly -magnificent. At that instant began the first great change in his life. -He might not consciously have dated it from that instant, and possibly -he never dated it at all, but Paris had set the hand of her beauty upon -him; her spell had touched him with its magic. - -“Why,” he said to himself, “anything could happen here!” And presently, -“The Germans drop bombs on this ... they try to destroy this.” - -For the first time came an appreciation, not yet a full appreciation, -but far more than an inkling, that a great event had overtaken him: he -had left the Middle West behind him; he felt that he was not only about -to see, but to be a part of, a new and wonderful mode of life and of -thought. There came to him a hint that there might be something to life -besides merely living it. Though he did not know the phrase, he felt -something of the meaning it bears—_Joie de vivre_. Later he would, -perhaps, appreciate a remark made to him by a French officer. “It is not -_savoir faire_ that is the great knowledge, it is _savoir vivre_.” It is -not so important to know how to conduct oneself as it is to know how to -make the most of life.... - -He retraced his steps to the rue de Rivoli, stopped to regard the golden -Jeanne d’Arc about which he said to himself that he would have liked it -better if it had been bronze or marble, and that the sculptor had made -Jeanne “huskier” than he had pictured her to himself. That was the word -he used—“huskier.” Somehow he had always conceived Jeanne d’Arc—what -slight conception he had of her—as rather anemic and thin and -fragile.... His conception of Jeanne was like the conception many good -Americans have made for themselves of France. Two millions of them would -soon be on French soil to see for themselves that it was not an anemic, -fragile country, but robust, healthy, capable not only of visions, but -of battles.... - -He walked on to pause again in the Place de la Concorde and to marvel at -such prodigality of open space in the very heart of a great city. He -even tried to calculate to himself the money worth of so many acres in -the retail section of New York, say along Fifth Avenue from -Thirty-fourth Street north and west.... It was a typical American -calculation. Beyond him the Champs Élysées reached on, climbing its -little gradient to the Arc dc Triomphe. It was splendid and beautiful. -It “got under his skin,” as he phrased it. - -He stood there looking off across the river toward the Chamber of -Deputies, over the roof of which could be seen the dome of Napoleon’s -Tomb. Then he turned and surveyed the path he had just traversed, that -reach of low, symmetrical buildings facing the Jardin des Tuileries. He -was not exactly inarticulate, but he was not eloquent. “I’ll be damned,” -he said under his breath. “Well, I’ll be damned.” - -Now he was hungry, and, walking more rapidly, he returned to the -University Union to find the dining-room open and a few American -officers at _petit déjeuner_. For the most part they were eating bread -and confiture and washing it down with chocolate. A few were taking the -American breakfast, actually eating _two eggs_ and other food—a thing to -convince the Parisian that these visitors were indeed mad, or at least -barbarians. - -“Yea, _boy_!” said a loud voice, just as Captain Ware was endeavoring to -give his order to one of the two pretty French girls who were the -waitresses. It was his first sight of the Parisienne, and it had rather -surprised him. They did not wear short skirts and high-heeled slippers, -with more than enough black-stockinged ankle to regard. They had not -saucy eyes and _rétroussé_ noses, nor did they whisk about -flirtatiously. They were pretty, indeed they were charming, but they -were quiet, even subdued, and they looked _nice_. That was a good -American word he could apply to them. He liked their looks, even if they -failed to come up to his ideas of what a French waitress should be. - -He looked up from the pad on which he had been checking off the _petit -déjeuner_, to see facing him across the table, in a captain’s uniform -and Sam Brown belt which made him almost unrecognizable, a man with whom -he had been more than friendly through four years in Ann Arbor. - -“Bert Stanley!” he exclaimed, jumping to his feet and extending his -hand. - -“They all come here,” said Stanley to himself, “all of them—if you just -wait long enough.... When did you land?” - -“Day before yesterday.” - -“And got to Paris so soon? How did you work that?” - -“Ordered.... What are you doing here?” - -“Making marks on pieces of paper. That’s what I got for knowing anything -about architectural engineering. I’m in the Signal Corps and I’m drawing -plans for aeroplane-sheds.... What are you?” He looked down at Kendall’s -collar markings. - -“Intelligence! I’m one of the fellows who find out everything about -everything in the world and tell it to the army for its good.” - -“Stationed here?” - -“Don’t know. Report this morning.” - -“Fix it, son, fix it.... It’s a great _guerre_, and this battle of -Paris—” - -“_Beurre, monsieur?_” asked the waitress. - -“Eh? What’s that?” - -“She wants to know,” explained Stanley, with exaggerated patience, “if -you want butter. It’s extra.” - -Kendall signified his desire for butter. “I’ve just been out looking at -the town,” he said. “The fellows that built it knew what they were -doing, didn’t they?” - -“They knew how to do a lot of things. Staying here, of course.” - -“Didn’t know where else to go. You, too?” - -“Have been a month, but if I’m going to live here for the duration, and -it looks as if I were, I’d like to get somebody and take a little -apartment somewhere.... Over in the Quartier Latin or up on one of the -streets off the Étoile. Have some comfort. Live cheaper, too. Get a cook -for sixty or seventy francs, and be regular people.... Say, if you’re -set down in Paris, come on in with me.” - -“Sounds reasonable,” said Kendall, tentatively. “Haven’t the least idea -what they’ll do with me, though.” - -“Well, you run up and see, and, whatever happens, meet me here at half -past six and I’ll take you to a regular place to eat, and then we’ll go -out and look at the sights.” - -“You’re on,” said Kendall, “bigger than a house.” - -Captain Ware had hoped to be assigned to active duty with a combat unit. -He had studied and trained himself for the duties of an intelligence -officer at the front, and for months had looked forward with enthusiasm -to those interesting and invaluable duties which such an officer -performs. He was not a young man to welcome a desk job or to be -contented with a position in the Safety of the Service of Supplies -region. In that he resembled thousands of other young officers whose -fortune it would never be to hear a cannon fired in battle, to take part -in a charge, or to be nearer to the front than some small town in the -interior of France. None of them had chosen their places. They had been -sent where they were most needed and where their work was essential to -the victories to be won against the enemy.... Captain Ware, like these -others, must perform the task set for him, wherever it might lie—hoping -always for a new assignment that should carry him to the dugout and to -the trench. It was, therefore, with grievous disappointment that he -learned he was to be stationed in Paris, apparently in permanence. He -could still hope, for in the army in France no man can tell what -to-morrow will bring him. Orders come and men go.... Somehow it did not -seem possible to him that he would thus go to war without going to war; -that he should journey across the ocean to this mightiest of all -conflicts without the experience of battle.... - -At half after six he was again at the Union, where he found Bert Stanley -waiting for him in the lounge, whiling away the time very pleasantly in -conversation with charming Annette of the pert face, white teeth, and -busy chatter—a chatter made up in very large part of excellent American -idiom learned from the patrons of the cigar-and-candy case of which she -was custodian. Hundreds of American officers will return to their -country after the war with pleasant memories of wise little Annette, the -little French girl who sold cigarettes and candy and wrist watches and -post-cards at the stand in the Union. - -Kendall ascended to his room in the queer little elevator whose -conductor was a tiny Belgian boy, proud of a few words of American, and -presently walked down the five flights—for in France it is not -considered good manners in war-time to use an elevator for descent—and -rejoined Stanley. - -“Well,” said Stanley, “what luck?” - -“It looks like Paris for mine,” said Kendall, still depressed by his -disappointment. - -“Might be worse.... Might have been Chaumont.” - -They walked north on the rue de Richelieu, past the Molière fountain, -and by the door of Marty’s which Kendall was to know very well later on. -At the rue St.-Marc they turned to the left until the Opéra Comique -uprose before them, and then made their way into the up-stairs -dining-room of the Café Poccardi on rue Favart. - -“It’s early. The crowd doesn’t show up before seven-thirty, so we can -get a table up front where we can see the show,” said Stanley. “Besides, -there’s a waiter there who speaks English.” - -They found seats with their backs toward the windows, a point of vantage -from which they could view the large, mirrored room with its rows of -small, closely set tables. Only a few were occupied, but gradually the -patrons straggled in—a truly Parisian gathering. There were handsome men -in officers’ uniforms with many gold service stripes on the sleeve, and -some with two, three, or even four wound chevrons on the opposite -sleeve. They were accompanied by well-dressed women, mostly young, -always very neat.... It was their shoes that demanded Kendall’s -attention. This was a matter that had been impressing itself upon him -through the day—that the Parisienne knew how to dress her feet. There -were _poilus_ on leave, each with his girl, or even with two girls. -There were one or two old but immaculate men with women young enough to -be their granddaughters. A few women entered alone and seated themselves -quietly at tables to await their partners—perhaps the café was their -place of rendezvous.... Two women, beautifully dressed in black, with -widows’ veils, occupied a table just across from Kendall and his -companion. They were very young, and one was remarkably lovely.... The -sight rather depressed Kendall. This was one of the meanings of war—this -youthful widowhood! Here was the cruelty of it, the bitterness of it! - -“France must be filled with widows,” he said to Stanley. - -Bert grinned. “Camouflage,” he said. - -“What do you mean?” - -“If you’re thinking about our friends opposite, don’t get too -sympathetic. They’re no more widows than I am. Camouflage. It’s the -style. But they’re overdoing it. Everybody’s next, now, even us -Americans. Bait, sonny, bait, that’s what it is.” - -Bert looked over at the widows and smiled, and the lovelier one smiled -in reply, not brazenly, not with the red-lipped, painted-cheeked smile -of the Anglo-Saxon siren, but demurely, pleasantly, as if she were -merely returning his smile out of courtesy and from an abundance of -gentle good nature. - -“See?” said Bert. - -“But they look _nice_.” Again Kendall used that word. - -“They are nice.... This isn’t Terre Haute, son.” - -Everybody was drinking wine, Kendall noticed. It was universal, and as -the meal progressed he spoke about it. - -“Everybody is going to the wine,” he said, “but nobody gets noisy.” - -“Nobody does,” said Bert. “Do we get noisy at home when we drink -coffee?” - -Kendall watched. He saw a man half fill his companion’s glass with red -wine, then pour in as much water as there was wine. This, he saw, was -almost universally done.... Conversation was animated. There was gay -laughter and lightness, but it was not the gaiety of wine. - -At a table well within view sat two _poilus_ with their wives or -sweethearts. Kendall watched them, for it was by far the jolliest, least -restrained party in the room.... And then he saw the larger soldier -throw his arm around the neck of his buxom companion and kiss her -soundly.... It rather shocked him. The idea of demonstrative affection -in, for instance, the dining-room of the McAlpin, or in one of the -better-class cafés of Detroit, was impossible to entertain. He watched -for a waiter to protest, perhaps to eject the couple from the place.... -But there were only tolerant smiles when any notice whatever was taken -of the event.... And it was an event which was repeated—the sound of -hearty smacks coming even to Kendall’s ear.... He saw other men come in, -and before they sat down beside waiting companions they would stoop to -salute with a kiss.... The thing was not universal, not even general, -but there was enough of it for him to become aware that it was not -exceptional.... But for all that, it made him feel embarrassed and -uncomfortable. Apparently, if people had kissing to do they simply did -it.... He was to recognize this later as one manifestation of the frank, -unaffected genuineness of the people. Now it seemed rather gross to him, -gross and exotic. The idea did not occur to him then that it was he with -his American notions and antecedents, with his inheritances from -Plymouth Rock, that was exotic. - -He wondered who all these people were; he wondered if they were -_married_. Were these men and women husbands and wives, or were the -women those mysterious, very French, somewhat exciting persons whom he -had read about in novels and who were called _mistresses_? - -He did not put the question to Stanley because he was afraid of -appearing provincial. He might as well have done so, for in all -probability Stanley, with all of his month’s experience in Paris, was -pondering the same matter.... Anyhow, he felt that he was seeing life; -that he was beholding things which he could tell about later to -interested audiences.... It is a peculiarity of the Anglo-Saxon mind -that everything which is strange to it appears to it as necessarily -tinged with naughtiness. - -At another table, over to Kendall’s left, two girls were eating alone, -and he watched them with interest and considerable curiosity, wondering -who and what they were. One of them attracted him particularly. She was -young, in the neighborhood of twenty, he judged. She was dressed in -white, a suit of some knit material that reminded him of a light jersey, -and on her very black and wavy hair was a shapeless white cap of the -tam-o-’shanter variety. Her skin was a delightful olive, and her eyes -black, with shadows under them. She was not beautiful, unless her eyes -made her so. She was small and almost thin. She addressed herself to her -food in a very business-like manner, not often looking up from her -plate, but once in a while she smiled as she replied to some comment of -her companion, and her teeth were very white and regular. There was no -appearance of wealth about her, but every feature spoke of -intelligence—indeed, of a certain keenness.... She was very attractive. - -“Look,” he said to Bert. “I wonder who she is. She looks as if she had -‘class.’” - -“Pretty kid,” said Bert, who, just then, was more interested in _poule -au riz_ than in Parisiennes. - -He continued to stare, unconscious of his rudeness, until she lifted her -eyes to his. For a moment she regarded him, with no especial interest, -certainly with no sign which could be interpreted as provocative, and -dropped her eyes again to her plate.... Kendall was conscious at once of -disappointment and satisfaction. Here was another girl that he had -estimated as “nice,” and this time, apparently, he was right. - -In a moment he heard her name, for her companion uttered it. “Andree.” -Somehow it suited her, Kendall thought, and he thought, too, that it was -a decidedly pretty name ... “Andree.” - -From time to time, as he was finishing his dinner, Kendall glanced at -Andree. But he did not meet her eyes again. She was not interested in -him, apparently, and even when he walked past her table on his way out -she did not look up or manifest by a sign that she was conscious of his -existence. - -“Where now?” he said as they debouched onto the broad Boulevard des -Italiens. - -“Might as well take in the ‘Folies Bergère.’ It’s one of the sights.” - -They walked along in silence, crossing the boulevard and turning up a -narrow street toward the theater. Kendall continued to think about the -little girl with the black eyes. Somehow she had made an impression of -some sort upon him. He could not have described it nor estimated it. All -he knew was that he liked her looks immensely and was curious about her. -Probably he would never see her again, but he found himself hoping that -he might. - -They bought tickets for the “Folies” and entered, traversing the large -hall filled with tables at which the audience was expected to refresh -itself between the acts, or even during the performance, and, after -buying programs, were conducted to their seats by a girl usher who stood -sternly by until she received her tip—a tip that she would have -suggested if it had not been tendered. - -Then the performance began—a very disappointing performance to a -Middle-Western young man who had heard tales of the naughtiness of the -French stage. It turned out to be a rather clumsy musical comedy which -was more vaudeville than either music or comedy. It was not naughty at -all, he said to himself—but perhaps that was because he failed to -understand the dialogue. Anyhow, he had seen much franker costumes and -much more suggestive incident in Mr. Ziegfeld’s “Follies” or at the -Winter Garden. - -The audience was more than half American; the music was adapted from -American shows, and between the acts a jazz orchestra, “straight from -Broadway,” made the ears ring. Everybody got up between the acts and -promenaded or sat at the little tables.... Girls wandered about and -spoke to one, and made Kendall feel uncomfortable and embarrassed again. -He was glad when they returned to their seats. - -The performance rather bored him, and he suggested leaving. Bert was -ready, too, so they sauntered out onto the dark streets, making their -way to the Avenue de l’Opéra and past the huge bulk of that wonderful -building which France had erected even while she was paying to Germany -the billion-franc indemnity exacted after 1870. Once or twice soft -voices accosted them out of the darkness, but they walked on toward the -Union, and presently were ordering ice-cream and listening to a -lieutenant play ragtime on the piano. - -Then, suddenly, the air was rent by a startling, metallic shriek, a -long-sustained, nerve-twanging, raucous blast. - -“Raid!” said Stanley, getting to his feet. - -“Bomb raid?” asked Kendall, instantly excited. - -“Yes. Let’s go out and take a look.” - -So, with characteristic foolhardiness, they sallied out and hurried up -the rue de Rivoli to the Place de la Concorde, where they sat on a stone -balustrade and waited. They were not alone. About that open space were -scattered a dozen Americans impelled by absurd curiosity—a curiosity -they would discard very shortly and become more circumspect in their -behavior as well as more respectful toward the _Gothas_. - -Still the _alerte_ sounded, more terrifying than the sound of the -barrage which was presently to begin. Sirens mounted on fire-engines -were giving the alarm, tearing madly through the black streets, and with -horrid voice commanding Paris to seek sanctuary in _abri_ or in the -tunnels of the Metropolitan. - -Kendall was not frightened; he was hardly apprehensive. Even when the -guns opened toward the north and he could see bright star-flashes as -shrapnel burst high above, he was only exhilarated and very interested. -The thing did not seem serious to him. But it _was_ serious, he knew. It -was war, and such barbarous war as held the world in a spell of horror. -Presently the air was filled with the crashes of cannon, and one could -trace the course of the enemy by the spreading of the ring of fire about -the city.... Once in a while would come a deep, dull, thunderous _boom_, -as a bomb, released by a _Gotha_, would fall in the distant suburbs, -perhaps upon the home of some laborer, burying himself with his wife and -babies in the ruins, or destroying them utterly so that no trace of -their human shell would ever be discovered.... The firing moved -westward, and then swung around to the south as the hostile aeroplanes -strove vainly to penetrate the city.... This continued for half an hour. -Then there was a time of quietness, after which came the pleasant voices -of bugles notifying a cowering population that all was clear.... The -raid had been abortive—it had succeeded in killing only half a dozen -defenseless civilians! - -Kendall and Stanley walked back to the Union—to have another dish of -ice-cream. As they walked up-stairs in the darkness Kendall said to his -friend: “I wonder who that girl was ... the one in the restaurant. Her -name was Andree.” - - - - - CHAPTER III - - -Kendall Ware had been two weeks in Paris; he had learned many things, -absorbed many things, but as his observations grew he discovered depths -to his ignorance that were not apparent to him on the day of his -arrival. The greatest advance he made in those first weeks was in -arriving at a knowledge of how little he understood or was equipped to -understand of France—and when he said _France_ he did not mean a -country, but the people who inhabited the country. Continually he was -amused by superficialities; daily he was impressed by profundities. -Gradually he came to perceive that one cannot know France by looking at -the surface any more than one can gather a knowledge of what is -transpiring in the ocean by sailing a little boat over its waves. - -A people which can produce Joan of Arc and Robespierre, a St. Louis and -a Louis the Eleventh, a Madame Roland and a Madame du Barry, a -Clemenceau and a Calliaux; which is capable of an 1870 and of a 1914, of -the Terror and of Verdun—is not one whose complexities can be solved by -a twenty-six-year-old American in fourteen days.... The American will -make no impression on France, but France will make a profound impression -on the American. - -From being interested in a city, in its buildings and its beauties, -Kendall became interested in its people. - -His first reaction to the people was rather romantic. He saw romance in -every one. Hotel porters with one arm, wearing the Croix de Guerre and -the Légion d’Honneur, and perhaps the Médaille Militaire excited him. -Each one was, in truth, a hero. These men had seen and done. Now they -worked at menial tasks, still wearing uniforms, and with those medals on -the breast which raised them into the aristocracy of manhood. It was -strange to him that a man could be at once an honored hero and a -porter.... _Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité_ were inscribed on every public -building. This was one of the manifestations of Liberty, Equality, -Brotherhood. These things really existed, and so a porter could be a -decorated hero. - -If one addressed a taxi-driver one called him _Monsieur_, just as if one -were addressing the President of the Republic itself. One addressed the -_gendarmes_ as _Monsieur_. One addressed even the turbaned and besashed -and betrousered Moroccan street-sweepers as _Monsieur_ if one addressed -them at all. Monsieur Poincaré or Monsieur Clemenceau would have given -them the same salutation. It was not an affectation; it was not what -strangers have called French politeness. It was but a manifestation of -Liberty, Equality, Brotherhood. At first it had seemed rather absurd to -Kendall, American and republican though he was, but he grew to like it, -and somewhat to understand it. - -Everywhere he saw heroes wearing medals. It made him feel insignificant -and somehow lacking. One could not walk a block without passing officer -or _poilu_ with the red ribbon of the Legion of Honor, or the rarer, -even more precious, broad yellow stripe of the Military Medal. The -narrow green stripe of the ribbon of the War Cross was everywhere. -Sometimes the ribbons were elongated to give space to two or three, or, -as was the case with one boyish officer, to eight palms.... And every -palm the token that its bearer had fought back out of the clutch of -Death, performing some act of valor which raised him above the level of -an army of heroes.... - -These soldiers were the first to command Kendall’s interest, but it -expanded to cover every one. Ancient drivers of _voitures_ whose horses -were always too tired to take him where he wanted to go; the chauffeurs -of taxi-cabs who could never understand his French, and who, when he had -made them understand, told him they could not take him to his -destination because they happened to be heading the other way; the -crowds who occupied the tables under the awnings on the sidewalks of the -rue de la Paix or the rue Royale; the old women who came to collect two -sous if one took a seat along the Champs Élysées or the Avenue du Bois -de Boulogne; the soldiers, French, Belgian, Italian, Austrian, Canadian, -English, Moroccan, American, who promenaded of evenings and Sundays from -the Place de la Concorde to Rond-Point, and the girls with whom they -promenaded—all these interested him, and each, as he studied them with -boyish _naïveté_, added something to his education. - -He worked hard by day, and often far into the night, but for the most -part his evenings were free to investigate life with Bert Stanley, whose -investigations were merely of the surface and were rather questings for -an hour of amusement.... Sometimes he played bridge with three other -Americans at the Union, but he liked best to stroll about the darkened -streets, without object or destination. - -Little by little he added to his meager store of the language. When he -spoke to friends about securing an instructor they laughed at him. “Pick -it up.... Talk to people,” they told him. “Sit down on a bench along the -Champs Élysées and talk to a girl. They’re as eager to learn English as -you are French.... It’s better than a teacher—and a darned sight more -pleasant.” - -He voiced his distaste for this suggestion. He had been but two weeks in -Paris, and very mistakenly had classified all the girls who promenade -the Champs Élysées in the evening as women of the streets. His natural -decency revolted at any contact, no matter how slight, with these. - -“Nine out of ten of those little girls work in shops or offices,” Bert -told him. “You haven’t got ’em right, son.” - -But Kendall was suspicious. He continued in that attitude until one -evening a little girl—she appeared not more than seventeen—sat rather -diffidently on the other end of his bench. - -“Good night, monsieur,” she said, with quaint pronunciation. - -He did not answer, but turned his back with a gesture of repulse. - -“Oh, monsieur, please,” she said, timidly. “I am not a bad girl.... -See.” She turned her face so that the dim light shone upon it and -pointed to her cheeks. “There is not paint. You see. No.... I am a good -girl, but monsieur, I am—how do you say _solitaire_? I learn English.... -It will not harm monsieur if I talk with him a little and learn -English.” - -Kendall regarded her. She was a little thing with clear eyes and a -rather pretty face, whose cheeks, as she pointed out, were guiltless of -paint. She was not well dressed, though she was neat, _chic_. And she -was so young.... It was apparent to him that she told the truth, and his -manner changed toward her. - -They talked. It was a conversation which would have aroused the mirth of -a listener ... but it was remarkable how well each made the other -understand; she with slowly pronounced French and a few words of quaint -English—he with his small stock of atrociously articulated French.... -She worked in a chocolate-shop. She was a refugee from Soissons and an -orphan. Her two brothers had been killed at Verdun and her mother and -father had died of the war. - -“Now I must make to work,” she said, simply. “But I am very _solitaire, -monsieur.... Oui, je suis trés-solitaire—trés-solitaire_.” - -“Poor kid!” said Kendall. - -She shrugged her shoulders and said, with that calm resignation which is -so much to be met with, “_C’est la guerre...._ It is the war.” That is a -phrase which explains everything, excuses anything in France to-day. -“_C’est la guerre._” One offers it to explain the lateness of trains, -the price of cheese, poverty, the lack of sugar, morale, everything -great or small. “_C’est la guerre_” is the countersign of the epoch. It -embraces everything. - -After an hour she arose, offered her hand charmingly, and said good -night and “_Merci_.” Kendall sat looking after her, feeling the first -life movements of a comprehension of the womankind of France. From that -moment they assumed a higher place in his thoughts, not yet so high as -they deserved, but one rung nearer to the truth. He did not even begin -to understand them—not their philosophy of life nor their conception of -the relations between the sexes; but he began to ask himself questions -to which his education and prejudices and narrownesses could provide no -answer. He began to wonder if all he had heard were true; he began to -consider, if it were true, was it then necessarily evil. He had been -brought up to regard the drinking of any beverage containing alcohol as -inherently wicked and as something to be done surreptitiously and with a -sort of “devilish” feeling. Here everybody drank wine, and wine -contained alcohol, and they did it with no concealment and with no -thought that it could be other than normal and perfectly respectable. He -considered that, and from it attempted to form a judgment of other -things which to him seemed not as they should be. Apparently drinking in -France was not a thing of moral turpitude, done as it was done by the -French.... Perhaps, then, other matters were the same: evil in Detroit -because custom and inherited moral conceptions had made them so; right -in Paris because custom and inherited moral conceptions had made them -so.... Dimly he was feeling for the conception that an act in itself is -not a sin, but the manner of the performance of that act.... This may -have been sophistry; it may have been alarmingly faulty moral -philosophy, but it marked a step ahead for a young man come of such -parentage as Kendall came of. It marked a willingness to listen to -argument and to maintain an open mind. His mother, he considered, had -never maintained an open mind. She had been dogmatic. To inquire into -things was a sin to her. Nothing had been so quick to arouse her anger -as an impulse on his part to look for the reasons of things, -particularly religious things.... His father had not been like this. -True, he had not been of an inquiring turn of mind, but he had seen no -especial reason why somebody who wanted to inquire should not be allowed -to do so. There was a certain sweetness about his father, a tolerant -attitude toward life in general and toward transgressions in particular, -that came nearer to the attitude of Jesus Christ than did the hard, -unbending, dogmatic almost cruel religion of his mother.... He had -inherited from both parents; each had given him something distinctly -traceable to each, and both had joined to give him other qualities which -were a strange composite of both of them. He was inclined to judge at -first sight like his mother, harshly and dogmatically; he was inclined, -on second thought, to look for excuses and to forgive what must be -judged as evil, like his father. It was a quality composite of the -characters of his parents that he placed the abstraction of _goodness_ -on a lofty throne, but was inclined to apply its laws with gentleness -and mercy rather than with narrowness and hardness.... There were days -when he was inclined to narrowness and dogmatism; there were days when -he bent quite in the other direction and became over-indulgent. - -Following his first experience in conversation with a casually -encountered girl, and finding himself to have come off none the worse -for it, he repeated the experience several times, and enjoyed it, and -came to look forward to the evenings because of the possibility of a -pleasant and instructive talk with some girl he would never see again, -but from whom he would learn some French and considerable of France.... -It was rarely that his sense of propriety was offended or that the -attitude of one of his chance companions was other than “nice.” He made -no effort to follow up any of these casual meetings, or to centralize -his attention upon a single girl. He preferred matters as they were. But -he was learning that the ordinary French girl did not resent being -accosted by an American, and that when he was lonely he might find -charming company without fear of being rebuffed. - -On his third Sunday in Paris he was sitting among the trees that border -the Champs Élysées. He was lonesome, for Bert Stanley had been absent on -a mission for several days. He and Bert were sharing a room at the Union -now, a room with two beds, which cost them jointly ten francs a day—and -he missed Bert. He had lunched alone that noon and now did not know what -to do with himself. It was the first time he had been really homesick, -but now he was homesick and uneasy and rather at loose ends. He wished -something would happen; that some friend would appear with an -entertaining suggestion. So he sat and smoked and watched the passage of -the colorful crowd. - -Presently he stiffened to interest. In the distance he saw approaching a -girl dressed in white. It was the white tam-o’-shanter that had caught -his eye. It was familiar. For a moment he could not remember where he -had seen it, or why it stirred him to interest, and then he recalled the -little girl of the Café Poccardi. He even remembered her name—“Andree.” -She came abreast of him and he identified her certainly. It was she, and -really more attractive than he had remembered her to be. She walked -along with little steps, her body very straight, her bearing very staid. -As she walked her eyes remained straight in front of her, as though her -mind were on some interest at her destination.... Her profile was -prettier than his first picture of her full face had been; there was a -daintiness about her lips and her straight little nose, and about the -whole of her. If one had been compelled to limit himself to a single -word in describing her, he would have been forced to use that word -“dainty.” - -She passed, and his eyes followed her. Suddenly he stood up with a -resolution half formed, a resolution to speak to her. Then he hesitated. -She did not look like a person one speaks to without permission or -presentation. But it was a chance.... He was lonely and this was rather -an adventure, and, besides, he had learned that one is not often -rebuffed when making a casual advance. Still Kendall was a bit -apprehensive. He walked along behind her irresolute, wondering if he -dared, and keying up his courage to dare. At any rate, he would wait -until they were out of the crowd; he did not wish the embarrassment of -being rebuffed too publicly. - -The girl tripped along, almost birdlike in the carriage of her head and -in the _ensemble_ of her daintiness. At the Place de la Concorde she -turned to her left up the rue Boissy d’Anglas, on one corner of which is -the Hôtel Crillon and on the other a high, blank wall of brick. The -street was deserted. - -Kendall summoned his resolution and overtook her as she entered the -shadow of the brick wall. He was rather excited and apprehensive, and -stammered a bit as he lifted his hat and said in his best French, “_Bon -jour, mademoiselle_.” - -She stopped suddenly and slowly raised her eyes to his face. She was not -startled, not frightened, not thrown from her poise in the least. - -“_Bon jour, monsieur_,” she said, with a rising inflection, as one who -expresses surprise and inquiry. - -Kendall was at a loss. He did not know how to proceed or how to make -plausible his action. What little French he knew departed from him, and -he stood awkwardly by her side, feeling very idiotic indeed. She waited -gravely, with no twinkle in her eye at the rather absurd figure he must -have presented. - -“_Voulez-vous promenade avec moi?_” he managed to articulate, at last. - -“_Pourquoi?_” she asked. - -Why? Why should she promenade with him? He felt his face reddening, and -it was his impulse to clap on his cap and beat a hasty retreat. What -answer was there to that _why?_ He could think of nothing whatever to -say, and the pause became awkward. - -“_Parlez-vous anglais?_” he asked, desperately. - -“_Non._” - -In sheer desperation he touched her arm and began walking. She walked -with him, the merest hint of an amused smile at the corners of her -mouth.... At any rate, she was walking with him. That much was -accomplished, but, now that he had progressed to this point, what was he -to do with her? She was difficult, and not inclined to help him in the -least. - -“Mademoiselle,” he said, desperately, “I speak very little French. I am -very lonesome.” Then, of necessity, he lapsed into his own tongue. “Why -in thunder don’t you speak English!” he said, testily. - -“Where are you going?” she asked. - -“With you—if you permit,” he replied. - -Again that appalling why. He was to come to know that she used it often; -that she shot it at one like an unexpected little arrow when one least -looked for it, and rather upset one with it. There came a time when he -called her Mademoiselle Pourquoi because of this. “Because—” he -answered. “Because— Oh, confound it! I don’t know why. I haven’t any -idea. No reason at all. I just want to.... Now if you could only -understand that we might get somewhere.” - -She was amused—a little. She regarded him gravely, and it was apparent -that she was appraising him, satisfying herself as to what sort of a -barbarian he was, and possibly as to what he had in mind. - -“Will you dine with me?” he asked. That was a phrase he had by heart. - -“Why?” - -“Same reason,” he said, ruefully, in English. “I’ve got to dine, you’ve -got to dine, we’ve got to dine.... _Pourquoi, pourquoi, -pourquoi—toujours vous dit pourquoi._” This was not remarkably excellent -French, but she comprehended, and for the first time she uttered a -little laugh. He amused her. From that moment they got along better, -for, apparently, she had appraised him as not dangerous. - -She began to ask questions, not idly, he judged, but the better to -satisfy herself about him. - -“Where do you live?” - -He told her. - -“You are an American?” - -“Yes.” - -“From what city?” - -“Detroit.” - -“I do not know it.... What is your grade?” She meant his military rank. - -“Captain.” - -“Are you married?” - -He had rather been expecting that question, for it had been put to him -by almost every girl he had talked to. Apparently it was an important -question.... In a land where so many, many young men have been -sacrificed to war an unmarried man is an important personage. He offers -possibilities. Suppose that one million, two millions of men of -marriageable age have been slaughtered, there remain at home one or two -millions of young women who have no one to marry. This, in France, is -not a theory, but a condition, a very real and very terrible condition. -A million girls of an age for marriage and no men!... - -“No,” he said. - -She was silent while they walked the greater part of a block. He -repeated again his well-learned phrase, “Will you dine with me?” - -“Yes,” she said, in the tone of one making a decision of some moment. -“Where?” - -“Anywhere you wish.” - -They were just passing a little café not distant from the Madeleine, and -she stopped hesitatingly, rather speculatively, and there was a subdued -twinkle in her eye. - -“Here?” she asked. - -She was looking for information about this young American, and this was -an experiment. The cafe was one of the most expensive in Paris, and -doubtless Andree wanted to see how he would act at her suggestion, for -reckless spending of money is a thing which your Parisian does not -indulge in. Possibly she wanted to find out just how much she attracted -him, and one way to do it was to discover if he was willing to spend -money on her. It is not impossible that she wondered a bit if he had -lots of money, as all Americans are said to do. Your Frenchwoman is not -mercenary, but she is practical—and lots of money is an excellent thing -to have. - -“All right,” he said, in perfect innocence, for he had never seen the -place before. It looked rather dingy and not especially attractive. It -was very small. So they went in. There was a passage down the middle of -the room, with tables on either side, set in solid rows. The waiter -moved a table out to admit Andree to the leather bench which ran along -the wall. Kendall waited for the table to be replaced so that he could -sit across from her, American fashion, but she motioned for him to sit -by her side. Young women and men in France sit side by side, not -_vis-a-vis_—and it is a custom not without its advantages. - -Ordering was a difficult matter, first because of lack of the language, -and second because he was beginning to be very anxious to please this -girl and to make a favorable impression on her. With characteristic -American generosity or love of displaying his willingness to spend, he -would have ordered more than four could have eaten, but she interfered -and took the ordering into her own hands—a thing for which he was -grateful when the check was presented.... Even when she was making an -experiment she could not bear to see money actually wasted. - -Kendall studied her covertly. She impressed him as being a grave, very -self-possessed young person. The word demure conceals in its meaning -something of the provocative. If it were possible to remove that shade -of meaning from it, then it would have described Andree exactly. She was -demure without being provocative.... And how pretty she was. She grew on -one. Those heavily shadowed eyes were really beautiful, and her lips -delicately sweet. He made up his mind that she was what he had been -accustomed to designate as a lady, which was but another way of saying -“nice.” - -Out of the corner of his eye he watched her eat. She was very dainty -about it, but also very interested. Indeed, she ate in a thoroughly -business-like manner, giving her attention fully to her plate. He -thought of a bird. Indeed, there was something birdlike about her, but -what bird she resembled Kendall could not determine. Possibly it was a -composite resemblance.... He liked her very much, but was puzzled by -her. She was something quite outside his experience. Her manner puzzled -him. She was not what he would have called “offish.” She did not seem -wholly at her ease, yet she was much more so than he. She was gravely -expectant; concealing herself, perhaps, while she waited for -self-disclosure on the part of Kendall. - -She would drink but a fraction of a glass of wine and declined a -cigarette at the end of the meal.... Then he called for the check and -discovered that the rather light repast was to cost him seventy francs. -He wondered if Andree were accustomed to eating seventy-franc meals, not -knowing that this was the first experience of the kind she had ever had. -Seventy francs would have sufficed nearly for her food for a month.... -On the whole, she was a mystery to him, and as long as he knew her she -continued to remain something of a mystery. He was incapable of solving -her. - -“Now what shall we do?” he asked. - -“We shall walk,” she replied, in quaintly stilted and accented English. -The effect was charming. - -“Eh?” said Kendall. “You—why, you said you didn’t speak English!” - -“Yes,” she said, and smiled, but offered no explanation. But the -explanation was clear, even to Kendall. It was because she was making no -admission whatever about herself in those first few minutes. It was -because she was on the brink of a new experience, was meeting her first -American, and because she wanted to find out as much as she could about -him without permitting him to learn anything whatever of her—until she -was ready to permit it.... He was pleased. Evidently her judgment was -favoring him. - -“That’s fine,” he said. “Now you can teach me French and I can teach you -English.” - -“Maybe,” she said, with her reserved smile. “We shall see.” - -“Let’s take a taxi out to the Bois de Boulogne,” he suggested. - -“It is very expensive.... It is not _nécessaire_. No, we shall walk.” - -They retraced their steps to the Place de la Concorde and walked slowly -up the Champs Élysées to the Étoile, and then diagonally to the left and -so along the Avenue du Bois de Boulogne, that wonderful promenade so -dear to Parisians. There they found chairs beside the broad graveled -walk and seated themselves. They had progressed very well -conversationally, for, though Andree’s English was but little more -extensive than Kendall’s French, the two supplemented each other -splendidly. A little pocket dictionary which Kendall always carried -worked wonders. The little dictionary was a splendid thing, anyway. It -grew to be a little joke between them and they laughed over it gaily; -Andree became less restrained. - -Kendall would start a sentence in French and arrive at a point -impassable. Neither English nor French could supply his meaning. -“_Attendez_,” he would say, with mock solemnity, and then would produce -the little book, and with heads close together in the dusk they would -search it for the word. When they found it Andree would laugh at -Kendall’s pronunciation of it.... The dictionary was a great promoter of -acquaintance. - -He was more and more curious about her. He wanted to know who she was, -and what she did, and if she worked for her living, and where she lived, -but he could not screw up his courage to direct questions, and she -volunteered nothing. - -Finally she said, “I must be at my home, for every day I have very much -work.” - -“What do you work at?” he asked, brashly. - -“I must study. Many, many hours every day I must study.” - -“What are you studying?” - -“Many things.... I must study much, much, for the time is not long.... -So I must be at my home _now_.” She pointed down at the ground with a -pretty gesture, a childish gesture, the first manifestation of the sort -she had shown him. “I must be at my home _now_—at this minute. Make me -to be there—instantly.” Then she laughed gleefully. - -What a charming little thing she was, he thought, and was enchanted by -her. - -“_Nous cherchons un taxi_,” he said, trying out his French. Apparently -he did reasonably well, for she shook her head. - -“It is not _nécessaire_. No, I shall go on the Metro.... Good-by.” - -“But—oh, now listen. I’m to go home with you, of course. And we must see -each other often—to learn French and English, you know.... You’re not -going to send me away now.” - -She considered a moment. - -“You may come with me—_some_.... When I say, then you shall tell me good -night. Do you promise?” - -“Yes,” he said, “but—” - -She arose and he accompanied her to the nearest station of the -Metropolitan, into which they descended, he very curious to know where -they were proceeding, and entered a passageway labeled “_Direction -Châtelet_.” The train was crowded and there was little opportunity for -speech until they changed to take another subterranean train which -discharged them at Place St.-Michel—the heart of the Quartier Latin. - -So, Kendall thought, she is a student and she lives in the Latin -Quarter! There was magic in that thought, romance in it; the very fact -of her residence in that fascinating quarter of the city gave her a -higher valuation. - -They entered the big lift which should have carried them to the street, -but the lift declined to rise. They waited amid bursts of laughter from -the crowd, and then everybody marched off again in perfect good -nature—indeed, rather delighted at a little adventure, for the old -soldier who operated the elevator had dined too well that Sunday -evening, and in his abounding good spirits had forgotten how to operate -his machine. The crowd trudged up-stairs, laughing, not at all peevish -as an American crowd in like circumstances would have been; indeed, they -were rather in sympathy with the old fellow. Just as they arrived at the -top of the stairs the elevator came slowly into view, the conductor -stepped off with the air of one who had done a noteworthy thing. He -removed his hat and bowed low to the company. - -“_Regardez!_” he said, magnificently. “_Voilà.... Voilà!_” - -Andree laughed prettily and Kendall laughed, and they were advanced -another step in their acquaintance by the little incident. - -The streets were black as they emerged, and Andree took his arm, leading -him diagonally across the Place, past the fountain, and up the Boulevard -St.-Michel—the “Boul’ Miche” of fable and story. She permitted him to -accompany her for a few blocks, then she halted. - -“It is here you must go,” she said. “You must go now.” - -“But—” - -“Your promise!” - -He acquiesced. “I shall see you again?” He essayed the thing in French, -“_Voulez-vous donnez moi un rendez-vous, mademoiselle?_” - -“No, no, no, no. It is not so. Écoutez. The right way to say is this, -_Voulez-vous me donnerai un rendez-vous?_ It is the future time, do you -onderstan’?... You wish to see me again?” - -“Yes.” - -“_Pourquoi?_” - -“Mademoiselle Pourquoi.” It was the first time he called her so. - -It was a liberty, perhaps, but it pleased her, for she gave a little -laugh. “You really wish to see me again?” - -“Yes, really.... I want to see you—to beat the band.” - -“To beat the band?... What is that, monsieur? I do not onderstan’, oh, I -do not onderstan’.” She had a way of failing to understand with despair -in her voice and her gestures that was very charming. - -“_L’argot américain_,” he explained. “American slang. It means I want to -see you very much.” - -“It is well.” - -“When?... To-morrow? _Demain?_” - -“I cannot to see you to-morrow, for I must work, as I said. _Mais_ in -the evening, yes. _Sept heure et demi._ Do you onderstan’? In the Place -St.-Michel, _près de la fontaine_.” - -“At half past seven near the St.-Michel fountain.... And you will be -there—_certainement_?” - -“_Oui—et vous?_” - -“_Certainement_—surely—you bet,” he said, with increasing emphasis. - -She held out her hand. “_Bonne nuit, monsieur._” - -“Good night, mademoiselle.... To-morrow evening at half past seven.” - -“Yes,” she said, and disappeared into the darkness. - - - - - CHAPTER IV - - -Kendall stood a moment looking after Andree until the blackness of the -boulevard swallowed her up. He was exhilarated. The girl had had a tonic -effect upon him; the incident was not an incident, but an adventure, and -he tingled with it.... He wondered why. He wondered why he wanted to see -her again when he had not cared whether or not he saw again any of the -other girls he had talked to. He hoped she would appear next evening as -she had promised ... and then he felt a twinge of apprehension. The -twinge was not an inheritance from his father. - -If he did see her again—then what? Would he see her again and still -again, and what were the meetings to lead to? What sort of affair was he -getting mixed into?... He felt a sense of naughtiness, and, when he -tried to discover why he should feel naughty, he was unable to say. -Certainly there had been nothing in the least to warrant it in any word -or action of the evening. But Andree was French—and she lived in the -Latin Quarter.... What _was_ he getting himself into, anyhow? - -The part of his being inherited from his mother was in the ascendant. -She suspected anything she did not understand. Because she did not -understand it she believed something wicked must lurk in it -somewhere.... He remembered how he had once dug a cave in a vacant lot -next his home and how his mother had almost gone into one of her -“tantrums” over it. She could not understand why a boy should want to -burrow into the earth. It must be some squalid desire for wicked -concealment on her son’s part. She almost convinced him that it was a -sin for a boy to dig a cave, just as she had almost succeeded in making -him believe that so many of his other perfectly natural desires and -impulses and doings were wicked.... She had a way of connecting -everything with _sex_, and she suspected _sex_ above everything else in -the world. It was her nightmare. It was a squalid, wicked sort of a -thing, to be thought of only in terms of aversion. Always she had -hammered this into him, and though he could not quite believe her, he -never quite outgrew her point of view. In this moment he knew exactly -how she would regard his meeting with Andree. - -Then his father came to his rescue—his father, whose dominant note was -tolerance and a sweet inability to see evil, or, if he saw it, to see -palliation of it, or even a vein of goodness running through it. His -father never suspected anything or anybody. His father had never -suspected _him_. Somehow that had always been very wonderful to him, -because his mother had impressed it upon him that he was a person always -under suspicion. He knew exactly how his father would regard Andree and -what he would say and do. He could hear his father saying it and see him -doing it. His father would have patted Andree on the shoulder and -smiled. He would have said, “She’s a pretty little thing, isn’t she?” -Then he would have proposed taking Andree and his son for an ice-cream -soda. His father always did that—for ice-cream soda or candy. And then -he would have whispered in Kendall’s ear: “Got enough money, son? ’Cause -if you hain’t—” - -Kendall wondered if it were better to see wickedness in everything and -sometimes to be justified by finding it, or to see wickedness in nothing -at all, and sometimes to be disappointed by having it suddenly thrust -upon one. - -He walked slowly toward the Place St.-Michel and there descended into -the Metro. His antagonistic inheritances struggled within him, and his -youth and his youthful desire for the joys of life took sides with his -father. In one moment he determined he would never see Andree again, and -then he would call himself an idiot and ask what harm could possibly -come from it.... If ever he had seen a “nice” girl, Andree was nice. -Well, then?... But he was disturbed, and had not been able to conquer -his disturbance when he entered the Union. There he found Bert Stanley -waiting for him. - -“Here comes the wicked old man,” Bert saluted him. “What you been up to, -with me away? Have I got to keep my eye on you every minute?” - -“Just walking around,” said Kendall. Some young men would have wanted to -tell about Andree and to discuss her, but not he. - -“Let’s split a bottle of beer.... Say, I heard about an apartment to -let—up near the Étoile. What say to having a look at it to-morrow?” - -“How much?” - -“I heard it was three hundred francs—and we’re paying that much here for -one room with two beds.” - -“Sounds good, but I don’t know. Anyhow, we can look it over.” - -“’Tisn’t far from the office. We can walk over at noon.” - -Kendall yawned. “Let’s go to bed,” he suggested. - -“What’s the use? There’ll be an air raid to-night. Better to sit up than -just to get nicely asleep and have to roll out. I never get to sleep -again.” - -Kendall persisted and walked up to his room, where he was soon in bed, -but not to sleep. He was excited and restless. He wanted to sleep, not -to think, but his mind persisted in its activity, and his thoughts -became incisive, whitely clear as one’s thoughts do of sleepless nights. -It was rather the sensation of being subjected to a blinding light which -hurt the brain.... It was not alone of Andree that he thought. He could -concentrate on nothing, but kept running down _cul-de-sacs_ of memories -and speculations and plans which overlapped and confused one another -maddeningly. He would shut his eyes and try to curtain off his mind so -that no thought could penetrate, but it was not to be done, so he tossed -and rolled and submitted.... Just around the corner of every avenue his -thoughts followed Andree, lay in wait. Before he knew it he was building -air-castles about her.... - -It was really a relief to him when the _alerte_ sounded. He said to -himself that he would not get up, and composed himself to wait. In a -quarter of an hour the barrage started, sporadically at first, then -worked itself up to a fury of sound such as he had never heard before. -It sounded nearer, more menacing. Really, cannon might have been going -off in the street below his window. So imminent did the sound become -that Kendall got out of bed, not frightened, exactly, but impressed. He -considered that there was nothing above his head but the roof. Half -determined to dress and go down, he fumbled for the light-button and -turned it before he remembered that there would be no light, that all -light was turned off at its source with the sounding of the _alerte_.... -In his pajamas he went to the windows which opened out on the little -balcony which overlooked the Palais Royal, and stood there looking off -toward the east, where the firing was most furious.... Over his head he -could hear the angry humming of aeroplanes, and wondered uneasily if -they were defenders or hostile bombers. Tremendous detonations rattled -the windows and rocked the buildings, and these, he fancied, were -falling bombs. The sky was alight with up-leaping flares from the mouths -of the cannon and from shells bursting high above the city, searching -the heavens for flitting _Gothas_.... Then came a series of tremendous -upheavals which seemed to his tingling nerves to be almost at hand.... -And then the sky was red with flames which uprose and spread and glanced -and billowed over the tops of the buildings. Metallic fragments rattled -on the roof of the Palais Royal, fifty feet away, and on the roof of his -hotel and in the streets below. Kendall ducked inside, for he knew this -was falling shrapnel from the defensive barrage.... For the first time -he was seeing a real air raid, a serious raid, and one that was meeting -with success. Already a tremendous fire had been started, and what might -not follow?... It was enough to shake one’s nerves, for the individual -is so helpless! All one can do at such a time is to hope and to argue -that Paris is large and a bomb small; that the chances of a bomb falling -where one happens to be are almost infinitesimal. - -The sound came very near indeed. Kendall could not see what caused this, -but it was an anti-aircraft gun mounted on a truck which had come to a -stop at an open space at the mouth of the Avenue de l’Opéra and was -industriously blazing away at the moon.... Kendall wished he were -dressed and down-stairs with company at hand; he would even have -consented to descend into an _abri_, an experience which had not so far -been his. He wondered what an _abri_ looked like. At any rate, there -were plenty of them, for nearly every building in Paris was defaced by a -poster announcing, “_Abri, 30 places.... Abri, 60 places._” - -The sound, the terrific crashings and retchings and tearing bursts of -tremendous potentiality, gradually ebbed, then surged up with renewed -vigor for a time, then subsided again, and, after a series of fitful -outbursts, ceased.... But the light which glowed and danced over the -roofs from the distant Faubourg St.-Antoine silhouetting the tangle of -chimney-pots on the Palais Royal did not subside. The fire burned on.... - -Kendall returned to bed—and slept. - -If that raid had made Kendall Ware fearful, what had it done to the -teeming populations of the Faubourg St.-Antoine, to the closely packed -poor who massed about the Bastille, and to the eastward of this monument -to an event that owed its being to their own ancestors, to those who -used to dwell in St.-Antoine, mother of revolutions! - -Next noon Bert Stanley and Kendall lunched at a table on the sidewalk of -a little café on the Place de Ternes and then walked down the Boulevard -de Courcelles a few hundred feet or so to the number that had been given -Bert as a place where a desirable furnished apartment was to let. - -They entered through an archway and rang the bell of the _concierge’s_ -apartment. A pleasant, motherly, smiling old woman came to the door and -bowed them in. It was not difficult to make her understand that they -were in search of an _appartement meublé_, whereupon she jangled a huge -bunch of keys and invited them to follow her up four flights of stairs, -and ushered them into the rooms that were for hire.... The apartment of -five rooms was to be had for three hundred francs a month, with twenty -francs extra for the _concierge_. Yes, a cook could be obtained, and -madame would undertake to have her on hand when needed. Her wages would -be seventy francs a month. Everything was very easy. - -“Where is the bath?” asked Kendall. - -“Oh, monsieur, we have a bath. Of a surety. It is but three blocks -away....” - -So it was arranged. They were to move in when they desired, and they -left the building feeling quite like family men and proprietors. They -discussed the apartment from all angles and were exceedingly pleased -with themselves for accomplishing it.... - -“All France needs,” said Bert, quoting some epigrammatic American -friend, “is open plumbing to make it the greatest country in the world.” - -On the broad stairs of that huge hotel which the United States -Expeditionary Force has taken over for its headquarters in Paris Bert -stopped suddenly. - -“I can’t help you move in to-night,” he said. “But there isn’t much to -do. Get a taxi to take up our boxes and bedding-rolls. I’m going to be -busy.” - -“So am I,” said Kendall, Andree recalled to his mind after she had been -absent from it since morning. - -“Huh!” grunted Bert. “Same one you were with last night?” - -“Go chase yourself,” said Kendall. - -“If it is,” Bert continued, “we might make a mixed quartet of it. Dinner -and then _promenade avec_. Eh?” - -Kendall hesitated. It sounded pleasant, but he was not sure Andree would -like it—and he was not sure about the sort of girl Bert might have -chosen for a companion. Andree, he had made up his mind, was not the -sort of girl who would take up with anybody. - -“Nothing doing,” he said. - -“Why?” - -“Who’s your girl?” Kendall countered. - -“Girl I’ve known quite awhile. Cashier in a shop.... Say, what you -getting at, anyhow? Madeleine’s a darn nice girl, I’m here to tell the -world. Looks it, too. I’d just as soon take her over to the Y. M. C. A. -and introduce her to the head guy—and she’d get past, too.” - -“I don’t know.... I don’t know Andree very well. She might not like it.” - -“Rats!” Bert said, scornfully. “They might as well get acquainted one -time as another.” - -Kendall wasn’t so sure of that. He saw no reason why the girls should -ever get acquainted. In short, he didn’t follow Bert’s reasoning nor -comprehend the point he made. - -“We can move in to-morrow,” Kendall said, and there was an end of it. - -It was a long afternoon for Capt. Kendall Ware, but at last he found his -day’s work at an end and himself in the street. He went into a café for -a hurried meal and then took the Metro to the Place St.-Michel, arriving -there a good half-hour ahead of the appointed time. He took a seat at a -sidewalk table in a café from which he could watch the fountain, and -ordered a glass of coffee into which he squirted _saccharin_ from a -bottle with a nozzle like those used by American barbers to put bay rum -on one’s hair. At ten minutes past seven he was fearful Andree did not -mean to keep her appointment. At a quarter past he was sure of it.... -And she was not due until half past. He was to learn that she was one of -those persons who are never ahead of time, who never hurry, but who may -always be depended upon to arrive eventually. - -It was almost exactly seven-thirty when he saw her coming across the -Place. At first he did not recognize her, for he had been expecting that -white suit topped by its cunning tam-o-’shanter; but she was not in -white this evening. Her dress was of some light summer material and she -wore a dark tam. He never saw her wear anything but a tam.... She looked -more slender, younger, than before. Why, she seemed to be nothing but a -child! He knew she saw him, but she did not seem to see him, for she -came forward sedately, with those staid little steps of hers until she -was almost at arm’s-length. Then she looked up and smiled. - -Again he found that difficulty in opening the conversation, in -organizing his French for action, and she—she seemed to have forgotten -her English. But each was glad to see the other. He tried to tell her he -was glad to see her, but made frightful work of his attempt to pronounce -the word _joyeux_. It necessitated resort to the dictionary—and -immediately awkwardness was dispelled. - -“I have worked so—_so_—hard. All the day.” - -“At what?” - -She held out her book. It was a volume of Racine. “I have been -studying.” She opened it to show him. “Regard this so long part. It is -necessary for me to learn it. You do not know Racine.... You do not know -this play. Oh, it is very sad, very _tragique_. But it is very -beautiful....” - -“What are you learning all that for?” - -“I must.... I must learn many things. It is for the examination. I must -to enter into the _Académie_. First I must pass the examination. If I -can succeed to enter into the _Académie_, then I shall some day go onto -the stage of the Comédie Française and be a great actress and make much -money, and you shall sit and clap your hands. I shall then come to New -York like Madame Bernhardt, for there is much money, and you shall be -proud I am your friend. _N’est-ce pas?_ But it is very _difficile_ to -enter the _Académie_. One must know a famous actor or musician to -recommend one.... Do you know actors and musicians in Paris?” - -“No.” - -“You must to meet these actor, then, and know him well, so you will say -to him, ‘Recommend my friend to the _Académie_.’ It is very necessary.” -She looked up at him and smiled gaily at her little joke, which was -uttered half in seriousness. - -“So you’re an actress, are you?” An actress! It rather startled him. He -had ideas about actresses—American actresses! But a French actress!... - -“_Non.... Non.... Non...._ I am nothing. I am a young girl only, me. But -I must do something. I have to live, is it not? Yes.... Then to be the -actress in the Comédie Française is to be well.” - -He was rather relieved. There is a difference between being an actress -and desiring to be one. He had an inspiration. “Maybe you would like to -go to the Comédie Française to-night,” he said. - -She clapped her hands. “But yes—yes. Let us hurry. It is already late -and we shall miss something.” - -They went to an adjacent bus-stand, where Andree tore two numbers from a -packet fastened to a post. The bus appeared, passengers alighted, and -the conductress began calling off numbers. Only those were allowed to -mount whose numbers were called, for overcrowding is not permitted. The -bus rolled away without them, but presently another appeared, their -numbers were called, and in ten minutes they were walking down the -Avenue de l’Opéra toward the theater. - -Kendall bought seats, the most expensive in the house, and they entered, -mounting the broad stairway to the gallery, where they permitted -themselves to be shown into a species of box by an attendant. The play -was just commencing. - -“Do you onderstan’ it?” Andree asked. - -“Not enough to do any good.” - -“Then I shall explain it to you.” And as the action progressed she -pattered on with explanations and observations very cunningly and -charmingly. “You see thees ol’ man? He is in love with thees yo’ng girl. -But she—she does not love him. It is ver’ sad. Thees yo’ng man who is -ver’ handsome, she loves him.” Suddenly she turned to him and asked: -“Are men in America—oh, how do you say—what is the word? _Fidèle._ Do -you know _fidèle_?” - -“Faithful—constant—is that it?” - -“Yes. Are American men so?” - -“Why—generally, I guess.” - -She shook her head somberly. “Frenchmen are not. They are most -_infidèle_. It is ver’ sad.” - -“How about French girls?” - -“Oh, some are _fidèle_ and some not. Some Frenchmen are _fidèle_. The -poor. _Oui._ It is the rich men and women who are not _fidèle_.” - -“Are you rich?” - -She laughed. “No, I am ver’ _fidèle_.” - -“So the poor folks always marry and are faithful?” he asked, with real -curiosity. - -“Oh, they are faithful. Not always do they marry. No. Sometimes they are -too poor, sometimes they do not want to, but they are _fidèle_. But yes. -Do young men and young girls in America always marry?” - -“Yes.” - -“It is very strange. Not so in France. No.” - -“What then?” - -“A young man love a young girl, and a young girl love a young man.... -They marry, maybe. That is well. But maybe they do not marry. It is -expensive to marry. Then they see each other very often and he gives her -money so she can live.... That is well, because they are _fidèle_.” - -Kendall gasped mentally. What would Detroit, what would his mother think -of such a theory of life as this? How would they regard a mode of living -which places fidelity over the solemn forms of marriage? Here was a -people who apparently valued love and fidelity more than marriage -licenses and wedding-rings!... It sounded very naughty to Kendall. Also -it made him think. His mother and his father tried to function in him -simultaneously and made a chaos of his thoughts.... - -The play continued. “Oh, you should onderstan’ French better. You must -speak it well, _well_!” she exclaimed. “Then I can read poems to you. Do -you know French poetry?” - -He laughed. “I know one poem,” he said. - -“Tell it to me.” - -He recited: - - “_Je vous aime, - Je vous adore, - Que voulez-vous encore?_” - -She turned to look full in his face, her lovely, childish eyes alight -with mischief. “It is not a poem,” she said; “it is a declaration.” - -“Exactly,” he said, half seriously. - -“Oh no, no, no! You do not love me.... It ees not _possible_. No. You do -not know me enough yet.” - -Without thought he made the leap. “Of course I do. How could I help -it?... Don’t you love me?” He talked to her as he would talk to a child. - -“I do not know—yet. I have not known you. We shall see.” - -She was perfectly serene and perfectly serious. It startled him. “By -Jove!” he said to himself, “things move rapidly in this country.” He was -right. France has a way of omitting unessentials and of disregarding -shams and subterfuges. If there is a destination to arrive at, France -does not walk around the block to reach it, but cuts straight across. - -“You are sure you are not married?” she said. “You tell the truth?” - -“I’m not, and I’m not going to be,” he said, decidedly. At least he -would put an end to any such speculations. - -“_Pourquoi?_” There it was again, that direct, troublesome _why_. - -“Because I don’t like it. I don’t want to be married.” - -She nodded. Apparently the reason was perfectly good and sufficient to -her. She directed her attention to the play. - -“Now,” she said, “thees ol’ man he has make love to thees yo’ng girl. -Also he has promise her much money, and she will love him.” - -“I don’t like that,” he said. “I can see, maybe, why people should love -each other and all that, but the money part of it! I don’t like that at -all. That isn’t—good.” - -“_Pourquoi?_ It is that a girl must live. She must eat. Because she -loves must she starve?” - -There was practical France speaking, and France, in spite of -temperament, in spite of surface excitability and eccentricity, is -eminently practical—especially your France of the poorer sort. France -may jump, but she jumps with her eyes open, and with a pretty sure -knowledge of where she will fall.... The play moved on to its climax, -Andree translating, but little translation was necessary, for the -pantomime carried the story. - -“It will be better for you to see a tragedy,” said Andree. “This is -_comédie_. The actors speak fast in _comédie_; in tragedy they speak -more slow.” She showed him how tragic actors speak, and it was -deliciously funny. - -Then came the climax in which “thees ol’ man” took “thees yo’ng girl” to -the railway station and delivered her into the hands of her youthful -lover. Andree was in tears. The magnificent acting affected Kendall -himself, touched his emotions. He felt Andree’s hand move spontaneously -to touch his arm as though in sympathy with the bereaved and forsaken -old man, and Kendall took her little fingers in his palm and patted them -very much as he would have stroked the hand of a weeping child.... She -was so fragile, so childlike, so _nice_. He regarded her covertly, -wondering what was going on under that curly black hair ... assuring -himself that it was impossible for any one to think of anything but -sweetness in connection with her. Yet she was a mystery. He was -incapable of understanding her, and never came to understand her. A -mystery she always remained to him—but a sweet mystery, a dainty -mystery, a mystery never touched by unworthy things or thoughts.... And -that was another mystery which he might one day understand dimly. He -might come to a height from which his vision would be so clear that he -could understand that she was good with that natural goodness which -comes from God ... not with that conventional, rule-of-thumb goodness -which is a product of narrow beliefs and set dogmas. Kendall was good -himself, but he was not capable of attaining to a goodness such as -Andree’s, for he could never approach her naturalness, the instinct -which was in her for following always a path upon which God could smile, -even if men should frown.... Doubtless the frowns of men weigh but -little in the judgments of God.... - -They left the theater silently, the emotions evoked by the drama still -moving them and drawing them together. He felt a great tenderness for -her and almost fancied he was in love. It was a fair imitation. Whatever -it was, it was not bad, but good. He would not be the worse, but the -better, for having experienced it. - -“My friend and I have rented an apartment,” he said, suddenly. - -“Your friend? What is his name?” - -“Bert Stanley.” - -“You will live together?” - -“Yes.” - -“I will know him then.... You shall show him to me.” - -“If you like.” - -“Where is thees apartment?” - -He told her. - -“Is it very _grand_?” She used the word in the French, not the English -signification. - -“Two bedrooms, dining-room, _salon_. It is very comfortable. We shall -move in to-morrow—and we’re going to have a cook.” - -“Cook? What is cook?” - -Again recourse must be had to the dictionary, and there followed a -lesson in pronouncing the rather difficult word _cuisinière_. - -“Has thees friend, this Monsieur Stanley, a friend—like me?” - -“I think so.” - -“You do not know? You have not seen her?” - -“No.” - -“That is droll.... And thees cook?” - -“I haven’t seen her.” - -“I must come to see thees apartment and thees cook. I must know how much -you pay, and if it is too much.... Ah, you shall have a dinner and she -shall cook, and I shall be there, and your friend, thees Monsieur -Stanley, and _his_ friend. We shall know each other.” - -“I don’t know,” he said, doubtfully, thinking of the proprieties and -wondering what the _concierge_ would say if he were to give a dinner -such as she suggested. His acquaintance with _concierges_ was limited. - -Again they were walking up the dark Boulevard St.-Michel, and again she -would not permit him to accompany her to her door. “Good night.... It -was ver’ nice, and I think you are ver’ nice—perhaps.” - -“But you don’t love me?” he asked, trifling with destiny without -intention, as young men will trifle. - -“I do not know—yet.... I do not know you. And you do not love me. Oh no, -no! It is not possible. You make fun of me. I can see you make _grimace_ -even in the dark.” - -“When do we play together again?” - -“Soon.... I cannot see you to-morrow, but the day after—yes.... It is -not a good place to meet, the Place St.-Michel. It is far. No, it shall -be the Metro, Place de la Concorde, at _sept heures_.” - -“Seven o’clock.” - -“Yes.... And you will not fail?” - -“No.” - -“Good night.” - -He was of a mind to kiss her good night as he had kissed American girls -whom he had taken home from parties and with whom he had played about, -but he hesitated. He didn’t want to spoil things, to make her take -fright and disappear. She was becoming too much a delightful element in -his life for him to take a chance of losing her now.... And while he -hesitated she was gone. - -As mysteriously as she appeared out of the mazes of the enormous city -she disappeared into them again, and Bert was apprehensive lest she fail -to reappear. He need not have been apprehensive. There is in life a -thread of fate, of destiny, which attaches one person to another, so -that, even though they separate to the ends of the earth, they will be -drawn together again at some spot in some hour.... Destiny had woven a -strand between Andree and Kendall.... - - - - - CHAPTER V - - -Kendall Ware and Bert Stanley went early to _petit déjeuner_ in the -dining-room of the Union, for they had decided to move before the day’s -work began. The waitress laid her order-slips on the table, and as she -did so Kendall noticed that her eyes were red and swollen with weeping -and that it was with difficulty that she restrained her sobs. - -“Mademoiselle is sad this morning,” he said, sympathetically. - -“_Oui, monsieur_, very sad.... Oh, it is my brother! The word came in -the night. The _boches_ have killed him....” - -“Poor kid!” said Kendall. It was his first direct contact with the -sadness of war, and it affected him strongly. Evidences of this sort had -been all about him, but this was so close! - -“He was the last,” she said, finding comfort in his sympathy. “There -were three brothers ...” - -“It’s rotten,” Kendall said when she moved away. “Rotten. These poor -women!...” - -Bert made no reply. He was not the sort to voice sympathy if he felt it, -nor was he the sort to be moved as Kendall was moved. He was more -objective, less emotional—a trifle boisterous and swanking and not given -to peering below the surface of events. It was his motto to take what -came and make the best of it. On the whole, he was a careless, buoyant, -thoughtless young American whose two great objects in life were to get -on in the world and to have a good time. He had none of the scruples and -inhibitions that made Kendall Ware more complex—not that he was -unscrupulous; not that he was not an ordinarily square, able, decent -sort of boy, but there did not reside in him that meticulous ethical -sense that Kendall had inherited from his mother, and which had been -softened and made finer by inheritances from his father. - -“Four sons out of one family,” said Kendall, “and there are thousands of -such cases, I suppose.” He stopped. “And every man killed is not a loss -to his mother and sisters alone—but to the girl he was going to marry or -had just married. After this war, Bert, where in thunder are the girls -of France going to find enough husbands to go around?” - -“They aren’t,” Bert said, and then he grinned. “That’s why the American -Army is so popular with them. Every one of us is a possible husband, so -look out, young fellow.” - -“A million—maybe two million—girls with nobody to marry.... It’s hell!” - -“It’s up to us to do our best to keep them from worrying about it,” said -Bert, characteristically. “Come on, we’ve got to hustle.” - -They loaded down a taxicab with their trunks and rolls and were driven -to their new home. The _concierge_, naïvely proud of having two American -officers as her tenants, bustled about them in genuine, motherly -welcome. Kendall liked the brightness of her smile, it was so brisk, so -alert; he liked her looks as a whole.... Why, she might have been his -aunt, he thought. She had the look of an aunt, the sort a nephew would -delight to visit. - -“I have your _cuisinière_,” she said. “I recommend her. She will please -messieurs.... But she is large, _une bonne femme_. She comes to-morrow -and she is called Arlette. All things may be left to her, do you -understand? Yes, yes, Arlette will see to all, to the marketing and the -accounts—if _messieurs les officiers_ desire. Shall you dine at home -to-morrow evening?” - -Bert looked at Kendall. - -“I had an engagement with Madeleine. Don’t see why we shouldn’t dine -here, though.” - -“Why,” Kendall said, hesitatingly, “Andree said she wanted to meet you -and Madeleine—and to see the apartment. We might—” He was still -reluctant. - -But Bert settled the thing for him out of hand. “Dinner for four, if you -please. At seventy-thirty.” - -“A nice dinner,” Kendall added, rather apprehensively. “There will be -ladies.” - -He watched the _concierge’s_ face to see how this news would affect her. -Apparently it did not affect her at all. - -“Of a surety,” she said, “Arlette shall be notified.” - -The young men disposed of their traps temporarily and walked to their -offices. - -“I heard of a bully place to eat,” said Bert. He was always finding new -and excellent and quaint cafés. “Up on the rue de Richelieu. Marty’s -they call it. A French officer told me about it—says it’s mostly -patronized by actors from the Comédie and artists and newspaper men. -Suppose we take a look.” - -“Suits me,” said Kendall. “Meet you in the Union at seven.” - -Kendall was more anxious to see Marty’s than he would have admitted to -Bert; as soon as Bert mentioned the fact that its _habitués_ were actors -he wanted to go to the place very badly. He wanted to see what French -actors were like—and actresses. In his whole life he had never seen an -actor off the stage, had never been especially curious about them, but -now it was different. Andree was going to be an actress if she could, -and he wanted to see for himself what sort of creature she would be when -she came to be one. - -Since he left Andree the night before he had been filled with -uneasiness. Again and again he reviewed his conversation with her and -found it disturbing. He had rather lost his head, he perceived. He had -told her he loved her when, so he declared to himself, he did not love -her in the least, and the fact that she had made light of his -declaration and had refused to believe in the possibility of a so-sudden -affection helped the situation very little. What troubled him most was -that he had made a start of some kind, to travel some sort of path. He -didn’t know what sort of path it was nor whither it led, but he was -vaguely apprehensive of it. He fancied that half-meant declaration of -his had altered the status of himself and Andree altogether, and placed -them on a different basis. But he was wrong.... He remembered that he -wanted to kiss her, but was not inclined to take himself to task for -that. What could be more natural than to want to kiss Andree? He never -saw anybody who was more kissable.... Again and again he consoled -himself by conjuring up her face and studying it, and by remembering her -modesty, her reserve, her sweetness and goodness. Of course it was all -right. There wasn’t the slightest danger with a girl like Andree—if, of -course, they didn’t actually fall in love with each other. He didn’t -want to do that. Andree was a _foreigner_. She was not American, but of -another race, speaking another language. This may sound droll, but how -many Americans are there who would have felt exactly as Kendall felt! - -Therefore the idea of marriage did not occur to him as of the -possibilities. He could not imagine himself marrying a foreigner. Here -his mother functioned without hindrance. She had been against all -foreigners. To her a foreigner had been a sort of freak of nature, a -distressing accident. Anybody who was not English had been guilty of -some sort of obscure offense against nature. Of course there were -degrees of foreignness—some, as the Chinese, were more guilty than -others—but it was a difference in degree and that was all. This was a -basic _fact_ to her, a part of her, and, without consciously instructing -Kendall, she had impressed her way of thinking upon him until it was his -own. He did not think of marriage with Andree any more than he would -have thought of eating a rose.... - -As a matter of fact, he didn’t know just what he did think of in -connection with her. He had no definite hopes. She had occurred in his -life and now he was drifting along, letting matters take care of -themselves. He simply was without intentions of any sort.... But he was -vaguely uneasy. - -At seven-thirty Kendall and Bert entered Marty’s a bit diffidently, as -young men do who go to a place where they are uncertain of just how to -behave. It was a dingy little café, poorly lighted and rather crowded -with things. One passed a sort of bar upon which were piled _langoustes_ -and melons, and behind which was madame, very fat and capable, -surrounded by bottles of various kinds, and keeping an efficient eye on -her patrons and upon the finances of the institution. A half-partition -of glass separated the bar from the rest of the room, which was filled -with tables in parallel rows, with a narrow aisle down the middle. When -filled to capacity the café might contain as many as thirty persons. - -Madame bade them welcome with a smile and a _bon soir_, and motioned -them to proceed to a table. They seated themselves and looked about. -Only a few persons were present, but before a stout waitress dressed in -black had taken their order a considerable party entered and took seats -directly opposite. There were four men and two women. Almost -simultaneously a fifth young man entered noisily. He waved his cane in -the air as he hobbled in, for he had an artificial leg, and shouted -greetings to everybody. He was rather tall and very thin and pale, but -exceedingly jaunty. His felt hat, a disreputable affair, was askew on -his head, and there was something rakish about even his limp. With many -gestures and apparent great excitement he rushed from one table to the -other, shaking hands with everybody, and once in a while stooping to -kiss a girl on the cheek. Everybody laughed with him and at him. At last -his eyes perceived Kendall and Bert and he came lunging across to them. - -“Ha!” he shouted, throatily. “Americans! Welcome! I shall sit at your -table and we shall be acquainted, is it not? You see I spik Engleesh -ver’ fine. Behol’! I shall sit here.” - -“Have nothing to do with him,” a handsome young man called to Kendall in -French. “He thinks you have sugar.” And everybody laughed. - -The young man leaped to his feet, waved his arms above his head, and -glared at his accuser. “_Bah!_” he shouted, explosively. “You are -nothing ...” and sat down very suddenly, apparently forgetting the whole -incident, for he leaned over the table to Kendall and said: “It is an -argument—yes. You shall decide, is it not? A foolish argument. Behol’—if -there is a king in Siam—eh, you observe?—and he is rich, oh, ver’, ver’ -rich. You onderstand? Yes? Also, if there is a—what you call—a electric -button here”—he turned wildly and shoved his thumb against the partition -as if he were ringing an electric bell—“if I could press this button—do -you understand?—and thees king in Siam is dead—oh, queek, sudden, like -thees”—he caught a long thumb-nail against his upper teeth and snapped -it—“so.... Now, then, if I can so to push the button and thees king is -dead, and all his money is mine—the argument, messieurs, is—shall I do -it. _Voilà!..._” He leaned back and regarded them gravely. - -“Give it a push,” said Bert. - -“Ah, you theenk!...” He leaped again to his feet and extended his hand -across the table to Bert, who took it and shook hands rather -embarrassedly. - -“I am Jacques,” said the young man. “We must to know one another. You -are named—ah, Monsieur Bert.... Monsieur Ken-dall. Ha!... All my friends -there, regard. Messieurs Bert and Ken-dall—my frien’s.... My -frien’s—Messieurs Bert and Ken-dall. Now we are acquaint’, is it not? -So.... You see that yo’ng man who spill soup on his coat. He is Monsieur -Robert, great comedian at the Comédie Française. _Oui_, he make the -first prize at the _Académie_ one year ago.... That other, with the hair -_so_.... He is _espagnol_.... _Oui_. Also an actor, but not a comedian. -He does _so_.” Jacques illustrated by scowling horribly in imitation of -the tragic method. “He also make the first prize at the _Académie_ -before two year.... They are ver’ clever.” Both young men so described -got to their feet and came across to shake hands. “Those others,” -continued Jacques, in full voice, “are jus’ boys an’ girl. You -onderstand? Not anybody.... That one who look so jealous at hees girl—he -make the dress for ladies. _Oui._ He have much money, but no brains.” At -this _mot_ everybody shouted with laughter, and the girl who accompanied -the maker of dresses disentangled herself from him and came across to -sit down by Kendall, putting her cheek up to him. - -“She wants you should kees,” said Jacques, and Kendall shamefacedly -planted a hurried kiss on her cheek. “And now you shall see—thees yo’ng -man with her, he is ver’ jealous. Perhaps he shall beat her w’en they -arrive at home.... _Oui...._” - -Kendall proffered a cigarette to Jacques, and then extended his case -toward the young actors across the aisle. They were real American -cigarettes, one of which will do more to carry you into the good graces -of a _poilu_ than many bottles of _vin ordinaire_. Both young men came -across, not too eagerly, and helped themselves. Monsieur Robert, the -younger, and a very handsome, boyish, pleasing young man, seated himself -in the chair the dressmaker’s companion had just vacated. He understood -a word of English, but dared not venture an attempt to speak it; -however, he was exceedingly cordial in French. Kendall managed to -understand most that he said. It was a very laughable, but somewhat -_risqué_, account of a conversation he had essayed with an Englishwoman -during a recent engagement in London, carried on through the agency of a -dictionary. Purely through accident the young man’s finger had pointed -to a certain word when it should have been directed to quite -another—with the result that he received a sound box on the ear. He told -the thing with such boyish delight, and with such naïve joy in the -outraged prudery of the Englishwoman, that Kendall laughed as he had -laughed at nothing for months. This pleased the young actor. If Kendall -had been diplomatically angling for Monsieur Robert’s friendship, he -could not have contrived better. - -Suddenly he remembered Andree. “You must know a famous actor,” she had -commanded him. Andree desired the good offices of an actor in her effort -to enter the _Académie_—and this young gentleman had carried off the -first prize in that national institution but a year before.... He -regarded Monsieur Robert with new interest. - -While Kendall and Monsieur Robert made merry, if difficult, -conversational progress, Bert was instructing Jacques in colloquial -American in a manner to which his rather grotesque sense of humor was -peculiarly adapted. “If you meet a lady,” he was saying, “and she bids -you good afternoon, the thing to say, if you want to be really polite, -is, ‘Go jump in the lake.’ Of course you don’t say this to a lady the -first time you meet her, because it is rather friendly, but possibly the -second time. Do you understand?” - -“But surely.... Go jump in the lake.... Ah, it has a sound, has it not? -I like that.” He stood up, placed his hand on his heart and bowed to -Bert profoundly. “Ah, madame,” he said, in honeyed tones, “you should go -to jump in the lake.... Is it so you say it? It is a phrase. I shall -remember it. And what does one say if—” - -Kendall lost the next lesson, for Monsieur Robert arose and shook hands -warmly. “I hope you shall dine here often,” he said. “Me, I always dine -here.... So we shall become better acquainted.” - -Others of the company took their departure to their theaters or with -their actor companions, or to write their criticisms, and as they went -out, laughing and jostling, each stopped at the table of the Americans -to shake hands and to say good evening. It was all very genial and -companionable—a sort of family affair—but very un-American and droll. - -Kendall and Bert took their departure soon afterward. The evening was -rather hot, but they determined to walk home, a distance of a couple of -miles. As they were passing the Hôtel Wagram, Kendall glanced inside and -saw, standing just within the lobby, the Miss Knox who had been his -playmate on the voyage across the Atlantic. - -“Wait a minute. Here’s a girl I know,” he said to Bert, and led his -companion inside. - -“Well, Captain Ware!” she exclaimed. “I was wondering if I should ever -see you again. What have you been doing? Have you been to the front?” - -“No. I’m anchored in Paris. And you?” - -“I’ve been down at Tours, but now I’ve been ordered to report at -headquarters here. I don’t know where I shall be sent.” - -“Better get assigned to Paris,” he said, rashly, “then we can play -around together.” - -“I don’t know.... I’d rather be nearer things. It’s more interesting.” - -“Anyhow, you’ll be here a day or two. Can’t you take dinner with me -to-morrow”——he stopped, hesitated, got a bit red, and finished, -lamely—“soon?” - -“It looks as if I might have competition as a playmate,” she said, -dryly. “Is she nice? Who is she? Red Cross or Y. M. C. A.?” - -“Neither.” - -She laughed. “And your French is so miserable,” she said. “How do you -talk to her?” - -“She speaks some English,” said Kendall, falling into a trap which had -not been set for him, and Bert and Maude Knox laughed as he reddened -with embarrassment. - -“Is she pretty?” Miss Knox demanded of Bert. - -“I don’t think so,” Bert said, solemnly. “He keeps her under cover. She -must be homely or he’d let her be seen.” - -“Now I won’t buy you a dinner,” Kendall said. - -“When I am so hungry!” she said, dolefully. - -“Don’t blame Ken,” Bert said. “She hardly lets him have an evening to -himself.” - -“Well,” said Miss Knox, “if you do get a night off I’ll be glad to see -you. Probably I won’t be here but a couple of days, though. You come, -too, Captain Stanley, if you like.” - -“And pay for half of the dinner,” said Bert. “That’s fair. Half the -young lady, half the dinner-check. Simple justice.” - -“Now I’ve got to run up to my room. I think—mind, I only think—I’m going -to have a bath. If the bathtub is still there, and if the water hasn’t -stopped running, and if a few other things haven’t happened to the -plumbing—Good night.... Don’t think of coming, Captain Ware, if it will -make any trouble with your friend.” - -The two young officers walked on up the street. Kendall did not feel -like talking. He was thinking about Andree and comparing her with Maude -Knox. He was wondering what Andree would think of Maude, and what Maude -would think of Andree. Also he wondered a bit what Maude thought about -_him_ and what sort of an affair she believed him to be carrying on with -Andree.... Not that it mattered to him in the least what she thought, -but— - -At last they stood before the building in which their apartment was -located. Bert pulled the bell and presently the lock clicked. They -pushed open the huge door and stepped into the blackness of the court, -lighting matches to find the light-button. It was a climb of four -flights of stairs to their rooms, which they entered with some pride of -possession and sat down to have a final smoke before going to bed. - -“I wonder what the _concierge_ will say to our bringing the girls here -for dinner to-morrow night?” Kendall said, for the point still worried -him. - -“Young man,” said Bert, drowsily, “you aren’t in Detroit. Go to the -window and reassure yourself. This is Paris....” - - - - - CHAPTER VI - - -Kendall was awakened next morning by the sound of some one shuffling -about his room. It was a woman, and she was moving toward the door with -his shoes in her hand, and for an instant he wondered if he were in the -presence of some new sort of burglar. The woman was short and very fat, -with a large head scantily covered by that colored hair which does not -turn white at sixty. Her face was broad, her nose was broad and had a -peculiar and laughable up-tilt, her mouth was broad, and her eyes were -very large and kindly. She had one generous double chin and a quite -respectable growth of whiskers. Her eyes and her nose were the most -notable features. One liked her eyes and one could not help laughing at -her nose. As a complete figure she was droll. - -She saw that he was awake and grinned timidly. - -“_Bon jour, monsieur_,” she said, and then, waggling his shoes, followed -her greeting by a torrent of French in which the word “_chaussers_” -occurred frequently. She spoke very rapidly and was unintelligible to -Kendall. - -“Arlette?” he asked. - -“_Oui, je suis Arlette_,” she said, with a broad grin of delight, and -then scudded through the door suddenly, as if she had been overtaken by -a fit of embarrassment. - -Kendall got out of bed and called Bert, who was still asleep. - -“Hey, somebody’s swiped my shoes!” came presently in a voice of -complaint. - -“Shut up!” said Kendall, going into his friend’s room. “It’s Arlette. I -saw her sneaking out with mine when I woke up.” - -“Arlette? ... Oh, _she’s_ here, eh? What’s she want with my shoes? I’ve -heard these French cooks could—” - -But just then Arlette pushed the door open, regardless of the state of -her young employers’ toilets, and deposited the shoes on the floor, -carefully cleaned and polished. - -The boys looked at each other, weighing this event in the light of their -experience with American domestics. It was so surprising as to be -upsetting. - -“Seventy francs a month—including shines,” said Bert. - -“And seventy francs is fourteen dollars.” - -“And my mother pays her cook twelve a week—and hires another girl to -wait on the cook! ... Come to France to solve the domestic-servant -problem! ... I wonder if she bathes us.” - -They hurried into their clothes and went to the dining-room, where a -great pitcher of chocolate stood in the center of the table, flanked by -a pot of jam and a basket of rolls. On each plate was a bowl—not a cup. -Arlette entered and stood with her stomach against the table’s edge, -whence she looked first at the food and then at her employers. She -pointed accusingly at the confiture and said, “_Abricot!_” - -“Apricot, eh? _Très-bien._” - -“_Mais non, messieurs.... Mais non._ It is not well.... Oh, the price—it -is terrific, it is wicked. Of a surety, you are robbed. We shall have no -more. _Messieurs les officiers_ shall not so be robbed. I shall see well -to it. But I was directed to procure confiture!” She crossed her pudgy -hands on her ample stomach and rolled her eyes to heaven, calling upon -Divinity to witness that apricot jam at four francs a jar was a thing to -excite horror in any well-regulated and economical mind. - -Kendall strove to comfort her, but it was impossible. No quantity of -assurances that it was _très-bien_ could remove her mind from the -enormity of the cost of that delicacy, and she went out shaking her head -and muttering and sniffling a trifle. In a moment she re-entered to ask -what was desired for dinner. It was the first and the last time she made -such an inquiry. In the future she made suggestions herself, but never -did she ask outright what these strange young savages would have to eat. - -“_Poulet_,” said Bert. “Chicken.” - -Arlette rested her hands on her hips and stared at him aghast. She -repeated the word after him as if unwilling to believe such a thing had -been mentioned in her presence. “_Poulet? ... Poulet? ... Non, non, -non._ But no. It is too dear. The cost, consider the cost! Veal, -perhaps, but never pullet.” - -“Young ladies are coming and we wish a suitable dinner,” said Bert. - -“But pullet—oh no. There shall be a suitable dinner, but there shall not -be pullet. It is a thing unthinkable—at the price. Before the war—yes, -but now! _Mon Dieu!_ do the American officers consider what price is -demanded for pullet?” - -The American officers did not, nor did Arlette enlighten them, but she -continued stubbornly to refuse to procure it. - -Ken shrugged his shoulders. “It looks as if we were going to be -henpecked,” he said, ruefully. - -Bert laughed. “Anyhow we get no chicken. I wonder if we can have a -salad?” - -Yes, a salad was thinkable, and even string-beans or cauliflower or -peas—but pullet! Arlette’s mind refused to be diverted from pullet. - -“Very well, then,” Bert said. “Whatever you want, Arlette. You’re the -boss. But get enough for four.” - -Arlette turned around and made for the door again, but paused on the -threshold to turn and stare at them unbelievingly and to utter in a -voice of anguish the word, “_Poulet_.” She said it as one might say -bubonic plague. - -As Kendall left the dining-room and went for his cap he saw a tiny, -big-eyed face suddenly whisk out of sight around the corner of the hall -which led to the kitchen. It had been the merest glimpse, such as a -believing mortal might hope some day to catch of a fairy. - -“Hey, there!” he called in English, for he had a way with children and -children had a way with him. There was no response, so he gave chase. -The fairy had scudded into the kitchen, and was standing close to -Arlette, concealing herself in the old woman’s ample skirts. Arlette -gazed at him with some apprehension as he came into the little kitchen, -wondering, doubtless, what these barbarians would do to her for bringing -a child into their lair, but a sight of his face reassured her, and she -smiled a bit dubiously and placed her pudgy hand on the little girl’s -head. - -Kendall got down on one knee and held out his hand gravely. “_Bon jour, -mademoiselle_,” he said. - -“_Bon jour, monsieur_,” she said, with the cunningest little lisp, her -face very sober and a little frightened, and she shook hands with him -primly. - -“How is your husband and all the family?” Ken asked. - -Her eyes opened wide—blue and sweet they were—and she looked up at -Arlette before replying. “But, monsieur, I have not yet a husband.” - -“No.... That is bad. You must find a husband. What, at your age? Oh _là, -là, là, là!_ And what is mademoiselle’s age?” - -“Eight years, monsieur.” - -He shook his head. “And no husband.... Would you like an American -husband, mademoiselle?” - -“Oh yes, monsieur. The Americans they are very nice.” - -She was the tiniest of mites with such a creamy-pink complexion as Ken -had never seen. Her face was oval and beautiful, with a fairy-like -childish beauty that deserved to be immortalized by some master of the -brush and canvas. He looked from her to Arlette and was unwilling to -admit a relationship between them or the possibility that this sprite -could ever grow with the weight of years and labor to resemble the old -woman. He wanted to kiss her; he wanted to kiss her on those little -lips, parted a trifle now in her interest, but usually resting so -lightly the one upon the other with the merest pursing which seemed to -say they were made for kisses. He drew her to him, and she came -diffidently, but not bashfully, and he lifted her to his knee. She -seemed almost to be without weight. - -“How do you name yourself?” he asked. - -“Arlette,” she said. - -“My granddaughter,” Arlette explained. “Her father is a prisoner of war -in Germany—in consequence of which her mother is dead....” - -“_Pauvre Mignonne_,” he said, and drew her close to him. - -She looked up into his face briefly, and then, for the first time, she -smiled. - -“You will come often to see me,” he said. “We must be friends—and then, -who knows, but I may have to take you to America with me. You have no -husband; I have no wife. I shall, perhaps, ask your grandmother for your -hand.” - -“Yes, monsieur, I shall come often if monsieur permits.... And I shall -sing for monsieur.” - -“I shall like that. And now let me see your hand. Something is the -matter with it.” He examined her palm gravely, then placed a franc upon -it and closed her fingers tightly. “There, that will cure it, I -think.... And you will not forget me—and you will think about going back -to America with me?” - -“Yes, monsieur,” she said, very gravely. - -Kendall rejoined Bert and they walked together to the Étoile and down -the Champs Élysées to the hotel which sheltered the huge office staff of -the American Expeditionary Force in Paris. - -“I hope everything goes off right to-night,” said Kendall, who was still -a trifle dubious despite Andree’s expressed desire to meet Bert and his -friend. - -“Sure. We’ll make it a regular party,” Bert said, confidently. “What’s -worrying you?” - -“You never can tell how strange girls will get on together.” - -“Fiddlesticks!... Madeleine will get on with anybody. See you at the -house at seven.” - -Promptly at seven Kendall was awaiting Andree at the entrance to the -Metro in the Place de la Concorde, and promptly at the hour she -appeared, walking leisurely, as she always seemed to do, and with an air -of not seeing him at all until she was very close to him, an air which -he came to associate with their meetings. There was something diffident -about it, something modest and maidenly that he liked.... Then she would -pause, always hesitatingly, as if she rather doubted her welcome, and -look up into his face without the vestige of a smile, expecting him to -extend his hand, and then she would shake hands very gravely. It was -always so. - -“You have made much work to-day?... You are _fatigué_?” she asked. - -“But, no.... And you?” - -“I have been—what do you say?—_ennuyée_?” - -“Bored.” - -“Yes, yes, bored.... Have you thought of me?” - -He had intended to be most circumspect, to make no repetitions of his -half-joking declaration of their last meeting, but with her delightful -presence beside him, with that half-veiled, appealing glance from her -darkly shadowed eyes, good resolutions were forgotten. - -“I’ve thought of nothing else,” he said, and was near to the truth. - -“But no”—she shook her head childishly—“you have not thought of me at -all. It is not possible.” - -“I thought of you when I got up, I thought of you all the morning, I -thought of you at noon and all the afternoon—and I am thinking of you -now.” - -She laughed quietly. The drollery of his protestation pleased her and -made her gay. Thereafter it became a formula, a sort of ritual. She -would ask him if he had thought of her, and he would recite, “When I got -up, all the morning, at noon, all the afternoon,” and always she would -laugh as if it were very new and very funny and very delightful. - -“Where do we go?” she said, as he took his place by her side. - -“To dine with Arlette.” - -“With Arlette!... Who is thees Arlette?” - -“My cook,” he said. - -“At your apartment?” - -“Yes.” - -“I do not know....” - -“Bert and Madeleine are coming, too. You said you wanted to know them.” - -“Yes.... Yes.... I will know them. And this yo’ng girl, this Madeleine, -does your friend love her?” - -He spread his hands and shrugged his shoulders. “How should I know?” - -“He has not told you?... He is your friend and he has not told you?” - -“No.” - -“Have you told him about me?” - -“A little; not much.” - -“_Pourquoi?_” - -“Mademoiselle Pourquoi!... Oh, because you were none of his business.” - -“Oh, I do not onderstan’, I do not onderstan’.” She clasped hands -together with mock despair, and with the cunningest expression of -bafflement on her face. “I do not onderstan’.... It ees ver’ difficult, -ver’ difficult.” - -“Shall we take the Metro or a taxi?” - -“The Metro, of a certainty. It arrives, does it not? And the taxi—oh, it -is very dear.” - -“You’re a great little economist,” he said, laughingly, but nevertheless -wonderingly. American girls had never been so careful to choose the less -expensive of two methods. - -As they were descending into the Metro they came suddenly face to face -with Maude Knox, and Kendall felt himself blushing hotly, and was -ashamed of himself for it, so he blushed even more hotly than before. He -stopped determinedly, and held Andree’s arm. - -“Miss Knox,” he said, “I want you to meet Mademoiselle—” He hesitated, -for he did not know Andree’s family name. This piece of ignorance had -never presented itself to him before. She had been Andree to him, and -nothing more. She had needed no other name. “I want you to meet -Mademoiselle Andree,” he finished, rather defiantly. - -The girls looked at each other, Miss Knox with a humorous twinkle in her -eye, but nevertheless with a glint of keen appraisal; Andree rather -timidly, as if she would like to hide behind Kendall as little Arlette -had hidden behind her grandmother’s skirts that morning, and peer out -big-eyed at this woman of another race. - -Maude Knox extended her hand. “Delighted,” she said, and smiled. - -“Mademoiselle is very agreeable,” said Andree, but she did not smile; -instead she studied Miss Knox’s face intently and very gravely. - -“There’s our train,” said Kendall, at a loss how otherwise to proceed -with the conversation, and he snatched Andree away before another word -could be exchanged. Maude Knox stood looking after them with a smile -that had in it a hint of something that was not humor, that mingled -curiosity with pique. - -Andree and Kendall alighted from the Metro at the Étoile and walked to -the apartment. He was rather taken aback to see the _concierge_ sweeping -the walk in front of the entrance, for he had hoped subconsciously to -smuggle Andree in without being seen. He could hardly have explained -this had he been asked. But he need not have been apprehensive. The -_concierge_ stopped, peered at Andree keenly for a second, then smiled -and bade them good day. Kendall did not know it, but Andree had been -inspected and had passed the inspection handsomely. Andree, however, was -well aware of it. - -Bert and Madeleine had not arrived, and Kendall showed Andree into their -_salon_ with something of a flourish. She stood looking about her at the -massive gilt furniture, at the large bronze statue of Diana with a bent -arrow in her hand which stood on a pedestal in a corner, and at a bronze -monstrosity depicting Ceres which, half life size, overweighted the -mantel. Her little nose was curling. - -“Oh,” she said in disappointment, “thees is not good. No, no. It is ver’ -bad.” - -“It is sort of fussy,” said Kendall, more than half afraid that she -would take fright at so much wretched taste on exhibition and refuse to -remain. She seemed of a mind to beat a retreat. “But don’t blame me for -it,” he hastened to say. “It isn’t my furniture, you know. This is a -furnished apartment—_meublé_, you know. I don’t like these gimcracks any -better than you do, but I couldn’t help it.” - -She continued to shake her head dolefully; then her eyes spied a sort of -throne between the windows, a fearful example of what a piece of -furniture can be, and clapped her hands with childish delight. “Oh, it -ees for me. See!” She ran to it and seated herself on the threadbare -seat, her tiny feet dangling above the floor. “Behold!... Regard me!... -I am a queen, is it not? You have not the manners. It is that you should -kneel. Here ... at once.” - -Laughingly he humored her whim and, dropping on one knee, he lifted her -hand to his lips. She laughed delightedly. Then she stepped down. “Come. -I shall see the rest. You shall show me.” And she insisted upon being -shown over the apartment, making little sounds of approval or -disapproval as she went, and finally they reached the kitchen where -Arlette was busy over the stove. - -“_Bon soir, madame_,” said Andree. - -“_Bon soir, mademoiselle_,” Arlette replied, and swiftly scrutinized -this young woman whom her master was bringing into his home. It was a -frank appraisal, for Arlette felt a sort of responsibility for these -strange, rather boisterous, difficult-to-understand, but kindly young -savages of whom she had taken charge. Then she smiled and released a -flood of French upon Andree, who smiled and chattered back at her. -Kendall caught only a word here and there, so rapidly did they speak, -but it was evident to him that they approved of each other, and there -was something very pleasing to him in that. He felt that Arlette would -not have approved of everybody. - -Presently they returned to the _salon_ and Andree said, seriously: “She -is well. I am satisfied. She is of a trustworthiness. Yes....” - -“I don’t know what I’d do if she hadn’t suited you,” said Kendall, with -a chuckle. - -“Oh, I do not onderstan’.... I do not onderstan’. And why does your left -eye laugh when your right does not? It ees ver’ fonny.” She pointed. -“Oh, see! It is laugh! It is laugh!” - -He wrinkled his nose at her, so bold and familiar had he become, and she -pretended anger. - -“You make _grimace_ at me. It is not good. Why do you make _grimace?_” -Then her mood changed. “Thees American girl—she is your friend?” - -“An acquaintance.” - -“You love _her_. I know it.... You love her.” - -“Nonsense!” - -“You see her often—and you love her.” - -“I didn’t know she was in Paris until last night, and I certainly don’t -love her.” She had withdrawn into herself and become a stranger to him. -It startled him, frightened him, not so much because she had withdrawn -herself from him, for he guessed that it was mostly pretense, but -because he had a glimpse of what it would mean to him if she should -withdraw herself utterly. “I don’t love anybody but you,” he said, and -he said it without wishing or intending to say it. - -“No,” she said, decidedly. “It ees not possible. You mock me.” - -Before he could enter upon protestations Bert opened the outer door and -handed a young woman into the apartment. Kendall could see that she was -tall and rather slight, but that was all. He was anxious for her to -appear, first out of curiosity, but principally to be reassured as to -Andree’s reception of the stranger. - -In a moment Bert appeared in the door with the girl at his side, both -laughing as at some joke which had just been uttered. - -“Hello, children!” Bert said, a trifle noisily. “Mademoiselle Andree, is -it not?” He advanced and took the hand which she held out to him primly -while she studied his face with a calm, inscrutable expression. -“Mademoiselle Andree, Monsieur Ken, this is Mademoiselle Madeleine.” - -Both shook hands with the laughing girl, Andree still with that -restraint which was always hers at a first meeting, Kendall with relief, -for he liked Madeleine’s looks. She was taller than Andree by inches, -and not at all beautiful as Andree was beautiful. The key-note of her -character at first glance seemed to be joyousness, a lightness of heart, -good nature. Her mouth was rather broad, but not displeasingly so, for -it was always showing her white teeth through a smile that seemed to be -the commencement of a laugh. She was always laughing, always moving her -body or her hands as if the young life that was in her could not be -still.... And yet there was a shrewd look about her eyes which -advertised that here was no empty head, but a capable young person -indeed.... She was a distinct blonde, with hair which seemed always just -on the point of being disordered, yet which never seemed to lose control -of itself and become disordered. Later Kendall wondered if Madeleine and -her hair were not very much alike in character. - -“All right, eh?” said Bert, proudly, patting Madeleine’s shoulder. - -She threw him a laughing, affectionate glance, and in another instant -she and Andree were chattering to each other with a rapidity which was -not only astonishing, but utterly unintelligible to the boys. If Andree -spoke with bewildering rapidity, what could one say of Madeleine? -Kendall laughed. - -“Mademoiselle Mitrailleuse,” he said, and it was a name that clung, for -it was so apt. She was a veritable machine-gun, shooting out words with -a rapidity almost incredible. - -Arlette appeared in the door of the dining-room and announced that -dinner was served. The quartet of young people took their places at -table, and Kendall began serving a wonderful pea soup from a big bowl -while Arlette stood in the door with hands folded across her stomach, -watching anxiously and shooting quick glances at Madeleine. - -“It is soup,” she said, suddenly, and then darted out of sight with -startling abruptness. - -The soup was followed by meat, which Arlette placed on the table with -something like a flourish, then stepped back and addressed Andree. - -“Veal,” she said. “Oh, mademoiselle, the meats are too dear. It is not -my fault.... Perhaps this will be tough. Who knows?” She paused -anxiously to look first at Bert and then at Ken, who was carving. - -“It’s all right, Arlette,” he assured her, but she was not satisfied, -remaining as close to the table as she could press and watching with an -expression of the most comical anxiety while Ken cut off a morsel and -put it in his mouth. She then, apparently, calculated the difficulty he -encountered in mastication, her jaws working a trifle as if to aid in -the process, and presently uttered a deep sigh of relief. According to -her judgment, Ken had not chewed too laboriously and the meat was -satisfactory. Only then did she retreat to the kitchen. - -“She is very droll,” said Madeleine, restraining her laughter with -difficulty. - -“She is very _well_,” said Andree, nodding her head prettily, “but also -she is droll.” - -“Monsieur Bert also is droll,” said Madeleine, reaching out to bestow a -little pat upon Bert’s hand. - -“All Americans are droll,” said Andree, solemnly. - -“_Tous les Américains sont fous_,” said Ken, quoting a saying of Paris, -which adored Americans at the moment and delighted in their -peculiarities and their absurdities, and laughed at them as one laughs -at the antics of children, deciding, as its dictum had it, that all the -Americans were mad. - -The _viande_ was served alone, as is the French custom, without a -vegetable, but with a delicious sauce which the girls, disdaining -butter, sopped from their plates with their bread—not at all a -manifestation of ill-breeding, but the proper and natural and habitual -method of eating. - -Ken turned to Andree. “I met your actor for you last night,” he said. - -“You have known an actor?... What actor?” - -“Monsieur Robert, of the Comédie Française. Do you know him?” - -“I have seen him. He is a very good actor—and very handsome, _n’est-ce -pas_? Have you spoke of me?” - -“No, my dear. Give a fellow time.” - -“But you must, you must.... It is ver’ _nécessaire_—oh, you do not know -how ver’ _nécessaire_. It is my need to enter into the _Académie_, and -he must help me. You will know him better.” It was a command. “You will -then make me to know him.” - -“I should say _not_.... He’s too handsome. I’m not going to take any -such chance as that—I should say _not_.” - -“_Pourquoi?_” - -“Because I should be jealous,” he said. - -“_Non, non, non!_... You do not care. You only _say_....” - -“How am I going to convince you?” - -“I do not know. It is not possible.... I will not believe.” - -Ken turned despairingly to Madeleine. “She refuses to believe that I -love her. How shall I make her believe?” - -Madeleine laughed at him. “How should I know?... It is for you to do. It -is a thing easy of accomplishment.” - -“Is it easy to make her love me, too?” - -“French girls are not cold,” she said, in the most matter-of-fact way -imaginable. - -“He loves an American girl.... I have seen her this night—yes. She is -not beautiful. American girls do not know how to dress.” Andree shook -her head and frowned at Ken. - -Arlette appeared presently with the vegetable, which she named and -waited to see approved, and afterward with the salad and a like -procedure. When the fruit appeared she made no observation, but asked, -calmly, as if it were the most natural question in the world, “_Petit -déjeuner_ for four?” - -Breakfast for four! It was dropping a thunderbolt on Kendall’s plate. He -was shocked. He was frightened, and shot a quick glance at Andree and -Madeleine. Andree was sipping her wine and appeared not to have heard; -if she had heard she was not disturbed nor shocked nor angered. -Madeleine was laughing. - -“_Arlette est très-méchante_—Arlette is very naughty,” she said. - -Bert shouted with laughter as at some superlative witticism, and both -the girls looked at him rather surprised. Then Madeleine laughed a bit, -as one laughs who does not quite see the point. Kendall watched Andree -in consternation. What would she do? What would she say? What would she -think?... She did nothing, said nothing, apparently thought nothing, but -pared a banana with quaint intensity as if a banana were a strange and -interesting fruit. She seemed always to be interested in her food with a -sort of naïve curiosity and a very real appetite. Her appetite seemed to -Kendall to be the only material thing about her. The rest was mystery, -dainty, rather elfin, mystery.... And here was a new mystery—her -attitude of unconcern in face of Arlette’s _faux pas_. Why, the question -had not touched her at all! It might as well not have been asked.... Or, -in this strange country, was it possible that the _cuisinière_ always -expected her master’s feminine guests to remain for breakfast as well as -dinner? He wondered.... - -“Will they take Paris—the _boches_?” Andree asked, suddenly. - -The Germans had broken across the Chemin des Dames and were rushing -headlong toward the Marne. News was filtering through only in driblets. -Paris was uneasy. One saw nondescript vehicles, piled with trunks and -hampers, making haste for the railroad stations, as frightened -inhabitants betook themselves to the country. Nobody knew what would -happen, but for months the fortune had been bad—and Paris was asking if -it had reached its worst. - -“Of course not,” said Bert, dogmatically. - -“But they are very strong—they have great numbers.” - -“There are the Americans,” said Madeleine. - -“To be sure—the Americans. But they are in Lorraine. The journals say -they are in Lorraine.” - -“You will see,” said Madeleine, for she had more than her share of -Paris’s enthusiasm for its newest ally. - -“Don’t you worry. The _boches_ are going to get themselves thrashed.... -Paris!...” Bert shrugged his shoulders disdainfully. - -“You really think they can be beaten?” - -“Just wait.” - -“And the war will end?... When will it end?” - -“In a year.” Bert was very confident. - -“Oh, a year—so long.... Monsieur Bert, it is terrible, this war. One -hardly remembers when it was not. We are so tired of it. The women are -so tired of it.... It makes me sad—sad. Everybody suffers.” Andree’s -eyes grew bigger and blacker, and her wistful mouth became more wistful. - -“It is true,” said Madeleine. “I have an aunt who lives in the -country—in a very little village. Before the war were thirty families -and fifty men. I was there two years ago. The men were all at the -front—all.... But the fields were planted and the harvests reaped. It -was the women. They labored for the men.... I was there again—it was a -month ago.... The fields were not planted. Matters were bad. It was not -beautiful, and all was neglected.... The women no longer worked. And -why? Ah, it was because there was no longer a reason for them to -work.... There were no men to come home to those fields.... Of the fifty -who went to the war, fifty were dead.... Forever it will be a village -without men!...” - -There was a silence. Every one was feeling the weight of the calamities -of war.... Then Madeleine laughed, but it was a laugh without her -customary gay, careless ring. “This is the last generation of the -French,” she said, half mockingly. “Our men are gone.... You shall see. -The next generation will be what? Look you. It will be English, Belgian, -Italian, American, Moroccan, Chinese....” - -“For example!” exclaimed Andree. - -“It is so,” affirmed Madeleine. - -“Already the government offers one five hundred francs for a son.... I -think the government is satisfied if it is half French, is it not?” - -“A son is a son,” said Andree. - -“To become a soldier when he is a man—and fight the _boches_!” - -“There will be no more wars,” said Bert. “When we are through with this -one nobody will ever have to fight the _boches_ again.” - -“If one could believe,” Andree said, in a low voice. - -Kendall was disturbed. It was within his power to be sympathetic, to -feel deeply, to know pain because another was suffering pain. He wished -this subject had not arisen and he wanted to have it changed ... because -the plight of the women—especially the young women, the marriageable -girls of France—was making itself apparent to him. Millions of them, and -no men to marry them! It was appalling. It was appalling that they -should realize it, and the consequences of their realization were -appalling.... Life was denied them; the fullness and beauty and the joys -and sufferings of womanhood were denied them. He wondered, with his -Middle-Western conscience, if one could really blame them for snatching -what little minutes of living came in their way. He wondered if the -conventional—in these terrible circumstances—could be the _right_. Would -the morals of Plymouth Rock answer in this emergency?... And then came -the inevitable question, What are morals?... His mother could not answer -this question for him to his satisfaction, nor could his father—with all -his father’s leniency. One had to see the thing to comprehend it, and -neither of his parents had seen. For the first time he asked himself if -the conventions, the cut-and-dried rules of living under which he had -grown to manhood, really sprang, full-armed, from the will of Deity, or -if they were evolved by expediency.... It was deep speculation for one -of his equipment, and dangerous speculation for a young man set down as -he was set down among manners strange and customs so divergent—and in -such an emergency. - -He moved back his chair. “Let’s go in the other room,” he said, “and—and -suppose we talk about something besides the war.” - -“It makes you sad?” Andree said, and looked at him with a strange -expression of sympathy, of understanding—of—of something that made her -seem nearer to him, less mysterious, more human than she had ever seemed -before. “Come ... we shall talk awhile and then I must go to my house, -because it is ver’ _nécessaire_ for me to lift up at an early hour.” - -Kendall laughed. “Lift up?...” The literal translation uttered so -soberly was exquisitely funny, made more so by Andree’s solemn little -face. - -“It is fonnee? For example! And what should one say?” - -“Get up,” said Ken. - -“It is not well.... I shall say lift up.” - -“You may say whatever you want to—_mignonne_,” he said, with a sudden -access of tenderness. - -“_Mignonne!..._” She looked up at him and smiled timidly. “It is ver’ -pretty—for you to call me so. It is ver’ well.” - -Madeleine was singing now. She always sang, Kendall discovered, mostly -popular _chansons_. And Andree joined. It was that song dear to the -_poilu_—“_Madelon_”—with its catchy air, its characteristic Frenchness. -Madeleine sang gaily, carelessly, Andree seriously and without a -smile.... Then the girls chattered with each other, becoming acquainted, -while the young men smoked and tried to edge into the conversation, or -to catch a stray word here and there. At last Andree rose. - -“You must take me to my house.” she said. - -“So early?” - -“It is ver’ _nécessaire_.” - -“Coming?” Ken said to Bert, who cast a sidewise glance at Madeleine, and -said: “No. We don’t go your way, anyhow.... See you later.” - -So Kendall and Andree said good night and went down the stairs, counting -the flights gaily, he offering to become an elevator to carry her down -if she became tired, and she demanding that he do so at once, without -delay. “Your friend, he is a high yo’ng man,” she said, suddenly. - -And that became a joke between them. Ever after that they referred to -Bert, not by name, but as the “high yo’ng man.” When people begin to -have private jokes between just themselves they are getting on very well -indeed.... - -Once more he took her to the Place St.-Michel and a little way up the -Boulevard. There she dismissed him, but they lingered with their good -nights. She seemed very gentle, very desirable, very sweet.... He was -not afraid of her as he had been before. Some sort of message had -traveled between them.... Kendall took the hand she extended, then he -drew her to him and kissed her. She submitted, but did not return his -kiss. - -“When?” he asked. - -“The day following to-morrow. Place de la Concorde. Metro. _Sept -heures._” - -It was becoming a part of their ritual. And then she disappeared into -the darkness—whither, he did not know; back into that mystery which was -her life, from which she emerged from time to time as mysteriously as -she disappeared.... He was impressed by this mystery tonight. He did not -know her name—only Andree. She was a sort of apparition that manifested -itself daintily, primly, conducted itself bewitchingly, and withdrew -itself into the unknown.... - -He took the Metro back to the Étoile and walked home. The light was -burning in the hall. When he hung his hat on the hall tree he found it -still encumbered by Madeleine’s hat and jacket.... - -Kendall went to bed in a frame of mind.... Madeleine had seemed such a -_nice_ girl. She _was_ a nice girl. Why, Andree had liked her.... His -mother in him was shocked, affronted. Yet, somehow, Kendall was not so -shocked as he expected himself to be. He didn’t know how he felt ... his -thoughts were a turmoil, and he kept repeating to himself, “She _is_ a -nice girl ... she is a nice girl,...” as one who is bewildered in the -presence of some incomprehensible phenomenon.... - - - - - CHAPTER VII - - -Kendall dressed and went in to breakfast feeling no slight awkwardness. -He was apprehensive, too, apprehensive of the _concierge_. The affair -had upset him in a complex sort of way. It had startled him, yet it had -not shocked him especially, and he was inclined to take himself to task -for not being shocked. He was disappointed, and yet he was not -disappointed in Madeleine. Anyhow, he was reluctant to meet her, for -fear that the meeting would set him against her irrevocably and so cause -trouble between himself and Bert.... And yet he was enjoying the -experience as an experience, though he did not quite appreciate that he -was enjoying it. Half a dozen times he said to himself, as if carrying -on a subconscious argument: “But she’s a _nice_ girl.... Darn it all, -she’s a nice girl....” He was afraid a meeting with her would dispel -this impression of her niceness. - -Bert and Madeleine were already at table, waiting for him. Bert said -good morning nonchalantly, and Madeleine smiled brightly and wished him -“_bon jour_” without the least hint of embarrassment or -self-consciousness. He was conscious of a feeling of relief. “By Jove! -she is a nice girl,” he said to himself, and took the hand which she -arose and offered. - -Then Arlette came in with the pitcher of chocolate, and Kendall -scrutinized her and then shook his head rather bewildered. Arlette might -have been serving breakfast to the most circumspect of families. The -only thing one could say of Arlette was that she served breakfast. She -was normal, everything was normal. Kendall’s bewilderment increased. - -“Mademoiselle Andree? Where is she?” Madeleine asked, presently. - -“At home,” said Kendall. - -“Ah....” Madeleine’s eyes twinkled. - -“Now listen here,” Kendall said, “Andree and I are friends, just -friends. We—how do you say it?—_camarades_. That is all.” - -“And you do not love thees Mademoiselle Andree? Not at all?” - -“I—” Kendall hesitated and did not answer, and Madeleine’s eyes twinkled -as she went on with her cross-examination. - -“And thees Mademoiselle Andree—she do not love you?” - -“I tell you we are just friends....” - -“For example!... I understand. You are just friends. Oh yes. It is -possible, because the French girl she is so col’.” - -Kendall applied himself to his chocolate and confiture industriously, -while Madeleine looked at him with twinkling eyes. If he failed to -understand her or her system of life and philosophy, she was equally -unable to understand him. If he found the present situation bewildering, -she, for her part, regarded him as a strange phenomenon that bordered on -the impossible. As a final conclusion she did not believe him in the -least, but thought of him as absurdly discreet. No other solution was -possible to her. - -They finished breakfast and went down the four flights of stairs, Bert -and Madeleine chatting gaily, Kendall following apprehensively, for they -must pass the omniscient eye of the _concierge_. He was inclined to make -an excuse to go back to the apartment so that he would not be compelled -to take part in the scene he feared. - -Bert and Madeleine passed out of the big doors into the concrete-floored -passageway that led to the street, and Kendall drew himself together as -he saw the _concierge_ busily sweeping between them and the outer doors. -She looked up and nodded and smiled. Madeleine stopped and they chatted! -Actually chatted as if—why, as if there was no reason why they should -not chat. And that _concierge_ was a gray-haired, motherly soul who in -Detroit would have gone to foreign missionary meetings! Kendall could -not follow the conversation, but he caught fragments of it. It was just -casual chatter, with here and there a question dropped in to make for a -better acquaintance. Then they bade each other good-by in the most -friendly way imaginable and the trio went out to the street. - -Kendall was suspended in mid-air, feet off the ground, nothing solid -within reach. He was in an element that was not his, in a universe where -two solids could occupy the same place at the same time, or where the -shortest distance between two points was a curve. All his rules and -axioms were useless.... He began to realize that the years he had lived -were more or less useless to him, and that if he wished to judge his -present life and the people among whom he lived he must start at the -beginning with an open mind. As an American he could never comprehend -them; he could not think their thoughts nor understand their mental -language. The part of him inherited from his mother could never get into -_rapport_ with France; the part inherited from his father never could -quite comprehend, though it might tolerate with a kindly toleration, and -say: “Well, I don’t understand this way of doing things at all.... But -maybe it’s all right—for the French.” - -He kept glancing at Madeleine. Every glance reassured him. She was a -_nice_ girl. He liked her. There was nothing reprehensible about her, -but, on the contrary, she was charming as he liked to see a girl -charming, and modest, and _good_. He felt instinctively that she was -good, just as he had felt that Andree was good.... Somewhere there must -be an explanation. Somehow the thing was reconcilable. - -They left Madeleine at the Metro and walked to their offices. Neither -boy referred to the situation; Bert, because he saw no reason for it; -Kendall, because he dared not. Strangely, it was not Madeleine and Bert -that troubled him; it was himself. He was not accustomed to studying -himself, but he was doing so now. He had rather fancied himself a man -capable of thought and understanding, a man who could look at the world -and comprehend it. He had regarded himself as wise in his generation, -not blatantly so, but with a certainty born of inherited dogmas and -local dogmas. For the first time he saw dimly that one may understand -the world from the Detroit point of view and be utterly at a loss in New -York; that he may understand life from the American point of view and be -grossly ignorant of the French. He even asked himself this question: - -“Is one who lives up to his code of ethics, his moral conceptions, good -and moral, even if those ethics and conceptions are utterly at variance -with some other code of behavior?” - -Could it be that a thing abominable in America because America’s code -was set against it could be perfectly proper in Persia because Persia’s -code permitted it? That there was an abstract _good_ he believed, and -that there was an abstract _evil_. But could a definite act be made -universally evil by legislation or by the custom of only a part of the -world? It was deeper reasoning than he had ever essayed before, and he -limped sadly as he traveled toward no conclusion at all. The result was -multiplied bewilderment.... - -One conclusion he reached: If Madeleine had been an American girl he -would have been shocked, outraged.... This led him to think of Maude -Knox, and suddenly he wanted to see her, to talk to her, to be with her -because she was American as he was American. He wanted to get his feet -on solid earth and to tread accustomed paths for a while. He determined -he would see her. - -At noon he told Bert he would not be at home for dinner, and then at six -o’clock he hurried to the Hôtel Wagram and telephoned Miss Knox’s room. -She was in, and would be delighted to dine with him if he would wait -twenty minutes. He sat down in the spacious lobby and smoked and waited. - -She came down the stairs very trim and American and pleasing to the eye. -He noted the little swagger—the rather charming swagger—to her walk. It -was accentuated by the fact that she carried her hands in the side -pockets of her coat. She was not in uniform; had left it off for the -evening as the women in the various services love to do. He arose and -walked to the stairway to meet her, and they shook hands in the frank -American way. - -“Well?” she said, with a humorous twinkle in her eye. - -“I got to wanting to see you this morning,” he said, “and it grew. So I -just came along and took a chance.” - -“To-morrow would be too late. I’ve got a job with a combat division and -I’m going out to-morrow. Maybe I’ll get close to the front.” - -“Congratulations. You’re luckier than I.... We’ll make this a -celebration. Where would you like to eat?” - -“Any place.... I don’t care—somewhere where we won’t see an American.... -Have you seen the papers?” - -“No. I’ve been grubbing all day, but a hint of the news has dribbled in -to me.” - -“Then you’ve heard that the Hun is stopped! And that we did it. Isn’t -that glorious? We—Americans—saved Paris. I wonder if it can be true.” - -They bought a _Herald_ from a kiosk and found a brief, unsatisfactory, -much-censored story, but it was a confirmation. The marines had been in -it. Apparently they had been thrown in to stop a gap, and had stopped it -effectively. Kendall knew that this meant the second division, -comprising two regiments of marines and some of the old Regular Army. -They had been thrown across the Paris-Metz road—and the _boches_ had -been halted abruptly. It was glorious, thrilling news. - -“How would you like to go to a little restaurant where I eat once in a -while? It’s very Parisian. There will be no Americans there, and while -it doesn’t look much, the food is bully and the crowd amusing.” - -“Fine!” she said, and he stopped a passing taxicab. By dint of many -repetitions he was able to make the chauffeur comprehend that he wanted -to be driven to Marty’s on the rue de Richelieu. - -They were a trifle early. Few of the regular _habitués de maison_ were -present yet, and they had their choice of tables. Ken selected the one -at which he had sat the other evening. One by one the regulars appeared -and, recognizing Kendall, smiled and nodded. Monsieur Robert appeared -with the Spanish tragedian, and Monsieur Robert came over to shake hands -and be very cordial. Ken presented him to Maude and watched her face -with amusement when the handsome young actor bent over her hand and -kissed it. Then entered the elderly critic with the pointed white beard -who was invariably accompanied by a beautiful girl—a new beautiful girl -every evening. And then appeared Monsieur Jacques, swinging his -artificial leg hilariously, waving his cane, and with his hat awry, as -was its custom. He shouted greetings to all, then, espying Kendall, he -rushed to his chair, clapped the captain on the back, and, turning, -harangued the room. His subject was Americans. The Americans were -heroic. They had appeared in France’s hour of need. They were shedding -their blood in France’s quarrel, and France should proclaim her -gratitude. Had not these so-much-to-be-loved Americans saved Paris from -the _boche_. But certainly! That very day.... _Vive l’Amérique!..._ -Suddenly, in a transport of enthusiasm, he threw his arm about Kendall’s -neck and kissed him resoundingly on both cheeks.... - -Kendall was frightfully embarrassed, especially when he heard the room -laugh until the dishes rocked. He was angry, but before he could give -vent to his anger his eye encountered Maude Knox, mirthful tears rolling -down her cheeks. Then he himself laughed, if a bit ruefully. Jacques -threw himself into a seat across the table and began talking in his wild -way to Maude Knox, who spoke French very well indeed. There was no need -for introductions here. Jacques never thought of such a thing and Maude -appeared perfectly willing to forgo the ceremony. Kendall was rather out -of it temporarily. He looked across at Monsieur Robert, who was bobbing -his head and laughing and writing on the back of a _carte de jour_.... -Then he arose and handed it to Kendall. - -Monsieur had a trifle of English of which he was very proud, and this -communication, relating to Jacques, was couched in that language. Ken -read it and then laughed in real earnest, for it made this rather -amazing announcement: - -“It is not a bad boy, but he is a few mad!” - -What more could one ask of a single sentence? - -“If you are looking for something un-American you get it here,” he said -to Maude. - -“I like it.... I’m enjoying every second of it,” she said, delightedly. -“They’re just like children.” - -“But Jacques here has an artificial leg, a silver plate in the crown of -his head, the Médaille Militaire and the Croix de Guerre,” he said. - -Jacques, meantime, had possessed himself of Monsieur Robert’s note and, -leaping to his feet, was heaping scorn and derision on the young actor’s -head, while Monsieur Robert feigned terror and made as though he would -hide under the table. - -“Are they always like this,” Maude asked, “or is it relief—now that -Paris seems to be safe?” - -“They are always so,” he said. - -“I envy them.... But it couldn’t happen in America, could it? Imagine -this in Cleveland or Detroit. Why, everybody would be put out by the -management, or the police would be called in! And why?... I’m learning a -lot since I came to France.... There’s something in the very air here. -One could do things never dreamed of at home.... I don’t know what it -is, but that’s the way I feel. Maybe it is the freedom from restraint, -maybe it’s the example, maybe it is that the war is so tremendous that -nothing a single individual can do is of the least importance.... But -the feeling is there. Other girls have told me the same thing.” - -“Paris does get you,” said Ken. - -“Things don’t seem to matter,” she said, thoughtfully. “It’s like being -in a different world where none of the old rules hold good.... I can’t -imagine myself talking like this or feeling like this. I couldn’t have a -month ago.... I think,” she said, with a little laugh, “that I shall -have to keep my head very level.” - -Ken was astonished. So the thing was getting Maude Knox, too! She saw a -difference, felt a difference, felt the challenge of a difference! “It -gets you.... It gets you,” he said, helplessly. - -“Sometimes I have a feeling that I’d like to throw up the whole show and -live here forever—be a lotus-eater,” she said, with more seriousness. -“If I were a man—” - -“Yes?” - -She shrugged her shoulders. “What’s the use?... But I’ll say this—I’m -never going to see things with the same eyes again. I think I’ll be able -to understand that there are two sides to a story.” - -This was the same Maude Knox he had known on the vessel crossing the -ocean—a Maude Knox who quite typified his ideas of the _nice_ American -girl, the sheltered, protected, almost prudish creature of his -experience! She had traveled far—and yet she was not less nice because -she had seen more of the life that inhabits the planet, nor because she -had acquired a certain tolerance for manners and customs that were -impossible for herself. It seemed as if she were passing through much -the same mental conflict as himself. Perhaps it was not so pronounced -with her because her experiences had not been so pronounced. But she -seemed to have reached a surer conclusion than he. However, she had -never had his mother. Her inheritances were different, and her -upbringing by her philosopher father had, perhaps, made it possible for -her to progress more rapidly in understanding and clear seeing than -himself. - -“For instance,” she said, “if I had met you with that little French girl -a month ago I should probably have cut you.... Especially when you wore -such a guilty look....” - -“It wasn’t a guilty look. I—Andree is a mighty nice girl. I introduced -her to you, didn’t I?... Well?” - -Her eyes twinkled. He could not decide whether it were derision or -unbelief, and he felt very uncomfortable in consequence. “Just because -she’s French ...” he commenced. - -“The young man doth protest too much,” she said. “But what I was going -to say was that it didn’t seem to matter in the least. I suppose it -ought to, but it didn’t.... She looked like such a nice, sweet little -thing.” - -“She is.” - -“And that’s why the life here in Paris is so bewildering. It upsets all -one’s preconceived notions. It makes one wonder....” - -“It does,” he said, emphatically. - -“I presume I should be just as intolerant back home as I ever was.” - -“It’s different back home.” - -“Extremely,” she said, dryly. - -Jacques turned suddenly to Maude as the male dressmaker came in with his -pink-cheeked companion of the other night. “You see her,” he said, as -one about to make a statement of distinct interest to the one addressed. -“She ees his girl—yes.... I theenk she look for anozzer boy. Bicause -thees dressmaker, he is ver’ selfish. He make mooch money, but he theenk -only of himself. It ees so.... For example!... He make that yo’ng girl -do _so_—how you say?” He went through the pantomime of shining his -shoes. “That ees not pleasant. _N’est-ce pas?..._ So I theenk she look -about for anozzer boy....” - -Kendall felt his ears growing hot, and was on the point of committing an -indiscretion when Maude answered with a quaver of mirth in her voice, -and not the least of the anger and shocked indignation Kendall expected. -“I should think she would....” - -Presently Kendall called for the check and they went out, Jacques -insisting on shaking hands with both of them, and appearing to be on the -point of kissing Ken all over again. - -“How shall we keep up the celebration?” Ken asked when they were out on -the dark, narrow street. - -“Let’s walk,” she said. “Paris fascinates me at night. I love to stroll -about, but usually I have to go in so early. Are you too tired to walk -up the Champs Élysées and possibly on to the Bois de Boulogne?” - -“Indeed not!” he said, and they started off with good American strides, -dodging taxicabs that came charging down upon them out of the darkness -with lights so dim as to be scarcely visible, and almost bumping into -pedestrians who loomed up suddenly out of the blackness ahead. In a few -moments they emerged upon the broader thoroughfares where visibility was -higher, and presently were walking up the rue de Rivoli toward the -Étoile. - -Kendall was feeling a new and different interest in Maude Knox. He had -been attracted to her casually on the boat, for she had been very -pleasant to look at, and a charming companion. But she had not impressed -him other than with a mild pleasantness, calling forth a temporary -friendliness. To-night he felt that he really _liked_ her; that there -was something to her. She had disclosed that there was a certain kinship -between their mental processes and their reactions to the new life that -surrounded them, but most of all she had shown herself adaptable and -_sensible_. Sensible covered a multitude of meanings for Ken. His idea -of girls was that they were creatures full of peculiar concealments and -inhibitions who had a habit of looking at facts obliquely and -interpreting them without frankness. Somehow they never seemed exactly -sincere to him, but rather as if they felt compelled to certain -pretenses as a measure of self-protection. His impression was that -American girls were always conscious of the necessity for protecting -themselves, and this destroyed comradeship and good understanding.... It -was his notion that they were constantly on their guard against a danger -which they rather feared did not exist.... - -But to-night Maude Knox seemed very different from all this; she seemed -frank and fearless. She had seen more than her sisters back home, and it -had not shocked her especially. She was capable of entering into the -spirit of the life—at least theoretically—and she treated him, Kendall, -as an equal and a friend rather than as a male to be kept in his place -lest he pounce upon her with dire consequences.... He liked it. He liked -the way she talked, and he liked the air with which she carried herself. - -Half an hour later they were seated on uncomfortable iron chairs beside -the Avenue du Bois de Boulogne, watching a string of American ambulances -whiz by from the hospital beyond, on their way to one of the stations to -meet a train bearing wounded from the front. - -“It makes one realize that we’re in it,” Maude said, gravely. “It hardly -seems possible that those ambulances will be back in an hour filled with -American boys—wounded in France by the Germans. There’s something unreal -about it.... To think that those boys have crossed the ocean to be -wounded and mutilated over here!... I wonder if they are sending any of -the wounded home.” - -“I don’t know.” - -“The folks won’t realize this war till they see boys on crutches....” - -Before them the promenaders straggled, dim forms in the dusk, only to be -distinguished when they passed within reach of the arm. There were -parties of three or four girls of the working-class hurrying home with -packages under their arms; there were other parties who dawdled and -laughed and jostled one another and giggled—young shop or factory girls -out to enjoy the evening. There were young men and young women who -walked very close to each other, sometimes holding hands. There were -single young men and young men in pairs out for walk and adventure. -There were officers of all armies and a sprinkling of American doughboys -ready for whatever might happen, often three or four of them with a -single girl, all jolly and laughing and having the most enjoyable sort -of time trying to make themselves understood to one another. At a little -distance two neat-looking girls were seriously giving a French lesson to -a group of American soldiers.... It was such a company of strollers and -dawdlers as the concerns of the world had never brought together before, -drawn from all habitable quarters of the globe because the Hun, in his -ruthless ambition, had thought to spread his _Kultur_ over the face of -the planet.... - -There were long lapses in the conversation, for both Maude and Kendall -found a gripping interest in the passers-by. - -“Just think,” said Maude, presently, “almost every girl we see has lost -a father or a brother or a sweetheart or a husband. Almost every one.... -A waitress in our hotel told me this morning that eleven men of her -family were dead.” - -“Yes,” he said. - -“But somehow the thing that—that _frightens_ me most is not to think of -the women who have lost fathers and brothers, or even husbands.... It is -the girls who have lost sweethearts. It is the thought of the boys who -are dead and who were to have been the husbands of these girls.... Think -of the hundreds of them who have lost husbands whom, perhaps, they have -never met ... whom they can never meet.... It’s awful to think of a -million girls who have _got_ to be old maids! They don’t want to be, but -they’ve _got_ to be.... War has taken from them the husbands they never -had.” - -“I’ve thought of that,” he said. - -“It means these girls have lost more than life—they have had killed for -them the possibility of living.... They can never have homes and -families.... The future is nothing but a stretch of years for -them—lonesome years without happiness and without sorrow.” - -“I suppose it is as hard to be deprived of sorrow as it is of -happiness,” said Kendall, slowly. - -She paused before replying. “Yes,” she said, “I can understand that—if -the sorrow is brought because you love. Sorrow is a necessary experience -of life. Emerson’s essay on compensation is all about that....” She -paused again and then broke out with a vehemence foreign to her. “I -don’t blame them—I don’t blame them a bit. Everybody is entitled to live -and to have the experiences of life. I never thought I should feel this -way, but it is _so_.... If you can have a life full of living you are -entitled to snatch your little moments of happiness—just as these French -girls are doing. It is their right, because it is the best life has to -offer them.... It isn’t France alone—it might happen in America. Suppose -half the girls at home were deprived of the possibility of marriage.... -It’s awful.” - -The little moments of happiness! Kendall’s mind seized on that phrase -and held it.... It was the essence of the whole matter. These women, -shut out from the Banquet of Life, were seizing hungrily the crumbs of -happiness that were brushed from the table. - -In the pause that followed an American soldier and a French girl sat -down in the chairs at the right of Maude and Kendall and talked jerkily, -half in French, half in English. They tried so hard to talk to each -other, because each was lonesome.... And then, as Kendall and Maude -eavesdropped shamelessly, the siren sounded—-the _Gothas_ were coming! - -People started to their feet and began scurrying away to seek for -shelter, but Maude and Kendall did not move, nor did the boy and girl -next them. Presently Kendall heard the boy ask, “Ain’t you afraid of the -bombs, mademoiselle?” - -“_Non.... Non...._” She shrugged her shoulders and then said, in a -hopeless voice, a pitiful voice: “I have not the fear, because what does -it matter?... There is nothing in life for me. If I am kill—_pouf!... -So...._ There is an end, and it will be well....” - -Kendall felt Maude’s fingers on his arm, felt their sudden pressure. -“There,” she whispered. “There it is.... She _knows_. They all know.... -Who has a right to say they sha’n’t have their little moments?...” - -Kendall stood up. It seemed as if movement were necessary, any sort of -movement, of physical action. This sudden, close contact with terrible -reality had seared through to his consciousness with a terrible, burning -depression.... The thing was unbearable.... And this, he thought, is -what war means!... - -“Come,” he said, almost roughly. - -She arose obediently and they walked rapidly toward the Étoile. - -“We have fifteen minutes,” he said. “If we walk fast we can almost make -your hotel.” - -As they walked the now almost deserted streets, deserted except for -stragglers and for taxicabs which went scurrying about as they always -do, not oblivious to bomb raids, but in defiance of them, they saw huge, -mysterious bodies arising from the shrubbery, great grub-shapes that -appeared from nowhere and mounted high into the heavens—the sausage -balloons which in time of raid stretch in interminable line across the -sky down the path of the Avenue du Bois de Boulogne and the Champs -Élysées and the Jardin des Tuileries. They were so silent, so -mysterious, such ghostly-gray blots against the sky! - -They reached the Place de la Concorde before the first gun of the -barrage sounded, and in a moment were safely under the arches of the -buildings that face the rue de Rivoli.... And then the storm broke in -all its fury. - -Kendall waited for Maude’s reactions. It was a sort of test. There was -danger, real danger, even under those huge stone arches—if a bomb should -strike directly above them or in the street without. He wanted to see -how she would behave in presence of danger. - -She satisfied him. She exhibited, not fear, but curiosity and a -childlike interest, as if it were some sort of spectacle, and she were -disappointed at not having a better seat. It was impossible to keep her -back from the curb, for she insisted on standing in the very mouth of -the arch to see all that was to be seen.... She had courage as well as -frankness and understanding. His admiration for her grew amazingly. - -In an hour the raid was over and they continued their way to the Hôtel -Wagram. - -“Good night,” she said, extending her hand and giving him a pressure of -real friendship. “I’ve enjoyed this evening—more than any other since -I’ve been here.” - -“It has been bully,” he said. “I feel as if I were just getting -acquainted with you.... It’s hard luck you’re going so soon—but you’ll -be back.” - -She laughed. “You won’t be lonesome,” she said, gaily. “There’s that -cunning little French girl of yours—who doesn’t seem to have any last -name.... Mademoiselle Andree.” She laughed again. “What is her last -name? You know it isn’t usual to introduce strangers by their given -names, as you did.” - -He laughed ruefully. “I’m darned if I know,” he said. “I always forget -to ask her.” It was a reply that would have been impossible for him to -make to Maude Knox six hours before. - -Her face grew serious and she touched his arm with her fingers lightly. -“She had a sweet face,” Maude said. “Don’t be unkind to her.... Now good -night. To-morrow I’ll be where I can hear the guns.” - -“Good night,” he said, and turned away. - -He was repeating to himself what Maude had said: “Don’t be unkind to -her.... Don’t be unkind to her.” What was he to do? How was he to deal -with that quaint little person who appeared out of mystery to assume -such an important place in his life?... Was not merely knowing her being -unkind to her?... Or was he giving her her little moment of -happiness?... - - - - - CHAPTER VIII - - -All day Kendall had been comparing Maude Knox with Andree. When he left -the American girl and went home to his apartment he had been under the -spell of her American manner, of her frankness, of the undefinable -something which one finds in all American girls of the college type, of -the cultured type, which is to be found in no other women the world -over. When you have called it the American manner you have done your -best at description.... It was the old story of like calling to like, of -that to which one is accustomed seeming to be more desirable than even -the most delightful of novelties. It was the call of home, the call of -race, a thing that can never be negligible in the affairs of mankind. - -A night of sleep rounded the sharp peaks of his impressions. When he -awoke in the morning he did not see Maude Knox so distinctly, but an -impression remained with him that would be permanent—that she was -splendid, desirable, the sort of girl a fellow would like to be very -well acquainted with. He went no farther than that. He was not so near -to being in love with her as he was with Andree, or, if he were, he -failed to recognize it.... He did recognize that Andree had become an -important personage in his life, so important that he could not think of -another girl without thinking immediately of her. - -She was everything that Maude Knox was not and Maude Knox seemed to be -everything that Andree was not. There was no single point at which their -characters converged and ran parallel—except that both were “nice”.... -And even their “niceness” was different. Kendall understood Maude’s -niceness perfectly; Andree’s was a mystery to him; it was something he -felt, but could not set down in any known terms. - -One could readily imagine Maude playing golf or swimming or driving a -car furiously and capably; it was impossible to imagine Andree doing any -of these things. Andree was utterly feminine. One could be pals with -Maude; with Andree, Kendall felt one could be bare acquaintance or -sweetheart—nothing else.... One felt that Andree would give and give and -give, asking only love in return: Maude would give and give, but would -demand, as American women do, a like amount of giving in return. - -Also, in the attraction which Andree exercised were the elements of -mystery and of danger. It was something that he knew nothing about her; -that she appeared as out of nothingness, and then disappeared into black -night again—and that he was apprehensive as to where his acquaintance -with her was leading him. To a young man of some imagination these two -factors were compelling.... The more he thought of the girls that day -the stronger grew his desire to be with Andree—to taste the charm of her -presence and to sense the mystery that surrounded her, the mystery of -herself and the mystery of a great race, apparent in her, and not -understandable by him. - -He was at the place of meeting early and there paced back and forth -before the entrance to subterranean Paris, watching the crowds and -waiting with impatience. The crowd was an old story to him now, but it -never quite lost its fascination, never quite laid aside that air of -unreality, of _foreignness_, of eventfulness that made the Paris throng -of those days what it was—foreign in the eyes of the foreigner and -foreign in the eyes of the Parisian.... He saw a slender girl—she seemed -not more than twenty—bidding farewell to a youthful soldier. Their -good-by was unrestrained and affecting. He was going to the north—to the -battle-line—and always was the possibility that he might never return. -It spoke eloquently in the fervor of that farewell.... They stood, -locked in each other’s arms while their lips met again and again—with -all the world to see. But none pointed or smiled. The world understood, -and the heart of the world moved in sympathy.... Here was another girl -who might never know the joys of wife or mother. If that young man did -not return, she, fortunate in the possession of a sweetheart, might -descend from her high place of happiness and security to the drab, -hopeless level of her million sisters.... It was no ordinary parting—it -was a parting with more than a loved one, for it was a possible parting -with the right to live.... - -Then Andree appeared, in white once more, walking with tiny, demure -little steps, unsmiling, apparently unconscious that she was not alone -on that crowded corner. So she always came. At one moment she was not -there; the next moment she appeared—from her mystery—appeared so -modestly, so diffidently. Kendall said to himself that she came like -some fairy, afraid lest a hostile glance or a human touch might send her -back all too soon to the fairyland whence she came.... - -He advanced to meet her and, as she always did, she stopped as if -startled, raised her eyes to his gravely, as if she had never seen him -before, and then smiled that little smile which seemed to say that she -was uncertain of her welcome, but hoped she would find it warm. Her -slender hand was in his, with quaint formality, and she said in French: -“Good-day, monsieur. How carry you yourself?” - -“Very well. Very well. And you?” - -“Oh, I have been bored! I have had to make a visit of duty. It was very -tiresome....” - -Then came the short, awkward pause while they adjusted themselves to -each other and sought for words in languages strange with which to begin -conversation. It was always so—that they spoke little for the first five -minutes after a meeting. Neither seemed to find words to begin. Then she -said, looking at him sidewise, with the merest hint of a smile in her -lovely eyes, “Have you thought of me?” - -“When I lifted up.” He laughed at this quotation of her literal -translation of the French for _arise_. “In the morning, at noon, all the -afternoon—always.” - -“It is well,” she said. “I also have thought of you.” - -“Where shall we eat?” - -“I do not care.... It makes nothing.... Is Arlette well?” She laughed a -little at recollection of Arlette. - -For a few moments they walked along undecided, and then Kendall looked -up to see Monsieur Robert approaching. - -“Here’s your actor,” he said. - -“What actor, monsieur?” - -“Monsieur Robert.” - -“You know heem?” - -“I told you about him.” - -“Yes.... Yes.... That was well.” - -Monsieur Robert recognized Kendall, and looked quickly at Andree; then -he smiled and waggled his head in the charming, boyish way he had, and -lifted his hat. - -“Good night,” he said, making a display of his English and extending his -hand. - -“Monsieur Robert, permit me, Mademoiselle Andree.” - -The young actor took her hand and, with a smile that was half a laugh, -bowed over it and made some response in French which was not -intelligible to Kendall. - -“Mademoiselle wishes to enter your profession,” Kendall said, with a -twinkle in his eye. “She is going to the _Académie_ in September.” - -“Ah....” Monsieur Robert looked at her more carefully. “You enter the -_Académie_?” - -“I do not know—I hope.... I am working very hard.” - -“And you wish to be an actress?... It is well. But why?” - -“So she can come to New York, _à la_ Madame Bernhardt, and bring home -much money, and be too proud to know an old friend like myself when I -sit in the front row and applaud.” - -She smiled up at him. “When I come in New York you will go to see me?... -But I shall be very great and famous. Oh yes. But I shall remember you, -of a surety.... I shall remember you—a little.” There was an infinity of -subdued roguishness about her. - -Monsieur Robert was studying Andree with interest. “You will be ver’ -pretty actress,” he said, haltingly, speaking in English so that Kendall -would share in the compliment. - -“You bet,” said Ken, spontaneously, and then, with characteristic -American directness: “What’s this about the necessity for having some -actor speak for her? She says she cannot enter unless some actor says a -good word for her.” - -“It makes the matter with more facility,” said Monsieur Robert. - -Andree looked from Kendall to the young actor timidly, almost with the -shyness of a child. - -“Why not come and dine with us?” said Ken. - -“I should be delighted, but it is not possible for me to-night. I am—how -you say?—_très-occupé_.... But some other night—very soon.... With -mademoiselle.” He waggled his head again and laughed his pleasing, -boyish laugh. - -“Shall we say to-morrow?” - -“Oh, very well.” - -“If it is possible for mademoiselle,” and Kendall looked at Andree. - -“Yes,” she said, “to-morrow.” - -“At Marty’s,” said Monsieur Robert. - -“Seven o’clock?” - -“It is well.... _Au revoir, mademoiselle et monsieur._ Until to-morrow.” - -Presently Kendall stopped. “By Jove!” he said, “I forgot to tell Arlette -I wouldn’t be home to dinner. She will have it ready. Shall we dine with -her?” - -“As you like.” - -“And afterward we can sit and talk.” - -“Oh, if only you can speak more French.... There are so many things we -could speak of. I should like to talk of many things to you—and to read -you poems.... You know French poets?” - -Ken shook his head. “You like poetry, don’t you?... I’ll bet you’re a -poet yourself? Don’t you make poems?” - -“One leetle book,” she said, with a rueful shake of the head. “One -leetle, small book.... But it was not good—oh no. In it are only two -poems that are good. The rest are bad, ver’, ver’ bad.” - -“I don’t believe a word of it. I’ll bet they’re great.” - -“_Non ... non!..._ I will bring them to you and you shall see.... But -no. It is not possible for you to read. I am so sad ... so sad.” She -laughed a little to show that she was not sad at all, and tripped along -by his side, almost instantly returning to that quaint gravity which -always baffled Kendall. He never could tell whether it was real gravity -or a sort of protective coloring such as birds use to make themselves -invisible to the hostile eye. - -As they descended into the Metro they met, coming up the stairs, a -handsomely dressed young woman, exquisitely shod, but so painted as to -cheeks that one could not possibly imagine what her natural complexion -might have been. She looked at Kendall boldly. - -“Camouflage,” said Andree, serenely, when the young woman had passed. “I -do not like ...” - -It was not the first time Kendall had heard that Parisian term applied -to the painted face, but he laughed now as if it were a fresh witticism -to him. Andree made it fresh, for any sort of slang sounded so unnatural -from her lips as to be irresistibly ludicrous ... like the harmless -precocity of a child. - -“_Vous êtes très-jolie_,” he said, with decision. - -“No.... I am not pretty. You do not theenk. You make mock of me.” And -then, as he wrinkled his nose: “Oh, why do you make _grimace_?... It is -not nice for make _grimace_ at me.... And now—oh, I see—your left eye it -laughs, and the other it does not. Why is that? Why does your left eye -laugh?” She pointed accusingly at the offending eye and stopped still, -shaking her head. “Oh, you are ver’ bad. I do not like you.... No.... -No.... I do not like you.” And then she laughed with that sudden change -from mock gravity to delicious merriment of which she alone, of all the -people Kendall knew, was capable. - -When she did that she was so alluring, so cunning, that Kendall had to -hold his arms stiff at his sides to prevent them from picking her up and -cuddling her and kissing her.... It seemed that humor of hers was given -her to tempt kisses. Yet there was nothing deliberately provocative -about her, nothing. Quite the contrary. It seemed rather her desire to -suppress such things as demonstrations of affection than to provoke -them. - -At the apartment the _concierge_ bowed and smiled to them, and wished -them a good evening. Up-stairs Arlette was manifestly upset by the -appearance of an unexpected guest, but Andree disappeared into the -kitchen, whence emerged a whirlwind of chatter, and all was well.... -Bert was just finishing shaving. - -“Andree, eh?” he said. “Why didn’t you tip me off, and I’d have gathered -up Madeleine.” - -“I don’t know.... I—” Kendall was thinking about the other night. - -“Piffle!” said Bert. Then, “Do you mean to tell me—” - -“I certainly do mean to tell you,” Ken said, belligerently. - -“You get me, young fellow. You sure do....” - -“Oh, dry up, and come to dinner—and behave if you can manage it.” -Kendall went into the _salon_ to rejoin Andree, more than a little -apprehensive of the future if it should throw Andree and Madeleine -together. - -Andree was looking about the room with humorous toleration from a seat -in the outrageous piece of furniture which she had claimed as her -throne. “Mademoiselle Madeleine—she is not here?” - -“No.” - -“It is not well. Go and fetch her.... Now.... At once. Or I shall go -away.” She shook her head and made stiff little gestures with her hand, -but when he stood in front of her she twinkled at him and placed both -hands in his when he held them out toward her. He retained them a moment -and then raised them to his lips. - -“You’re a sweet child,” he said. - -“Oh, I do not onderstan’....I do not know.... Where is the -_dictionnaire_?” - -“No matter.... There’s Arlette announcing dinner.” It was Arlette’s -custom to poke her head through the door when dinner was ready and to -stare into the room silently and a little affrightedly. She never spoke. -It was necessary to watch for the appearance of her head if one wanted -to know when the meal was served. - -Bert came in and Andree asked after Madeleine’s health as if she -considered Bert personally responsible for it, demanding why she was not -present. - -“Ken’s afraid you don’t like her,” Bert said, mischievously. - -“_Mais oui.... Mais oui._ I do like. I like ver’ much. Why you theenk?” -She turned to Ken with the question. - -“Don’t pay any attention to Bert. He thinks he has a sense of humor,” -Ken said, but his ears were red, nevertheless, a circumstance which did -not escape Andree’s sharp eyes. She let the matter pass and addressed -herself to her food with that detachment from all other matters which -always brought a smile to Kendall’s face. There were so many quaint, -delightful attributes in her.... - -Toward the end of the dinner the diners heard a subdued whispering and -giggling without, and then appeared little Arlette, bearing a dessert—a -wonderful dessert. It was a pudding with a white frothiness of beaten -egg covering it. It was a real dessert—the first, if one excepts fruit -and ices without authority, that Ken had seen since he came to France. -Little Arlette carried it to the table, and stood, big-eyed, mouth -pursed, waiting for the astonishment which the miracle was to cause.... -Arlette herself, wiping her chin on the back of her hand and grinning -with delight, allowed her head to be seen through the door. - -“It is from the _concierge_,” she said, very rapidly. “She sends it to -messieurs with her compliments.” - -“Now that’s mighty nice. You thank her, Arlette, and we’ll thank her -when we go down.... I guess we haven’t made a hit with madame, eh?... -And, _mignonne_! We must have another place, Arlette, and a spoon. But -_mignonne_ does not like pudding, eh?” - -“_Oui_,” said little Arlette, her eyes growing even bigger, and the -pucker turning into a smile. - -Kendall settled the child at table and then gravely introduced her to -Andree. - -“She goes to America with me, you are to understand. I am about to ask -Arlette for this young lady’s hand. But yes. We are very fond of each -other. Is it not so, mademoiselle?” - -“Yes, monsieur,” replied little Arlette, very gravely. - -“Oh!... Oh!... You are ver’ naughty. I am jealous. I shall not stay. I -shall go away.” - -Little Arlette observed her gravely. “Monsieur will be my husband,” she -said. “It is arranged.” - -“Poor myself!... I am sad. I shall to weep.” - -Arlette looked at Andree interestedly and expectantly and cheerfully, -not displeased to have caused this frightful storm of jealousy and well -prepared to rejoice in the tears of her defeated rival. - -Kendall carried the mite into the other room and placed her on the sofa -between himself and Andree, where she snuggled up to him with a charming -little air of proprietorship. Andree bent suddenly to kiss the child, -and then turned her head away and gazed out of the window.... - -“Now you shall sing for me,” said Kendall. - -Little Arlette stood very erect and sang in a sweet little voice that -carried the airs very accurately, sang the songs of the street and the -music-halls and of the _poilus_, while her grandmother stood just within -the dining-room, wrapping and unwrapping her pudgy hands in her apron -and grinning and nodding her head with enormous pride. The child sang -with great seriousness, her head a little back, looking for all the -world like a bird on the nest opening its beak for the mother bird to -drop in a worm.... When she was through, and both Andree and Arlette -laughed at some of the songs especially, though Ken could not understand -a word, he put a franc in her hand and kissed her. Andree snatched her -up and held her close and murmured in her ear. - -“Come now,” said Arlette, and the baby shook hands ceremoniously. - -“You must begin to get ready to go to America,” Kendall said. - -“Yes, monsieur,” she responded, and went out, turning at every step to -wave her hand in farewell. - -Bert came back into the room, cap in hand, and said good night. - -“And what shall we do?” Kendall asked when he was gone. - -“We shall sit and talk,” she replied. - -“About what?” - -“You shall tell to me many things.... If there really is a building of -fifty stories high in New York, and when the war will finish, and if -actors make much money in America, and also dancers.... Here the dancers -do not make much money. Even the best.... _Non...._ A few—yes. Madame -Duncan.... But in _Amérique_—is it not the same?” - -“They earn lots of money—heaps.” - -“_Pourquoi?_” - -“I don’t know. They just do. People go to see them. Why don’t they make -much money here?” - -She shook her head. “I do not know. The people they do not go for see a -dancer.... Maybe, if I cannot enter into the _Conservatoire_, I shall -become a dancer and take myself to _Amérique_. But that is very hard.... -One must start in the music-halls, and I do not like.” - -“I should say _not_.” Kendall thought of her in the atmosphere of the -Paris music-hall and his soul revolted. - -“_Pourquoi?_” she asked again. - -“Mademoiselle Pourquoi.... Because you are a nice child, and the -music-halls are not nice.” - -She smiled at him. “You theenk I am nice?” - -“I think so many things about you...” - -“Oh, I do not onderstan’.” Her mock despair was very pathetic until her -sudden laughter changed it to delight. In revenge she discharged a -volley of rapid French at him for two minutes. “You see?... It is not -nice to not onderstan’. You must _es_-tudy French ver’ hard, and I will -_es_-tudy English so w’en I go to New York...” - -Her mood changed. “I am sad—ver’ sad.... Life, it is not good.... No.” - -“Life is mighty confusing,” he said. “Why are you sad?” - -“Because I am _solitaire_—and because there is so much miserable. -_Oui...._ There is little happiness—only _les petites minutes_.... But -all the time life is not well.” - -The _petites minutes_!... The little minutes! There it was again, the -same thought that Maude Knox had put into words. The little moments of -happiness. Andree searched for them, too. She felt that the best life -had to offer her were rare and transitory moments of joy. - -“_Pauvre petite!_” he said, and took her hand. “You should be always -glad. It isn’t right for you to be sad. You weren’t built to be sad.... -It’s rotten.” - -“Yes,” she said, pensively, not understanding all his words, but -comprehending their meaning from his tone. - -It filled him with anger to think of this child whom sorrow had no right -to touch for years—to think of her life as clouded at the moment when it -should have been filled with joys. It was unfair.... Life had no right -to treat her so. Sympathy and tenderness moved him, and he placed his -arm about her and drew her to him. She did not resist, nor did she -respond, even when he turned her face upward and kissed her. Her lips -were cold.... If nothing but little minutes of happiness were possible -for her, he vowed in his heart that he would make them more numerous. - -He continued to hold her, and she lay in his arms unresisting while he -whispered to her as he would have whispered to an unhappy child—yet not -as he would have whispered to a child. The touch of her, her nearness, -her sweet fragility mounted to his head. - -“I want you to be very happy ... because I love you,” he said, and, -saying it, he believed it. There was room in his thoughts for nothing -but her in that moment. Inhibitions were forgotten, apprehensions laid -aside—the youth in his heart cried out to the youth in her heart—nothing -remained but youth and love and a great sympathy. He did not look to the -future. The sharp voice of conscience, suspicious, narrow, inherited -from his mother, was silenced. Not that he was consciously running -counter to the demands of that conscience! He was living that minute -with no thought of what the next minute might bring.... - -Andree freed herself and looked at him gravely, with a sad scrutiny. -“No,” she said. “You do not love me.... It is not possible.” - -“But I do.... I do.... Don’t you love me a little—just a little?” - -“Oh,” she said in a little voice, “I am afraid....” - -“Afraid? ... Of what?” - -“I do not know.... I am so _solitaire_—so lonely—and I am afraid.” - -“If you love me—” - -“_Non!... Non!..._ You do not love me. You only say. And if I love -you—in a week, in two week, you go away to _Amérique_ and leave me to be -more _solitaire_.... I should be more sad....” - -“No,” he declared, and was about to expostulate and to declare that he -would never leave her, but the words would not come. His mother had -stepped in. “You will love me,” he declared, in spite of his mother. “We -will love each other—and there will be happiness.... If the best we can -have is little moments of happiness, let us have all we can of them.” He -was honest, thought he was being honest in his sophistry. - -“You would go away—in a week, in a month....” - -“No, no!” - -He saw that she was crying, and suddenly she turned from him to bury her -face in her arms and to sob quietly, not unrestrainedly, but with such a -quietness as went with powerful impulse to his heart, and he gathered -her to him again and tried to comfort her. - -“Why do you cry? What is it, _mignonne_?” - -She shook her head. “I do not know,” she said, but he knew that she did -know and would not tell. “I will go home now.... I am sad, and you will -not like me when I am sad.” - -“I like you any way you choose to be,” he said, holding her close. She -did not respond to his caresses, neither did she repulse them. She was -simply negative, as if they were not happening to her at all. “I love -you,” he repeated, insistently. - -“No....” She wiped her eyes and got to her feet. “I must go to my house. -Will you come?” she asked, shyly. - -“Of course.... But—” - -“No.... No.... You do not love me. You cannot. I do not believe—and I am -afraid.” - -They walked down the street in silence. Kendall tried to talk, but grew -discouraged, for Andree was intent, thinking, thinking, thinking, and -would not talk.... He wondered if it were the end of matters between -them, if he had been too impetuous and had frightened her away. The -thought frightened him, and he tried to reassure her, but could find no -words. He did not know how to reassure her, because he did not know what -she feared or what she was thinking.... How was he to understand? His -eyes were not clear to see into her world, or his intelligence to -understand it. He had declared his love to her as he would have declared -it to an American girl—that and nothing more. And she—what was she -thinking? What was going on inside that dainty, that sad little head? He -spoke of love in American; she understood him in French. How was he to -know that? - -They spoke hardly a word as the Metro carried them to the Place -St.-Michel, nor was the silence broken as they walked slowly up the -darkened Boulevard, so dark that at times they had actually to feel -their way through a spot of blackness. There was an occasional dim blue -street light, but no lights were visible from any interior.... The -shining out of the feeblest of lights would have brought next day a -summons to appear before the police to explain the matter. Paris was -severe in the matter of lights. Kendall had seen the people stone an -automobile at night because the driver had neglected to dim his lamps! -The city had no humor in its appreciation of air raids. - -Andree did not make him turn back at the usual spot. She seemed to have -forgotten him, though she clung to his arm, and they went on to broad -rue Soufflot, which leads off the Boulevard at right angles to the -Panthéon. In the middle of the first block Andree paused. - -“It is necessary to go back now,” she said, turning her face to him, and -he bent over so that he might see its expression. - -“Why did you cry?” he asked - -“Because I was afraid,” she said. - -“You are not afraid now?” - -“I—I have said I shall not have fear.” - -He took both her hands and drew her close to him. There were none to -see. The street was deserted. Even the tables and chairs of the café at -the corner were piled in close to the wall. - -“You love me a little?” he insisted. - -There was a tiny pause. “Yes,” she said. It was a queer, decided little -syllable, uttered as after mature deliberation. She was looking up into -his face. - -“_Mignonne!_” he said, softly, and kissed her. This time her lips were -not cold, his caress was not tolerated, but returned. She returned his -kiss. It was not the first girl Kendall had kissed, but it opened his -eyes to the possibilities of a kiss. It went to his head, and he -snatched her up in his arms as if she had been a baby. “You love me?... -You will always love me?” - -“Yes,” she said, in that same voice of calm decision. “And you?” - -“Always.... Always,” he said. - -“_Non...._ I know. For a week, for a month.... That is all. You are not -_fidèle_.... You will go away and I shall be sad. I know, but I am -lonely.” She kissed him. “But we shall be glad,” she said, wistfully. -“We shall have happiness—many little minutes of happiness. I shall -pretend that you never go away to leave me _solitaire_....” - -What could he say? He protested and asserted, but she smiled a grave -smile of knowledge and of resignation. She knew what she knew. -“To-morrow,” she said. “Place de la Concorde. _Sept heures._” - -“And you love me?” - -“Do you not believe?” she asked, sweetly. - -“Yes.” - -“It is well.... Good night, monsieur. To-morrow.” - -She kissed him again and freed herself. In another moment her daintiness -had been engulfed in the mysterious blackness. Once more she had -vanished into her fairy-land.... Each time he wondered if it could be -possible that there should be another visitation. - -Kendall, young, inexperienced in serious thought as he was, realized -that some sort of crisis in his life had arrived; events impended which -were to modify him, which were to affect him and to continue to affect -him so long as life should last. He did not know what. He did not -realize what had just happened to him and to Andree, and yet he wondered -... wondered. And he loved her; he was sure of it. Just as he was sure -she was worthy of his love! - -He was exalted, yet he was troubled, perplexed, worried, so he walked. -At the Boulevard St.-Germain he turned off to the eastward, crossing the -Seine upon the Pont Sully, and swinging to the left on the Quai Henri IV -until he reached the Boulevard de la Bastille, and so to the place -forever marked in the annals of time as the spot, not where the Bastille -had stood, but as the spot where it had been _destroyed_.... The great -column uprose blackly before him. At his left was a Metro station, its -entrance surrounded by people, who elbowed and surged, or stood or sat -wearily near to that place of subterranean refuge.... For so had the -_Gothas_ affected the imagination of the poor of Paris! Their nights -were nights of terror, for the Hun in his malignant ingenuity sought to -drop his bombs in this quarter of Paris, near the Bastille, in the -Faubourg St.-Antoine—St.-Antoine, mother of revolutions! If these people -could be terrorized, they might be driven to a fresh revolution, -reasoned Berlin.... They were in terror, but there was no fresh -revolution.... And so they cowered about the subway entrances, men, -women, boys, girls, wailing children in arms, ready to descend into the -cold dampness of the tube at the first note of the _alerte_. - -It was the first time Kendall had seen this thing, and it went to his -heart. He felt an uprush of rage against the Hun who wrought thus -inhumanly, thus without that sportsmanship which has lifted war from its -mire of blood and horror and degradation, to paint it with the glamour -of chivalry and heroism.... Chivalry was dead, slain by the _boche_, who -made frightful war upon defenseless populations, stark naked, hideous, -savage war stripped of glamour and of glory. The Hun pictured war not as -a St. Michael clad in shining armor and mounted upon a glorious charger, -but as a skeleton from which the decaying flesh had not completely -fallen, riding upon a wolf.... - -Kendall walked on, turning now toward home. He felt that he could not -sleep unless he walked himself to exhaustion, so he continued on and on -and on. His consciousness was the ground of a battle between the -inheritances that came from his mother and those which came from his -gentle father—in which his own individual, peculiar reason sought to -intervene. - -“Look out,” said his mother. “She’s French, and she must be bad. She’s -getting you into her clutches....” - -“Now, now,” said his father, “she’s a sweet little thing, perty as a -picture. I don’t see how there can be harm in her, and if there should -be, it wouldn’t be wilful harm.” - -“She’s nice,” said Kendall himself. “She’s a nice girl, and nothing’s -going to happen. Why—I tell you, she’s a _nice_ girl!” - -And so it went, suspicion, accusation, argument, defense, until his -brain whirled and he was miserable, but always his intelligence, lighted -by meager experience, emerged triumphant with the declaration that she -was a nice girl, and no harm could come of it.... - -Kendall forgot that he was a guest in a strange world; that his mode of -thought, his code of ethics, his purview of life and of the affairs of -life were foreign, were not of the currency of this land. It was more -than a mere difference between races; it was a difference between those -elements which make _life_.... But one thing he was given to see, and -that was, that whatever came to Andree and himself could not be evil, -could not be mean or squalid or wicked—and, in his limited vocabulary, -it all came back to the comforting assertion, “But she’s a nice girl.” -That persisted, no matter what other paths of speculation his thoughts -might follow. Andree was good. There was something about her that -proclaimed that she would continue to be _good_, and it was comforting -to him.... And he believed he loved her.... - -He went to bed and fell asleep with the remembrance of Andree’s kiss -upon his lips.... - - - - - CHAPTER IX - - -In the morning Kendall was given orders to leave that night for the -headquarters of the Second Division, which lay not distant from -Meaux—that splendid body of old Regulars and Marines who had but a few -weeks before proved the worth of the American soldier to the Hun and to -the Allied armies by its splendidly achieved defense of the Paris-Metz -highway—and there to gather certain information on shoes and ships and -sealing-wax and cabbages and cooties and morale and crops and transport. -He was to acquire this information with all possible despatch and -accuracy, and to return to Paris with his report. An army automobile, -carrying certain other officers, would leave 10 rue Ste.-Anne at nine -o’clock that evening. - -So he was going to the front. He was actually to penetrate to those not -distant battle-lines and to hear the sound of guns and himself to come -under hostile fire.... He was not, then, to rest safely in Paris for the -duration of the war; was not to return to America a veteran of the -roll-top desk and the ink-well! It was only for a space of days, but he -would actually have been there, actually have set his feet in a -trench—to be a part of a combat division. He was delighted.... He hoped -something would happen, that his days at the front might not be -uneventful, that he might see and take part in some manifestation of -real war. His sentiments were very boyish. Why, he might actually be -wounded, and so entitled to wear on his sleeve a golden wound chevron! -He found himself close to hoping it would be so, and, with a sudden -assertion of common sense, laughed at himself when he discovered he was -actually selecting the part of his anatomy in which he preferred to -receive his wound. He had decided on a leg, the fleshy part of the leg. -That would not be serious, would not incapacitate him for more than a -few days or weeks. It was really a glowing prospect.... And it would -make him a veteran! - -However, going to the front that night was unhandy. He had a -_rendez-vous_ with Andree and an appointment to dine with Monsieur -Robert.... But that would be possible. Number 10 rue Ste.-Anne was just -around the corner from Marty’s. He could dine and then hasten to be -where his orders called him.... Andree was eclipsed by the adventure. - -At noon he packed such things as were necessary and whisked them by -taxicab to rue Ste.-Anne where he left them in charge of a sergeant in -the Assistant Provost Marshal’s office. This left him free until nine -o’clock.... He was proud that his equipment contained a steel helmet and -gas-mask. - -It was an exultant and excited young man who waited for Andree at the -Metro station in the Place de la Concorde that evening. He wanted to -tell her. He wanted to impress her with the fact that he was a real -soldier and was going into danger. He even rehearsed the nonchalant -speech which would announce it to her.... And at last she appeared—again -in white, again with that quaint air of detachment and concentration, -and still very lovely in her fragile, slender way.... Suddenly he was -sorry he was going, because it meant an absence from her. - -Now she was recognizing him in that delightfully timid way of -hers—doubting her welcome until he reassured her. - -“Good evening, monsieur,” she said in French. She was always formal in -those first few moments. - -“I’ve wanted to see you—wanted to see you ever since you left me last -night,” he said, rather unexpectedly to himself, especially unexpected -in its truth, for it was true, though he realized it only then. - -“That is well,” she said, and looked up at him quickly, smilingly, with -something shining in her eyes that had never been there before. “And I -have thought of you.” - -“It has been a long day.... All the days are long because you are not -with me.” - -“It is true?” She paused, demanding to be assured that he was speaking -in earnest, and he took her arm and pressed it to his side. “That is -nice,” she said. “You should miss me at all times. Oh yes. Ver’, ver’ -much.... And I shall also miss you.” - -“My dear,” he said, bending close to her ear, “do you love me?” - -“Yes,” she said, simply. - -And then he knew that his great news had turned to aloes in his mouth. -The thing he had longed to tell her—a little boastfully—he could not -bear to tell her now, and he wondered vaguely why it should be so. But -he must tell her. He started to do so, and stopped. No—it would do as -well after dinner. - -“And you?” she said, after a little pause. - -“Very much.... Very much....” - -“No, no.... I am afraid. It cannot be so. You only say—that is all. You -have make me love you—and soon you will go away and leave me to cry.... -Yes....” - -“And if I do,” he said, striving to tease her, “you will soon find -another American. Sure you will.... _Vous êtes très-méchante.... Pas -fidèle_.” - -“How can you say? It is not kind. Oh, I am _fidèle_. You believe? Yes, -yes. You believe?” - -“Of course, child,” he said, repentantly. “I was only joking.” - -“And you—are you _fidèle_? On the nights when I do not meet with -you—what then? Do you see some other girl?... Men are not _fidèle_.... -You see other girl—lots of other girl.” - -“Now look here, you mustn’t say that. You’re the only girl in the world -I give a snap of my finger for.... Just you.” - -“It is well,” she said, contentedly; and then, “We dine with thees yo’ng -actor thees evening?” - -“Yes.” - -“Oh, I am glad.... It is ver’ important. He must like me, and then he -will speak for me at the _Conservatoire_. You must be ver’ good friend -to him so that he will speak for me.” - -“No, young lady, you keep away from that young actor. He’s too darned -handsome. I don’t want him stealing you away from me.” - -“_Non.... Non...._ I do not care for him, only that he speak for me. You -must not be afraid.” - -“Shall we take a taxi?” - -“No. There is much time. A taxi is much expensive. I must not make you -spend all your money.” - -“That wouldn’t be such a hard job. I haven’t much to spend.” - -“It is no matter.... If you had much—that is different—then I would -spend.... It is not for money that I know you—oh no. At first—then I do -not know what kind of yo’ng man you are.... I take you to that expensive -café. It is to punish you because you speak to me as you did.... I did -not know you. But now I know you ver’ well. You have been kind.” She -nodded her head in punctuation. “You have been always nice and ver’ -gentle, and so I see you ver’ often.” - -“Nobody could help being gentle with you, _mignonne_.” - -“I do not know,” she said. “The worl’ it is not nice.” She shook her -head disapprovingly. “All men are not nice.... It is ver’ hard, and -sometimes I am most unhappy. It is so.” - -“But you are happy now?” - -She pointed her finger down at the sidewalk. “Now—thees minute—yes. In -one hour in four hours it may not be so. Who can say?” - -It brought him again to his going away, and a real dread of making the -announcement to her seized upon him. He was afraid she would cry or do -some other equally distressing thing. But that was selfish. He dreaded -her crying because it would be unpleasant for himself and was rather -ashamed of it. He even fancied he could understand something of how she -would actually feel, but he was wrong. He was groping in the darkness, -wandering in the darkness of a strange mansion with many rooms and -devious passages, and it was inevitable that he should miss his way.... - -They entered Marty’s and Monsieur Robert came forward to greet them with -that delicious, boyish smile of his. - -“I am glad you come,” he said, bobbing his head. “My friends they shall -be jealous to see me wit’ such pretty girl.” - -Andree was very prim and quiet with that quaint attractive quietness -that always made Kendall wonder, because he had never seen anything like -it. It was a sort of waiting quietness, a kind of recess that Andree -retired into to await events, and from which she would emerge impish or -girlish or serious, like a child or like a weary woman. One felt she was -not present bodily, but was staring at one expectantly to read one’s -mood, or, possibly, to read one into the future and to foretell if good -or ill were to come out of it. Now she watched Monsieur Robert when he -was not looking at her, but the instant his eyes turned toward her her -own eyes would hide behind their lashes diffidently. - -“What shall we eat?” Monsieur Robert asked, in French. “_Potage? Poulet -rôti, cresson? Haricots verts? Salade?..._ Eh?” - -“Sounds good,” said Kendall, but monsieur was looking expectantly to -Andree. - -“That is well,” she said. - -“Pommard?... The _vin ordinaire_ is not for us to-night?” - -She was not interested in the wine, and Kendall trusted to the young -actor’s judgment. So they gave their order, and were only commencing on -the soup when a commotion at the door apprised Kendall that Jacques was -coming. Andree had started at the noise. - -“It is Jacques,” he said to her. “I told you about him.” - -“Yes,” she said, but did not turn her head. - -In a moment Jacques paused at the table and stared, drew himself to his -full height, threw back his hair from his brow with a flamboyant -gesture, and shouted: “A-ah!... A-ah!...” - -Kendall was embarrassed. There was no telling what Jacques might say or -do, for the man had a rather terrible, if delicious, frankness, and -discussed with openness and noise what Kendall was accustomed to hear -spoken of in whispers by men alone—and by them in corners.... He had -heard Jacques one evening going from table to table—demanding of friends -and strangers alike their judgment on a certain phase of the art of -making love. Kendall had really been shocked and had looked for somebody -to stand up and smite Jacques mightily, but everybody had laughed and -answered according to their kind with a frankness equal to Jacques’s.... -So now Kendall was apprehensive. - -“A-ah!...” said Jacques again, and pointed at Andree. “I ask you if I -should not find for you a girl, and you say _no_. Now I know why.... -A-ah!...” He frowned at Andree and waggled his head. “She is nice,” he -said, approvingly. Then he appeared to notice Monsieur Robert for the -first time and glared at him, glared and poked a long finger under his -nose. “_He_ dines with you,” he said, tragically. “You—you make -introduce your girl to him.... _Oh, là là!_ What is this? Do you not -know that this man steals little girls?... He is ver’ bad. Look you out -or he will steal her from you. It is I, Jacques, your friend, who make -the warning.” Then suddenly he turned away and flew across the room to -kiss a young woman who had just entered with the elderly critic. - -Ken was at a loss to know if the fellow had been in earnest or were -merely up to his usual capers.... - -The three at the table chatted, Andree always maintaining that queer -reserve, not emerging from her hiding-place, speaking only when directly -addressed, and then briefly. Monsieur Robert looked at her frequently, -and ever more frequently, for she was a charming picture, and more than -once spoke to her in French. She always replied in English. - -“I think mademoiselle look ver’ nice on the stage,” he said to Ken. “If -only she have the talent.” He shrugged his shoulders. “Pretty eyes and -talent for act not always are together,” he said. - -“You can’t tell till you try,” said Kendall, colloquially. - -“I should like for hear mademoiselle recite one day. Mademoiselle -studies Racine?” - -“Already I know many parts,” said Andree. - -“That is well. Some day you and Capitaine Ware shall come and you shall -recite for me, _n’est-ce pas_?” - -“_Oui, monsieur_,” she said, primly. - -“There is but one way to enter into the stage,” he continued. “It is the -_Conservatoire_. Then, if one make the success, there is the Comédie -Française.... But it is not easy to enter into the _Conservatoire_.” - -“_Mais non_.... It is ver’ difficult,” she said, despairingly. - -“Ah.... But if some one speak for you? Then it ees not the same—it ees -differen’.... But we shall see. Capitaine Ware ees my frien’. I would -oblige him. Also I would oblige mademoiselle.” He looked at her rather -intently. “We shall see.” - -The roast chicken arrived, surrounded by cress and swimming in a -delicious sauce. Conversation languished. From time to time Kendall -turned to look at Andree, for it always delighted him to see her eat, -she was so intent about it. She went about it as if eating were an -intricate problem requiring concentration.... And presently they fell to -chatting in fragmentary fashion, Andree translating for both Kendall and -Monsieur Robert, and it was very jolly and pleasant.... Kendall did not -notice how often the young actor glanced at Andree.... - -Presently they were through and monsieur was compelled to hurry away -because he had a part in the piece that was playing that evening. “I -mus’ see you ver’ soon,” he said to them both, but with his eyes -intently upon Andree’s—which dropped before his gaze. “I mus’ hear -mademoiselle recite.” - -“We’ll fix it up,” said Ken. “Good night.” They shook hands and Monsieur -Robert bent to kiss Andree’s hand, bent gracefully, with a charming air -that was half joking, half serious. It set upon him well. “Good night,” -he said, and hastened toward the theater. - -“I like him,” said Kendall. - -Andree looked at him quickly, her face expressionless. “Yes?” she said. - -“Don’t you?” - -“How can I say? I do not know him.... He is ver’ handsome.” - -“It doesn’t matter whether you like him or not—so long as he gets you -into that _Conservatoire_ thing.” - -She did not reply. - -They walked the best part of a block before she spoke. “It is ver’ -_nécessaire_ for me to enter into the Conservatoire.... Oh, ver’ -_nécessaire_.... I mus’ earn money. I have no money. I mus’ earn it for -myself, because there is no one to earn it for me.... You do not -onderstan’.... Sometime, before the war, yo’ng girls say they do not -need to earn money, because they marry. All will be wives and the -husbands they will earn.... Now it ees not so—_non_—it ees differen’.... -You onderstan’? Many, many yo’ng girl mus’ learn to earn money, and -because they will always be alone.... There can be no one....” - -“It does mean a lot to you, doesn’t it? I’ll be mighty happy if I can -help.” - -She was silent again for a time and then said, suddenly, as if thinking -aloud, “I theenk I can enter into the _Conservatoire_ if I want to....” - -“Eh?” - -“It was not anything.” - -He scarcely heard her; his mind was not on what she said, for he was -thinking to himself, “I must tell her.... I must tell her now,” and was -nerving himself up to make the announcement of his departure. - -“Andree,” he said, and stopped. - -“Yes?” - -“Do you love me?” he said, procrastinating. It was not what he had -intended to say. - -“Yes.” She spoke very sweetly. “And you?” The question sounded so -charming from her lips, the tone and the manner of it were rare and -lovely; they seemed to say, “I know you love me, but it is sweet—very -sweet—to hear you say so.” The street was dark and he drew her close to -him, and so they walked, his arm about her waist, she responding to his -touch so deliciously. - -“I love you—I do love you,” he said. - -“It is well.... I am ver’ happy.” - -“But, Andree—” - -“Yes?” - -“I—I’ve got to go away.... Only for a day or two,” he hastened to say. -“It’s just a little trip.” - -“When?” - -“Now—to-night.” - -“_To-night?_” Her tone was so strange, so startled, so shocked. -“_To-night?_” - -“Orders,” he said. “Nothing could take me away from you but orders.” - -She had drawn away from him, and was striving to peer into his face, but -the darkness prevented. She was striving to read from his eyes if he -were telling the truth. She had feared his going—this young man from -strange America. The possibility of his going had become a nightmare to -her—always present in the profound recesses of her thoughts. - -“Where?” she asked. - -“To the front.” - -“O-oh!...” It was not an exclamation, it was a suppressed cry. It was -one of the things she had feared, that this young soldier would be sent -from her to the hell of battle, and that he would not return, as the -brothers and the husbands and the sweethearts of her acquaintances had -gone—to be swallowed up and to be seen no more on earth.... He was -going.... The thing was going to happen to her.... Her man—the man she -loved—was going to become a sacrifice as those millions of other men had -become sacrifices. - -He had feared that she would cry, that she would cling to him with sobs -and beg him not to go, that she might make some sort of regrettable -scene, but she did not. But she was very still with the stillness of the -stricken. - -“_C’est la guerre_,” she said in a whisper. - -It is the war—that phrase so often heard, which excuses everything, -accounts for everything. But now it had a deeper meaning. _This_ was the -war! This parting was the war—this giving of a loved one to death, and -this remaining behind in an agony of fear and of loneliness—this was -indeed the war!... To men war is one thing—it is a grim fight, it is -suffering and wounds, it is bravery and glory.... To man war, at its -most, can mean only death. But to a woman who sends her man it means -more, infinitely, terribly more. It means that she may be deprived of -all that makes life desirable. It means that she must remain behind to -fear and to suffer, and then, when the feared news arrives, to face a -life that is not life, a life without love, without companionship.... A -life with the smile snatched away and with the heart robbed of laughter! -It means that from her the one, the great, the vital thing is to be -forever missing, and that the future is to be nothing but day following -day.... War means that men must die.... War means that women must -continue to live! - -“You mustn’t worry.... I—I sha’n’t be in the fighting. I’m just going to -get certain information.” He had looked forward to boasting to her about -how he would stand under fire. He would have done it in such a way that -it would not have sounded like boasting, but in a mock-modest way. He -had wanted to show her that he was actually going into it to take his -chance with the rest.... Now he had no thought but to reassure her; he -had no desire to take unto himself the heroic. “I promise you to come -back,” he said. “I sha’n’t be hurt.... It is only a day or two, and you -mustn’t be afraid.... Why”—here he lied—“I may not even be near to -danger.” - -She shook her head. “I know,” she said. And then: “I shall not let you -be hurt.... I shall prevent it.” Like a little Spartan, she was herself -again, speaking like her own self, almost gaily. “Do you theenk I should -let you be hurt?... Oh no! Not in the least.” She was being brave and -calm—for him! - -“I will be back surely in four days—the fourth day from to-day.... Then -I shall see you. We will make the engagement now.” - -“Yes.” - -“Where?” - -“I shall dine with Arlette,” she said, with a little laugh. “I will come -there—it is easier—_sept heures_.” - -“And—” - -“Yes,” she said, quietly. - -“I—by gad!—I _do_ love you.” - -She touched his cheek gently with her finger. “And there will be many -_petites minutes_,” she said. “We shall have much happiness.” - -“I hope so.” - -“And you will be _fidèle_—when you go away from me? You will not find a -yo’ng girl at the front—in the trenches? Promise me?” She was laughing -gaily now. - -“If I find a girl in the trenches,” he said, “I will give her to the -_boche_.” - -“It is well,” she said, and clapped her hands merrily. - -They were close to the Metro station at the Palais Royal now, and, for -their parting, paused in the blackness of a recess. - -“I can’t go home with you—do you mind?” - -“Ver’ much.” - -“Good-by, _mignonne_....” - -For a moment she clung to him, the fear that was upon her manifest in -the trembling of her little body. “Not good-by,” she said. “We must not -say good-by.” - -“Four days from to-day—without fail.” - -“I shall not fail—I shall come, _certainement_.” - -Again their lips met. “Now you must go,” he said, and she turned away -slowly and walked in that dainty way of hers toward the entrance to the -Metro. He stood watching her, expecting her to turn back, but she did -not turn back.... In a moment she disappeared down the stairs. He was -miserable.... - -But he did not understand—or if he did understand he hid the truth from -himself—what this parting on this evening was to Andree.... Last night -she had confessed that she loved him, and had made him a promise, a -promise that he half understood, but which he pretended to himself he -did not understand at all.... Perhaps he did not really grasp the extent -of her surrender, for young men, American young men of such upbringing -as his, and such code of ethics as he knew, are not equipped to -understand—and sometimes nature has made them very dull.... He had -drifted along with Andree until he was beyond his depth. To drift had -been so easy, for his heart had told him Andree was good—was _nice_.... -Now he hid from himself that he was apprehensive of what might come, -just as he tried to hide from himself that his own viewpoint was -changed, and that a thing which had seemed very wrong and squalid and -unthinkable was not, perhaps, so evil as his mother might assert. - -At any rate, he had arrived at this point—he would not draw back. Andree -was good, and he loved and respected Andree. And ... it was very -confusing ... he was young and decent and as clean of mind as a man may -be.... But—he was seeing and learning. Plymouth Rock could not legislate -for the world nor impose its prudery and falsity—a prudery and falsity -that made it a punishable offense for a husband to kiss his wife on the -Sabbath day—upon an older world well able to legislate for itself. -America was America. Well and good! Let America live according to the -code it had chosen.... France was France. Who, save only Deity Itself, -could assert that France was less virtuous, less in accord with the -wishes of the Supreme Composer of Ethical Systems, because the ethics of -France were not the ethics of Plymouth, Massachusetts, or of Detroit, -Michigan? - -But Kendall did not realize—how could he realize it?—that to Andree, -after her promise of the night before, this parting had been in all its -essentials as if she had been deserted upon her bridal night.... - - - - - CHAPTER X - - -It was nearly eleven o’clock when Kendall and his companions arrived in -the old cathedral town of Meaux and found accommodations in the Hôtel -Sirène, that rather quaint and down-at-heel hostelry which hides in a -courtyard behind huge gates that close at an hour so early as to -astonish Americans. Kendall was to discover that this was the universal -custom in the smaller towns of the country—that the hotels closed -themselves to guests in the early evening, and that to effect an -entrance thereafter was an achievement. - -They contrived, however, to find huddled accommodations, but Kendall did -not find sleep for a long hour. Events were imminent, events both of the -soul and material, and his imagination insisted upon handling them and -scrutinizing them. Speculations upon the proximity of war mingled with -anticipations and apprehensions of his relations with Andree.... He -fancied she, too, was suffering a wakeful night.... - -In the morning he awoke and breakfasted in a dining-room filled with -American newspaper correspondents, for Meaux was at that date one of -their headquarters, with French and American officers and a few English -Red Cross nurses.... Presently he was in his car again and moving -through the narrow, crowded streets toward Montreuil. The open country, -rolling, beautiful, rich, lay before him. - -Here, indeed, were indications of war. The roads were crowded with the -traffic of warfare, with vehicles of all sorts and descriptions moving -toward the front or returning from the front. The greater part of them -were huge French camions driven by _poilus_ who looked out upon the -world with eyes that had seen such sights as alter the fabric of a man’s -soul during the four years that were drawing to a close. They were all -in haste. American camions and camionettes and side-cars were rumbling -or whizzing by. Refugees driving cows, urging on weary horses that -dragged enormous two-wheeled carts heaped high with household treasures, -appeared now and then.... These seemed to Kendall to savor more of the -thing that was war than even such jolting, bumping pieces of artillery -as he encountered now and then.... - -Kendall was within hearing of the big guns on the battle-line, yet all -about him, spread in peaceful beauty, was a country apparently secure, -apparently untouched by the devastation of an invading army. Yet, a few -weeks before, German cavalry patrols had penetrated almost to this -point. The fields were green and beautiful, promising abundant crops. -Children were entering a little school-house just as children enter -school-houses in America. Farmers were working in their fields.... If it -had not been for the mass of military vehicles upon the roads and for an -occasional distant rumble that might have been thunder, but was not the -thunder of heaven, Kendall could not have sensed the proximity of war. - -French soldiers on bicycles were frequent. Now a Frenchman on a bicycle -is one of the sights of the war. Somehow he never seems to master the -contrivance in all its intricacies. He can ride furiously in a straight -line, coattails standing out straight behind, eyes fixed and determined, -jaws set. So long as he follows a bee-line all is well, but you can read -on his face that he realizes the uncertainty of life. Let him be -compelled to swerve from his course, to turn a corner, or even to stop -the machine to alight, and there is none so rash as to prophesy what -will be forthcoming. Kendall saw one stocky poilu attempt to turn -around. It was amazing! The man ricochetted off a camion against a stone -pile, off the stone pile into a donkey-cart, off the donkey-cart into -the arms of a troop of his marching comrades, scattering them like -chickens, thence through the _poilus_ in zigzag to a ditch, from which -he presently rebounded, facing in the direction in which he had -originally traveled. He did not turn. He had had enough of turning. Now -he would keep on his way without meddling with Providence, doubtless -intending to reach his destination by circumnavigating the globe.... - -Now Ken was passing long mule-teams driven by American boys whose faces -were so incrusted in dust as to give them the appearance of figures -carved out of ghastly rock. Ken could see the dust in drifts on their -eyebrows, and their eyelashes had a strange albino-look. Again his car -edged over to give space to a truck carrying to the rear the remnants of -a destroyed German avion. This moved by to disclose a long column of -Italian troops, armed not with rifles, but with picks and shovels—each -man wearing on his cap a vivid red star. Not a hundred yards beyond was -visible the gray rump of an observation balloon, kneeling on the ground -in the midst of a cluster of trees like some unbelievably monstrous -elephant, its back incrusted with something that might have been the -green moss of great age. This was the camouflage to make it -indistinguishable from the foliage of the trees.... Presently Kendall -was passing groups of hangars, aeroplanes standing before them in the -fields. Now it was a huge howitzer grunting and straining to be at its -business farther ahead and lumberingly eager to join its voice with the -roars of its companions. Once in a while by the roadside nestled a -little plot of graves above which waved the tricolor of France.... - -An hour’s drive brought them to Montreuil and Kendall’s car descended -the steep and crooked road that led into the valley where the tiny -village, teeming with American soldiers, lay in all its morning -charm.... It was not quiet. There sounded, every minute or so, the sharp -crack of the marvelous little seventy-five sending its word of defiance -to the German army which crouched behind the hills, making ready for -another leap at the throat of France. - -There was no stopping here. On they went along roads whose wooded sides -concealed American artillerymen and artillery. Here was the edge of the -front. Guns were actually firing over Kendall’s head at the distant and -invisible enemy. He thrilled to this realization.... In a few moments -they passed on their left a beautiful château, historic because it had -been occupied by von Kluck as headquarters when his armies were rushing -onward to meet their defeat at the Marne. The car passed through Bezu, -where was an American field hospital occupying a tiny church, its -operating-room now in the adjoining building, which had been, a few -weeks before, the school crowded with urchins.... But there was neither -priest nor school-boy now. All were gone; all had fled before the Hun -and were scattered, God knew where, over the face of France. - -Now Kendall’s driver turned off the main road and shortly another hamlet -lay before them—the remnants of the place that had been Domptin. Here a -military policeman halted them, demanded credentials and destination. - -“You walk from here,” he said. “No cars pass over this road by day.” - -“You know the way?” Ken asked his driver. - -“Yes.” - -So they alighted and trudged along the road. Ken observed many little -craters by the roadside and in the fields, and, without asking, knew -they had been caused by hostile shells.... It was very noisy—or so -Kendall fancied. Artillery was at work on all sides of him, but it was -only the desultory fire of the quiet day. Though the voices of the guns -were audible, neither guns nor the men who served them were to be seen. -Kendall’s pulse increased; he felt in the pit of his stomach that -electric sensation which always came to him while he stood waiting for -the referee’s whistle at the start of a football game. - -They walked on. Even here, where the affairs of war were unmistakable, -there was that exotic sense of peace. The woods were still green, the -bushes thick and covered with foliage, the crops, almost ready for the -reaper, waving and undulating as the breezes crossed the fields.... No -human being was visible. Yet here ahead, to the right and to the left, -was the locale of one of the most savage struggles of the war; here it -was that the American Second Division was thrown into the line to stop -the German as he marched, victory-flushed, upon Paris.... And here the -German had stopped.... Just beyond were fields of wheat and woodlands -tenanted by no living being, but nevertheless tenanted. In their depths, -concealed from the eye, not reachable by any human hand, were the -unburied bodies of American dead.... - -“Here we are,” said Kendall’s driver, pointing to a gray rectangular -mass of buildings just ahead. “Paris Farms. Regimental headquarters of -the Ninth Infantry.” - -They entered the gates, passed the saluting sentry, and found themselves -in a square courtyard surrounded by barns and farm buildings, with the -old farm-house at the opposite end. Groups of men in khaki sat close to -the walls. None were in the middle of the courtyard, and Kendall’s -driver, instead of leading him up the path that ran directly to the -door, conducted him in a round-about way, his shoulder rubbing the -wall.... In the air above was the intermittent throb of a German -aeroplane reconnoitering, and it was the duty as well as the desire of -all men to remain invisible.... - -Life, for the most part, is made up of small matters, of small joys and -small griefs, of little pleasurable surprises and minor catastrophes. In -the ratio as the little joys outnumber the little sorrows we are happy. -Tremendous events, crashing climaxes, occur in few lives. But we like to -fancy ourselves participants in astonishing doings, and as the victims -of beneficiaries of amazing coincidences. We are so constituted that we -can be amazed at the slightest deviation from the normal, and the -arrival of a genuine surprise can set us all by the ears with -excitement.... A benevolent surprise awaited Kendall inside the door of -the ancient farm-house. It was of not the least importance in the scheme -of the universe and would not modify Kendall’s life by the breadth of a -hair, yet it was potent to overshadow everything else in his mind for -hours and to make him feel that he had been singled out by the powers -for especial grace. - -There was a broad hallway, cluttered with bedding rolls and occupied by -a group of lounging soldiers. At the right was a room occupied as the -office of the adjutant, which Kendall entered a trifle diffidently as a -stranger, wondering what manner of men he would be required to have -dealings with.... And then.... - -“Ken Ware!” shouted a voice, and a young second lieutenant with the most -pitiable of mustaches—a yellow and yearning mustache—leaped from a desk -at his right to greet him. “Where did you rain down from, and where did -you get all those bars on your shoulders?” - -It was Jimmy Martin, whom Kendall had last known as a newspaper man in -Detroit, with whom he had been familiar in those affairs of young -manhood which make for friendships to be looked back upon with longing -and regret when the days and the affairs of young manhood have been -engulfed in the past. - -“What are you doing? What are you doing _here_?” Jimmy demanded. - -“I’m in the Intelligence. And you—?” - -“Intelligence officer of this regiment.... And only a second lieutenant. -Ought to be a captain. Doing a captain’s work. Say”—he was a sudden -young man—“wait till I get my tin lid and cane and we’ll go to see the -sights. How long are you here?” - -“Bring on your sights,” said Kendall. “While you are exhibiting I can -get from you what I came for.” - -“Wish you could stay. We’ve got a darn good mess. Not as good as we had -the first few days, but good.” - -“Why the first few days?” - -“We went out and gathered up stuff to eat—to save it from the _boche_.” - -“Foraging, eh?” - -“Not exactly. We gathered it in and ate it to prevent its giving aid and -comfort to the enemy. One day we got a pig at eleven-thirty and had -chops for lunch at one. The colonel said that pork was too close to -being pig for him. Next day we had rabbits. Speared them with -pitchforks. There was a bully strawberry-patch up the line and we had -plenty until a regiment of Senegalese moved in and looted it. There’s a -patch of gooseberries in No Man’s Land, and we have the devil’s own time -keeping the men from going out after them.” - -As they passed out and through the barn into the woods Kendall explained -his errand, and the conversation became technical. Whatever else he -might have been, Jimmy Martin was engrossed in his particular job and, -apparently, was admirably efficient. The greater part of the data -Kendall wanted was at Jimmy’s tongue’s end; the rest would be readily -obtainable from available records of Martin’s work. - -By this time they had traversed a plainly marked road which led along -the end of a field bordering the woods, and Jimmy complained bitterly of -its evidence. “We’ve made that road since we came here. It’ll show up -plain on their photographs and show a lot of circulation here.... You -can see they’ve been droppin’ shells on it now.” - -They entered the denseness of the woods to find it teeming with American -soldiery who occupied the quiet of the day in enlarging and making more -comfortable the makeshift dugouts they inhabited.... These were not such -dugouts as Kendall had seen described in books about the war; they were -such affairs as he had made himself when he was a boy and called -“coojees,” where he had played robber and baked potatoes. They were -hastily dug and as hastily covered with a mat of boughs and a layer of -earth—flimsy sanctuaries, able to shelter from spraying shrapnel, but of -no effect whatever against explosive shell. - -Suddenly an invisible seventy-five was discharged almost at Kendall’s -elbow, and Jimmy laughed to see his friend’s reaction to the unexpected -sound. They parted the bushes and examined the beautiful little gun—that -weapon which one may almost say has been the salvation of France! - -A captain of artillery issued belligerently from a timbered dugout and -confronted Martin. “Say,” he demanded, “you’re the ding-donged -Intelligence officer that had me pinched the other night. Ain’t you?” - -“Oh, was it you? Sorry. The boys are sort of stirred up about spies. -They didn’t savvy you. When a strange officer comes poking around these -woods looking for a place to light and asking oodles of questions about -whether there’s artillery here and such like, somethin’s goin’ to -happen. A couple of boys came rushin’ up to me to ask what to do, and I -told them to pinch you. This place is full of spy rumors. Everybody’s -seein’ them. The doughboy that hasn’t seen somethin’ darn mysterious and -suspicious in the last twenty-four hours is hard to find.” - -“Forget it. I was some lost. Should have reported before I came down.” - -“Where was it they got Lieutenant Small last night?” - -“Down this path about a hundred yards. His horse is there yet.” - -Kendall and Martin walked that way. Under a shelter of boughs stood the -handsome horse of which the dead lieutenant had been so fond; he stood -quietly switching his tail and nibbling the leaves about him, all -unconscious that his back would never again bear the weight of a gentle -master.... And thirty feet away was the spot where Small had met his -death, met it because he had scorned the shelter of a dugout, but with -his French orderly had slept on the surface of the earth, with no -shelter except a lean-to of brushwood.... On the surrounding bushes were -gruesome shreds.... - -So this was war at last! On this spot a man had been killed by the enemy -and the blood of him was not yet dry!... Somehow it convinced Kendall -that he was at the front, that there was actual danger where he stood. -He was experiencing the thing he had come to France hoping to -experience.... And yet it was difficult to feel the fact. He had fancied -the line of battle to be a constant tumult, horrible with tremendous -showers of bursting shells and glorious with charges and defenses. In -its stark actuality it was quite different. Affairs were gone about -nonchalantly and methodically. Even the artillerymen who sent a shell -now and then at some target they could not see served their guns in a -bored manner. - -It was only by a certain tingling of the nerves that he, a tenderfoot in -this business, sensed the presence of war; that war was here about him, -within reach of his arm. Those seventy-fives which spoke with such a -vicious, through-the-teeth bark were sending lethal shells across the -sunlit landscape, causing death and wounds. Possibly that very shell -which he could hear as it sped on its way might kill an enemy.... And -these boys killed with an air of detachment and _ennui_.... - -And the infantrymen! Scattered through the woods about their -rabbit-warren of dugouts, they looked and acted like boys on holiday, on -some camping excursion. They chatted and frolicked, and grumbled about -the food, and because they were not relieved and sent to rest billets, -and because the enemy did not try to advance, and because they -themselves were not sent against the enemy. Kendall absorbed a feeling -that they rather liked the whole thing, that it was just the life they -were born to and were fitted to live—and that they knew it. - -It was a picture, there in the _bois_, a picture that touched the -imagination of that young man from the peaceful Middle West and would -not soon be erased from his memory. The trees grew closely, admitting -only patches of sunlight here and there, with an effect of peaceful, -lazy, restful shade. One saw dimly. The scene was soothing to the eyes, -alive as it was with movement. The brown of uniforms blended with the -yellow-green of the foliage and with the red-yellow of the upturned soil -where it had been broken by hundreds of shovels in the fashioning of -shelters.... Kendall stood and watched and knew that he was beholding a -sight which, in the years of his age, he would see again and describe -again, and live again in the telling.... It excited him, yet he wondered -why it should excite him more than it had done when he had seen other -khaki-clad boys in camps in America.... It was because these boys slept -with death for a blanket-mate. It was because no man of them knew what -minute might call him with awful suddenness over the threshold of life -and into the mysteries of death.... - -There had been no fire from the enemy. Since the dawn their guns had -been silent, but now, without warning, the air was filled with a threat, -with a sound which Kendall had never heard before, but which he -recognized by the instinct of self-preservation which resided in him. It -was the rushing, shrieking, rending, express-train rush of a big -shell—not of a shell going, but of one coming. It startled Kendall. For -an instant he was blind and deaf to everything in the universe but the -approach of that shell, and it seemed to him to be directing itself -exactly at the small of his back. He wanted to dodge, to run, to -obliterate himself from that portion of the earth, but there was no -place to betake himself. It was a matter of seconds, of parts of a -second. The shell screeched over their heads and detonated over toward -the farm-house.... And Ken became fully conscious again, a bit surprised -that he was still in the same spot and that he had not made himself -ridiculous. - -And now pictures came to him that he had seen in that interval, pictures -seen but registering now for the first time. He laughed.... The woods -had resolved itself into a prairie-dog village at the first instant of -alarm. The air had been full of diving legs as soldiers plunged headlong -into the earth. Everywhere Ken’s eyes had looked they had seen an -American soldier disappearing with comical haste into the bowels of the -earth. - -“It was about time for them to start,” said Martin. “We’d better get -back to headquarters. I may be wanted.” - -They walked back hurriedly while shell after shell screamed down at them -as it rushed over their heads. Ken was silent. He was thinking: “I’m -under fire. I’m really under fire. The enemy is shooting at _me_.... -They are trying to kill _me_.” It was not easy to convince his mind. - -As they entered the farm-house the shells were coming in rapid -succession and exploding in the vicinity with tremendous detonations. -Young Martin cocked his ear and hazarded an opinion as to their -caliber.... A jagged fragment, hurtled from an explosion a hundred feet -away, crashed through the roof and came to rest on the second floor. -Young Martin was delighted; he rushed up-stairs after the bit, carrying -it down gingerly wrapped in a cloth, for it was still hot, and then with -joy applied gauges and calipers to it so that he might identify it -exactly.... He was happy. The gauge was as he had named it. - -“Say,” he said over his shoulder to several officers who were gathered -in the room, “listen here: now comes this man with orders for us to -report on the crops of the neighborhood. Kind of crops. Quantity. -Quality. How many kernels of wheat to the head.... My business is -collecting information about the Germans....” - -“Huh!” grunted the lieutenant-colonel, who evidently in civilian life -had been acquainted with market reports, “snails weak to medium. Frogs -strong. Give it to ’em, boy. Full particulars.” - -“Say, colonel, you know that woods we were talking about.” Martin -pointed to a map on the wall. “The boches are using it. My men have -reported circulation there, and they’ve been putting up camouflage. How -many shells will it take to gas ’em out? I’d like to get ’em out of -there.” - -“Have to have brigade orders to use gas....” - -_Blammm!_ came a detonation unpleasantly near, but still beyond the -headquarters. The colonel cocked his ear. “Boy, don’t you make them no -shorter,” he drawled. - -The adjutant entered. “General’s here. Come to mess. He and the colonel -are coming down-stairs now. All in.” - -All filed into the mess-room. The younger officers had been full of -boyish spirits and pranks, but decorum settled on them as they entered -the door. They seemed suddenly to grow up and to acquire the demeanor of -maturity, and stood erect in stately manner while Kendall was presented -to the general and the colonel.... And then the meal proceeded. Kendall -wondered where the food came from, but asked no embarrassing questions -about the source of supplies. There was chicken, there were potatoes, -there was fresh asparagus, there was custard pudding, there were cheese -and coffee and cherries—and then cigars. - -“Don’t get the idea we pass cigars at every mess,” whispered a daring -lieutenant in Kendall’s ear. “Just throwin’ ourselves in honor of the -general....” - -The bombardment had increased in violence during the meal, had increased -to such a degree that Kendall thought rather more of falling shells than -of food.... There was absolutely no protection. A shell might crash down -upon them through the frail structure at will.... But nobody appeared to -mind. Kendall reflected that he, perhaps, did not appear to mind, and -wondered if the others were experiencing the same sensations as he. He -did not see how it could be otherwise. Or had they found some magic -philosophy which rendered them immune to reflections upon sudden -death?... The general told the colonel a humorous anecdote, and the -colonel replied to it with another equally pointless to Kendall’s way of -thinking. Why in thunder, he wondered, didn’t they get through with this -meal and go to a place a bit more sheltered?... But the seniors chatted -on, apparently with placid enjoyment of Philippine and Cuban -reminiscences, all to the accompaniment of bursting high-explosive -shells, one of which could have obliterated that farm-house and all the -men it contained. - -But an end arrived. The general and the colonel arose, and it became -etiquette for the juniors to arise as well. The dignitaries disappeared -to the colonel’s quarters up the stairs, and a few of the younger -officers went to the adjutant’s office across the hall, Kendall and -Jimmy with them. The telephone on Martin’s desk buzzed and Jimmy lifted -the receiver. He looked up with a frown. - -“This nut down the road wants to know if the general’s killed yet.” - -“Did he say _general_ over that ’phone?” - -“Yes.” - -“Then we can sit down and expect to get really shelled now.” - -It was then that Kendall learned that the general theory was that the -enemy had found means to tap all our telephone wires and to listen in to -our conversations—a theory which has given rise to much quaint telephone -conversation, couched in a language not hitherto known on this or any -other planet. - -Darkness was falling without, and with the darkness came a -multiplication of the shells designed by the enemy for the discomfort of -the regiment.... Kendall, to his surprise, was growing accustomed to the -shells. He was conscious of them, but had lost something of his -consciousness of the danger that was in them.... He was interested. It -was an interesting spot and an interesting moment, and he sat quiet and -wide of eye to miss no thrill that might be there for him.... Telephones -were busy with messages coming and going, messages camouflaged by -strange words and code numbers and weird names. When plain English was -necessary the longest and most erudite words in the dictionary were -sought, doubtless on the theory that the German was not educated to the -point of comprehending them. - -Everybody had his job, and everybody seemed to believe his especial -piece of work to be the most important in the army. A lieutenant came in -with a scowl of tremendous ferocity. - -“Colonel,” he said, “we’ve got a damn bad situation. It’s that doctor. -He refuses to give some of my wounded men wound chevrons. Says they -aren’t wounded enough.... How bad has a man got to be shot before he’s -wounded, anyhow?” - -“My understanding,” said the lieutenant-colonel, “is that any man who is -hurt enough to require medical attention is entitled to a chevron.... It -doesn’t make any difference if he’s hurt by high explosive or hooked by -a bull.” - -The din was now terrific. French and American artillery had opened fire -all along the line. So quickly did report follow explosion and explosion -report that the whole mingled into one continuous and mighty sound. And -during it all the young Intelligence officer quarreled with a sergeant -who was his draftsman, as they tried to reconcile maps drawn from -observers’ sketches with photographs taken from aeroplanes. - -“Aw, hell!” growled the draftsman, “this guy’s made a conventionalized -design. What we’re lookin’ for is what’s on the ground, not some guy’s -pretty ideas. You want me to make a map to send up to the general, and -what the devil have I got to make it from? I’m S.O.L.... There hain’t no -damn woods like that.” - -“Here,” declared Jimmy, indicating on maps and photographs, “this woods -is supposed to be that woods, and this trench is supposed to be that -trench.” - -“_Supposed!_” - -“Yes.” - -“Expect me to send a map to the general and label it ‘Supposed?...’ That -map’s pretty, all right, but it hain’t worth a hoot in Hoboken. Call him -up and ask him what the blazes—” - -Kendall laughed, and was surprised to discover that he could laugh, that -anything would seem humor in this place with death showering down on all -sides. - -Now the attentions of the enemy seemed to take on the aspect of a -serious effort, for the officers of experience began to gather and to -hold consultations and to listen with marked interest. - -“Gas!” somebody said. “Listen! Hear it?” - -Kendall listened, but could not distinguish the bursting of the -gas-shell, so easily to be identified by the practised ear. - -“Gas-masks at _alerte_,” was the order. - -The telephone rang. “Shrapnel and gas here,” said an observer some place -out in the darkness. - -“Got your mask on?” demanded Jimmy. - -“No. It ain’t bad yet.” - -“You get that mask on and keep it on. Now. While I’m waiting.... Is it -on? ... There. You can telephone as well through a mask as without it. -Try it.... All right.” - -There was a moment of comparative inactivity, then the telephone again. -“Mustard gas to the right,” was reported, and after a few moments a call -from a certain company of infantry which had become unhappy in its -position: “Say, we want a retaliatory barrage. We’re getting everything -here—big, little, and gas.” - -“They want a barrage,” reported Jimmy. - -“Where do they want it?” asked the lieutenant-colonel. - -“I don’t know. Wake George up; that’s _his_ business.... Say, let’s -notify the gas officer; we’re beginning to get it pretty close here.” - -Jimmy called the person designated as George. “Hey!” he said, -irreverently. “Get your pants on and come down. The adjutant wants you.” - -It was very chilly. Ken shivered with the cold, and was rather thankful -it was cold, because it gave him honest reason for shivering. He was -keyed to a high pitch, nerves taut, imagination straining its leash, but -he was enjoying himself after a strange fashion, reveling in this -experience, in the sensations of peril, in the fact that he was at the -very center of things. The artillery activity continued to increase, and -the ear-shattering, sweeping, rolling gusts of infernal clamor seemed to -reach a very climax of sound.... Again and again he could feel upon his -own body the shock of adjacent explosions. It required but a few feet -difference in the fall of one of those shells to mean all that stood -between life and death for him.... And yet he was not afraid. He was not -conscious of fear, only of that queer electric sensation, and of an -elevation of spirits due to intense excitement. - -The telephone insisted with a new insistence each moment. “Gas reported -to the right.... Gas reported to the left....” - -“What shall we do about it?” Jimmy asked the lieutenant-colonel. - -“How about a little interdiction?” They spoke casually, as one would -say, “The road is dusty,” and the other reply, “It might be well to -sprinkle it.” - -“It’ll be all right if we can get enough.... I’ll call up and ask for -it.” - -Then: “Hello!... Hello! Is this Hoboken?... They’re giving us more gas -than we like ... at right and left and in front.... Yes.... Been coming -twenty minutes.... Is it worth while to retaliate?... Orders to use gas -have to come from you.” - -“We’re in for _beaucoup_ casualties,” somebody said out of a moment’s -pause. - -“Say, you were too mild with Hoboken. I’d ’a’ told him we was gettin’ -gas to beat the devil, and we had to have some doin’s of our own. Them -birds don’t worry about what _we’re_ gettin’ unless we holler loud.” -This from the draftsman-sergeant. - -“There!” The adjutant looked up at the ceiling. “Listen!... _Boche_ -aeroplane. I’ve heard it quite a spell. Directing their fire by the -flash of our batteries.... Gawd! Why don’t we get more aeroplanes of our -own!” - -The telephone again, and Jimmy reported with what Kendall conceived to -be relief, “He says he’ll have the hundred and fifty-fives and gas going -in ten minutes.” - -“Say,” somebody complained, “that _boche_ aeroplane must be mired in a -cloud. It sounds like it was standing still in one spot.” - -“Stuck or not, she’s up there without any friendly intentions.... Say, -we ought to go over to the States and shoot them peace-talkin’ pups.” It -was the sergeant speaking again. “Anybody that wants to make peace with -the _boche_!... They hain’t got no right pollutin’ the atmosphere....” - -There came a pause while all waited hopefully for the “big stuff” that -had been promised them—and presently it came. Kendall had believed the -ultimate in sound had been achieved before, but this—this was -impossible. Such an extreme from silence could not be. It was cosmic. It -was awful. He seemed to be standing in the very center of such an -upheaval as might have created worlds.... It upreared to a very ultimate -climax of sound, to a single note made up of a multitude of gigantic -sub-tones. It was amazing, it was terrifying, it was gratifying.... - -“Fritz is gettin’ his good,” said the sergeant, with profound -satisfaction. - -This continued an hour, and then gradually subsided. The German fire had -become desultory—and then ceased. They had drawn upon themselves more -than they liked by their evening’s strafing.... The silence that ensued -was startlingly loud. One could hear it.... - -“I’m for some grub if we can rustle it,” said a raw-boned lieutenant. - -The lieutenant-colonel yawned and stretched his arms high over his head. -“Oh-hum!... Darn these quiet nights,” he said, with sincerity. “I -thought for a while there was going to be something stirring.” - -“Oh, I’m willing to have a rest once in a while,” said Jimmy. “I’m going -to sleep. Gimme all these quiet nights you want to....” - -Kendall looked at his watch. It was half past two in the morning.... -Quiet nights! He wondered if they were making game of him, but as he -looked back on the conduct of these young men during that night he was -persuaded of their sincerity.... And he—he had fancied himself present -at the unloosing of Inferno.... - -Presently he was lying on a bundle of hay on a stone floor, wrapped in -his blankets.... A sentence, a scrap from the talk of the night, -repeated itself to him, “We’re in for casualties.” He pondered it. -Casualties—that meant wounded and dead; men mangled and men in the -horrible agonies that follow the breathing of mustard gas.... Some of -those boys he had seen a few hours ago down in the woods—only a few -hundred feet away—were dead ... _dead_! He had been near to death—had -sat for hours where death might reach out and touch him upon the -shoulder.... So this was war ... this was how the thing was done! - -It seemed so futile. What had been accomplished by this night’s -slaughter? Neither side had advanced a foot; nothing had been won or -lost.... But hundreds of lives had been wasted, hundreds of thousands of -dollars’ worth of munitions had been expended—and why? For nothing that -he could see, for no purpose except the desire of each side to make the -other side uncomfortable.... That night could have been erased from the -history of the war, and its absence would never have been noticed. Its -activities had no more effect upon the course of the war than the -barking of a dog would have had—and yet hundreds of bodies were -tenantless, and hundreds of mothers would mourn their sons. - -“War is scientific waste,” he said to himself, and repeated the phrase. -He hated war because it was waste.... He wondered how many men had given -their lives on just such futile nights as this during the years since -August, 1914. Thousands upon thousands, doubtless.... How many of those -girls he had seen in Paris had been deprived of husbands—of the men who -would some day have been their husbands—in just such affairs? It was -wrong—_wrong_.... War was a horrid disease, or was it the German nation -which was a horrid disease? He could not think clearly.... He had -thought little of mankind in the mass, but now he considered it, and his -sympathy attached to it. It was futile to pity an individual, any -individual, but one’s heart might bleed for mankind.... And most of all -it might bleed for that portion of mankind whose duty it is to be the -mothers of forthcoming generations—who were deprived by war of the right -to fulfil that duty. - -Then he found himself repeating over and over a phrase: “Little moments -of happiness.... Little moments of happiness....” If men were to be -wasted as they had been wasted this night, and if God could sit -quiescent in His heaven, tolerating such wastage, then could that God -deny to women their little moments of happiness as a partial, an -infinitesimal, balm for the agony He permitted? Could He frown upon -those little moments, or decree them to be evil?... He wondered how God -stood on this question of morals. In a moment came an answer, but -Kendall could not assert it to be a true answer. It was this: “_God -demands another generation of mankind._” - - - - - CHAPTER XI - - -Kendall awoke refreshed, but with those sensations which a man -experiences after an exceedingly circumstantial and vivid dream. The -reality of last night’s events had vanished, to be remembered only as -something lived through in that subconscious land of dreams. The morning -was bright, cheerful, and he breakfasted with enthusiasm. Directly -afterward Jimmy was summoned to brigade headquarters, and Kendall, -having finished his work at that point, set out with his chauffeur to -walk back to Domptin. - -On the way they paused on the road to watch the shelling out of a corner -of the woods by a German battery. The high-explosive shells fell with -beautiful precision and at regular intervals of about a minute. The -scream of the shells could be heard during an interval in which one -could count up to six slowly, and then would come the explosion. By -counting so and keeping his eyes on that wooded angle Kendall could -watch the work of the shells with exact timing of his vision. Somehow -the processes of the explosion reminded him of an enormously powerful -man heaving upward a weight with his shoulders. First would come a small -surge of smoke, as if the giant were testing his load, and then an -uprush of black smoke and debris in geyser form, regular until it had -spent its force, then breaking into irregular billows at the top and -dissipating through the air.... Shell after shell dropped precisely, -neatly, not varying in their placing by more than a couple of score of -feet.... About the corner was no sign of life, no hurrying figures -stumbling headlong away from the peril, and Kendall wondered if life -were present there, if life had been there, or if it had wholly ceased -to exist. - -They walked on down the road to their car and returned to Montreuil, -where Kendall had business with the Assistant Provost Marshal, who -occupied a house on the edge of town, midway down the winding hill. As -Ken’s car drew up at the house a gray camion stopped at an adjoining -cottage, and Kendall saw a girl leap briskly down from the seat and run -up the bank. She wore the uniform of the Y. M. C. A.... He recognized -Maude Knox. - -His first impulse was to hasten to her, for he was as much delighted as -astonished to see her in such a place, but something stopped him—call it -curiosity. He was conscious of wanting to see how she acted, what she -was doing, how she did it.... An American girl alone in a French hamlet -deserted by its civil population! A girl alone with an army! Here was -indeed a situation; here was romance; here was something to excite the -imagination! Kendall leaned forward eagerly and watched. - -She entered the open door of the little cottage and looked within; then -she turned about in the most matter-of-fact way and called something to -the man who drove the truck. He dismounted and began unloading cases and -crates—and a cook-stove. These he carried up the bank and placed in the -house. Maude shook hands with the man; he climbed on his camion again -and drove away. She was alone!... She, an American girl, had been set -down casually in a matter-of-course manner here within range of hostile -guns, and abandoned to her own devices! She seemed not in the least -excited or disturbed. It was amazing. This sort of thing might have been -happening to her every day or so for years, and yet Kendall knew she had -never, probably, spent a night alone in a house before in her life.... -And here she was more than alone in a house. There was not another woman -within miles.... He saw her attempting to fasten a sign to the wall -beside the door, and, failing, turn and look about her for the first -time.... Seventy-fives were being discharged every few minutes from -points not a quarter of a mile away from her. He saw that she was gazing -toward the sound.... He shook his head, for the thing was beyond his -comprehension. Did American girls do this sort of thing? Was this -expected of them? Were they all capable of such adaptations of -themselves, or was Maude Knox a remarkable exception? He wondered.... - -There was nothing more to be seen. Maude had gone inside, and Kendall -stepped from his car and walked up to her door, on whose threshold he -paused, not speaking, and peered inside. She was standing in the middle -of a rubbish-littered room, looking about her, not with bewilderment or -with uncertainty, but calculatingly. She seemed the embodiment of -capability.... She nodded her head as much as to say, “This will do -nicely,” and reached for a broom that was among the boxes that had -accompanied her. - -“Good morning,” said Kendall. - -She turned and looked at him, smiling even before she recognized him, -and then exclaimed, “Kendall Ware, of all people!” - -“Of all people, indeed! How about yourself? I presume you are a natural -and normal part of the scenery.” - -She nodded. “Of course. This is what I came to France to do.” - -“To—to be set down on a pile of filth like this”—his arm swept the -room—“alone—in the middle of an army—within a couple of miles of No -Man’s Land?” - -“Of course.... Why not?” - -“Aren’t you—afraid?” - -She was actually surprised; there was no pretense about it. “Of what?” -she asked. - -He shrugged his shoulders. “I’ll bet you never slept alone in a house -before in your life.” - -“Never.” - -“You wouldn’t do it at home.” - -“I suppose not.” - -He waggled his head. “You’d have been afraid to stay alone in a house in -a civilized town.... Now, wouldn’t you?” - -“I—I guess I would. Yes, I would.” - -“But here—with nothing to protect you, without even a decent lock—and -not a woman within half a dozen kilometers!... It isn’t right. They -hadn’t any business sending you to such a place.” - -“Rubbish!... I’m safer than I would be in my own home with a policeman -standing in front of the door. Why, I’ve never even thought of being -nervous! Really.... I suppose it is queer.” She stopped a moment to -speculate on its queerness. “If I were back home and somebody should -describe this to me I couldn’t understand any girl doing it.... But I’m -here—and it’s all different.... I never felt so—so _safe_.” - -“But an army—even our army—is made up of all sorts of men.” - -She laughed with sincerity. “Fiddlesticks!... What do you suppose would -happen to a man who offended me? Why, Kendall”—it was the first time she -had used his given name, but it appeared perfectly natural—“I’ve got a -whole division to look after me.” - -It was true. He knew it was true. These American boys—lonely for a -familiar American face, hungry for the sound of the voice and laughter -of an American woman—would idolize her. They would be her slaves. -Safe?... There never had been such safety as was hers—and yet he was -troubled. It was so unconventional—so off the beaten track of the -ordinary movement of life. He did not quite like it.... That was his -mother speaking in him. His mother would have declared such conduct to -be unwomanly, to be not nice, and she would have condemned Maude Knox -unheard.... Because Maude Knox was doing a thing _she_ had never done -and had never seen done by a respectable member of her sex!... Kendall -realized this to be absurd. - -“We’re surely in a different world,” he said, tritely. - -“The Epworth Sewing Circle wouldn’t approve,” she said, with a twinkle, -“but the Epworth Sewing Circle doesn’t count over here, does it?... I -wonder if it will ever count again anywhere—for us who have been here?” - -Kendall wondered, too. What was going to become of the home conventions -when these young women, who had adventured to France to aid as they -found opportunity in the winning of the war, got home? What ideas would -they bring with them and disseminate? What would happen to America?... -America could never be the same, for, not only would these thousands of -girls return, having seen the world with opened eyes—and lived -undreamable lives—but two millions of young men would be going home, -too.... Each one of them would take something of France and of the war -to his home—and what would come of it?... - -“You’re—you’re _bully_!” he said, with sudden conviction. “By Jove! -you’re _bully_!” - -“Fiddlesticks!” - -“What are you here for?... What do you expect to do?” - -“Talk, mostly,” she said, merrily. “I guess that’s what I’m wanted for -more than anything else—to let the boys talk to me. Incidentally I’ll -make hot chocolate and sell cigarettes and safety razors and jam and -cookies.... I’ll just be here.” - -“Just be here,” he repeated after her. “Just be here....” And in a flash -as of lightning he saw what her just being here would mean to those -men.... He saw what a lofty height they would set her upon, and how they -would worship her beauty, and how they would delight in her every -word.... It would be good for them, good for them as soldiers and good -for them as men!... What a war it was that produced this!... - -“Look!” she said, and laughed aloud. - -Kendall turned. The doorway was closed by a rapidly augmenting crowd of -boys in khaki, curious, eager, delighted, grinning. - -“How do you do?” Maude said, with perfect calm. She walked toward them -and extended her hand, which boy after boy seized bashfully. “I’m Miss -Knox—and if you ever expect to get any hot chocolate, somebody’s got to -put up the stove. It isn’t much of a stove.” - -“Say, miss,” blurted out a sergeant, “if you’ll—er—git out of here a -spell we’ll fix things up.... Say, was you calc’latin’ on stayin’?” - -“I’m a permanent improvement,” she said. - -From that instant Kendall had no doubts, conjured up no violated -proprieties. Maude Knox was _right_ to be there; there was no other spot -in the world where it was so right for her to be.... - -“I’ll clear out,” she said, and, pausing as she passed through the door, -“I could use some sort of a counter....” - -“You bet, miss.” - -“There,” said Maude to Kendall, presently. - -“I see,” he said, soberly. “I’m seeing lots of things.” - -“That weren’t visible in Detroit,” she added for him. Then, after a -pause, “And so am I.... There’s something in the air—here—in -Paris—wherever one goes in this country. It _gets_ you.... I could do -things. Yes, I could.... You have a feeling that nothing you do as an -individual counts—nothing matters. Everything we’ve ever been used to -seems so far away and insignificant. Don’t you feel that way?” - -“Yes.” - -“As if you could be very good or very, very bad—and it wouldn’t make a -cent’s worth of difference to anybody?” - -“Yes.” - -“Other girls are feeling it. I think they are all feeling it. There are -plenty of signs.... _C’est la guerre._ I suppose that’s it.... No, it -can’t be explained by a phrase of the streets; it’s deeper than that.... -With one half of the world trying to slaughter the other half.... Every -little while I have a feeling that right and wrong have grown to be too -big to apply to individuals—they’re for _nations_. Does that express -what I mean? And then I’ve thought more than once that this is the end -of the world—the end of the old world and the starting-place of a new -one.... Temporarily we’re without a set of rules because the old ones -won’t do any more, and we’ve got to build up an altogether new code.” - -“I’ve felt something like that, but I didn’t have a philosopher for a -father, so I didn’t know just what I was feeling or how to say it.” - -“We’re being a sort of spiritual Bolsheviki, I suppose, going through a -transition period of confusion and lawlessness and wild thinking.... -But, just as something better than the old Russian Empire with its czars -and grand dukes and Siberias and its—its _Rasputins_—is bound to follow -Bolsheviki-ism, so something better than the narrowness of the -sewing-circles and the Pilgrims and the viciousness of blindly accepted -conventions and codes.... This has turned into something bigger than a -World War—it is turning into a Greater Reformation.... Not the -reformation of a religion, but a reformation in the basic _thought_ of -the world—surely of America....” - -“Whew!” exclaimed Kendall. “I follow you, I guess, but my feet are off -the bottom ... and I can’t swim.” - -“You can think, can’t you?” she said, a trifle tartly. - -“I guess I _feel_ more than I _think_,” he said. - -“We all do.... We have to feel in order to think, and we have to feel in -order to understand. Cold logic isn’t worth a snap of the -fingers—really.... You’ve been getting something out of Paris, haven’t -you? Feeling something? I think you get it there more than any place -else.... I love Paris.” - -“My mother wouldn’t love it,” he said, gravely. - -“And you’re like her—sometimes—aren’t you?... But aren’t you growing -more tolerant—more able to see the other person’s point of view?” - -“I—hang it all!—I can’t get away from the notion that good is good and -bad is bad.” - -She shook her head. “But you are beginning to see that America hasn’t -the right to legislate for the world, and to define what is good and -what is evil.... I know you are.... Now don’t be shocked, please. I’m -American, of course, and the American code is for me—until it is -altered. Whatever I may think about it, still it is the code and -accepted by the majority. That binds me to a degree.... But I can still -believe we are narrow and prudish.... It doesn’t take much imagination -to understand that eating pork may be a sin to an orthodox Jew. It is a -sin because he believes it is a sin. It is no sin for you because you -think it is nonsense.... When you get down to essentials, the thing that -is a _sin_ is doing a thing you _think_ to be a sin. It isn’t the -_thing_, but the thinking....” - -“I suppose that’s it.” - -“Of course it is.... And that’s enough of this sort of talk, isn’t it? I -don’t always talk this way, really. I’m quite pleasant and frivolous -most of the time.... You’re not to be stationed here by any chance?” - -“No such luck.” - -She laughed. “I wouldn’t have time to bother with you, anyhow, if you -were meaning that as a compliment.... I’ve got at least a regiment of -young men, and I sha’n’t be partial.... Besides, there’s that pretty -little French girl.... I liked her looks.... Tell the truth, you’d be -heartbroken if you were sent away from Paris and her.” - -Andree!... He had scarcely remembered her existence for twenty-four -hours. And only the night before last he had been telling her that he -loved her, and kissing her good-by! He felt ashamed of himself. He felt -ashamed because he felt that he was not being true to the love he -professed for her—in his thoughts and in the pleasure which he found in -the presence of Maude Knox.... He _was_ in love with Andree, -but—confound it all!—was it possible he could be falling in love with -Maude Knox, too? He had heard that people and books asserted a man could -be in love with two women at once.... If this were so, he said to -himself, it would create a devilish unpleasant situation ... and a -situation not without an element to cause laughter. If a man loved two -girls, he would have to choose one of them. In which case he would be, -at the same instant, in a state of bliss because he had won a sweetheart -and in a state of heartbreak because he had been thwarted in love!... - -“I wish you could know Andree,” he said. “She—she’s educating me, I -guess. I don’t understand her, of course. She is constantly startling -me. I never knew anybody who in the least resembled her.” - -“Of course not.... She’s French. She’s a war-time Parisienne.” - -“But she’s good,” said Kendall, as if Maude had brought some charge -against Andree. - -“Why not?” Maude smiled a trifle. - -“You mustn’t think—” he began. - -“I’m thinking nothing. It’s none of my business.” She paused. “Frankly, -I don’t care.... Now don’t misunderstand that. I like you, Kendall. I’m -interested in you. There was a time when, if I suspected of a man what -you seem to think I suspect of you, I would have cut him in a hurry.... -And the girl—I would have been horrified.... But now—I don’t quite -understand myself—I wouldn’t in the least object to knowing your -Andree.” - -“But I tell you—” - -“Of course you do—and I don’t believe you. So there!” - -Kendall was embarrassed and a trifle angry. “I don’t see why you should -suspect anything—just because Andree is French!” - -“And because you are American? And because lots of things?” She shrugged -her shoulders. - -“Would you marry a man you knew had been having an—an affair with a girl -like Andree?” - -“It would depend. There are affairs and affairs.... Somehow I don’t -think I should marry a man who had an affair with an American woman, one -of these squalid, scandalous things we hear about in New York or -Detroit.... But in war conditions—with a girl like Andree, as you say, -why, if I loved the man of course I would marry him.... I think I -would—if I loved him.” - -“Where is the difference?” - -“I don’t know.... It gets back to a sin being a sin because you think it -is. It’s a feeling. I’ve seen these women in France, women I knew were -having affairs, and they were sweet and modest—and natural. An American -woman can’t seem to have an affair and still be sweet and modest—and -natural. She feels she is doing something wicked and degrading, and -consequently is degraded. She is being deliberately bad.... Don’t you -see?” - -“I—I think so.... There’s something. I have the same notion about it as -you, but I couldn’t explain it. I guess you’re right.... Do you think a -man can be in love with two girls at once?” He asked the question -suddenly. - -She laughed joyously. “Now, you aren’t going to tell me you are in love -with me, too?... Please don’t. I suppose a lot of these boys will fancy -they’re in love with me just because I happen to be moderately neat and -clean and good-looking and because I’m out here alone like this.... I’ll -stand to them for their sweethearts back home, and all that, but they -won’t be in love with me in the least—and neither are you.” - -This frankness was truly American, modern American. Kendall could not -imagine Andree saying or thinking such things; he could not imagine his -mother saying or thinking such things. And why? To Andree love was -love—the great business of life. Everything else was subordinate to it. -To his mother love was—was just a little bit off color, because there -was sex in it. His mother could love her son frankly, but she could not -love her husband frankly nor talk with frankness about it.... Original -sin clung to love in her mind. It was the thing that had cast man out of -Paradise, and while one married and bore children, and marital relations -were necessary, nevertheless there was something squalid and indecent -about them. Andree saw nothing indecent in sex, as she saw nothing -indecent in eating her dinner.... Maude Knox was more like Andree than -like his mother, but even there there was a vast difference. There was -the difference of race and of racial philosophy. - -Maude placed her hand on Kendall’s arm. “Be nice to that little girl,” -she said. “Don’t hurt her.... Be fair.” - -“What do you mean?... Do you mean I should marry her?” - -She hesitated. “I don’t know.... Marriage!...” - -Her own inherited prejudices were lifting their heads now. Marriage!... -Marriage with a French girl with whom one was having relations! That was -different. She hesitated and did not give him a frank answer. - -“Well?” he said. - -“You mustn’t ask me.... I can’t answer that. It is a thing you’ll have -to decide.” - -“I guess you have answered,” he said, gloomily. - -“Perhaps—and perhaps I’m ashamed of myself for answering so.... But I -was born in America and brought up in a surrounding of sewing-circles.” - -There was a pause. Then he said, almost as if to himself, “You’re the -sort of girl I’d like to be in love with.” - -“That’s a very nice thing to say—but you’re not.” - -“I don’t know.... I’m not sure. I could be very easily if I were to see -much of you.” - -“And Andree?...” - -He was really depressed, worried, and she perceived it with genuine -sympathy. She saw that this young man was facing a problem whose correct -solution would be vital to his happiness and to his future peace of -mind. She was able to realize that he was approaching one of those -climaxes of the soul which are infinitely more trying and infinitely -more potent to modify than could any climax in which the physical -predominated. She fancied she knew Kendall rather well and understood -him. She fancied he was not complex, but rather simple and -straightforward—just a young man—but she was wrong. There were such -elements of complexity in him as made for the sharpest of suffering, -which would have defied the analysis of the most expert psychologist. -She did not perceive the overwhelming importance of his inheritances -from mother and father, those beliefs and those sensations and those -reactions which were almost a physical part of him as his arms and legs -were a physical part of him. She could not know that his body was in -constant use as an arena in which Puritanism and dogmas and blind faiths -and intolerances of the unknown were battling with that mild toleration -derived from his father, that desire to see good in everything, that -sweetness which held fast to its faith in mankind, even when it could -not understand what mankind was about.... Nor could she know that -Kendall himself stood between these adversaries with a mind better -equipped than either to see and to appraise, striving with a great -hunger for the right, to be modified by the adversaries only as it was -right to be modified by them. Youth and the desires of youth for life -and pleasure and the knowledge that comes by experiencing was also there -with its immature carelessness of consequences.... There was no -simplicity here, rather such a complexity as seemed destined to defy -solution and to make a decent peace of the soul a thing possible to -attain.... - -A young captain ran down the bank to meet them. “You are Miss Knox?” he -asked, cordially. - -“Yes.” - -“I’m Captain Morris, A.P.M. here—and I’m mighty glad to see you. You -don’t mean you’re really going to stay?” - -“Really.” - -“_No!_... By Jove!... Say!...” He was inarticulate, but there was no -doubting of his delight. - -“Captain Ware—Captain Morris,” said Maude, and the two young men shook -hands. - -“I’ve got some business with you,” Kendall said, “as soon as we can get -Miss Ware settled.” - -“What do you want? What do you need?...” This to Maude: “I’ll give you -details of men till the cows come home. Just ask for it, and—if it’s in -this sector—we’ll get it for you.... By Jove!... Think of it! Going to -stay!... Oh, say!” - -Maude laughed. “You’ll have me thinking I’m doing something unusual in a -minute.” - -“Unusual! Miss Knox, if you knew what it will mean to these boys to have -an American girl here—just to know she’s around! It’s wonderful, that’s -what it is! Do you realize that some of the men haven’t seen an American -woman in a year—haven’t talked to a woman?... By Jove!...” Every time he -thought about it he became boyishly inarticulate again. - -“They’re fixing up my canteen for me,” she said. - -“Good! I’ll run up and see they do it right.” - -“I—I wouldn’t, if I were you,” said Maude, gently. “They seem to like -it—to want to do it themselves. They shooed me away. Don’t you think it -would be better to let them go ahead by themselves—if it pleases them?” - -Kendall was conscious of a pride in her, in her understanding and her -beautiful tact. So was Captain Morris, who could only stare at her -unbelievingly and utter, “By Jove!...” - -In half an hour they three walked back to the canteen. - -“Here she comes!” yelled a boy in the door, and a sergeant with a smudge -on his nose, his sleeves rolled up, and a hammer in his hand, poked his -nose out of the door. - -“Shoo her off ag’in,” he said, in a rumble that was distinctly audible, -though not intended for Maude’s ears. “We hain’t done yet.” - -Maude turned away with a laugh. “I guess we’d better walk some more. If -you men are busy I can look after myself.” - -“Busy!...” exclaimed Captain Morris. “By Jove!” And they all laughed, -even the captain, who had a faint perception of his own state of mind. - -In another half-hour they returned again to the little cottage. This -time a dozen boys were standing about with a great pretense of -carelessness, but with an embarrassed eagerness which set her eyes to -twinkling. - -“May I go in now?” she asked. - -“Yes, ma’am.... You bet!” - -They crowded in after her to watch her every movement and expression and -to assure themselves that they had pleased her. There was a serviceable -counter. Behind it were rough shelves for her wares. The stove was set -up, and such utensils as she possessed hung precisely on nails. There -was a comfortable chair, rather dilapidated, but foraged at some expense -of trouble.... And the cleanliness of the place was nothing short of -amazing. It had been swept and dusted and scoured until not a trace of -its former filth remained. - -“Oh, boys,” said Maude, after a moment’s silence, “isn’t it fine!... -Haven’t you made a nice place of it! I wouldn’t have thought it was -possible.... And the counter and shelving!... I don’t know how to thank -you.” - -The soldiers were in a dreadful state of embarrassment, blushing and -giggling and nudging one another like schoolboys detected in a prank. -They seemed to have a feeling that something ought to be said, for they -kept jostling and pushing the sergeant, who growled back at them, -savagely. “Lemme be, doggone you!” Maude heard him mutter. But they -pushed him out into consciousness. “Go on, Hank.... Open up. Git it off -your chest,” he was abjured. - -Hank scowled terribly at Maude, opened his mouth and closed it again, -hunched his broad shoulders and felt of his prominent Adam’s apple. -“Aw—” he began, and then, “Aw—hell!...” With which well-chosen remark he -burst through his comrades and fled headlong. - -Maude again did the one tactful thing, the one thing that, in those -circumstances, not only saved the face of the vanished Hank, but raised -her to an elevation in the minds of the soldiers from which she would -never descend.... She simply sat down on that scoured floor and laughed -and laughed until her cheeks were wet with tears of mirth. So infectious -was her laugh that there was not a man but laughed with her. - -“By Jove!...” exclaimed Captain Morris. “She’s a wonder.” - -“She is,” said Kendall, soberly. - -Maude looked up at them. “You officers go away,” she said, severely. -“I’m going to be very busy.... No, you boys needn’t go—just the -officers....” - -“I may come back to say good-by?” Kendall asked. “I’ll be leaving in an -hour.” - -“Of course.” - -When Kendall finished his business with the Assistant Provost Marshal he -returned to the canteen. - -“I’m going,” he said from the door. - -Maude issued from behind her counter and made her way through a knot of -soldiers who had crowded about it. - -“Good-by,” she said, extending her hand. “It’s been nice to see you.” - -“It—it has been wonderful to see you,” he said. “I don’t think I shall -ever forget this.” He waved his hand around the room. “It isn’t -possible.” He smiled whimsically. “I know I’m dreaming the whole thing. -You’re really back in Ohio somewhere, probably playing bridge.” - -“Not bridge—I don’t like bridge. Tennis, maybe.” - -“And I’m going to wake up in a little while and tell folks what a queer -dream I’ve had.” - -She pinched herself. “See, I’m awake—and you don’t know how glad I am -that I am awake—that I am here, seeing this, being a part of this....” - -“But it isn’t done, you know. There’s nothing in the rules to cover -it.... No, Miss Knox, I’m dreaming it—and I’m glad I am dreaming it. If -it were real—” His face grew serious. - -“Perhaps,” she said, “this is the first time you’ve ever seen anything -real ... since you came to France. That is it.... France is real, the -war is real, Andree is real, I am real.... The only things that aren’t -real are the habits and thoughts we were busy with sixty days ago.... -Sixty days!...” - -“Good-by—and don’t forget me.” - -“I sha’n’t do that. I like you.... Good-by.” - -Kendall leaned far back in his car and smoked and found his thoughts -disturbing company. He was not used to facing questions of big -importance, but he saw now that for weeks he had been drifting toward a -day when he would have to meet and reply to the first soul-modifying -question that had ever been propounded to him.... The thing was -inevitable. He was moving toward facts that could not be brushed -aside.... Strangely enough, though he was heavy with apprehension, -nevertheless there was a certain exultation.... This was living—living -not in a circumscribed area, but in the unbounded world. This was -_life_—this was _experience_—something big, worthy of the consideration -of a man. There were happiness and misery in it.... He was beginning to -see that he could not win through with happiness intact; it was his hope -to win through with happiness preponderant.... The day he landed in -France he had been a boy; less than two months had passed—and he had -become a man.... France had done that for him. - - - - - CHAPTER XII - - -On the fourth evening after his departure from Paris Captain Ware stood -at the entrance to the Metro on the Place de la Concorde, just across -the road from the headquarters of the American Red Cross, waiting for -Andree. At his left the Obelisk arose like a great needle; he could see -the Metz and Strasburg statues green with wreaths, and beyond other -pieces of sculpture deemed of sufficient artistic value to protect with -sandbags from the menace of German bombs. Somehow this made him feel -that he had not seen Paris, that it would be necessary for him to come -back again when the base of the Vendôme Column should not be concealed -by sand and concrete, when the carvings on the Arc de Triomphe should -not be hidden under scaffoldings and stacked sandbags, when the once -despised and criticized statue at the extreme right of the face of the -Opéra—now the single piece of sculpture of all that adorned the building -considered worth careful protection—should be exposed to view. - -There was an analogy between the hooded statues and the spirit of the -city. He wanted to see both when they were as they had been before -August, 1914. He wanted to see Paris when it was gay, beautiful, -carefree, buoyant, volatile. How much more it would mean to see it so -after having seen it as it was now.... Just across from him was a wall -upon which was a poster exclaiming, “_Abri, 40 places_.” He wanted to -see Paris without that fear riding its shoulders. He wanted to see it -when every fourth or fifth shop had not its shutters down in permanence, -explained by a sign which gave notice that the closing was by reason of -the mobilization.... And yet it was beautiful, compellingly beautiful. -Suddenly the certainty came upon him that a people whose genius could -have created such a city could not be _wrong_. He had been told that the -genius of the French was rotten at the core, its morals corrupt. He knew -in this moment that it was a lie.... Such a city could not have been -produced by a people who were decadent, who were not of the greatest, -the worthiest of the earth.... - -In a moment Andree appeared, in a flimsy dress of light material this -time, a dress that came just to her shoe-tops. It made her look even -slenderer than he had remembered her to be, and more childish.... He -waited for her to speak. She approached almost to his side before she -seemed to see him, then she raised her eyes quickly, searchingly, to his -face and let them fall again. But he had read anxiety and relief in that -flickering glance. She shook hands, giving him a trusting little -pressure of her fingers. - -“You see,” he said, “I promised to come back safe. The _boches_ didn’t -get me.” - -“It is ver’ well. If the _boches_ keel you I am ver’ angry—me.” - -“Have you been lonely for me?” - -“Oh!...” she said, and raised her eyes again for an instant. “And you—do -you think of me? But, no. You have been _très-occupé_—ver’ busy.... And -you have seen other girls.” - -She asked no questions about the front, showed no desire to hear about -the affairs of war. Poor child! Like the great multitude of her sisters, -she was tired of war, bored with war. In her mind was only one question -about the war—when would it end? - -“Bert and Madeleine are going to dine with us,” he said. - -“That is well.... Monsieur Bert—is he well? And Madeleine? Have you seen -her?” - -“No.” - -“That high yo’ng man!” she said, and laughed. “Oh, it is not nice for -you to make fon of me. High.... Tall.... How shall one tell them apart?” - -“Don’t try,” Kendall said. Then he laughed at his recollections of her -blunders in a strange language. “At what hour do you lift up?” he -mimicked her. - -“I have study English since you have gone away. I know that now. It is -not _lift up_; it is raise up. At what hour do you raise up in the -morning. _N’est-ce pas?_” - -“You _have_ studied!” he exclaimed. “I’m proud of you. But you speak -English better than I do now.” - -“Better than you do French,” she said, with a little grimace. - -“What have you been doing while I was away?” he asked, and asked because -he was really curious. He wanted to know something about her life away -from him, about her regular routine life. To him now she was a creature -that appeared as out of a fog, to disappear again into a fog, -untraceable, strange, mysterious. She must do something. She must have a -family. She must live in a house and sleep in a bed and take her meals -at a table. It must be that she had her friends and her little every-day -affairs, different, perhaps, from the every-day affairs of the American -girl, but nevertheless taking up the greater part of her life.... He -wished he could have the history of one of her days from waking to -sleeping, could be present to oversee one of her days. - -“I have been lonely,” she said. So she always answered, and, it seemed -to him, not from any conscious effort to hide her life from him, but -rather because when she was with him it was her belief that nothing was -of interest to them but each other. It was as if she wanted to shut all -the rest of the world out, forget all the world and its business, and -remember only themselves and their little moments of happiness together. -No, it was not concealment, it was the exclusiveness of love. “I—many -times—I thought you would not come.... And I was sad.” She pressed his -arm gently. - -They boarded the red car—first class—of the Metro, and it started its -rather leisurely journey westward under the Place de la Concorde and the -Champs Élysées. Kendall always insisted on riding first class on the -subway, though Andree urged it was a scandalous waste of money. One -could ride as comfortably second class, or, if the trip were very short, -the saving by taking third class was worth one’s while. The car was -crowded—women, a few old men in civilian clothes, _poilus_, officers -(one with four medals on his breast), Belgians with little gold tassels -dangling from the fronts of their caps, two English soldiers in an -advanced state of intoxication who recognized Kendall as belonging to a -kindred race and shouted joyously to him from afar. - -“Hey, matey, does this ’ere car git us to the Gare St.-Nizaire?” - -Kendall shook his head. - -“Needn’t be so dam’ close-mouthed. Speak up like you was a officer and a -gen’lman! ’Urrah for America, says I. ’Ear me, Jock? Wi’ a will, -Jock.... ’Urrah for America.” - -With enthusiasm they cheered for their newest ally, while Kendall -blushed with the embarrassment of finding himself thus elevated to a -place of prominence. The car laughed joyfully and in sympathy with the -Britishers. Andree looked up into Kendall’s face and, finding it -forbidding, pressed his arm and smiled. - -“_Beaucoup_ de zigzag,” she said, philosophically, as if that explained -all and excused all. - -It was not until they alighted at the Étoile that Kendall was rid of the -attentions of his friends, and even there one of them leaned out of the -front door as Ken descended from the rear and shouted: “Give me love to -your lidy friend, ol’ top.... ’Urrah for President Wilson....” - -Kendall did not regain his equanimity until they were nearing the -apartment; it was the more difficult to regain because he had a feeling -that Andree was laughing at him a bit, notwithstanding her grave face. -He felt, somehow, that the necessity for maintaining dignity at all -times—a foible of American youth—was not to be understood by Andree, and -fell under that category of actions which she described as “_C’est -drôle_.” - -Madame the _concierge_ greeted them with affability; the big glass door -slammed behind them as it always did when Kendall forgot to hold it -carefully, and the sound of its slamming echoed hollowly up the stairs. - -At the first floor Andree paused and clung to the banister. “Oh, you -must have—what you call—?” She made a lifting motion with her hands. - -“An elevator?” - -“Yes, yes.... Now. At once. Go. Run quickly and fetch an elevator. I -shall stay here.” - -He made pretense of lifting her in his arms. - -“No.... No.... I must have an elevator. Oh, you do not get me an -elevator.” There was awful despair in her voice. “You do not love me.... -No.... Then I shall go away. You are not kind.” - -“I’ll get you two elevators. I’ll get you half a dozen, but the -elevator-store is closed for the night. You’ll have to wait till -morning.” - -“Oh, I do not onderstan’. You speak _trop vite_—much fast. So I shall -ron away from you....” And she danced away from him up the stairs, not -at all like a young woman, but wholly like a child, with the glee of a -child. “Behol’!” she cried, presently. “The _clef_ it is under the mat. -I find it. I know where it is hidden. Now I shall come by night and rob -you.... I shall carry away everything—everything.” - -She handed him the huge key and he opened the door for her and allowed -her to pass into the narrow hall. She stopped timidly, waiting for him -to enter, peering about as if some danger might lurk behind any of the -doors. She was very sweet, very dainty.... - -“_Mignonne_,” he said, and took both her hands—and then she was in his -arms, her lips to his ... and he knew that he loved her, that she had -charmed his heart into her keeping—and that he was very glad to have it -there. - -“You love me?” she whispered. - -“Much.... Much.... And you?” - -“Oh yes.... I am not _solitaire_ now. _Je suis très-joyeuse._” - -“You must always be glad. You must always be happy.” - -“As long as you love me.” - -“I shall always love you.” - -“_Non!... Non!..._ It ees not possible. In a day, in a week—I do not -know when—you will go away, and I will be sad.” - -“I don’t know when I shall have to go, nor where I shall have to go.... -It is the war.... But whenever and wherever, I shall love you.” - -“It is well—but—but I do not believe you.... Oh, life it is not well! It -is our _besoin_—our need—to find many little minutes. That is the best -of life. I know.... Much sadness, much loneliness ... but now and then -the little minutes of happiness.” - -He was hanging her tam-o’-shanter on the hall tree, then he led her into -the _salon_ with its bronze statues and its gilded furniture, at which -she did not wrinkle her nose this time, for she was in serious mood. - -“Are you always happy?” she asked. - -“I’m not often unhappy.” - -“That is ver’ well—yes.... It is not so well as to be happy, but it is -better than to be sad.... Me, I am often sad.” - -“I’ll put a stop to that. From now on you must be happy.” - -“Come—you must sit close to me—ver’ close—_so_....” She had seated -herself by the table and was looking at a magazine, a French periodical -filled with pictures of young women in one-piece bathing-suits. “They -are ver’ beautiful,” she said, slipping her arm about his neck and -pressing her cheek to his. “I should like to be beautiful—yes. That -would be well.” - -“_Vous étes très-jolie_,” he protested. - -She laughed. “No, but I like you to tell me.... You theenk I am pretty?” - -“You bet I do.” - -“It is well. Then for you I am pretty, and I am glad.... Also I am ver’ -nice, and ver’ wise, n’est-ce pas?” - -“You are the cunningest little person that ever lived.” - -“Hush!... There is some one. Listen.” - -“Bert and Madeleine,” he said, as he heard a key fumbling in the door. - -“Then I mus’ be ver’ _sérieuse_—so.” She sat erect, very primly, her -hands folded in her lap—a very image of gravity and circumspection. -Presently Bert and Madeleine entered the room. The girls shook hands -gravely and exchanged a few words. Then Madeleine shook hands with -Kendall and Bert with Andree. Everybody must shake hands before matters -could proceed. Once disposed of, formality relaxed; the girls chattered -in French, Madeleine with laughing vivacity and many gestures, Andree -rather as if she were a bit embarrassed, always searching Madeleine with -her eyes as she studied every new-comer into her acquaintance. Her eyes -were always studying, studying, but she never disclosed what they told -her. - -Arlette opened the door of the dining-room very softly and allowed her -head to project into the room. She did so very discreetly and silently, -as if she were afraid of being detected in the act of announcing dinner. -She uttered no word, but allowed her head to remain, round and big-eyed, -until it should be seen—like the sign of a restaurant making its silent -announcement. Kendall caught her eye, and in a twinkling she disappeared -with comical haste—a pudgy jack-in-a-box. - -“Dinner is served,” Kendall said, “and I’m hungry.” - -A fine, thick soup steamed in a huge bowl in the middle of the table, -and Arlette watched with big-eyed anxiety while Bert served it. Before -any one could taste a spoonful her impatience overcame her; she could -contain herself no longer. - -“It is pea soup,” she said, explosively. - -Madeleine laughed, showing her fine white teeth. “It is very good,” she -said in French. - -“Monsieur Kendall does not like,” exclaimed Arlette, in heartrending -accents as she perceived that Ken did not at once address himself to the -_potage_, but sat regarding Andree, forgetful of everything else. - -“Oh yes, he does,” said Bert, “but Monsieur Kendall is in love. -Presently if he does not eat I shall feed him.... Arlette,” he demanded, -severely, “are you in love with some young man?” - -“Ho!...” she exclaimed, and, overcome with embarrassed giggles, scurried -out of the room. - -“_C’est drôle_,” said Andree, judgmatically. - -“Is red wine or white wine desired?” Arlette asked from the door. - -“Suppose we try a bottle of that Anjou Rose,” said Ken. “I like the -color of it.” - -“Anjou!” exclaimed Madeleine. “Ah, that is my country. I am born -there.... The wine of Anjou it is ver’ well.... I shall go soon to visit -in that country—to, if possible, sell a house. Yes. Oh, it is mos’ -beautiful.” - -Andree regarded her speculatively, gravely. - -“Before the war my father owns the store of the shoes there. There is a -yo’ng man work in thees store, and I am ver’ yo’ng. I do not know -theengs. _Mais non_. I am marry thees yo’ng man, but he ees no good—him. -My father die, my mother die, and I am _orpheline_. It ees ver’ bad for -me, bicause my _oncle_ and thees yo’ng man they take away the store of -the shoes and I have not’ing only thees house. It ees so. Thees yo’ng -man he ees ver’ bad; he is not _fidèle_; also he is mos’ unkind. Then he -go to the war, and I never see him since. I theenk he is dead.... It ees -ver’ well. But my oncle he lives—but I have not’ing. It is ver’ -necessary I mus’ eat, so I come to Paris and work in the store of the -shoes.... Now, ver’ soon I go to my country for sell thees house and to -have a leetle money.” She shrugged her shoulders and laughed. “I do not -cry—no, I laugh. Much time I laugh, bicause why not? It is ver’ -_nécessaire_ to laugh and be happy. Is it not so, my Bert?” - -“Laugh all you like, my dear.” - -Andree raised her eyes to Madeleine’s face. “Oh, it ees too bad,” she -said. “Thees husban’ and thees _oncle_ they are ver’ wicked.” - -Thus encouraged, Madeleine amplified her autobiography in an avalanche -of headlong French, while Andree listened unsmilingly and nodded her -head now and then, or waggled it a trifle in sympathy or condemnation of -some related atrocity. - -“You see,” she said to Kendall, “no one is happy. It is so. Life it is -not nice—for yo’ng girls.” - -“One mus’ theenk not about the sad theengs,” said Madeleine, -sententiously. “One mus’ be happy. That ees best. Me—I take what -comes.... See, I am ver’ ol’. _Oui...._ I am twenty-four. So ol’ am I -that no man ever want to marry me.... _Tiens!_ I am _passée_. But still -I laugh.... I love Monsieur Bert, and I am happy. One day Monsieur Bert -love me no more....” She shrugged her shoulders. “Then I am sad for -leetle w’ile.... But another yo’ng man he will love me, perhaps. It ees -so. What would you?... If one does not love and is not loved, then there -is no happiness, _n’est-ce pas_?...” - -Andree nodded. “When there is no love it is terrible,” she said. - -Bert laughed and looked at Kendall. “Aha!” he said. “But, mademoiselle, -Ken says you and he do not love each other—that you are just -_camarades_....” - -“It was so,” she said, “but now”—she looked at Kendall gravely—“it is so -no longer. No.... We love.” - -“I said to you,” Madeleine addressed Kendall, “that French girls are not -cold. Did I not?” - -“But—” Kendall began to expostulate and to explain. - -But Madeleine would have none of it. “You are ver’ _sérieux_, monsieur. -Doubtless you are also _un religieux_!” - -“_Religieux?_ What is that?” - -“She means in English a monk,” said Andree, her eyes twinkling. “To wear -a brown robe—_oui!_—and also bare feet and sandals.” - -“It must be.” Madeleine laughed delightedly. “For heem to look at a -yo’ng girl ees a sin.... See!... See!... He makes to blush. Regard his -ear!...” - -Andree laughed quietly, meantime studying Kendall’s face with kindly, -twinkling eye. She did not deride him, but one could see that she loved -to tease him—this incomprehensible foreigner who was so _drôle_! - -Kendall laughed, too, a bit ruefully, but while he laughed he was -thinking, fumbling for Madeleine’s point of view. It was clear to him -that the man who was not eager for love could be no man at all—but a -monk. It was the only possible explanation. Love was for men and women; -continence was for monks. Well, then? To love might be a sin for a monk, -but even on this point she doubtless was lenient; for a man not to love -was a sin. He was not realizing his duty to achieve happiness. Love was -love. It was good. It carried no burden of evil. - -“The good God—He make the yo’ng man and the yo’ng girl, and He tell them -to love.... It is true. Then one must obey the good God,” she said, -seriously. - -Here was rather a new religion to Kendall, but, somehow, it did not seem -absurd, nor did her utterance of it touch upon the sacrilegious. She -made the statement simply, out of her heart, with simple belief.... He -turned to Andree. - -“Is that what you think?” he asked. - -“Of a certainty—or why did the good God create men and women and -love?... I theenk God is happy when He sees a yo’ng man and a yo’ng girl -who love each other much.” - -“Some philosophy!” said Bert. “I’m for it.” - -“But the love—it ees _nécessaire_....” - -“By Jove!...” Kendall exclaimed. “My dear, you’re a nice child.... Bert, -she’s _good_! Get that? _Good!..._ Maybe she’s right, and we’re all -wrong.... Morals are a devil of a mix-up. They’re beyond me.... But I -know this, and nobody can argue me out of it—these girls are _good_.” - -He spoke in English and rapidly. Neither girl could follow him. - -Bert laughed. “You take it mighty seriously. What’s the matter with you, -anyhow?” - -“Nothing’s the matter.... But a fellow can think. It’s a big question. -We’ve been taught one way—these girls have been taught, or have learned -and seen, another way.... Who is right and who is wrong?...” - -“Fiddlesticks!” said Bert. “Why worry about it? We’re having the time of -our young lives.” - -“They’re good,” Kendall repeated to himself. - -“Who said they weren’t?” - -“All of America.... All the world that we know. And it must be wrong—it -must be.” - -“Suits me—it’s wrong, then.” - -“But—but the way America thinks is right in America. That’s what I can’t -understand. Right is right there, and what America thinks is wrong seems -to be right over here....” - -“What do you speak?... Oh, you speak _trop vite_. I cannot onderstan’.” -Andree made a little face of distress. - -“I was saying that you are a dear child and I love you.” - -“It is ver’ well.” She stretched out her tiny hand and patted Kendall’s -hand. - -Arlette entered with the meat, depositing it on the table and standing -by with her usual apprehension. “It is beef,” she said. “Perhaps it is -tough!...” - -“It is ver’ well,” said Andree. - -Arlette sighed with relief and waggled her head. - -“But the price, mademoiselle—I ask you to regard the price. One is -frightened. It is so. For this so small piece of meat! But messieurs -demand the meat. They spend much money, and I am alarmed. I shall be -blamed. It is I who make the purchases.... Also the cheese ... and -butter. _Mon Dieu!_ The cost! It is frightful! It is because these -American soldiers arrive in France with great wealth in their pockets -and spend with the so great freedom that prices rise.... Oh yes. They do -not care. They have no regard for money—and in consequence the poor must -pay. Can nothing be done to prevent these Americans from making the -prices to rise?” - -“_C’est la guerre_,” said Madeleine. - -“It is the Americans,” said Arlette, dogmatically. “But one must admit -they are generous and of a kindness. I regard messieurs highly. _Oui. -Ils sont très-gentils._” - -“Arlette likes you much,” said Andree. “I theenk she fall in love weeth -you, and I am jealous—oh, so jealous. You shall send her away. I will -not have her. She is bad—bad. She take you away from me.” And then she -laughed low, with a charm that found its way to Kendall’s heart. She was -so cunning, so full of little humors and tricks of manner, of moods and -delightful graces—at one moment grave and wise, at the next playful and -gay. One instant she was a woman made wise by sorrow, the next moment -she was a child, untouched by anything but joy.... She was wonderful, -thought Kendall, there was no one in the world to compare with her.... - -“We’re going to the Casino de Paris to-night. Coming along?” asked Bert. - -Kendall turned to Andree. “Shall we?” - -“No. We shall stay here.” She pointed downward at the floor with a -gesture that was peculiarly her own. “I have not seen you for long.... -We shall talk of many theengs.” - -“Keep your dictionary handy, Ken,” jeered Bert. “There are lots of -useful words in it.... Comme ça: You take the lady’s hand. -‘_Mademoiselle, vous êtes—_’ Quick the dictionary! Find the first word -that fits.... Here it is—look! ‘_Charmante._’ Fine! Thus we have a -compliment with only a slight interruption. A compliment doesn’t get -cold like a dish of soup. It is still good even if we have to look in -the dictionary twice. In the course of an evening we can get through a -dozen sentences.... You shall talk of many theengs,” he finished, -mimicking Andree. - -“Monsieur Bert—he does not need to speak,” laughed Madeleine. “He is -ver’ fonny. _Écoutez!_ He says, ‘_Je no’ désirez de la potage.’ Oui._ -Always. One understands what he is about, but it is awful. But yes.... I -cannot teach him. No. Past or present, number, person, it is all one for -him. He jus’ make words and expects one to understand.... But when he -does not speak at all—then he does much better.” - -Arlette served the vegetable and the salad, and finally cheese and -confiture. “_Abricot_ for Mademoiselle Andree,” she explained, -remembering Andree’s preference. Presently they went into the _salon_ -where the boys lighted cigarettes. Kendall tendered his case to Andree, -who selected one and lighted it daintily. - -“I thought you didn’t smoke,” he said, with surprise. - -“Only in the house. Nevaire outside,” she said. - -Madeleine did not smoke at all. Madeleine began to walk about the room -and sing “Madelon,” while Andree looked out of the window and speculated -on the characters and peculiarities of the occupants of the apartments -across the avenue. - -The four turned toward the door upon hearing a shuffling and a subdued -giggling in the hall. It was Arlette and little Arlette. The child hung -back bashfully, while her grandmother shooed her ahead with her apron. - -“I have brought her to see Mademoiselle Madeleine,” she said. “I have -told her, and she desires to see.” - -The child had seen Andree, but it was necessary that she become -acquainted with the entire family, it seemed. It was another shock for -Kendall—the idea that fat, respectable, motherly Arlette should take -delight in bringing this baby to make the acquaintance of Madeleine!... -It was impossible. In America grandmothers would have shut their -grandchildren in locked rooms to prevent any contact with a girl about -whom they had the knowledge Arlette possessed of Madeleine.... Why, -Arlette had gotten breakfast for Madeleine in that apartment! Yet she -brought the baby to see her, and fairly wriggled with delight when -Madeleine caught little Arlette up in her arms and kissed her and called -her endearing names. The old woman could scarcely contain her pride and -delight when Madeleine turned to tell her how pretty the child was!... -It was bewildering. - -“You must sing,” Madeleine said to Arlette. “I know you can sing many -songs. Oh, I have heard. See. Stand you so, and sing.” - -So little Arlette stood erect and lifted her little chin without -embarrassment and sang, while her grandmother, in the door, waggled her -head and kept time by a ponderous swaying of her body.... Little Arlette -ran to Kendall, always her favorite, and crawled between him and Andree, -who had seated herself beside him. She insinuated her arm about his neck -and pressed her cheek to his, while she intrusted a hand to Andree to be -held. - -“_Mignonne!_” said Andree, tremulously. - -“Good efening, sirr,” said little Arlette, suddenly, and her grandmother -giggled in the very great pride of hearing this English spoken. - -“Aha!” said Kendall, “you study English.... She is getting ready to go -back to America with me. Yes, indeed. I have asked for her hand. We are -sweethearts, aren’t we, Arlette?” - -“Yes, monsieur,” she said, very seriously. - -“You love me very much?” - -“Yes, monsieur.” - -“You learn to cook and to sew and all the things a wife should know?” - -“Yes, monsieur.... When shall we go to this America? Is it America of -the North or of the South?” - -“Of the North, _petite_....” - -“Oh, my uncle was once in America of the South.” - -“It is not quite the same. But it is just as nice. Really. Shall we take -grandma with us when we go?” - -“If monsieur desires.” - -She was very serious and grown-up in her manner; even then there was -something feminine, something of the woman in her, for she turned her -face toward Andree with eyes that seemed to say: “You see. He is mine. -It is no use for you to try to steal him from me.” - -Andree made pretense to draw away from her and to cry. “You are ver’ -naughty,” she said from between her fingers. “You steal away my -sweetheart. Oh, what shall I do?... What shall I do?” - -Little Arlette smiled out of a great satisfaction at this discomfiture -of a rival, and openly kissed Kendall. - -“Now, come,” called Arlette. “You must not bother monsieur. Say good -night.” - -So little Arlette shook hands all around, and backed out of the door, -throwing kisses and waving her tiny hand, a dainty little fairy, a very -breath of sweetness and purity.... And her grandmother had not thought -it amiss to bring her to see Madeleine—for whom she had gotten -breakfast.... - -“If we’re going to the Casino—” said Bert to Madeleine, and got to his -feet. “Sure you won’t come?” he said to Andree. - -“_Merci_,” said Andree, positively. - -“See you later, then.... Good night.” - -In a moment the door closed behind Bert, and Madeleine and Kendall were -alone with Andree.... Somehow he had never felt the sensation of being -alone with her as he felt it now. On other occasions he had been alone -merely with a girl he knew, was somewhat interested in; now he was alone -with Andree, whom he loved, who loved him.... He was alone with her as a -man would be alone with his wife in his home. It was very sweet, -wonderful, and yet he was disquieted. There were things he did not -understand. Chief of all he did not know what Andree was thinking, what -she was intending. Second in importance, he did not know what he himself -was intending.... He put the thought away from him, even though he -realized that their relations had reached some sort of climax.... He -would allow that climax to approach unurged. When it arrived he would -meet it.... - -“The sun puts itself to bed,” Andree said, using the French locution. - -“I’ll light the lights,” he replied, and, walking to the windows, closed -the heavy iron shutters and drew the curtains as the law required him to -do before he illuminated the room. He was glad of something to do to -cover the awkwardness he felt in those first moments. - -“Sit by me,” she said, softly. - -She was not embarrassed, was, indeed, perfectly normal, unexcited, at -ease; her manner was very gentle, very sweet. Her every look, every -gesture, seemed to declare her love and her joy in his love. There was a -quiet assurance in her manner; the sure trace of present happiness which -would not tolerate a shadow on this night.... She was her own self, -dainty, genuine, wonderfully appealing. It seemed as if she had lived -all her life for this moment so that she could unfold under the touch of -the marvel of love and become wholly admirable.... She was beautiful, as -was fitting, beautiful with the loveliness that can come only from a -soul not warring with the laws of God. Untroubled by doubt or question, -she reassured him, gave him renewed confidence in her goodness, her -rightness, her purity.... Her moment of happiness had come to her, and -she looked into the brightness of it with unwavering eyes that saw -nothing to fear, nothing to conceal—saw only love. - -He sat beside her and she nestled close to him, touching his hand, -lifting her deep-shadowed eyes to his—and then she smiled. - -“_Mignonne!_” he whispered, tenderly. - -“Tell me,” she said. “Say it—quickly.” - -“I love you,” he responded, and she sighed softly, closing her eyes, and -was silent. So still was she that he might have fancied her asleep but -for the pressure of her fingers upon his own. After a time she spoke -again: - -“It is well—ver’ well—to love.” - -“Yes.... But—you are not afraid. Do you remember the last time you were -here you cried? You were afraid.” - -“I have not fear—no. Then I cried because I was not certain.... I was -making up my mind. I have made up my mind, and so I have no fear.... Oh, -I was ver’ _solitaire_.... But we mus’ not theenk of that now—only of -ourselves. Is it not?... And be happy. We must be ver’ happy—every -little second we must be happy ... while it lasts.” - -“While it lasts? What do you mean?” - -“Nothing. We mus’ speak of that—not at all. We mus’ speak only of love -and happiness—and of how sweet is the world and to be alive—together.” - -“It _is_ sweet,” he said, unevenly, moved as he had never been moved -before. “You are sweet ... and _good_.” - -Doubt, self-accusations, uneasiness, inhibitions, were swept from him by -a flood of tenderness. The world was right; Andree was right; love was -right. Nothing mattered but Andree and himself. It was their universe, -of which they were masters, with none to forbid. Happiness was their -right; it might not be denied them. The future was the future, but -to-night was to-night, and little moments of happiness were the gift of -Heaven.... - -“You love me?” he demanded. - -“I am here,” she said, simply. - -His arms were about her, her lips were upon his lips; he knew his own -moment of happiness. “You are here ...” he whispered. “You are here....” - - - - - CHAPTER XIII - - -Kendall Ware had set foot on the French liner bound for France early in -May; he had landed at Bordeaux, May 19th. It was now the last of June. -Less than two months had passed over his head, but the Kendall Ware who -paced the Avenue du Bois de Boulogne this evening was years removed from -the boy who walked the decks of the _Rochambeau_ with Maude Knox. He was -altered as only years of experience could have altered him in the times -when men went about their business after the manner of rational human -beings, when death was not a profession which engaged the world, when -the dollar was the measure of success, when one day was like another, -and meat could be eaten seven days in the week. The great modification -in him was that he had learned it to be true that man is a thinking -animal and that the brain may be used for something besides adding a -column of figures or as a storage-house for the thoughts of a past -generation. He had perceived that different theories of life existed in -the world. He had been seized by events and forcibly fed with something -which might crystallize into knowledge, and he had arrived at that -unpleasant junction in the railroad system of life where he must choose -between trains—whether he would board the one which went ahead swiftly -through the Country of Responsible Individual Thought or the one which -lagged backward through the Land of Swallowed Dogmas.... He was not -happy. - -He was making another discovery—namely, that one can theorize very -comfortably, but that when one transmutes theory into accomplished fact, -theory has become practice, and speculations upon its results may be -exceedingly unpleasant. Within the last twenty-four hours Kendall had -translated one theory into a fact, and another fact had arrived, needing -no transmutation. The theory was the little-moment-of-happiness theory, -and the fact was a letter from his mother. - -That morning after he had left Andree he was rather disappointed to find -that he suffered no remorse, experienced no sense of having done what he -should have left undone. Andree was Andree, sweet, good, lovable. -Because she was so, and because of his certainty of her cleanness of -soul, he felt no sense of degradation or of having transgressed. He was -even happy, rejoicing, boylike, in the sweetness of the gift of her -love.... He found his mother’s letter at the office and, having read it, -his romance was smirched with sordidness, its beauty was dulled by the -intrusion of harsh, unsparing, cold convention. The Middle West had -intruded upon Paris, and he was discovering that there was much Middle -West remaining alive in him. - -His mother’s letter had said, and he could visualize her face as she -wrote, severe, unyielding, harsh, forbidding: - - I am sorry to hear that you are stationed in Paris. They say - that Paris is a wicked city. Everybody says the French are loose - and immoral, which makes me worry about all our young men who - are thrown with them. Your letter says that Paris is beautiful. - It is not a good beauty, I have heard. Some one told me there - were statues of naked women all over in the parks. I cannot - understand how they allow such things; they must be bad, - passionate men to allow it. I hope you will be very careful. You - are young, and sometimes you are like your father, who is easily - taken in. I am glad you do not speak that language, because you - cannot get acquainted with French people. Those women have no - morals; they are nasty creatures who just want to get hold of - every penny you get. Some day you will want to marry a nice, - clean American girl, and you have got to think about that. I - don’t see why the war couldn’t have been some place else. Don’t - ever look at one of them. They’re all atheists and that accounts - for it.... - -There was more to the same effect. It reflected his mother perfectly, -and the sentiments of the people among whom his mother lived; it -represented, in extreme terms, the sentiment of his home community.... -And over against it all stood Andree! That such words should be used to -apply to her was sacrilege!... Yet ... yet ... she was—no matter what he -might argue in her favor—in the language of his people, Andree was not -an honest woman.... - -The effect of the letter upon him, however, had been uncanny. While he -read he was again in Detroit. His sensations were almost exactly those -which he always felt as he entered the Presbyterian church with his -father and mother—not as he sat down in the accustomed pew, but as he -passed through the crowded little vestibule where bald, smug elders and -bearded, smug deacons and severe-faced chairwomen of missionary boards -held their court before the service, shaking hands with all who entered -with that religious affability, that hushed and somber and severe -welcome, which strove to counterfeit open-heartedness.... It was that -vestibule, and not the church, not the sermon, not the hymns nor the -songs, which personified Kendall’s religion and what his religion -meant.... He had grown up among those elders and deacons and chairwomen, -and he knew them—in the church. It was incomprehensible to him that they -could have any interests or activities outside the church. The practice -of religion in that place seemed to him to be the sole occupations of -their lives, and when he met one of them in the secular world of a -week-day in the act of selling goods, or of handling money in a bank, or -of anything else which savored of business and earning a living, Ken had -the sort of feeling one has when he detects a person in something -unusual and a bit discreditable. Why, those persons _were_ the -church!... And the thoughts of those persons were the thoughts of -Kendall’s home world, thoughts among which he had been raised from -babyhood.... So, as he read, he was transported to that vestibule—and -that vestibule’s occupants smugly set the stain of guilt upon him and -rolled eyes of horror at Andree.... He had been seeing Paris with -something that approximated the eyes of Paris—now he was seeing it with -the eyes of the vestibule of the Presbyterian church. - -Before him stretched the magnificent avenue, crowded, as dusk descended, -with pleasure-seeking Parisians: he regarded it—regarded it as a -spectator, an utter outsider. It was as if he looked at the scene from a -window in the Presbyterian church. The two worlds stood starkly facing -each other, challenging each other—the civilization that was Paris and -the civilization that had its expression in the occupants of the church -vestibule. Kendall saw, with something very like to fear, that they -could not be reconciled, that neither contained a starting-point which -would lead to understanding of the other.... And yet he, springing from -the one, felt that he understood both. He was drawn to the one while the -other clung to him tenaciously. - -It was not that his mother’s letter made him feel guilt; it was rather -that it made him feel as if he _ought_ to be conscious of wrong-doing. -He ought to feel wicked and degraded, but he could not, and the fact -that he could not seemed in itself to convict him of sin.... It was only -when he thought of Andree that any semblance of stability came upon his -thinking. There could be no argument about Andree. He had studied her, -known her, loved her—and she was good. No church vestibule, no dogmatic -elder, not even his mother, should say Andree was anything but good. He -got some happiness out of that thought; Andree was an oasis of safety -for him. He was capable of distinguishing between evil and virtue, he -thought, and he had studied Andree as he had never studied any other -living being. From the first moment of their acquaintance he had not -perceived in her one quality, one emotion, one tendency that was not -sweet, womanly, kindly, lovable, springing from a heart of purity.... -How could a girl, proved to his intelligence to be good, be otherwise -than good? How was it that any act of hers might be brought into -question? Why was he questioning _his_ righteousness because of his -relations with her when her righteousness because of her relations with -him were not open to question? It was very confusing. Could two -individuals share an act and one of them be good and the other bad -because of it? That sounded like a violation of some natural law as, for -instance, that two solids cannot occupy the same space at the same -instant.... Or was he wholly wrong? Could his judgment of her and of -Paris and of the whole French nation be mistaken?... It might even be -that Paris was not beautiful, as he had seen it beautiful, or that the -French nation was not really sturdy, glowing with virility, heroic, as -its deeds had seemed to prove it to be, but squalid, decadent.... - -He began to walk rapidly, as was his custom when in mental difficulty, -and as he walked he knew the keen discomfort of a soul in turmoil.... He -tried not to think about it, to put it out of his mind, and to find -pleasure in the evening and in the dusk-softened beauties of the city, -but his mind would not obey. He had a sensation of being terribly awake, -of the blinding glow as of a tremendously powerful white light inside -his head. His thoughts seemed to function independently of him, and -himself to be an audience present to observe and listen to their -activities. There was something ghastly about it, something unreal.... - -He strode around the Arc de Triomphe and thence down the Champs Élysées -until he reached the Palais des Beaux-Arts, and there he turned to his -right, crossing the Pont Alexandre III, marvelously beautiful in the -half-light. He did not pause to admire the river and the city’s sky-line -as he had so often done, but turned again, this time to his left, and -followed the Quai d’Orsay, clinging to the bank of the Seine until he -was opposite the Cité and in the familiar open space of the Place -St.-Michel. - -Again he turned and followed the broad boulevard up which he had walked -again and again with Andree. Perhaps that was why he had come to the -locality, drawn subconsciously into a region of such associations. -Perhaps there had been hidden in some recess of his mind the hope that -he might encounter her, and so feel her presence and sense her goodness -and verify his judgment. - -At the corner of the Boulevard St.-Michel and the equally broad rue -Soufflot is a café whose tables and chairs crowded the sidewalk. It was -still light enough to distinguish the crowd of people who patronized the -place, sipping coffee from small goblets or drinking wine or that -strange beverage kept in bottles which Paris believes to be lemonade.... -He glanced carelessly at the café, then he stopped, peered again -intently with a sudden up-leap of the pulse, for at a table near the end -sat a girl in white, wearing a white tam-o’-shanter. This alone would -not have halted Kendall, rather it would have urged him forward with -eager haste, but the girl was not alone. A man occupied the chair at her -side, bending over her with that eagerness which is not to be mistaken -in a young man, that eagerness which apprises all the watching world -that he is in the act of making love.... - -At the end of the café were a number of small potted trees reaching -almost to the awning above. Kendall, unconscious that it was jealousy -that dictated his movements, drew near cautiously to peer over the -foliage at that adjacent table, to assure himself if it were Andree or -not.... It was Andree, and her companion was Monsieur Robert, of the -Comédie Française.... - -Quick suspicion is a natural result of the thing that the vestibule of -the Presbyterian church, as Kendall knew it, stood for. Intolerance has -for its favorite child Suspicion, Acute Suspicion, which convicts -without trial and, if subsequent trial goes against it, asserts that the -jury was tampered with. It was one of Kendall’s inheritances. He had -been raised under the influence of constant suspicion. He himself had -been suspected; he was used to seeing the most trivial events suspected. -His mother, for instance, knew instantly that any happening which came -under her eye and about which she was not fully informed meant something -bad. It was never the way of that body of society in which he had been -brought up to think the best when a trifle of imagination would enable -it to think the worst—and to-night Kendall was peculiarly under the -influence of his inheritances.... He suspected. A natural jealousy -deepened his suspicion. Monsieur Robert’s profession deepened it -further, and Andree’s often stated ambition to become an actress carried -it to more profound depths. Suspicion may own a specious logic: Andree -declared it was necessary for her to undertake a stage career. To do so -it was necessary to enter the _Académie_. To enter the _Académie_ it was -necessary to interest the influence of some actor of prominence, and she -had more than once hoped for this intervention. Ken himself had -introduced her to this Monsieur Robert with that end in view.... And -Jacques, perhaps in jest, perhaps in earnest, had warned him to beware -of Monsieur Robert, or that handsome young actor would steal Andree from -him. Hence Robert must have that sort of reputation.... And, therefore, -Robert was with Andree at this moment for that purpose.... Again, what -more natural and logical than that Andree should be willing to purchase -her career, and that, even at this very moment, the agreement was being -made.... Or, perhaps, had been made before, and he had been deceived -already! Undoubtedly that was it.... - -The part of him inherited from his mother was in complete control now; -he was narrow, certain in suspicion, hard, willing to be cruel. All that -was worst in Roundhead, Puritan, Pilgrim Father was apparent in him. He -had seen, and, in the instant of seeing, the pendulum of his character -had swung to the uppermost point of its arc on the side opposed to -tolerance, a reasonable philosophy, and the wider things toward which he -had been growing since he came to France.... - -“Mother was right,” he said to himself, “they were all right. I’ve been -fooled and I’ve been a fool.... And I thought she was _good!_... This -damn, miserable country—if ever I can get out of it back to where decent -people live....” - -Almost exactly twenty-four hours ago he had held Andree in his arms, -loving her and believing in her love. He remembered it, recalled the -sweetness of last evening, Andree’s tender sweetness, which could have -been nothing but designing and duplicity.... And now _this_.... He -despised her and he despised himself. A beautiful dream had become a -sordid reality.... - -How much of all this was due to a sudden perception of right and how -much to boyish jealousy and a sharp hurt to a boyish heart he did not -know. It did not occur to him to ask.... He had been made a fool of. He -was furious with what he took to be righteous anger; what he did not -know was that as soon as she passed there would come the most poignant -grief he had ever known; the grief that comes only when a beautiful -something has crept into one’s life to be snatched away brutally, -leaving in its nest something squalid, unsightly, disgusting. - -For a moment he was on the point of confronting Andree and Monsieur -Robert, but he restrained himself. There would be a scene; probably he -would thrash Robert—and to what good?... He glared at them a moment -longer, then turned away and almost ran down the boulevard.... He was -not thinking now, only suffering. - -Presently he found himself repeating over and over to himself: “Andree, -how could you?... Andree, how could you?...” Rage was departing, grief -and disillusionment were taking its place. Presently he came to a Metro -station and plunged downward. The train would carry him home faster than -he could walk, and he wanted to be home, to shut himself up, to be -alone. He wanted to feel that doors and walls were between him and all -the world.... It was the sort of feeling which, long continued, drives -men into religious orders, makes of them Trappists, Cistercians.... -Shelter and silence were what Kendall wanted—to crawl away into some -hiding-place where he might make the most of his suffering. - -He ran up the stairs of the apartment, snatched the key from under the -rug, and threw open the door. The apartment was lighted. He paused. -Madeleine and Bert were in the _salon_, and both appeared in the door to -greet him. They called to him gaily, but Kendall did not reply. He -scowled at them and flung himself past them without a word, to disappear -in his room and slam the door. - -“_Qu’est-ce que c’est?_” exclaimed Madeleine, and then laughed. -“_Beaucoup zigzag!_” - -“No,” said Bert, staring after his friend, “he doesn’t drink. -Something’s up. Something’s happened.” - -“It is Andree,” Madeleine said, with a shake of her head. “I know. -_Oui...._ It is plain to read. _Jaloux_. Oh yes. I know the signs. -_Pauvre enfant!_ He is ver’ jealous. There is no other anger like -it—none.” - -“What had I better do?” - -“Not anything. That is best.... He mus’ be lef’ alone—him.... But I do -not theenk—Andree love heem. I could see. He is not glad.... But what -would you? It is not nice to be jealous. One suffers. But I theenk he -make the mistake—yes.” - -“Anyhow, he’s in an awful stew. Seems like I ought to do something.” - -“No—he would behave like one _sauvage_. It is to make to leave him -alone. To-morrow, perhaps....” - - - - - CHAPTER XIV - - -Andree glanced at her watch as she emerged from the Metro at the -St.-Michel station that evening and noticed that it was almost exactly -seven o’clock. With quaint, almost stiff little steps she proceeded -across the Place, her eyes lowered with that charmingly unconscious -demureness which was a part of her, her thoughts directed inward, as -they always seemed to be. She had a gift of detachment; it was possible -for her to be in the midst of a crowd, and yet to seem and to be -unconscious of the crowd’s proximity or existence. She always seemed -grave, with a tiny hint of apprehension, and when, as she rarely did, -she raised her eyes to regard some passing individual, it was with a -sort of naïve wonder to discover that there was another human being in -her neighborhood.... That is how she impressed one. What she was really -thinking, how much she saw of what went on about her, nobody ever knew. -Kendall, who had studied her every mood, had not the least idea of what -her little head busied itself with. She was a dainty mystery to him. She -was a dainty mystery to everybody who felt an interest in her. - -“Good evening, Mademoiselle Andree,” said a voice in her own language, -and she looked up with that childishly startled air which was hers -alone. It was Monsieur Robert, smiling with handsome boyishness and with -a twinkle of mischief in his eye. She regarded him gravely. - -“Good evening, monsieur,” she replied, timidly. - -“I have good fortune,” he said. “I have thought of you so often; I have -wished to meet you, and, behold! here you are.” - -She made no reply, but stood looking at him questioningly. - -“Is it permitted to say that mademoiselle is very pretty this evening—as -always?... Ah, we were to be friends, do you remember? It was agreed, -was it not? And some day we were to talk of many things ... of the -_Académie_ and the Comédie and of yourself. Was it not so?” - -“Yes, monsieur.” - -“It is well.” He laughed gaily. “Then shall we talk this evening? You -shall dine with me, then.... It is impossible that you are much -occupied. Fortune could not be so unkind. You will dine with me and we -will talk of those plans of yours?” - -She considered a moment unsmilingly, and Monsieur Robert wondered what -were her thoughts. It was impossible to guess. - -“Yes,” she said, presently. - -“There is a café at the corner of the rue Soufflot. Does that please -you?” - -“Yes.” - -He took his place at her side and they continued up the boulevard, -Andree silent and apparently preoccupied; Monsieur Robert laughing, gay, -exerting all his great charm and displaying his high abilities in droll -humor. Occasionally Andree looked up at him a moment and smiled, but for -the most part she was serious and gave what answers were required of her -in monosyllables. They found a table on the sidewalk of the café and -gave their orders. - -“Mademoiselle desires to enter the _Académie_?” said he. - -“Yes.” - -“It is not easy to gain admission, which is correct. It is not every one -who is fit.... There are the examinations, which are difficult.” - -“I have not fear of the examinations, for I have studied very much. It -is that—” She hesitated. - -“That you have not an influential friend to make the recommendation. Is -that it?” - -“Yes.” - -He laughed easily. “Why do you wish to become an actress?” - -“Because I must do something—I must find a career, because it is -necessary to eat. The stage is very well. I think I can do it; I have -always felt I was for the stage.” - -“That is very well. One must feel so.... You have the beauty that -appeals, yes. You have the youth. You have the intelligence, that is -clear. Now, if only you have the talent, the genius—” - -“One does not know.” - -“Until one makes the attempt, it is true.... But I have a feeling it is -there, mademoiselle. Something tells me so. I am sure of it.” - -“You are very amiable.” - -“No.... No.... It is but the truth.... But there is much hard work. In -the _Académie_ one must work until one is ready to drop with fatigue.” - -“It is nothing—if one succeeds.” - -“True.... And the success is very good. Ah, mademoiselle, I can see the -success of you. Behold!... To-day you are not rich, is it not so? You -have no fame. But the future—what possibilities are there!... You -succeed in entering the _Académie_. That is possible. You work, you -study, you learn.... The teachers see that you have beauty, and they -search for the talent.... That is their way, and when they see it to be -present they make you work the harder and bestow upon you the extra -pains. Oh yes.... I can see it. Then, with good fortune, you take the -first prize of all the women, and that makes a place for you on the -stage of the Comédie Française. You shall be a _comédienne_—that is for -you.... And then—one day will come the great success....” He stopped -suddenly and regarded her. - -“Can you not see it? To-day you—you are very charming, but you are -merely you. You have nothing, you are nothing. You have a room, perhaps, -for which you pay seventy francs a month. Am I not right? You are not -happy. You are hidden.... But then comes a wonderful night. You make the -great success. Paris is at your feet. Paris adores you.... What does it -mean? Ah, mademoiselle, one can scarcely imagine it. It means a career, -a great success in life. It means to be adored, to have all that a -beautiful woman can desire.... It means applause and the envy of all the -world—everything! everything!... What a change! What a wonderful -change!” - -“Yes,” she said, her eyes glowing. - -“It means that famous men will compete for your favor. You will be -pointed out everywhere, received everywhere.... The papers will speak of -your every movement.... You will be happy.” - -“Yes,” she said. - -Then his manner changed, his enthusiasm seemed to die, and he looked -steadily into her face. - -“But before it all comes one must enter the _Académie_.” - -“It is so.” - -“Mademoiselle, do you want very much to do so?” - -“Oh, greatly! greatly!” - -“Then it shall be. I guarantee it.” - -“Oh, monsieur!” - -He leaned over the table, his face serious now, his handsome eyes eager. -“If mademoiselle will be kind,” he said. - -She looked at him an instant and let her eyes fall. - -“Ah,” she said. - -“I love you.... I adore you.” - -“No,” she replied, with the merest hint of a smile. “It is not so. You -do not love me.” - -“You are very lovely.... You are poor—you shall be rich. You are -unknown—you shall be famous.... And I love you.” - -She did not lift her eyes now, but sat very still and looked at her -plate. Her face told him nothing; it had not altered its expression of -detached gravity—and it intrigued him, made her the more desirable -because he could not understand her. Her lips quivered, she closed her -eyes and drew a little breath which was almost a sigh. - -“It cannot be, monsieur.” - -He sat erect, astonished, really astonished. - -“You—you refuse?” - -“Yes, monsieur.” - -“You refuse fame and wealth and all that may be yours?” - -“It is necessary, monsieur.” - -“And why? Why?” - -“Because, monsieur, I love, and I am happy.... I am faithful.... I am -very happy.” - -He stared, unbelieving. Then, “It is the American officer—this Capitaine -Ware?” - -“Yes, monsieur.” - -“You—you throw it all away for him—for this foreigner? You throw away -your chance—your career?... It is absurd, impossible!... But look, -mademoiselle. These Americans they do not remain. There is the war. -To-morrow, the next day, he may be ordered away—he may be sent back to -America.... He will go away from you and leave you lonely.... For a -week, a month, will you throw away your life? Oh, mademoiselle, think! -It would be terrible.” - -She smiled. “It is the first happiness I have known.... I love him, -monsieur, and he loves me. We are very happy.... Life is not good. It is -very bad, but there may be the little moments of happiness, and they are -most sweet. Does monsieur understand? There may be grief and loneliness -to follow, but those little moments—they are all of life.... Nothing -else is to be considered. It is as you say.... It may be a week, a -month, but I would not lose it, not for all you promise me.... And I am -constant, I am faithful.... If I must buy my little moments with this -career, then I shall pay—oh, so happily. Do you not understand? At all -events, one can remember them while life lasts.... They will make a long -life sweet.... And so, monsieur, it cannot be. I have considered and I -have chosen....” - -It was at this moment, the moment when Andree was surrendering her -future, passing by the call of Fame and closing her ears to the knock of -Opportunity, that Kendall Ware glared at her above the bushes that shut -in the front of the café.... It was this moment that he saw—a wonderful, -a glowing, a superb moment. He saw a miracle, and his eyes were shut so -that it was not apparent to him.... - -Monsieur Robert was silent for a space, during which one might have told -the numbers to twenty, and then he arose, very gravely, dignified now, -courtly. He lifted Andree’s hand and bowed over it and his lips touched -it in token of respect and of honor. - -“Mademoiselle,” he said, quietly, “I have said that I love you.... It is -true.... I have seen a great thing, a beautiful thing.... I am proud -that I have kissed your hand. From this moment I revere two women—my -mother and yourself....” - -She smiled up at him with that quaint smile of hers, that smile which -was half lost child, half banished fairy. “It is nothing ...” she said. - -“May I walk on with you?” he asked. - -She shook her head, and then extended her hand. “Good-by, monsieur,” she -said. - -He accompanied her to the open walk. “Good-by, mademoiselle,” he said, -softly, and stood looking after her until she reached the distant -Panthéon and turned the corner. Then he sighed and smiled and shook his -head and walked away. “The women of France!...” he said aloud, and there -was a hushed wonder in his voice. - - - - - CHAPTER XV - - -Despite Bert Stanley’s crudities and carelessness and boisterousness, he -had no mean capacity for friendship. He was fond of Kendall Ware with -that sort of friendship which one so often finds in men of his character -for others of finer fiber. He did not understand Kendall, nor did he try -overly hard to understand him; it was enough that he liked him and -rather admired him. Sometimes his attitude toward his friend was of -humorous tolerance. He laughed to himself when Ken took some slight -affair with gravity and seriousness. He thought Ken was a bit queer and -moody. As for himself, he took things as they presented themselves and -made the best of it, not inquiring into causes and not caring about -results unless there was a possibility of their presenting themselves in -too unpleasant fashion. - -For instance, he had seen Kendall thrown into somber mood by a -discussion of the unhappy future of hundreds of thousands of French -girls deprived of men with whom to marry. Of course it did look a bit -tough on the women, Bert thought, but what can you expect? And what -could one do about it? He put this thought into words. - -“Do about it?” Kendall replied, gloomily. “That’s the devil of -it—there’s nothing that can be done about it. They’re just up against -it.... Poor devils!” - -“Oh, it’ll come out all right somehow,” Bert said, with a shrug. -“They’ll find men somewhere.” - -“Find men!... There aren’t any men. You can’t take a stick and whittle -out men.” - -“Then what in thunder is the use worrying about it? It’s so, and that’s -all there is to it. No use getting gloomy.” - -“But it makes me gloomy. It’s so rotten unfair. It’s horrible. Just -think of what it means to them!...” - -“Just don’t think about it and you’ll be better off.” - -It was this sort of thing that Bert failed to understand. He could -imagine a man worrying because he was out of a job, or because he had -broken his leg, or because his house was on fire; but why anybody should -go out of his way to fuss over something that seemed to him like a -rather distant abstraction, he failed to comprehend. But Ken always did -it. - -Bert could never understand the effect of the sight of Paris on his -friend. Of course it was a regular city, different from New York and -Chicago, but there was no use to rave about it or to stand on a bridge -mooning and looking at a row of buildings. Paris meant a good time of an -exotic sort to Bert—and that was all. He was willing to agree that the -town was beautiful if anybody insisted, but what was the use of -insisting? A town was a town. It wasn’t what a town looked like that -made it a good place to be; it was the business opportunities of the -town and the opportunities for pleasure when business was over for the -day. He went with Kendall to see Notre Dame, and wondered why in the -dickens anybody had ever gone to the trouble to hew all those ugly -carvings out of stone, or why they should run fringes of them around a -church. It was a sort of dingy old place, anyhow.... Now for a regular -building, give him the Hôtel de Ville. That was something like, because -it might have been the post-office or a railroad station in New York. He -would have traded his chance to see all the ramshackle cathedrals in -France for one sight of the Woolworth Building. Now there was something! -There was some use in going to see that structure! It was capable of -astonishing him—but only because it was so lofty. To see it of a spring -morning with the hazy sun tipping its golden peak meant nothing to him -except looking at a tall building early in the day.... There wasn’t a -high building in Paris! But Ken wanted to poke around to see such things -as Notre Dame, and if he got pleasure out of it, that was his business. - -Nevertheless, Bert saw dimly that Kendall had something admirable which -was denied to him. Not that he wanted it especially! He was very well -satisfied, but somehow he admired Ken for having it and liked him the -better for it.... And Ken was always philosophizing about things, and -advancing theories, and worrying about morals, and splitting hairs of -right and wrong. To Bert certain things were wrong, and the rest didn’t -matter. It was wrong to murder and to steal or to kick a child or to -cheat at cards or in any other game. As for the bulk of the rest of the -possible acts of man, he saw them as neuter, and not mattering much.... -But Ken could get up a moral argument over the way he spread his bread! -And these arguments had the power to upset his friend completely, to -make him gloomy, to worry him.... It was utter nonsense, but it was a -part of Ken and Ken was his friend. - -He felt a sort of duty to look after Ken, a responsibility for him. He -was actually troubled sometimes by one of Ken’s moods and deliberately -thought up means to cheer him.... And now he was really worried. He had -never seen Kendall as he had appeared last night. Something out of the -ordinary had happened. Most likely it was nothing that the ordinary -fellow would think twice about, but the Lord only knew how it would -affect Ken. Anyhow, Ken thought he was in some sort of trouble, and Bert -was really disturbed. He had wanted to do something about it last night, -but Madeleine had prevented, and now he felt rather guilty. Putting on -his bathrobe and slippers, he went to Ken’s door and opened it softly. -Ken was sitting up in bed, staring out of the window. - -“Morning,” said Bert, affably. - -“Morning,” replied Kendall, shortly. - -“Um!... Cheerful, ain’t you? Say, what’s eating you, anyhow?” - -“Nothing.” - -“Nothing, my aunt’s knee-cap! Come through. What’s carried off your -goat?” - -Kendall did not reply. - -“Get up and have breakfast. I hear Arlette in the kitchen. You’ll feel -better after you’ve had a bowl of chocolate warming up your tummy.” - -“I don’t want any breakfast.” - -“Huh?...” Bert was beginning now to be seriously troubled. “Say, what’s -the matter, anyhow? Is it Andree?” - -“I’ve just been a damn fool, that’s all.” - -“Ought to be used to it,” said Bert, flippantly, and then, more -seriously, “Say, you don’t mean to say that you’ve gone and went and -fallen in love with her, or anything like that?” - -“Look here,” Ken said, morosely, “I don’t want to talk about it.” - -“I do,” said Bert, with a grin, “so we’re going to talk. I’m the -biggest, and I can doggone well hold you while we thrash it out. Now -tell it to your uncle. Are you in love with Andree?” - -“I—I don’t know.” - -“That means you are.... What about it? Say, you don’t mean you’re -worrying about _marrying_ her, do you?” - -Ken laughed unpleasantly. “I wouldn’t marry her if she was the last -woman on earth. I never want to see her again. I never want to think -about her again.” - -“Huh! Had a row, eh?” - -“No.” - -Bert glowered at his friend a minute. “I don’t know whether you are -interested or not, but you give me an acute pain. Why in blazes can’t -you go along and have a good time like a fellow ought to without always -landing into the middle of something that fusses you all up? You think -too darn much.... Now there’s Madeleine and I—you don’t see me doing any -worrying or scrapping, do you? Well!... Nor falling in love. You bet you -don’t! When I fall in love it will be with some American girl, and then -I’ll settle down and raise a family and wear slippers in the evening. -But now I’m out to have what fun is going before I get my style cramped. -I like Madeleine and she likes me.... That’s all. I’m giving her a good -time, and she’s a good fellow—but that’s all there is to it. She knows -it and I know it, and there you are. I saw to that right at the -start-off. I told her. You bet I did! I said to her, ‘Now look here, -young lady, we’re just playing, understand. There’s nothing serious -about this. I’m going back to America some day, and when I do, it’s -good-by.’ And she feels the same way about it.... And that’s the only -system.” - -Arlette came shuffling into the room after Kendall’s shoes and responded -to Bert’s greeting with a grin and a bob of her head. - -“Arlette,” said Bert, “Monsieur Ken’s in love. You’ve had experience, -eh? What’s to be done about it?” - -“Eh?... In love!... _Mon Dieu!_ What does one do about it? One makes -nothing. Either one is in love or one is not.... I have been in love.” -She wagged her head sagely. - -“I knew it. I could tell it just by looking at you. What did you do?” - -“I married ... and now I have grandchildren, and love is no more for -me.... But I remember it, messieurs.... Yes, yes, I often think of it. -Is that not droll?” Again she waggled her head. - -“But Monsieur Ken is in love and he doesn’t seem to like it.” - -“It happens so,” she said. “There is both joy and sorrow. But monsieur -is loved in return. I have perceived it. Why, then, is he not joyous?” - -“You tell the answer. I don’t know.” - -“He loves Mademoiselle Andree; Mademoiselle Andree loves him. She is -very pretty, very sweet.... Well, then?” She made a gesture with her -arms as if to say that the thing was beyond human comprehension. - -“All the Americans are mad,” said Bert in French, employing the phrase -of the streets. - -“It is true,” said Arlette, nodding. “I have seen it.” - -“And when they are in love they are madder than ever.” - -“It may well be believed.” - -“Oh, get out and leave me alone, both of you,” Ken said, morosely. - -“Nothing of the sort. Explain carefully the difficulty to Arlette and -me. We are the council of experts.” - -“It’s nothing—except that I was a fool to get mixed up in this kind of a -thing. It’s rotten.” - -“It’s his conscience, Arlette,” said Bert, with mock impressiveness. - -“When the conscience makes to interfere in a matter of love,” said -Arlette, “it means either that one is not in love at all or that one is -jealous. Love, messieurs, is its own conscience.” - -“Madeleine said you were jealous last night. Two experts agree.... -Jealous! Um!...” - -“I’m not jealous, you gibbering idiot. I—It’s just that I thought Andree -was something and find she’s not.... It’s the whole idea over here. I -thought it was right—and it’s rotten. I was losing my balance. I thought -wrong could be right.” - -“It never can be when the other fellow does it,” said Bert, with more -acuteness than usual. “Then you’re not worrying about marrying Andree? -And you have discovered that you’re being very wicked, and so you’re in -the dumps, and you’re figuring on calling the whole thing off and living -a noble and austere life. Huh!... What happened last night? You can’t -fool your uncle. You got a letter from home, and then something -happened. What was it?” - -“I saw Andree with that actor.” - -“_Mon Dieu!_” exclaimed Arlette, and she passed off, as though -frightened, to her kitchen. - -“You saw them together? Where?” - -“In a café?” - -“Yes—go on.” - -“That’s all.” - -“And you—Oh, say—all this cat-fit is because you saw Andree in a café -with another man! Get out!” - -“With that particular man. You know what Jacques said about him.... You -know Andree wants to get into the _Conservatoire_ and on the stage. I -introduced them—” - -“More fool you,” said Bert, succinctly. - -“It was plain enough. She could use him. She needed his influence—so—Oh, -what’s the use? I don’t want to talk about it.” - -Bert thought that Ken’s view was altogether likely. And why not? But he -conceived it to be his duty to argue against it in his friend’s -interest. “Just a case of plain, or garden, jealousy. Nothing to it. You -see them together in a café and jump to conclusions. Didn’t hang around -to see where they went?” - -“Certainly not.” - -“Made up your mind with a snap—and then, because you were jealous, and -it looked as if your nose was out of joint, you hollered sour grapes. In -a second it all got to be immoral and naughty—and you’re worked up to a -state of mind.... If this actor had never come along, and if Andree had -loved you alone and all that, would it have been wrong?... Of course -not, and you know it.” - -Ken did not reply, but he had an uncomfortable feeling that Bert was -right. - -“You’d better give her a chance to explain—or did you burst in on the -party and rear and tear all over the place?” - -“They never knew I saw them.” - -“Then, old son, you’d better let Andree tell you about it. Madeleine -says she loves you and Arlette says she loves you—and, believe me, -they’re experts.” - -“If she loves me, and then would do such a thing, it’s all the worse.... -I’ll never see her again.” - -“Well, if your mind’s made up, there’s the end of the whole thing. Get -up and eat and forget it.... The river’s full of fish.” - -“You don’t think I’d try it again. Never!... I’ve been a fool, and a -rotten fool.... I fooled myself into thinking one could do this kind of -thing and not be wrong. I got it into my head that our ideas of morals -in America were old-fashioned and narrow and absurd, and that the French -were right.” - -“Of course you’d have to philosophize about it.” - -“Well, I’m through now. I’ve got what was coming to me—and right on top -of it there was a letter from mother.” - -“I’ll bet I know the kind. I’ve stayed at your house, you know.” - -“Do you think—” Ken bit his lips and stopped. - -“No, and I’m not going to. I’m satisfied. What’s the use wasting energy -thinking when it doesn’t earn you anything? You got a jolt and a sermon, -and between them they’ve given you a mental twister.... After we’ve -walked down to the office you’ll feel better, son.... Get up before I -haul you out.” - -Kendall got heavily out of bed while Bert returned to his own room to -dress. When one is Kendall Ware’s age the morning should be the -pleasantest part of the day, and usually it is so. One does not arise -weary and irritable, but joyously, looking forward to the day that is -coming.... This morning Ken left his bed like a man of sixty whose -digestion has become the primary consideration of his life, and who is -not fit to enter human society before noon. He had not slept well, his -head was heavy—and he despised himself. At any rate, he fancied he -despised himself, which makes for the same result. There was the sharp -grief of youth as well, and one does not wisely who belittles the griefs -of youth. It seems to be true that the energies which make youth -wonderful give of their strength to the pain that youth can feel.... Now -he was certain he had loved Andree and he had never experienced anything -that compared with the distress and chagrin at his discovery that he had -loved an unworthy object. He had idealized Andree, had made of her -something more than human, something above the laws of humanity, mystic, -of the stuff of which fairies are made, and she had been proved dross -and himself a self-deluded fool.... He was bitter against himself and -her. His thoughts made him well worthy to accept a high place in the -company of those who gathered in the vestibule of his church at home.... - -He approached the table without appetite, and Arlette, when she brought -in the pitcher of chocolate, eyed him sidewise and askance, and waddled -out, shaking her head uneasily. He could hear her muttering to herself, -and it annoyed him, because he knew she was troubled about him. Bert had -chosen to leave him alone and to let the thing run its course, so the -breakfast was a silent one. They put on their overseas caps and -descended the stairs without a word. - -In the passageway the _concierge_ was waiting for them with the friendly -smile which had always made his returnings to the apartment seem more -like homecomings. She rested on her broom and wished them good morning. - -“Your national _fête_ is but a few days away,” she said. “It is made a -national _fête_ for us also—this fourth day of July. All Paris—all -France will make it a day the like of which has not been seen. I hear -this on all sides.... It is a pleasure to me to have American officers -in this house. I am envied. I speak only the truth. Therefore I hope -messieurs the American officers will procure for me flags of their -country to hang from their windows. It will be an honor. Will messieurs -see to this matter?” - -“Yes, indeed,” said Bert. “I’ll get them for you to-day.” - -“Many thanks,” she said, and returned to her sweeping. - -“Nice old lady,” said Bert. “They’re all nice. Cordial lot—these French -people.... I wonder how we would act in America if we had a couple of -millions of foreign soldiers planted down on us. Mostly we’re -disagreeable to strangers.” - -Ken did not answer. He was staring straight before him and thinking, -thinking, thinking. His thoughts were intolerant thoughts, uncharitable, -narrow. It was of thoughts such as his, persisted in until they become -habitual, that are born the hanging of witches and the burning of -martyrs.... They were not natural to him, and they filled him with -discomfort and restlessness. He had a vague sense that he was being not -altogether fair, and that he was condemning the whole because of a fault -in a part. All France must not necessarily be evil because Andree had -proved to be faithless, but he was declaring it to be evil. There was no -good in it; there was no good in anything except the ruthless bigotry -which had taken possession of him. There was no God but Puritanism, and -Narrowness was its prophet.... - -They reached the Élysées Palace Hotel in which were their offices. He -had not enjoyed his walk; there had been none of that pleasure which -always before he derived from the great open stretches and wide -boulevards of Paris. Beauty had ceased to exist or to signify.... He had -a sensation of being shriveled up and dried—of lifelessness, and his -thoughts seemed to rub against one another like sand-paper.... He saw it -all as the unpleasant process of a moral awakening; it was not that; it -was the disgruntlement of a youth over a love-affair gone awry.... - -“Hope it wears off during the day,” said Bert. - -Ken only grunted, and turned up the stairs. - -It was a futile day and he was glad when it came to an end. It was not -until he was hanging his cap on the hall tree that he remembered Andree -was to come—to come there to dine this evening. He paused with hand in -mid-air as he recalled how they had made the plan. Hereafter she was not -to meet him at the Metro, but would come directly to the apartment. It -would be better, and there was something exquisitely attractive about -it. He had been very happy. Her lips had been close to his as she had -given her promise to come there to him; the perfume of her had been in -his nostrils, and in that maddening way of perfumes it returned now -unasked and undesired. It was almost as if she were there, close to him, -but invisible. He remembered that she had lain in his arms at the -moment, smiling, sweet, a marvelous creature to be treasured with a -great tenderness.... And she had gone from that to a meeting with -another man—to purchase material success at the price of spurious -love!... - -What should he do? He did not want to see her, felt that he could not -undergo the ordeal of seeing her.... He snatched his cap and turned to -the door, only to replace it again on the hall tree and to stand -wavering, undecided.... He did not know it, would not admit it, but his -heart cried out to see her, to feel the delight of her presence.... He -despised her, but he loved her.... As one does at such moments, he -sought refuge in sophistry. It was necessary for him to see her this -last single time. He must tell her that he had detected her infamy and, -with harsh words, cast her out of his life. He told himself that this -was both appropriate and essential.... Yes, he would allow her to come -and would admit her—and then—and then she should hear the truth, the -bald truth. She should hear what a decent man thought of such behavior -as hers.... Not that it would benefit her or change a character that -could be guilty of the thing of which she was guilty.... But he had to -accuse her.... It was the desire, the cruel desire, which comes to every -man at some moment, for some cause, to inflict agony on the one he most -loves.... - -Kendall glanced at his watch. It wanted fifteen minutes to seven, the -hour at which Andree would arrive, so he went into the _salon_, there to -pace up and down, restlessly composing dignified but biting speeches one -after the other and forgetting them as soon as composed.... Bert entered -and spoke to him, but Kendall only growled, and Bert passed into his own -room with a shrug. From the door to the window Kendall paced, and from -the window to the door, to and fro, with rapid, excited stride. As the -moment of Andree’s arrival neared, his thoughts became less coherent and -himself more apprehensive. He felt that it was his duty to be very -angry, so he worked himself up to anger.... Then came a soft, timid rap -at the door. - -He strode into the hall and flung the door open savagely. There stood -Andree, fragile, lovely, appealing, her face turned up to his with that -wistful question which it always wore when they first met. She looked so -dainty, so small, so sweet!... Her eyes met his and waited a moment for -his smile of welcome before they smiled. Always she seemed to be -afraid—afraid that she would not read welcome in his eyes. He remembered -it, and her look accused him. He stood silent, staring. Her lips parted -at the strangeness of his manner and he saw astonishment grow in her -dark-shaded eyes.... He found the rage up to which he had worked himself -slipping away from him; as he looked down at her it even seemed -impossible to believe that she was not all he had thought her to be. -There was an innocence, a trustfulness about her. - -“Come in, mademoiselle,” he said, coldly, stepping back to permit her to -pass. - -She entered slowly, diffidently. He could see that she was surprised, -hurt by his manner, and a feeling of guilt overtook him. She stopped -near him and turned expectantly.... He understood. He was expected to -act the lover; she was awaiting his lover-like greeting.... He -discovered how much bolder and more resolute one may be in anticipation -than at the required moment. - -“Do not take off your things,” he said, striving to keep his voice -steady and emotionless. “Will you come in here?” - -She obeyed silently, with a silence that came from sudden apprehension. -He followed her and stood before her, searching for words with which to -begin, and she, her face grave and a little sad, as was its custom, -stood very still, but once or twice her eyes turned upward quickly to -read his face. The speeches he had prepared against this moment had -hidden themselves away, and he was left with an uncomfortable feeling of -inadequacy to the event. He hesitated; the silence became unsupportable, -and he began with sudden harshness, a harshness that a little frightened -himself when he heard it. - -“I never intended to see you again,” he said, “but I forgot you were -coming here to-night.” He spoke in English, rapidly, but she understood -him, for her eyes lifted now and remained fixed on his own, dark, -frightened, appealing. He looked into them and turned hastily away. -There was a magic in them that he feared; they seemed so pure, so -honest.... Her lips parted a little, but she did not speak. - -“I loved you,” he said, hoarsely, “and I trusted you.... I thought you -were good and honest. I trusted you, do you understand? Trusted you and -believed in you.” Words were coming more easily now, and with facility -in speech returned what he fancied to be his righteous anger. “I was a -fool.... I thought that you, even brought up in this city, in this way -of life, could be good and faithful.... You fooled me—I should have -known better. It was my own fault.... But I’ve got my lesson. I’ve seen. -I know now.... I loved you—I was all ready to love you—but I despise -you.... Do you understand? I despise you. You are bad—bad. You said you -loved me and you gave me your love—and it was all a lie.... How many -other men are you telling the same thing? Is every day given to -somebody?” He was bitter now, cruelly bitter. - -She did not speak, but stared up at him as though she did not believe, -at least as if she did not understand. Her face was pitiful in its -surprise and pain. Motionless, without movement or gesture, she stood -and looked up into his face as a dog might look into the face of his -master, knowing that master is about to shoot him to death. - -“I never want to see you again. I want to forget you. I wish I could -forget that I ever saw you and all that has happened. Probably it -doesn’t matter to you. Maybe you don’t see any harm in what you’ve -done—but it was squalid and contemptible.” - -His voice rose with his anger and she shrank back from him. Bert, -startled, came hurrying into the room and stopped with amazement. - -“Ken,” he exclaimed, “easy ... easy. What’s all this?” - -“Please go away, Bert.... I’m telling her what I think of her.... Go -away.” - -Bert looked curiously at Andree, who did not move her eyes from -Kendall’s face, and then he shook his head. - -“No need to shout,” he said. “You’re excited, old man.” He turned to -Andree. “You mustn’t mind him. He’s wrought up about something.” - -Andree did not appear to notice that Bert was present. - -He laid his hand on Kendall’s arm. “Come along,” he said. “Don’t say -something you’ll be sorry for.... If you want Andree to go away, I’ll -take her.... Come on into your room.” He was really apprehensive, for -Kendall’s eyes glowed somberly, his face was convulsed with toxic -emotion. - -Ken shook off his friend’s hand. “Leave me be.... This is my affair.” He -pointed to the door. “Go!...” he said to Andree, his voice quivering. -“You don’t know what you’ve done—what miserable thing you’ve done.... I -despise you.... I despise you....” - -Bert stepped forward and touched her arm. “You’d better go, I guess,” he -said in a low tone. “Ken’s pretty excited. Let me take you down.” His -voice was sympathetic. - -Andree did not move. “Oh, I do not onderstan’.... I do not onderstan’ -...” she said, like a frightened child. - -“Don’t lie,” said Kendall, furiously. “Go!... And never come back.... -I’ll never see you again.” - -She stood an instant more, her eyes seeking his, demanding of his. Then, -very slowly, very quietly, without sob or even a quiver of her dainty -lips, she turned and walked to the door. There she paused and turned to -look at him again, rather drooping, hopeless, appealing.... “Oh, it is -not well.... I do not onderstan’,” she said. - -Kendall turned his back.... In another instant the door had opened and -closed and Andree was gone. He stood with hands clenched, experiencing a -certain unholy satisfaction. He had done the thing thoroughly. He had -finished it. He had told her what he thought of her, and he was rid of -her forever. - -Presently Bert returned. He walked up to his friend with a grim look -upon his usually nonchalant face. “That was pretty average brutal,” he -said. “Maybe it’s good Presbyterian to do that sort of thing.... If it -is, I thank God I’m a heathen.... That poor little kid! Did you see her -face?...” - - - - - CHAPTER XVI - - -Arlette stood in the dining-room door, making her silent announcement -that dinner was served. Her round eyes, which usually wore an expression -of surprise, were now frightened, and she stared at Kendall as if he -were some sort of explosive that was likely to go off at any moment with -a tremendous explosion. Then she withdrew her head and could be heard -padding out to the kitchen. - -“Come on,” said Bert. “Dinner’s on.” - -“I don’t want any dinner.” - -“You don’t deserve any dinner,” said Bert, hotly, “but you’ve got to -eat.” He pushed Ken toward the dining-room. “In with you.” - -Kendall obeyed apathetically, took his chair and began to eat -automatically, without interest in his food. He had anticipated a sort -of barbarous pleasure from his harshness toward Andree, but found it -ashes in his mouth. He was ashamed of himself, and then ashamed of -himself again for being ashamed. He had done right, exactly right, he -insisted. She had deserved what he had given her, but nevertheless he -was ashamed of himself. There are two identities in every man, the -emotional, the sentimental, the natural—and the intellectual. Either of -these identities may perform actions satisfactory to itself but -abhorrent to the other. Kendall’s intellectual and logical self was -content; his emotional self accused him.... If one would be happy, if he -would gain and retain affection, if he would have the best gifts of life -for himself and those with whom he comes in contact, he should place -confidence in his emotional self rather than his intellectual. The -emotions are natural and for the most part kindly. They do not operate -by rule and precept, but spontaneously; intellect is artificial and -logic is without the warmth of life.... Even the law recognizes a -distinction, for it does not punish a crime of emotion with the severity -that it metes out to the crime of cold reason. Peter was emotional, he -denied his Master, yet was forgiven and stands chief of the companions -of Christ; Judas took logical thought and betrayed. He committed the -unforgivable sin. The difference was not so much in kind as in cause.... - -“What would you have done?” he demanded, suddenly, of Bert. - -“I wouldn’t have been so infernally brutal.... You and I have been -friends a long time, haven’t we?... Well, right now I’m nearer to -wanting to give you a thrashing than I thought I could ever come. It was -rotten!... Poor kid!... And the way she took it! Without a word or a -whimper!... But did you see her face?... I came darn near blubbing.” - -“She deserved it.... She did. She did a rotten thing—and anybody would -think it was I who was to blame. I won’t be put in the wrong.” - -“I’m not going to quarrel with you. You asked me what I thought, and I -told you.... I wouldn’t have the confounded conscience you have to live -with for a million dollars. I’m no angel. I suppose I do a lot of things -the righteous folks back home would think were pretty bad. I’m not much -on religion, either. But, all the same, if there is a God, I’ll bet He’s -a lot more apt to take a liking to the fellow who is a bit off color, -but tries to be sort of kind and tolerant, and not to hurt folks, than -He is to the man who lives up to every letter and punctuation mark of -the law, and does it like a brute.... From what I’ve seen of you -stiff-necked, righteous folks, if I were God I’d be pretty average sore -to think I had to have heaven crowded with you. You’d irritate me till I -let in a bunch of sinners just to get some decent company....” - -“Right is right and wrong is wrong.” - -“Huh!... Maybe! But who knows what is right and what is wrong? It’s a -guess, and everybody does his own guessing.... There are your Ten -Commandments, sure enough, but you can’t regulate the whole world and -all it does with ten little rules.... Let’s see! Wasn’t there an -eleventh commandment later on? I used to go to Sunday-school myself. -Something to the effect that you ought to love your neighbor as -yourself? A God that could make that sort of a commandment isn’t going -to be too stiff-backed about the other ten. No, sir.... Things are too -mixed up for _anything_ to be all wrong or all right. Everything’s a -mixture—and the more of that love-your-neighbor stuff there is in it, -why, my notion is, the nearer it is to what is really good.” - -Ken was surprised. He had never accused Bert of so much abstract -speculation, and perhaps Bert had not been speculating consciously -before. It was rather that these ideas had been taking root in him and -growing spontaneously. Possibly Bert was himself astonished to find -himself uttering such ideas. - -“It’s over now,” Bert said, presently, “so let’s shut up about it. -You’re in a devil of a state of mind, and the only thing to get rid of -_that_ is to walk it off. As soon as I finish this cheese I’m going to -take you out and walk you till you’re human again—or till you drop.” - -“I’ll walk.... I’ll do anything. I want to get outdoors and move.” - -“Come on, then, sonny, but be genial—be genial. It’s a walk we’re going -for, not a march to the grave.” - -They walked over to the rue du Faubourg St.-Honoré, which presented to -them a face of little second-class shops, dairy products, bakeries, -locksmiths, antiques, wine-shops, variety-stores, in front of every -second one of which was its cat—a huge, sleek Thomas or a matronly old -Tabby keeping an eye on two or three adventurous kittens. The street -seemed to have a special leaning toward the feline in pets. But, then, -all Paris is a sanctuary for cats, which is remarkable when one takes -into account the number of dogs, and even jackals and young foxes, the -latter affected by the ladies. It may be that there is a permanent truce -between the dogs and cats in Paris. Bert remarked that he had never seen -a cat chased by a dog there. Possibly, he declared, it might be the -system. American dogs chased cats. It was their moral code to do so; -Parisian dogs left cats alone, for a similar reason. - -“It’s all a matter of where you live,” he said, in an effort to arouse -Kendall. “Maybe there’s a place in the world where they put deacons in -jail and look up reverently to burglars. You can’t tell. I suppose folks -could agree among themselves to almost anything.” - -“Except to alter a natural law,” said Ken, harshly. - -“Natural law, eh? What’s a natural law? To be sure, I get you. The -shortest distance between two points, and gravitation, and that sort of -thing. I guess nobody could change them, but, so far as I can see, -they’re the only settled things in the world. Natural laws—pretty good -name for them. Means they come right from nature without people’s -tinkering with them at all, doesn’t it?” - -“Yes.” - -“That’s the kind of law for me—the sort you can’t disobey and so get in -wrong.... But the other kind—what’ll we call ’em—that’s something else -again, Mawrus. The kind of law that has to be agreed upon by a majority -before it goes to work isn’t such a serious matter in the long run. I -mean, it is important only to the majority that agrees on it. Some other -majority in the next county might agree to its exact opposite. Like -local option. It’s a sin to sell liquor on one side of a fence and a -legitimate business on the other.... Huh!... I never got to thinking how -funny it all was before.” - -How curious it was, thought Kendall, with quickened interest, that Bert -should rather clumsily be following a line of reasoning that he himself -had followed with deeper study and more particularity during the past -weeks!... Could there really be something in it, after all? He had been -sure of it yesterday, but yesterday was gone forever, and that had -happened since which made the affairs and reasonings of yesterday -repulsive to him.... But—the dogmatism, the harsh, uncompromising, -puritanical attitude he had chosen to take quivered a very little on its -foundations.... - -They proceeded onward past the Ministry of the Interior on their left, -and on their right the building with its great central court, and its -archway through which could be seen broad, red-carpeted steps, which was -the French White House—the residence of France’s President. Now small -cafés and wine-shops became more numerous, and the shops to partake of a -better quality. - -“Hey!” said Bert, stopping, “want to introduce you to a friend.” He -stepped into a little wine-shop and spoke to the young woman behind the -bar, who lifted her voice loudly, calling a name that Kendall could not -catch. In a moment a rather dirty, but very bright-eyed, bull-terrier -appeared from the rear and stood looking at Bert expectantly. Bert -selected a copper from his pocket and put it in the dog’s mouth. The -creature waggled his tail violently and trotted out into the street. - -“Watch him,” Bert urged. - -The dog trotted into the adjoining baker’s shop, barked once sharply -with a note of command. A young woman leaned far over the counter, -holding out her hand, into which the dog dropped his coin and stood -expectant while she selected a roll and handed it to him. Then, in the -most dignified manner, he paced back to Bert, waggled his tail in -thanks, waited to be patted, and withdrew under a table to eat his -dainty. - -“There!” said Bert. “Finest dog in Paris. Wish I could buy him. Say, -wasn’t that great?” - -“Huh!...” grunted Kendall, rather astonished that anybody could be -interested in dogs when the world was coming down in awful ruin as his -world was coming down. - -Bert was offended. To him that dog was one of the sights of Paris, and, -when he returned to America, it would be that animal and his little -piece of cleverness that he would describe rather than anything else he -had seen in Paris. The dog was worth coming to see.... Notre Dame was -just a dingy pile of stones.... Yet, somewhere in him was a strain that -was able to speculate on the attitude of God toward Pharisees and -sinners.... - -They continued in silence until they reached the Place du Théâtre -Français, with the Palais Royal before them and the Comédie Française, -and with the magnificent breadth of the Avenue de l’Opéra angling -sharply to the left. Across the open space was the University Union, and -Bert suggested dropping in to see if any acquaintances were lounging -about, when suddenly they were hailed from a distance, and, turning, saw -Jacques, wooden leg grotesquely swinging at an angle from his body, hat -swinging about his head, and cane describing enthusiastic circles. -Jacques was trying to run to catch them. His method was to take two hops -with his sound leg and then one lurch with the artificial one. There was -a devil-may-care jauntiness about this unusual gait and a -good-fellowship about his eccentric salutations that, somehow, always -gained him a welcome. - -“Ah,” he shouted, when yet he was thirty feet away, “I have find you! I -have surround you—eh? Where ’ave you been? I have not seen you for -_longtemps_.... And Monsieur Kendall. It ees well. We are friends and -_camarades_.... I have speak about you thees evening—you, Monsieur -Kendall. Ho! you have the great good fortune, _n’est-ce pas_? I give you -my felicitations. I salute you.... Ah, messieurs, eet was _magnifique, -splendide_!...” - -“What was magnificent, Jacques? Take a breath and start in fresh,” Bert -admonished. - -Jacques patted Ken on the back. “Oh, he ees a good boy, thees Monsieur -Kendall. He deserve the good fortune, _mais_, messieurs, it ees of a -grandeur. Again I make the congratulations.” - -“Why? Why? Why?” - -“Bicause,” said Jacques, becoming preternaturally solemn, “bicause -monsieur ees loved.” He paused. “_Oui_, he ees loved ver’ well by -beautiful yo’ng girl who ees ver’ _fidèle_. It ees one beautiful theeng. -I make to weep w’en it ees tol’ to me. _Vraiment!_ The tear she stand in -my eyes. _Sacré nom d’une pipe!_ but it ees the theme for a poem.” - -“What in thunder are you talking about? Light on a bough, little bird, -light.” Bert grasped Jacques by the shoulder and pretended to hold him -down to earth. “Now, little man, come clean. Tell the story and don’t -bubble over.” - -“It ees the leetle sweetheart of Monsieur Kendall—thees so graceful and -beautiful yo’ng girl that has for her name Andree. She weesh for enter -into the _Académie_ and _après_ to be an actress. It is so.... To do -this is ver’ _difficile_. It is necessary first to have much influence. -Monsieur Kendall know thees. Yes. _Alors_, Monsieur Kendall introduce -thees yo’ng girl to Monsieur Robert. I am present and see. Also I warn -monsieur that thees Robert loves all young girl.... What would you? The -theeng befalls yesterday. As Monsieur Robert emerges from the Metro near -the Place St.-Michel he see bifore him thees Mademoiselle Andree, -walking weeth her eyes so careful upon the sidewalk—so.” Jacques -imitated Andree’s demure glance. “She do not see Robert until he address -her. She is startle’—ver’ much startle’, but Monsieur Robert he is -polite, _oui_, he is _très-gentil_. He ask mademoiselle will she -promenade weeth heem, and she cannot refuse. Next he ask will she dine -weeth heem, and she ees too sweet and gentle to hurt hees feeling, so -she consent....” - -Bert felt Kendall grasp his arm with fingers that gripped to the bone. - -“Then they eat, this Mademoiselle Andree and Monsieur Robert, and he say -to her if she will be kind to heem he make her to enter into the -_Académie_, and give her hees influence, which is much, that she bicome -a success, weeth all Paris at her feet.... It was wonderful chance for -poor yo’ng girl, _n’est-ce pas_? One million girl they jump at it. -Truly.... But thees mademoiselle she shake her head and say no—and why, -messieurs?... Bicause she love thees yo’ng man here ver’ true and is -_fidèle_. It ees the truth, and it ees ver’ beautiful.... Monsieur -Robert say thees yo’ng man make himself to go away and leave her -_solitaire_. Mademoiselle makes to him the reply that it does not -matter—for weeth Monsieur Kendall she have the wonderful little moment -of happiness w’ich is more splendid, more magnificent, more to be -desired than any other theeng in the worl’ ... bicause it ees the great -love.... Yes, she say thees theeng to Robert, who admire so much he kees -her hand, and now he tells me and others, and as he tell the tear stands -in his eyes. He theenk Mademoiselle Andree she has make the great -success, to which nothing can compare, a success much times greater than -fame or than glory—bicause it is a success of the soul.... So I make -many compliments to Monsieur Kendall—many compliments....” - -“Bert ...” said Ken, in a voice that was little more than a whisper. -“Bert....” - -“Ees monsieur ill?” asked Jacques. - -“No, Jacques. Just out of sorts—worried,” said Bert. “I’m walking it out -of him.... Mighty glad to have met you, old man.” - -Kendall turned to Jacques. “What you say about Andree—is it true? You -are sure?...” - -“_Certainement_.” - -“Of course,” Ken answered, slowly. “I didn’t doubt it.... It sounded -like the truth.... I thank you, Jacques. Some day I’ll thank you -better.” He held out his hand. “Good night, Jacques.” - -He turned away, and Bert, after shaking hands with the exuberant little -Frenchman, followed. Jacques stood for a moment staring after them, then -waved his cane in the air for no purpose whatever, and said, -perplexedly, “_Tous les Américains sont fous...._” - -Ken walked rapidly, as one in haste to reach a definite destination; he -did not speak. Bert, keeping pace with him, watched his friend’s face -covertly; it was a gray mask without expression, a mask that seemed to -tell a tale of years double that which made the total of Kendall’s life. - -They diagonaled across the Place Marengo and at a more acute angle -through the Place du Louvre to the Quai du Louvre and crossed the Pont -Neuf, which carried them over the broader arm of the Seine, the upper -point of the Cité, where to their left arose the dark mass of the Palais -de Justice, and across the narrower branch of the river to the Quai des -Augustins. Presently the Place St.-Michel opened before them, and, as -Kendall turned into it Bert stopped to demand where they were going. - -“To find her,” said Kendall. - -Bert nodded. “I thought so.” - -It was like Kendall—to start upon a search for her immediately. Just as -jealousy, made more vicious by an attack of Puritan conscience, had -caused him to drive Andree out of his life, so now that same conscience -demanded that immediate reparation be made. If Bert knew his friend, -then Kendall would be unable to rest until he had seen Andree, until he -had debased himself before her and begged her forgiveness.... - -“Does she live here?” he asked. - -“Near the Panthéon some place.... I don’t know. I haven’t her -address.... Bert, I don’t even know her last name!” - -“Eh? What’s that?” - -“I don’t know her name.... Somehow that was a part of it—the mystery—not -knowing. It—I can’t explain it to you—but she seemed like something -dainty and lovely that appeared out of nothingness. I never asked, -because I didn’t want to know. She appeared and disappeared—like a -fairy.... It was as if she were immaterial and only materialized herself -for me—do you understand?” - -“I’m darned if I do.” - -“I always left her a little ways beyond—on the rue Soufflot. She went on -alone toward the Panthéon. That’s all I know. Just that her name was -Andree—and that she could appear and disappear. It was that unreality -that made the whole thing possible.” - -“A few practical details would make the whole thing a lot more possible -now.... What do you aim to do?” - -“Wait for her.” - -“Huh!... Where?” - -“At the corner of the rue Soufflot.... She may pass to-night.” - -“And she may not pass for a month.” - -“Then I’ll wait a month,” said Kendall, and Bert knew that his friend -meant what he said. - -They walked on up the boulevard and took seats at a table in that very -café where Kendall had seen Andree and Monsieur Robert the night before. -He could see that table, occupied now by a _poilu_ and his -sweetheart.... Bert ordered coffee for them, which came in thick glasses -accompanied by a bottle of _saccharin_ for the sweetening. Kendall left -his glass untouched while his eyes fixed themselves on the street, now -becoming ever more rapidly hidden by the dusk. Many people were passing, -_habitués_ of the Quartier Latin; young men in uniform with girls on -their arms, skylarking, humming the chorus of “Madelon”; old women -making a last effort of the day to sell bright-colored Rintintins and -Ninettes fabricated out of worsteds, those quaint little charms which -were all the rage in Paris, and which were supposed to make one safe -from Big Bertha and the bomb of the air raid. One young girl passed -clinging to the arm of a youth in a broad hat, baggy corduroy trousers, -paint-daubed coat, and flowing tie—a figure who might have stepped out -of the pages of Henri Mürger. He seemed the very genius of the Latin -Quarter, a hungry _peintre_ with canvas under his arm, and his -gay-hearted little mistress who cooked his meals and shared his hunger -and poverty brightly.... Kendall watched them go and envied them the -thing that was theirs. Now and then a gendarme, wearing his short sword, -passed stiffly.... It became darker and darker, and the crowd in the -café thinned itself away until nobody remained but himself and Bert. -Impatient waiters began piling up chairs and moving tables against the -wall. Dim, hooded, blue street-lights glowed in the distance, making the -boulevard ghastly and somber.... The darkness became impenetrable, but -still Kendall lingered, hoping, demanding that Andree’s dainty little -figure appear. - -“No use, Ken,” Bert said. “She won’t come now, and if she did you -wouldn’t be able to see her.” - -“I can’t go till I’m sure,” Ken answered. - -“Let’s walk, then. More chance of seeing her out on the sidewalk.” - -They arose and sauntered slowly toward the Panthéon, crossing the very -spot where Andree had given Kendall that first kiss.... They retraced -their steps. The streets were now all but deserted; only here and there -was a hurrying figure, or upon some bench along the curb a pair of -lovers sitting close and whispering in each other’s ears. - -“It’s eleven o’clock,” said Bert. “Come on home.” - -“Yes,” said Ken. “It is too late now. She won’t come to-night....” - -Suddenly the air was rent by the wail of the siren; the avions were -coming! One heard cries of anger or fright, saw dark blots resolve into -hurried action as loiterers sought places of refuge.... A fire-engine -swept by with gnome-like black figures clinging to it, and that voice -like some horrid wail from the pit rising from it as a fireman turned -the handle of the siren.... It was a voice that matched Kendall’s -humor—a voice of despair, a voice that made audible a thing which -described to his ear all that was evil and squalid and treacherous and -unforgivable that lurked in the black and stealthy warrens of the -world.... - -“Let’s get out of this,” said Bert. - -Kendall did not want to go, and the less so now that there was -danger.... Andree was in danger and, somehow, he felt that his place, if -it could not be with her, was as near to her as he could station -himself. He was alarmed. People were killed in these air raids. There -were always casualties.... What if a bomb—what if he should never be -able to see Andree again to make matters right with her? How if he -should be prevented from entreating her pardon for the ugly wrong he had -done her and for his brutality—he could recognize it as brutality now. - -Yet, mixed with all his self-accusation, his bitter heartache and -wretchedness, there ran a vein of relief—actual relief, and of something -like comfort. The pendulum of his subconscious self was swaying -downward, preparatory to the upward sweep in the opposite direction.... -The world was good, there was good in the world. All was not suspicion -and sin; one might have faith in humanity.... The vestibule of the home -church with its crowd of bigots seemed cold and untrue now, though they -had appeared the one safe and living thing in the world so short a time -ago.... Andree was good. He had not been mistaken in her; and if Andree -was good, then other things and people must be good likewise.... Even -Paris.... - -They descended into the Metro whose underground platforms were crowded -with refuge-seekers of all classes and ages, who clustered together and -railed against the _boche_. It was impossible to find a seat.... In half -an hour many were sitting on the concrete floor: mothers with children -sleeping in their laps; youths supporting the heads of sweethearts on -willing shoulders; sleepy and frowsy old men and slatternly old women -with hair that hung gray and unpleasant before their eyes. A gendarme -prevented any from ascending the stairs to the open air. - -It seemed hours, though it was only a trifle more than an hour before -the “all clear” was sounded. The mighty clamor of the barrage and of -falling bombs had penetrated only as a dim rumble to that depth. There -had been no excitement, no exhilaration, only damp, cold discomfort. The -refugees made their way stiffly to the out-of-doors, Kendall and Bert in -their midst. - -“If I should never find her—” Ken said, uneasily. - -“You will.” - -“But if she should refuse to listen.” - -“Um.... I shouldn’t blame her. But you know her, son, better than I. I -saw her eyes to-night—and I shouldn’t worry. They were the sort of eyes -that forgive much.” - -“Yes,” said Kendall, slowly. “But she will remember. She is that sort, -too. She will never forget—and this thing will always be there, never to -be gotten rid of.... She will look at me, and I will see it in her eyes, -that she is wondering and that she is afraid—that I might do such a -thing again....” - -“The trouble with you is too darn much imagination,” Bert said, -disgustedly. “Let’s get to bed. Work goes on to-morrow, whatever -happens.” - -Work would go on and life would go on; death would continue to claim its -own and births would replenish the races of the earth; there would be -sorrow and joy, sin and repentance, squalor and luxury, in spite of -anything that happened to him.... Kendall seized upon this thought. He -was infinitely small, of less than negligible importance in the world’s -scheme.... Events would transpire as usual, and the story of mankind -would continue adding to itself chapter by chapter. It was -inevitable.... Just as it was inevitable that the _motif_ of the story -should be love, and that so long as it should continue to be love the -good should predominate the evil, and the ending, though it might -threaten to be tragic, must be happy for the majority. He saw, for the -first time, that a world in which love is the first essential cannot be -a lost world nor an unhappy world. He wondered if love, in whatever form -it showed itself, was not merely the essence of _good_ masquerading -under another style. In that case to love was to be virtuous.... He -inclined to believe it. The reflection made him easier of mind. - -“I think I can sleep,” he said to Bert, and they turned their faces -homeward. - - - - - CHAPTER XVII - - -Kendall Ware woke up to a world which was not all straight lines and -angles, which was not an uncompromising and rule-of-thumb world as it -had seemed yesterday. To-day it was a world in which curves and even -curlicues were permissible. Yesterday he was in sympathy with the Blue -Laws and could have understood a God who frowned if a man were to kiss -his wife of a Sabbath. To-day he could not comprehend the attitude of -yesterday, hardly remembered it, in fact. He was young, and rapid -changes of attitude were possible to him as the heart was heavy or -light, as events were kind or harsh. It would not have been true to say -that he was light of heart this morning, but his heart was in a -condition to become light, needing only to find Andree and to receive -Andree’s forgiveness to make it so. - -As was characteristic, the pendulum of his convictions had swung to the -opposite and most remote point of its arc; where yesterday any deviation -from orthodox rule and rigid form had been a sin, to-day he was inclined -to err on the side of liberality. It seemed, rather, as if nothing could -be wholly evil, and this simply because it had been shown to him that -Andree was not evil and that his relations with her need not of -necessity be degrading. Yesterday he had been possessed by his -inheritances from his mother; to-day his father was in control. Just as -the one had been exaggerated, so now the other was in extreme.... And -therefore he could conceive happiness and stand upon the brink of -happiness.... To be able to perceive virtue is to be happy. It is a -perception which is its own reward.... - -Last night he had been afraid he would never find Andree; now he was -certain she would be easy to find. It was the matter of forgiveness that -caused his uneasiness. He had been brutal, harsh, presenting an unlovely -spectacle. It was such a spectacle of a man’s self as might prove fatal -to love, for who can love the unlovely? And yet when he thought of -Andree’s gentleness, her sweetness, of all the many indications he had -seen of a gracious and tender character, he even dared to hope that he -had not offended past condoning. - -He arose impatiently, eager for the day to commence so that it might end -and enable him to take up his search. - -“Bert!” he called. “Up yet?” - -“Getting up,” Bert answered, drowsily. - -“Is Arlette here yet?” - -“Haven’t heard her.” - -“What in thunder’s getting into her! Doesn’t she know a fellow’s got to -have breakfast in the morning?” - -“Huh—she isn’t due for quarter of an hour. What’s the sudden rush?” - -Before he was fully clothed Arlette rapped on his closed door to demand -his shoes, which he passed out to her, together with his puttees, and -walked into Bert’s room, wearing bedroom slippers. - -“Some uniform,” said Bert, eying the spectacle. “Ought to recommend it -to the General Staff. Swagger, I call it. Now if you only wore red -socks.... H’m! How you feeling this morning?” - -“Hungry.” - -“Surprising, seeing you didn’t eat anything all day yesterday.” Bert -studied his friend’s face covertly and found reason for satisfaction. -With more tact than his character warranted one to expect, he let the -subject of yesterday rest there and did not again refer to it. He -finished shaving in his usual leisurely manner, put on his blouse and -belt, and was just in time to receive his shoes and leggings from -Arlette. - -“Mind having dinner late to-night?” Ken asked. - -“No. Why?” - -“I—I hope Andree will be here.” - -“H’m!... Want me to look up Madeleine?” - -“Rather you didn’t. We’ll—Well, you can see yourself that we’ll have a -lot of talking to do.... I’ve got to square myself.” - -“I’ll clear out altogether and let you have the place to yourselves.” - -“No need. I might not—it’s possible I won’t find her.” - -Bert thought that was highly probable, but he did not say so. “Just as -you say,” he said. “What time?” - -“Eight o’clock. If I’m not here by that time, go ahead and eat.” - -“What about you?” - -“I’m going to camp in that café on the corner there until I find her.” -Ken’s jaws became prominent. “I’ll stay there till I’m a permanent -improvement.” - -Arlette came in, casting apprehensive glances at Kendall; she was -unsmiling and had nothing to say beyond the greetings of the morning. -Ken realized that he was in her disfavor. - -“Arlette,” he said. - -She paused in the door and, glancing up to his face quickly, let her -eyes shift to the carpet. “Yes, monsieur,” she said. - -“You’re angry with me.” - -“_Non, monsieur._” - -“Yes you are. You should be. I’ve been a fool.” - -She looked up again, this time scrutinizing his face more carefully. -“Monsieur did not conduct himself with wisdom,” she said. - -“What should I have done, Arlette?” He was really curious to know what -she would answer. - -“It is never wise to hurt where one is loved,” she said. “Also one -should be sure that no mistake is made—” - -“But it was a mistake, Arlette.... If you loved as you told me you did -once, and the man you loved behaved as I did, what would you do? Would -you forgive him?” - -“Me?” said Arlette. “Ah, who can say! It is many years, and love is only -a thing to remember sometimes.... But I, monsieur, was not as -Mademoiselle Andree is. Oh, no. There was weight to me, and a temper of -the highest. Oh yes, and I spoke many words with great readiness. It is -so.... What would you? Mademoiselle Andree is not at any point the same. -She is gentle and sweet, monsieur, and it may be she is forgiving. As -for me, I think if any man had so behaved to me he would have taken -himself away with words in his ear that, I’ll warrant, would have leaped -through to his clumsy brain, _oui_, and with other reminders that I was -not to be dealt with after such a manner.... But, as I have said, I was -of a weight, and my temper was high.” - -“But you would have forgiven?” - -Arlette waggled her head and wiped her chin on the back of her hand. “At -least,” she said, “I should have made him earn my forgiveness.... Oh, -Monsieur Ken, it was not well for you to treat her so; it was of a -cruelty.... But I believe she will forgive; her eyes were of the kind -that forgive with too great readiness.” - -She turned and was about to disappear when she leaned far back to allow -her face to present itself at a droll angle in the doorway. “Jealousy,” -she said, “is a disease that makes heavy hearts. In very truth, I have -seen it.... It is much better if one is not jealous. One cannot at the -same time be jealous and wise.... And always there are regrets.” - -“Will you have dinner at eight to-night? A nice dinner. I hope to find -Mademoiselle Andree and bring her home again.” - -“Find her? But monsieur has but to go to her address. She has not gone -away?” - -“I do not know her address.” - -Arlette sighed and waggled her head ponderously. - -“Then monsieur must apply to the police. All addresses are known to the -police.” - -“But I don’t know her name—only Andree.” - -“Name of God!... Can such things be? Oh, these Americans! Who has seen -their like? Not know her name, not know her address. It is of an -impossibility!... Does he speak truly, monsieur?” she demanded of Bert, -who nodded in the affirmative. - -“_Mon Dieu!... Mon Dieu!..._” she exclaimed, and waddled off to the -kitchen as if she dared no longer trust her body in the presence of such -a madman. - -“There,” said Bert, “now you know what a respectable body thinks of you. -Apparently she thinks all Americans are in the habit of cutting up such -capers. Most likely she believes addresses don’t count with us because -we live under trees like savages, and never go back to the same tree -twice....” - -“Anybody who doesn’t do things exactly as you yourself do them is a -savage. We think the French are barbarians, the French think we are -barbarians, and the English consider both of us savages.... Come on, -it’s time we were starting.” - -When they reached the street Ken began to walk swiftly, as if by -hurrying now he could make the day pass more quickly. At the office he -plunged into his work, taking only the briefest period for lunch. At -five o’clock he was on his way toward the Place St.-Michel to take up -his sentry-go there. Somehow he was confident he would see Andree. What -she did with her days he did not know, but he imagined she went into the -city. Certainly she went somewhere, and to return she must traverse the -square from the Metro station over at the left. He, therefore, took his -station by the rim of the fountain and watched each passer-by. It was -tiresome to watch and wait; the people did not interest him as they had -always interested him before. Quaint couples passed unnoticed; children -stopped to stare at him as he sat on the flat rim of the basin; venders -of Rintintin and Ninette dangled their worsted dolls before him in vain. -Once or twice he thought he saw her coming, and stood up eagerly, only -to sink down again, disappointed.... And then he saw her coming; it was -she unmistakably; there was no mistaking that tam, that flimsy little -dress, that slender figure and her quaint, abstracted walk. - -Long before she saw him he was groping for words, searching for the one -thing to say, because he knew that there must be some single thought -that should be put into words.... There must be some eloquent sentence -which would explain all, gain forgiveness for all. But he could not find -it. His French was gone; his English would not take form. - -She crossed the square with little steps that seemed almost stiff, her -body very erect, as always, and her eyes seeming to see nothing that -went on about her. He fancied a shade of sadness was added to the -gravity of her face.... She did not see him until he stood before her -and spoke, and it was no eloquent sentence that he uttered, no wonderful -thought that he put into words. - -“_Mignonne!..._” he said. - -She did not start, but merely stopped and raised her eyes to his face -slowly. There was no surprise, no emotion of any sort to be seen, only -that quaint gravity with which he was so familiar. She stopped and -waited, as she always stopped and waited, ready, it seemed, to take her -cue from what was about to happen. She might never have seen him before, -but then, he thought, she always met him so—as if she had never seen him -before.... She did not speak; only waited. - -He was inarticulate, abashed, nonplussed. Suddenly it seemed to him that -there was nothing to say, nothing that could be said. He had been guilty -of conduct which removed him forever from her life, which was -unforgivable. There was an impulse to turn and to hurry away from her, -but he repressed it.... He must do something, say something. - -“I’m ashamed,” he said, clumsily. “I’ve been miserable.... I had to find -you and tell you.... I—What can I say? It was wicked—wicked....” - -He could go no farther, could only search her face with his eyes for -some reflection of her thoughts, for some sign that he might hope for -pardon. She did not reply; there was no change in her expression, only -that unfathomable gravity and that air of suspended judgment. - -“Last night I tried to find you.... I sat and waited, but you did not -come. I couldn’t go to sleep until I had begged you to forgive me.... I -don’t deserve to be forgiven. What I did—what I said, was -unforgivable.... Oh, Andree!...” - -There was a little pause, then she said, “You have been sad?” - -“Yes.” - -“And I also,” she said, not reproachfully. - -“I—Never before have I known what it was to suffer—and I have suffered. -It was right that I should. I deserved punishment.” Even here the -Puritan in him obtruded itself. “And you were so good, so sweet, so -wonderful.... I know all about it now—and I was suspicious and -brutal.... I was jealous, too. But I didn’t know I was jealous.... When -I thought you were not good, it seemed to me that nothing in the world -could be good. Do you understand?... But there’s no excuse for me. I -should have known, and I should have trusted you.... I didn’t even give -you a chance to explain....” - -“Oh, you speak ver’ fast. I cannot onderstan’ all.... But you have not -been happy—no.... It is to be seen.... At first I do not onderstan’, and -I am ver’ sad and hurt—oh, ver’ sad. When I make to cross the _pont_ I -look down at the water—yes.... And then I say it is some mistake.... I -say something have happen I do not know of and it makes you to be not -like Monsieur Ken, but ver’ hurt and miserable and—how you say?—upset? -Yes. I say, also, that I love Monsieur Ken and always that I am -_fidèle_.... So what could it be?... If, then, it is nothing, only some -mistake, then I am much sorry.... Not sorry for me, monsieur, who have -done no wrong, but for you, who are mos’ unhappy.... It is so. My heart -it makes to weep for you because you suffer....” - -“Andree!...” - -She nodded her head gravely. “I do not onderstan’ _les Américains.... -Non!... Non!_ They are of a difference. But I onderstan’ love which mus’ -be the same in America as in France, so I say Monsieur Ken he is ver’ -jealous and ver’ mistaken, and I mus’ be patient and not sad more than -is _nécessaire_.... So I wait till thees mistake is not a mistake any -more. And many times I mus’ say to myself that you are jealous, and -therefore you love me. Because if there is not love, then there is not -to be jealous, _n’est-ce pas_? So I am almos’ happy, but not quite ... -because you love me.” - -“And you don’t hate me? You can forgive me?” - -“Oh, _mon bien cher ami_, there is nothing to forgive! It is so.... It -is only that I cried sometimes for you, because you are mos’ -miserable.... I say to theenk how sad you are, and then I cry.... I -would not have you to be sad.” - -“It isn’t possible,” Ken said, more than half to himself. “There’s -nobody like this in the world.” - -“Possible?... _Pourquoi?_” - -“Mademoiselle Pourquoi—dear little Mademoiselle Pourquoi!” he said, -softly. - -“You are not angry with me any more—not jealous?” - -“No.... No.” - -“It is well.” She smiled for the first time and touched his arm with her -little hand. “Then I am joyous.” - -“You ought to be joyous always.... You are wonderful. When I think what -you were giving up for me—and that I could suspect you—I hate myself.” - -“But you are not sad now? There is not any mistake any more, and we are -together. You are not sad?” - -“Sad, _mignonne_!... Only when I think of what I said to you—things you -can never forget—” - -“Never forget?” She laughed a little. “Behol’, already I have forgotten. -It is as if nothing ever happen’. I do not remember. Now”—she made that -old familiar gesture of pointing repeatedly to the sidewalk with her -finger to indicate the identical present second—“now I remember nothing. -I do not know what you talk about.... You are ver’ droll, Monsieur Ken, -to be speak so much about something I do not know ... about a something -that have never happen’.” - -Kendall felt something that was almost reverence for her; it was more -than wonder and little less than awe. Never until that moment had he -conceived of the possibility that such greatness of heart, such -forgetfulness of self, such _rightness_ could exist in the world.... He -felt himself incapable of appreciating, of appraising the gold of her -heart. It was very sweet, very radiant, that moment. There must be a -goodness in the world more marvelous, purer, worthier than he had been -able to imagine, and Andree possessed it.... And, possessing that -goodness, she could not in any particular be evil. She would see -rightly, and evil that was truly evil would be abhorrent in her eyes. -His last doubt, his last fear, his last self-accusation departed from -him; in his elation he was unable to perceive that a thing virtuous in -Andree and for Andree might be quite other for himself.... - -“You gave up everything for me—your chance to enter the _Académie_, to -go on the stage ... to be famous, perhaps.” - -“Oh, that!...” She smiled up at him. “Nothing in the worl’ is so good to -have as love. It is so. It is a ver’ great theeng. One leetle hour, one -day of love—that is more great and more necessary to have than the mos’ -fame that can be.” - -“You do love me, Andree? Say it.” - -“I love you,” she said, gently. - -“I can never let you out of my sight again. You must be with me -always—where I can see you and touch you.” - -She smiled up at him, but there was a shade of sadness, perhaps of -apprehension, in her deep-shadowed black eyes. “It is not possible,” she -said. - -“Arlette has dinner waiting for us.” - -“To-night? Now.... Oh, it is not possible....” She made a pretty gesture -of dismay. - -“It is necessary. To prove that you have forgiven me. I couldn’t let you -go now ... now that I’ve found you again. Come.” - -She looked down at the walk a moment with detached gravity, then put her -fingers on his arm. “Ver’ well,” she said. “You mus’ take me off like -_prisonnier de guerre, n’est-ce pas_?... You have capture me, so what am -I to do? I am ver’ helpless.... You mus’ say many sweet theengs to me so -that I am not sad.” - -They crossed the street to the Metro station and descended to the -crowded train in which they were compelled to stand until they reached -the Châtelet station, where they changed to the line that runs under the -rue de Rivoli and the Champs Élysées. It was impossible to talk except -in occasional monosyllables, but every now and then Kendall would look -down into Andree’s face, always to find her looking up at him gravely, -but happily. Then he would press her arm gently, and she would respond -by nestling his fingers between her arm and her body. He was happy, -boyishly happy. It was a new sort of happiness for him—a great, surging -happiness which made the world lovely, which made even standing in a -swaying subway car, jostled and elbowed by a tired crowd, a delectable -thing. - -He yearned toward Andree as he had never yearned toward her before. He -wanted to hold her in his arms, not passionately, but gently. He was -filled with a desire to show a great gentleness and consideration for -her, to prove to her that he was kind. He wanted to protect her, to -shield her, to deal with her as he would have dealt with a tired, -trusting child, for she seemed very childlike to him, with all the -purity and heart honesty of a child.... He magnified the thing she had -done, and the beauty of her forgiveness, repeating over and over in his -thoughts that she was good, wonderfully, miraculously good. - -“_Mignonne!..._” he whispered in her ear, and she smiled up at him and -pressed his hand. - -At last they alighted and mounted to the street, and there he attempted -to keep step with her tiny, severe strides until both of them laughed -gaily at his efforts. She was all child now, laughing, roguish, teasing. -She rattled French at him, well knowing he could not understand, and -laughed at him for not understanding, and he pretended to believe she -was telling him that he was ugly and cross-eyed and that she was ashamed -to walk with him. Then they were at the apartment, and Ken greeted the -_concierge_ with a cordiality that left the old lady a little amazed and -wondering if her American officer had not been dealing too liberally -with the wines of the country. - -“Oh, I shall not walk up these so many stairs,” Andree said, with her -pretty mock despair. “It is not possible. You have not made an -_ascenseur_. It was a promise.... Oui. And until you fetch one I shall -remain here, on this spot.” She indicated the spot severely. - -“I’ll be the _ascenseur_,” he volunteered, and made as if to lift her in -his arms, but she slipped away and danced up the stairs before him, -making believe, as she approached each floor, to be on the point of -dropping from exhaustion, and counting each floor with dismay. - -“So much have we climb’ and it only is the _premier étage.... Oo là -là...._ For hours we mount, and arrive but at the secon’—what do you -say?—secon’ floor. It is ver’ fonny. Secon’ floor. _Mais, mon bien cher -ami_, it sound’ like nothing at all, on’y jus’ sound.... Secon’ -floor!... Such a language is thees Engleesh!” - -They arrived at the fourth floor honestly panting, and she sank into a -chair while Kendall searched under the mat for the key. - -“I will go no more,” she said, firmly. “I am _blessée_. I am one _poilu_ -with the bad wound. It is not possible to proceed. Behol’, I am one -_poilu_.” She puffed out her cheeks and frowned. “_Sacré nom d’une -pipe!..._ It is so the _poilu_ swears....” - -He thrust open the door and, picking her slight form up as he might have -lifted little Arlette, he carried her inside and set her down before the -hall tree.... His hands rested on her shoulders and they both became -grave, looking into each other’s eyes.... And then he drew her close to -him and pressed his lips to hers.... - -Arlette padded into the hall, attracted by the sound, observed what she -observed, folded her pudgy hands on her stomach, and stared with -amazement. “_Mon Dieu!... Mon Dieu!..._” she exclaimed, and padded away -again in confusion. - -Then they went into the _salon_, where Bert was reading the paper. - -“I’ve found her,” Ken said, gaily. - -“So I observe.” Bert’s voice was dry. - -“Your voice must not be so w’en you speak to Monsieur Ken,” Andree said, -severely. “_Non...._ I will not have it so. Bicause he is ver’ good, and -nobody mus’ be—w’at you say?—cross with him—so.” - -“Well,” Bert said, “I’ll be gentle with the child, mademoiselle, though -it’s contrary to my duty.” He turned to Ken. “You seem to have put it -over,” he said. - -“Bert, she’s wonderful—she’s—” - -“I’ve heard just two hundred and seven men say that at one time and -another. Seems to be a stock phrase in the language of young gentlemen -in your state of mind.... Anyhow, I’m glad the rumpus is settled. I can -get some sleep now.” - -“Does he scold you?” Andree asked. - -“It doesn’t matter what he does,” Ken said, laughingly. “Nothing -matters.... There’s Arlette’s head through the door. Let’s eat.” - -Arlette served silently, but as she moved about the table she kept her -eyes furtively upon Andree, and her lips moved constantly without -uttering a sound. This continued until it was time to remove the meat, -and then Arlette could contain herself no longer. She reached the door -on her way to the kitchen with the platter, when, with startling -suddenness, she turned, replaced the platter on the edge of the table, -folded her hands across her stomach, rolled her eyes to heaven, and -launched upon a harangue in such rapid French that it seemed one -continuous word of mingled syllables. - -Andree listened gravely, nodding her head the merest trifle every moment -or so. Then Arlette paused expectantly and Andree replied with all the -gravity of a Cabinet Minister facing a crisis. At the end of a sentence -she got out of her chair and walked to Ken and put her arm about his -neck and her cheek to his, continuing the reply thence. Arlette rolled -her eyes and waggled her head and heaved great sighs.... Presently her -set face relaxed and she smiled and wiped her chin on the back of her -hand. - -“_Mon Dieu!..._” she said. “_Mon Dieu!..._” and with a tremulous smile -which, somehow, was not at all absurd on her heavy face—was almost -tender—she retreated with suddenness to her kitchen. - -“Well,” said Ken, “what now, _mignonne_? What’s it all about?” - -Andree shook her head gaily. “No!... No!... It is not for you. I shall -not speak it.” - -“Was it so terrible as that?... I’m afraid I have made an enemy of -Arlette.” - -“But no. Well, dear friend, it is that she have much worry for you. Yes. -She have much worry. She theenk you—oh, it is ver’ fonny!—she theenk you -are leetle child that is lost and also is mad! She theenk something -happen to you if you have no one to take care of you. She tell me I mus’ -not be angry with you, but ver’ nice and kind always, bicause it is not -your fault you are a baby and mad.... Oh yes. She say she love you like -she is your _marraine_, but she is powerless to make you to be -protected.... And she theenk I mus’ take you by the hand same theeng as -you are blind.... So I have promise’, and now she will not worry, but -gives you to me to care for. She have been mos’ unhappy. She say that -only God can onderstan’ a mad American who is in love!...” - -“Arlette,” said Bert, “is a woman of sound judgment.” - -“Where is Mademoiselle Madeleine?” Andree asked, with one of those -sudden changes of subject which were characteristic of her. - -“I haven’t the least idea.” - -“Why is she not here? I want her to be here. I would speak of many -things to her.” - -“Blame Ken there. I suggested having Madeleine, but he said he wanted -you all by yourself with nobody else around.” - -She turned to look at Ken as if to satisfy herself if this were truth or -jesting, and then she smiled the merest trifle. “It is well,” she said, -softly. - -“I’m on my way,” said Bert, arising. “Got a bridge game on at the -Union.... _Bon soir, mademoiselle...._ And you, Ken, keep your feet on -the ground.” - -“‘Keep your feet on the groun’,’” repeated Andree, when Bert was gone. -“Oh, it mean nothing whatever. Thees English language, it is -_très-drôle_. What is thees keep your feet on the groun’?” - -“It means that Bert agrees with Arlette that I need somebody to look -after me,” he said, a bit ruefully. - -“It is well. Here am I—here—here.” She laughed that fairy laugh, and -poked her finger toward the floor many times. “I am here, so he mus’ not -be afraid. I shall look after you. Oh yes, I shall be mos’ firm and ver’ -stern. You shall see.” And she made a tremendous face to show him what -severity she was capable of. - -They went into the _salon_, with its absurd bronze statues, its -tasteless gilt furniture, and its absurd little throne between the -windows. Andree must observe herself closely before the huge glass above -the fireplace and do little unnecessary things to her hair and touch her -nose with a powder-puff. Ken watched her delightedly, and then carried -her to her throne, where she sat dangling her tiny feet while he closed -the heavy iron shutters to make it lawful for him to turn on the lights. - -Andree moved over to the sofa, looking up at him with that gravely -curious expression which he saw so often on her face; she seemed to be -wondering, always wondering, about something. Was it possible he was as -strange, as unusual, as interesting to her as she was to him? He would -have given much to know just what she was thinking, but, somehow, even -then it was borne in upon him that he should never know—that she would -always remain a sweet, bewildering, exotic mystery to him. - -“Sit by me—ver’ close,” she said; and he sat by her and took her in his -arms, while she snuggled against him with the contented sigh of a child. - -“Do you love me?” he whispered. - -She nodded emphatically, and then with an upward glance said, as she -always said, “And you?” - -“More than I can say.... _Toujours_—always. I shall always love you.” - -“It is well.... We shall make the pretense it is so—that you love me -always. But the little moments, they are so sweet—well, dear friend, -that they could not be always. Is it not so? If it could be always then -I theenk God He would be jealous.... No.... But we mus’ pretend. We mus’ -pretend there is no war, and that you shall never go to _Amérique_ again -... and leave me _solitaire_.” - -He was silent. This was a thought that had been growing in his mind from -day to day, a thought he had refused to face or to consider. What was to -be the end of it all? Suppose he should be ordered home in a week or a -month. What then?... He did not know, and he was unwilling to ask -himself. Rather he would be contented with the little minutes and let -each day care for each day’s problems. When the day of his return -arrived, then the thing must be faced and the question answered.... But -to-night he loved her; wanted to think of nothing but love and the -happiness that such a sweetheart could bestow.... She seemed to wait for -some answer, for some assurance, but he had none to make, and presently -she said, but not with the same happy note in her voice: - -“It may be that love is so great a thing that it cannot live forever—as -it is for us. Behol’—one has a mos’ beautiful jewel, and it is ver’ nice -and there is much joy to have it. But consider—if everything one had is -jewels, jewels, jewels, then the firs’ jewel it is not so nice, so -wonderful. _N’est-ce pas?_ It may be it is the same theeng with love. Do -you onderstan’? It is great and ver’ beautiful bicause it is only for -the leetle moments w’en one is yo’ng—and w’en the heart it is ready for -love.... I theenk this is so. Then, what can matter, _bien cher ami_? -Thees love of now is the mos’ bes’ theeng of all life ... bicause, -maybe, it cannot live much long.... Yes, yes, I have seen many ol’ man -and ol’ woman who say they remember thees love—but not one who say he -has thees love still. You see I theenk of it much....” - -“Yes, honey.” - -“And so I have not fear that you go.... I have only fear that something -happen bifore our little moment of happiness is done—never to come back -again. Do you onderstan’? One day, for all, thees love it begins to fade -and be less lovely. It becomes less strong and not weeth such -wonderfulness.... I have seen. At las’ it is but a friendship and a -memory. But it is a great and a fine friendship bicause of the memory. -Is it not so?... And that is marriage, my friend ... that friendship. It -is but a good regard of each for the other which comes like the bread -after the beautiful growing wheat.... Am I ver’ foolish?” - -“No.... No....” - -“Bicause of thees that I believe, then I am not sad, but ver’ happy, and -I do not fear. I have what is worth all other theengs—thees leetle -moment of happiness which is love.... I would pay for it weeth -ever’thing. It is worth to pay for weeth much sorrow and weeth much -loneliness.... If you mus’ go—well, dear friend, let it be bifore thees -leetle moment fades.... But we mus’ pretend it shall never fade and that -we are together always as thees.... It is more better so.” - -She drew his lips down to hers, and he knew that blind, throbbing, -winged happiness which has no language, no symbols, no words of -description, which can never be remembered except as a mysterious, -haunting ecstasy which once was living and real, which leaves behind but -the dim outline of its spirit and an elusive something as of a sweet -scent that once tingled the nostrils for an instant, to be wafted away -forever.... - - - - - CHAPTER XVIII - - -Now commenced a brief period which was, perhaps, to be the happiest of -Kendall Ware’s whole life. It was happy because it was free from doubts -and questionings. From the depths he had mounted to the heights from -which he looked upon a world bathed in sunshine, rich in harvest, -beautiful as a world could be beautiful only when it was freed from all -evil. He saw everything as good, and it contented him. He ate of the -lotus of inexperienced youth, flavored with the pungent spice of -sophistry, and the taste of it was sweet in his mouth. Plymouth Rock had -sunk beneath its sands, the vestibule of the Presbyterian church had -vanished behind the mists of an intervening ocean. He did not think; he -only felt and acted—and was happy. - -His work was interesting, and he could recognize its value, so he became -less dissatisfied with the necessity that held him far behind the -battle-line. Not that he was content, rather that he was resigned.... -And at the end of the day there was Andree.... - -There were few evenings which they did not spend together, either by -themselves or with Bert and Madeleine, dining at home, at Poccardi’s, at -Marty’s, or in interesting, homelike little cafés across the river where -excellent food could be had very cheaply. Sometimes they went to the -theater or to the music-halls. Sometimes they strolled up and down the -Avenue du Bois de Boulogne until they were tired and then sat and talked -contentedly on springy iron chairs along the promenade. Once they walked -out that street, so crowded of evenings—that street of the ever-changing -names—Montmartre, Poissonnière, Nouvelle, St.-Denis, St.-Martin—as far -as the Place de la République. It was interesting, if tiresome. More -than once Kendall was impressed with the fact that Parisians of a -certain class take their pleasures simply and childishly. More than one -glaring palace, open at the front, showed rows upon rows of those -devices, long extinct in America, before which one could sit or stand -with the ends of a rubber tube in one’s ears and listen to such tunes as -found favor with him played by phonograph. The popularity of these -places surprised him. They were always crowded.... It seemed to him that -this was the most crowded thoroughfare in Paris, as well as one of the -most questionable. The crowds impressed him as being questionable and -bent on questionable errands.... And yet he did not know; he only -guessed. So far as his knowledge went, these folk might be the most -respectable in all France—all save the numerous soft-voice girls who -threaded their way in and out.... And for a mere child, a girl who -seemed hardly in her teens, who bit and struggled in the hands of two -gendarmes, shrieking in a voice that remained long in Kendall’s ears, “I -have the age!... I have the age!... I have the age!...” over and over -again.... - -Madeleine had laughed and shrugged her shoulders with some flippant word -of comment, but Kendall looked down at Andree to see her eyes moist and -big with pity. - -“_Pauvre p’tite!... Pauvre p’tite!..._ It is not she who should be -punish’. She have made no wrong.... I theenk it is the crime of poverty. -_N’est-ce pas?_ Oh, to be _pauvre_—it is not well....” - -“Yet _le bon Dieu_ permits it,” said Madeleine. - -“_Non!... Non!..._ It is not of God, ma’m’selle; it is of man—thees -poverty and thees awful theengs.... It mus’ be that tears come often to -the eyes of the good God....” - -Kendall was affected deeply. She spoke of the good God with such -simplicity, with the sort of intimacy which children use. He felt almost -a reverence for her.... There was a _rightness_ about her, a simple, -unaffected, unconscious _goodness_, that set her apart and made her -different, to him, from all mankind. - -“_Mignonne!_” he whispered, and pressed her arm, and she, looking up -shyly into his face, gave answering pressure, and, perhaps, wondered a -little. - -She was always so, never changing, yet always possessed of that infinite -variety of which Shakespeare speaks. But it was a variety which was -always Andree. In no mood, in no manifestation, could she be anything -but Andree. If she were sad, it was with a sadness peculiar to her, and -very lovable; if she were gay, it was with her own gaiety; if she were -mischievous, it was with a charming impishness which no other being -could have managed. And always she was natural—as natural as the rain -that falls or the sun that shines or the breezes that blow.... She was -Andree. - -“To-morrow is the great fête,” said Andree. “There will be much to see.” - -“And I can’t show it to you. I must work in the morning, and in the -afternoon I am ordered to go to the front.” - -“How long?” she said, quickly. - -“But one day. I shall be here again Sunday—and we shall play, eh? We -shall have _déjeuner_ together and do something in the afternoon, and -find a place to dine....” - -“It is well—but you mus’ be ver’ careful. You mus’ not let the _boche_ -keel you.... Oh, I should be sad, sad.” - -Already Paris was dressing for the American fête-day, the Fourth of -July, which, by methods of law, had been made her own national holiday -this year. Everywhere were American flags. There was no house in Paris -too poor to show some small copy of the Stars and Stripes, for just now -Paris was mad about America and Americans ... as it had had its day of -madness over the Belgians and then the English. Paris is given to such -enthusiasms, and at the moment there were men in the service of the -great god Propaganda who labored to bring it about that this latest -passion should not die and become sudden ashes as the others had done, -but rather to persuade it to subside slowly, unnoticeably, leaving a -pleasant memory behind.... - -“The _boches_ will pull something off to-morrow,” said Bert. “You see. -They’ll do something to bust up the celebration.” - -This was the opinion of the Paris streets—that the Hun would, by some -ingenious and disagreeable means, make the fête memorable in the history -of the city. - -“Maybe it’s just as well I’m going away,” laughed Ken. “So you, -Ma’m’selle Pourquoi—you look out for yourself. Don’t you let anything -hurt you.” - -“Me—_pouf_!... It could not be. While there is you nothing can happen to -me—nothing. I am ver’ safe.” - -They tried in vain to persuade a _voiture_ or a taxicab to take them -home, but, with that perversity which belongs to the Paris cabby alone, -none of them would go. One reason or another was given—the horse was -tired, the gasolene supply was depleted, it was the wrong quarter of the -city. A large volume, serious or comic, might be written on the habits -and moods of these public conveyances of the most charming city in the -world. Paris would not be the same without them. While they are one of -the irritations, none the less they are of the quaint and pleasant -memories of the city, and Kendall could often see himself, as he sat at -some future day, retailing to audiences of less traveled Americans than -he his adventures with the war-time taxi. - -Finally they were obliged to descend to the Metro, which carried them to -the Place de l’Opéra, to change there for the short ride to the Palais -Royal, where another change was necessary to carry them to the Étoile. -It was late and they were tired. - -“Oh, we have make the _beaucoup travail_—the so great labor thees day,” -said Andree, shaking her head. “I have the _fatigue_.... But it is well -to be weary. Are you weary, Monsieur Ken?” - -“I am happy,” he said. - -“Yes.... Yes.... That is bes’ of all—to be happy. Tell me, when you have -gone to the front—will you theenk of me?” - -“In the morning, at noon, in the afternoon—” - -“Oh, oh!... It is not possible. But sometimes. Once, twice? For I shall -be theenking of you always.” - -“Do you love me?” - -“Yes,” she nodded emphatically, and then—he would have missed it had she -omitted it—“and you?” - -“More than anybody in the world.” - -“More than thees yo’ng American girl?... I have seen her thees day. She -is in Paris. Do you know?” - -“You must be mistaken, _mignonne_. Miss Knox is out at the front.” - -“It is so.... It is so. I have seen her—thees day. Oh, do you theenk I -do not know her? I am ver’ _jalouse_—mos’ _jalouse_. She come for take -you away from me.” - -“Don’t you let her do it,” said Ken happily. “Don’t you dare let her do -it.” - -“I do not know,” she said, becoming suddenly grave. “You are -American—she is American.... Some day...” Then she laughed gaily, -impishly. “_Mais_ these American girl, they do not know how to dress. -Oh, it is terrible!” - -“You mustn’t judge all American women by these uniforms you see in -France,” said Bert. “Just now it is the style in America for women to -get into something they think are uniforms. I wonder who designed these -Y. M. C. A. uniforms, anyhow?... But really, Mademoiselle Andree, our -women do know how to dress.” - -“I have never seen,” she said, stubbornly. “Also they do not always wear -uniforms, but always they wear their feet. Their feet they cannot take -off. _Mais non._ It is too bad. If only they could leave at home their -feet.” - -Kendall suspected that American women were suffering for the sins of -Maude Knox, so he did not rush to their defense. He did not want to -think about Maude Knox to-night—he wanted to think of no woman but -Andree. - -“_Méchante!_” he whispered. - -“It is so—what I say,” she said, severely. “I do not like American -women.... I do not like thees girl. She ees ver’ wicked, for she wish to -steal you from me.” - -The street was very dark. Kendall made youth’s answer to youth’s -jealousy. He lifted her slight form in his arms and kissed her until she -returned his kisses. - -“There,” he said, “you are punished.” - -“It ees ver’ nice to be wicked,” she said. “Thees punishment is ver’ -well.” - -Maude Knox was banished. They two found themselves the sole inhabitants -of a brightly glowing world.... - -Next morning Kendall made his way through early assembling crowds to his -office, where he was much occupied until noon, making preparations for -his trip to the front. Then he was driven through the holiday-making -streets crowded with a populace in holiday humor to the _barrière_, and -thence into the country. On every building waved an American flag, in -every buttonhole was a tiny American flag, and the appearance of an -American military automobile was the signal for applause and lifting of -hats. Small boys shouted as small boys of all countries shout; friendly -old gentlemen waved their canes; young women smiled broadly or demurely, -invitingly or shyly. Kendall felt as if he were enjoying some sort of a -triumph, as if this celebration were for him. The frankness and -open-heartedness and courtesy of it were delightful. - -They drove rapidly through little villages, between rolling fields -cultivated as only the French agriculturist seems to be able to -cultivate. The villages, too, were in gala dress and the people in -holiday attire. In one place a brief stop was made. Immediately the car -was surrounded by children who shouted eagerly for “penny,” for “gu-um,” -for “cigarette.” So it was all over France. Let but an American soldier -appear and the children of the neighborhood formed a group about him -demanding tribute. - -Soon the civil inhabitants disappeared. Whole villages were occupied by -billeted troops, _poilus_ and colonials, black-skinned men wearing red -fezzes and speaking strange tongues who gave to the picture an exotic -tint. The countryside swarmed with soldiers _en repos_, a zone miles -deep crowded with the guardians of Paris and of the Channel ports.... -Now came forests in whose depths could be caught fleeting glimpses of -huge ammunition-dumps, skilfully camouflaged, then a wonderful woods, -clean as the floor of a kitchen, a forest of magnificent trees, but as -well kept as a Michigan peach-orchard.... Dusk descended, then darkness. -The car seemed to be running into a black curtain upon a thread of white -cloud. Kendall could not see the length of his nose to one side or the -other, but ahead could be discerned that pale cloud avenue, a sort of -milky way that disappeared itself into blackness a hundred feet away. He -was now upon one of those roads of white chalk, deep with dust which -arose in clouds and nestled in the hair and eyebrows and penetrated the -very pores of the skin, giving to men the singular appearance of having -been carved out of bronze. - -Presently the horizon glowed for an instant, as with heat lightning, and -glowed again and again. There was a mutter and a grumble ahead which was -the distant voice of the guns.... Something burst into flower in the sky -far ahead, a vivid rose-blossom, then another and another. It was -shrapnel, either our own demanding toll of a prowling German aeroplane -or the enemy searching the air for an Allied machine.... The heat -lightning became continuous, the roar of the guns a rumble without -break, almost a single, sustained note. - -Ken was riding in the depths of a sea of blackness. To right and left -the eyes encountered an _impasse_; ahead was only that dim milky way of -road and those upsurging lights as the guns answered one another across -the desert of No Man’s Land. The car was traveling at breakneck speed. -Suddenly came a tremendous snap almost in Ken’s ears, a snap as of a -mountain being cracked in twain by giant hands. There was a blinding -flash across the road ahead and the air was usurped by the scream of a -departing shell. A battery by the roadside had taken up its work of the -night. Kendall was in the midst of it now. Guns on both sides cracked -and roared; projectiles screamed over his head, and now and then would -come that easily distinguishable sound, the bursting of a German -shell.... - -Presently the road sank below the level of the fields. The car was -running between irregular rows of barely discernible lights which -appeared to issue from the ground—as indeed they did—glowing from the -dugouts of French artillerymen who had burrowed into the banks at the -side of the road. The moon began to climb so that objects became dimly -visible. The scene was like that of some village of prehistoric -cave-dwellers, save for those breaks in the line of dugouts, cunningly -covered with nets of camouflage, under which lurked the cannon, muzzles -directed toward the foe. - -Now they stopped in a battered, deserted village which was headquarters -of our Twenty-eighth Infantry, a component of that First Division made -up of our old regulars—a body of troops whose name will be famous as -long as the history of America shall endure. And there, in an enormous -dugout entered through a narrow tunnel some fifty feet in length, Ken -found shelter for the night. He traversed the tunnel, descended steps -carved out of the stone to a level twenty feet below, and found himself -in a warren. Here, notwithstanding the hour of the night, were bustle -and activity. Here were offices where sounded the click of typewriters -and the staccato of the telephone; here were passages, bedrooms, a -dining-room—a veritable maze hewn out of the chalk formation. It was as -if Ali Baba’s forty thieves had turned systematic and were carrying on -their trade according to modern business methods. Yet men worked here as -casually and nonchalantly, accustomed by long habit, as they would have -worked in their New York offices.... - -Kendall was provided with a cot, and, despite the sounds that penetrated -here, the sounds of the Fourth of July celebration of the First -Division, he slept.... - -Early in the morning he awoke, then, after some hours spent with the -regimental intelligence officer, he walked abroad to see this historic -countryside. Far off to the left the glasses showed him that spot which -had been Montdidier; almost straight ahead was the grisly, silent -crumble known now to the world by the name of Cantigny. - -The day was beautiful. It seemed strange, unnatural that the country -should be so beautiful as well. Even the gun-pits among which Kendall -quickly found himself did not detract from the beauty, for they were -almost invisible even at a distance of a few yards, only appearing as -low mounds, scarcely differing in color from the surrounding fields. Yet -the guns were there under their tents of chicken-wire covered with -stained burlap and grasses. Everywhere he looked were these mounds which -during the night that had just passed had been uncovered to the sky -while shells filled with deadly gas had screamed through intervening -miles of air to fall with deadly effect in the German lines.... It had -been mustard gas, six thousand rounds of it, he had been told. He was -also told it was the first time American gunners had been supplied with -that devilishness of war—to celebrate the Fourth.... Now the gun-pits -were neat as a New England parlor, guns were brightly polished. Nothing -seemed to have happened there. - -He stood above and looked down the slope of the valley, a valley of -golden fields, a valley which was a miracle of color. Never had Kendall -seen such color, acres upon acres of it, nor such a profusion of -flowers. Gold and red and white and blue ... and _peace_! That valley -had been spread there for some painter—not for a battle-field. It -impressed the inherited mysticism in him—he saw a symbolism in it all. -The fields blazed with gorgeous tints; rectangles acres in extent were -red with poppies, not with a sprinkling of poppies here and there, but -as with a snowfall of vivid red. Segregated in an adjoining field were -cornflowers, a carpet of blue; and then another field glaring white with -some flower that Kendall did not know.... Other fields there were in -which the three flowers mingled. The panorama spoke of peace and -beauty.... It was as if the war irritated God until He spread this, His -own camouflage of peace, to hide the horrors from His down-gazing -eyes.... Or perhaps, as of olden times He had set His rainbow in the sky -as a promise to the sons of Noah, so now He planted this living rainbow -in the fields as a new and more wonderful promise to all the sons of men -... a promise that His purposes should nevermore demand another war to -devastate the earth.... - -Before him, knee-deep in poppies, moved half a dozen figures in khaki. - -“The boys are gathering flowers for the funeral,” he was told. - -“The funeral?...” - -“Of the men killed last night....” - -Presently, his business completed, he was driving toward Paris, reached -Paris in the darkness with a feeling of home-coming and pleasure.... But -he was thoughtful, troubled. His sternly believing mother was awake in -him, asserting that he had seen with his own eyes a movement of the -finger of God—that he had read a sign from Omnipotence. It weighed him -down, filled him not with joyous faith, but with Calvinistic gloom to -have this assurance that God was actually taking an active interest in -His world.... The weight of the knowledge of the existence of a Deity -was upon him as it had been upon his stern forebears—the knowledge of -the existence of a Deity, stern, forbidding, cruel in his revenges and -implacable in his demands ... not of such a God as Andree knew—whose -eyes might be wet with tears caused by the sufferings of His puppets to -whom He had vouchsaved the dubious boon of freedom of action.... - -He awoke in the morning as one awakes from an impressive dream, with a -feeling of heaviness upon him, a consciousness of his personal existence -that made him dull company at breakfast. This humor did not pass away, -it was rather laid aside for further reference and obscured by the -events and anticipations of the day. - -“Good trip?” asked Bert. - -“Fine! Saw a lot.” - -“Wish I could get a crack at it sometime. I haven’t heard a gun go off -yet—except in an air raid.... Was anything stirring up there?” - -Ken described his experiences of the day and night, and, strangely, from -a different viewpoint than that from which he had beheld them. Yesterday -the thing had been subjective, symbolical; to-day it was objective. He -described the war he had seen as a tourist might describe some -interesting scene in a foreign country—and he rather wondered at himself -that he could think of it in that manner. - -“When do you meet Andree?” Bert asked. - -“Eleven o’clock—at the Place de la Concorde. You and Madeleine are -coming along?” - -“Sure! We’ll pick you up there at eleven.” - -“Anything happen here yesterday?” - -“Not a thing. The _boches_ disappointed everybody. I went to one of -those dinners the crowd at the Union are always piloting a fellow -to—this Society of French Homes, or whatever they call it.... Four of us -dined with a Madame Lefebvre.” - -“Good time?” - -“Interesting. Played bridge with three French people, a deputy and two -women. None of them spoke a word of English, but we made out pretty -well. I won thirty francs.... They were rather upper crust in this town, -I guess. Fine house and that sort of thing.” - -“I must go to one of those some day,” said Ken, reflectively. “I’ve -wondered if we were really seeing Paris—the way the French live.” - -“Not if that dinner last night was a sample. I had to lug out all my -manners. And the women—they sort of made me feel uncomfortable. -Dignified, you know, but very friendly. It was all the family. Old -grandmother and her sons and daughters and a few grandchildren. -Patriarchal affair.” - -“I want to see that sort of thing. People have told me that French -family life is beautiful.... One wouldn’t think it to judge from what -we’ve seen.” - -“I don’t know about the beautiful,” said Bert, and Ken registered a -thought that Bert would not be likely to notice domestic beauties, “but -there was something fine about it. I liked it.... That old grandmother -was bully. They were all so doggone respectful.... And there was a young -lieutenant, a grandson—had his face shot away. Nothing left but his -mouth and one eye. Wore a big triangular patch over his face. He must -have been quite a fellow, though. Had the Croix de Guerre and the Legion -of Honor and the Médaille Militaire. Just been married, too—to a mighty -nice little girl—one of these home bodies, looked as though. And, by -Jove! she acted like she was a heap in love with him. It sort of got -me—especially when everybody in the room took the opportunity at some -time during the evening to tell me that she never met him until after he -was mutilated.... I don’t believe that sort of girl would pick up with a -fellow, somehow. And I know mighty well her mother and grandmother never -would have. I guess there are all kinds of French people, just the same -as there are Americans....” - -“Of course,” said Ken, out of his abysmal ignorance. Then, defensively, -“Maybe these aristocrats are different from the girls we know, but, I -don’t care how they live or how straitlaced they are, they’re no better -than Andree.... Andree’s _good_.” - -“Sure,” said Bert, “and you’re dotty.... Meet you at eleven.” - -Ken wrote a few letters home, one to his mother in which he went rather -to descriptions and very little to personal matters. He spoke little of -France and the French, but rather made it appear that he was living in a -Paris inhabited exclusively by American soldiers who were all so busy -with the war that they had no time to do anything else but work and -sleep. He did mention seeing Notre Dame ... which was a church, and of -undoubted historic interest. It was a very circumspect letter, and not -at all confidential.... But it is an undoubted fact that mothers and -fathers have to earn by their conduct toward their children those -confidences which they seem to fancy are theirs by right. Ken could have -told his father anything—everything. But his mother—somehow it was -difficult for him to compel himself to make the most trivial disclosure -to her. Her attitude toward him and toward the world had created that -difficulty. The young are naturally confidential.... - -Then he went to meet Andree. - -One of the delights of Ken’s acquaintance with Andree was that each -meeting with her seemed a fresh adventure; there was a sameness about -these meetings. Andree always appeared just so, and conducted herself -just so. He could foretell with exactitude what her every movement and -gesture and word would be when she did appear. But somehow, probably -unconsciously, she was able to impart to every rendezvous a freshness, -an air of mystery, something elusive and elfin that made them, no matter -how often repeated, always alluring, exciting, delightful. Her sudden -appearances out of a life of which he knew nothing and her -disappearances back into that life lifted this affair above the level of -all other affairs, imparting to it something of the occult, giving play -to the imagination.... Ken cherished this illusion and, therefore, -though often tempted, he asked no questions. Even now he did not know -her name—only Andree. - -Presently she appeared, just as he knew she would appear, walking very -erect, with little steps that seemed almost stiff, her eyes cast -downward or staring straight before her and seeming to see nothing -whatever. He knew that she would approach within reach of his hand -before she gave sign of recognition, and then she would regard him with -grave query as if to ascertain if it were really he, and if, as she -feared, she was not welcome. And then she would smile timidly, without -taking her eyes from his, and shake hands with quaint formality, and ask -how he carried himself. If she had changed any particular of it he would -have been alarmed, would have felt a sense of loss. - -“Bert and Madeleine will meet us here,” he said. - -“It is well.” She smiled and nodded. “You have been at the front?” - -“Yes.” - -“You are ver’ _fatigué_ perhaps?” - -“No. I had a bully night’s sleep, and I’m ready for anything. We must -have a regular party to-day. We’ll paint the town and all the suburbs.” - -“Oh, so ver’ fast. I do not onderstan’.... I do not onderstan’. You mus’ -speak more slow.... Give me the _dictionnaire_.” - -“It was nothing.... Are you happy?” - -“Are you not here?” she said, gravely. - -There was something so timid, yet so confident about her, so gentle, so -child-womanly, that the realization of it struck Kendall almost with the -force of an accusation.... It was the forerunner of self-accusation -which might have come then and there, had not Bert and Madeleine turned -the corner and waved to them. Immediately the girls were chattering -French, after their inevitable formal handshake. - -“Where to, children?” asked Bert. - -They turned to the girls. “Where are we going?” Ken asked. - -“Oh, out of the city. Let us go to the Bois—for the long day.” - -“_Oui_,” agreed Madeleine. “The Bois—every one—_tout le monde_—make -themselves to go to the Bois.” - -So, after some difficulty, they persuaded the driver of a _voiture_ to -drive them up the Champs Élysées and the length of the Avenue du Bois de -Boulogne to the gates of the park. There the _cocher_ drew up to the -curb inexorably and stopped without paying the least attention to the -protests of the Americans. - -“We must get down,” said Andree. “He cannot go inside.” - -“But there are _voitures_ inside—lots of them. Why can’t he go in?” - -She shrugged her shoulders, but arose, and Madeleine followed her. They -knew the way of the Paris coachmen—or it may have been a rule, or an -agreement for the division of patronage. At any rate, they got down and -paid the absurdly low fare. Then, walking two by two, they entered the -famous park. - -The walks near the entrance were crowded, but as they penetrated the -city’s playground the congestion became less dense. But it did seem as -if Madeleine were right, that all the world had come to the Bois that -day. Every seat, and they were scattered about generously, was occupied. -Back among the trees family parties had preempted shady glades and were -spreading lunches. Buxom young women played battledore with _poilus_ on -permission, or engaged in what they seriously believed to be tennis with -the most profound earnestness. This tennis delighted Bert, who insisted -upon stopping to watch more than one game. The players had no nets—only -rackets and a ball. With these they placed themselves sometimes as much -as twenty feet apart and then lobbed the ball back and forth with such a -seriousness and intensity that it seemed they were playing for life -itself.... Children were everywhere, and stout old ladies who drowsed -and lean old men who had taken off their coats and were tormented by -insects.... Out on the pavements men and women and children rode -furiously by on bicycles, all crouching apprehensively over their -handlebars and pedaling for dear life.... Youths in French uniforms made -vigorous and unashamed love to their sweethearts.... It was very hot. - -A few minutes’ walk brought them to the lake, steaming with the heat of -the day, its surface churned by the unskilled oars of pleasure-seekers. -On the opposite shore was a dense crowd packed about a booth, awaiting -their turns to go upon the water and suffer. Two or three huge _bateaux_ -capable of seating a score of people made little voyages up and down, -each propelled by one sweating, coatless individual who pulled the -enormous weight at such terrific speed that a circuit of the pond might -have been made in an hour. The passengers sat packed together in -blissful enjoyment.... Those who took rowboats seemed to have a positive -genius for loading them in such a way as to make them unmanageable. In -the middle was an elderly man, very stout, with two young girls. One -girl rowed while her companions sat as far into the bow as possible, -lifting the stern high in the air, and making any progress except a sort -of whirligig motion impossible. There were collisions, shouts, laughter, -screams—and an intolerable heat. But the crowd was happy as only a -Parisian crowd can be happy. They had not the least fear of making -themselves appear absurd; they went about their pleasure in a -determined, do-or-die spirit, and everybody was so satisfied, so happy, -so charming that Ken was delighted and tried to tell Andree how pleased -he was by aid of French, English, and the dictionary, but only -succeeding in bewildering the young lady utterly.... He had a suspicion -that both Andree and Madeleine looked at those boats longingly, but with -characteristic American terror of making himself look ridiculous he -would not have gone upon that water if they had fallen on their knees to -plead with him.... - -After a time they managed by bribery and cajolery to persuade a _cocher_ -to drive them about the park and an hour or two later got down near to a -toy railroad with a tiny engine which pulled crowded trains along a -child’s track. Bert, whose inhibitions were less pronounced than Ken’s, -insisted upon riding. The girls boarded the train as a matter of course, -with no trace of self-consciousness, but as they bowled along past -crowds that waved and pointed and laughed, Ken felt like the father of -all idiots.... Finally they arrived at the zoo, which Andree insisted -upon inspecting. - -The cages in the zoo which attracted the crowds contained dogs! Indeed, -dogs were the backbone and almost the sum total of the animals to be -seen. They were caged like bears and ran around and around behind their -iron bars with the ceaseless gait of wolves. It rather revolted Kendall, -especially to see a beautiful English setter in such an environment. -There were setters, Danes, bulls, fox-terriers—and the crowds stood and -stared and gasped and exclaimed as if they gazed at the behemoth of Holy -Writ.... - -But it was all fascinating to Ken, all different and strange. Here was -France again! He was seeing something foreign, not of the Middle West, -and it was droll and incomprehensible to him. He did not speculate on -what your Frenchman might have thought of a Sunday crowd at Coney Island -or the Bronx Zoo or in Belle Isle Park in his own Detroit.... He reveled -in it, drinking in eagerly the sensation that he was in another world -peopled by incomprehensible beings who functioned in an incomprehensible -manner. - -Here at least was none of the depression and woe of war.... Had it not -been for the presence of uniforms, one would have forgotten war. Ken -wondered if these people had been able to forget it—and then reflected -that some of these that he saw might be killed before another dawn by -bombs dropped upon their sleeping homes from ruthless German -aeroplanes.... All was lightness and joyousness now; in a few hours -every individual here might be cowering in a cellar, damp with the sweat -of fear of imminent slaughter.... - -They dined expensively at a table under the trees and near to a -fountain, and Andree exclaimed at the extravagance of it and declared -that for days to come they must satisfy their hunger on bread and -water.... They were very gay and very young. For that one day all cares -and apprehensions had taken flight; they simply did what occurred to -them, and the word _responsibility_ was scratched from their -vocabularies. - -After a time they found a pleasant spot among the trees and sat down to -rest, for such a day is very tiring. - -“Thees day has been ver’ well,” said Andree, nodding her head three -times by way of punctuation. - -“I wish all days were like it,” Madeleine said in French. - -Andree regarded her gravely a moment, then shook her head emphatically. -“No. It would not be well. The days like thees day are ver’ nice bicause -they are seldom. To-day is for nothing but only happiness—yes. But it is -not possible to be so happy to-day if we are not ver’ unhappy some other -day.” - -“Do you think that unhappiness makes happiness?” said Bert, with a -laugh. - -“But yes, monsieur. If there is not sadness there is no joy. It is of a -truthfulness. _Certainement._ How do you know you are happy? It is -bicause you theenk of days when you are ver’ miserable, and thees day is -so different from that day. If all days shall be like to-day, then we -shall be—how do you say?—we shall be bored.” - -“But if one is very miserable after he has been happy?” said Ken. - -Andree looked at him quickly as if trying to penetrate to the thought -that prompted the question. - -“It is well,” she said, softly. “On the unhappy day you theenk often of -the happy day—it makes the unhappiness to be less. After many, many days -one may forget the unhappiness. The good God has made it a law. The -sorrow it becomes not so sharp. Even the ver’ greatest grief becomes -jus’ a theeng to be remembered. But a happiness! Oh, my friend, that -live forever. A happiness cannot be made to fade. Always it live and -always it is ver’ beautiful and makes itself to give other happiness.... -That is why,” she said, softly, to Ken, “that I have not great fear to -love you. Do you see?... W’en it is ended, thees love of ours, it will -be ver’ sad, but the sadness it will become soft and make itself to fade -after many year. The happiness, such happiness as thees ver’ day, it -will be always....” - -“But,” said Ken, suddenly depressed and thoughtful, “isn’t there a -sorrow so great that it cannot be endured?” - -“Oh yes, yes! But that is terrible. I have thought many times of such a -sorrow. There is only one like that. It is to love ver’ much and trust -ver’ much and be ver’ much happy, and then, one day, to know that one -has been deceive’ entirely. To know that the friend one love’ was on’y -making to pretend and did not himself love.... That one could not -bear.... Then all the little moments of happiness with him would make -themselves to be black and wicked ... and one must die....” - -Kendall lifted her hand and touched it with his lips and looked into her -eyes. “I do not know what will come, _mignonne_ ... but whatever does -come, it must not be that.... See, I am speaking the truth so that you -may remember it always.... I love you.” - -For a moment she returned his gaze gravely, then into her dark-shadowed -eyes came a glow that was real happiness, her lips smiled and she leaned -a little toward him. - -“I believe,” she said, softly, “and it is ver’ well....” - - - - - CHAPTER XIX - - -Kendall had paid little attention to Andree’s assertion that she had -seen Maude Knox in Paris, yet on Monday he received a _petit bleu_ from -her informing him that she was again at the Hôtel Wagram and would be -delighted to have him call that evening if he were free. At his first -reading of the note Maude Knox seemed to him an intrusion. Somehow be -rather resented her existence because, subconsciously, he knew that -association with her was going to be disquieting. It would give rise to -argument within himself and to speculations upon the future which he -would have liked to avoid. He was satisfied and as happy as he had ever -been in his life—and Maude was a complication. If Maude Knox had been -less important in his life he would have welcomed her more heartily. - -However, as he thought more and more of her presence, he found himself -desiring greatly to see her. There was something sympathetic and -dependable about her, something that he could understand and approve. -She was American, thoroughly American. Yes, by all means, he wished to -see her, but he would hold himself in restraint. They should not become -at all personal, and he would watch the conversation carefully to see -that it did not turn any unexpected corners or wander down lanes ending -in disagreeable obstacles to be cleared. - -“There’s no reason why I shouldn’t be decent to her,” he told himself, -speciously. “She’s probably lonesome, and we are both Americans....” He -remembered the hour or so he had spent with her in Montreuil, and how he -had come away from her in a state of perplexity, wondering if it were -possible for a man to love two women at the same time.... “It isn’t -that,” he told himself. “I love Andree and nobody but Andree ... but -that’s no reason I shouldn’t see Maude. Anyhow, she’ll be here only a -day or so....” - -The truth of the matter was that, without realizing it, Kendall did not -trust himself. He was afraid that a thing might happen which he was in a -queer sort of way half willing should happen—that he might fall in love -with Maude Knox or that he might realize in her presence that he -actually was in love with her. It was a singular position. Undoubtedly -he loved Andree—but how? That he did not ask himself. He loved her, he -had a sort of reverence for her, and he had besides a real friendship -for her, but—He would inevitably have reached that _but_ if he had -allowed himself to analyze his love for her.... A man may have one child -and love it with a love which he fancies is boundless and exclusive. He -may believe that every fraction of the love he has to give belongs to -that child, and he may resent the coming of a second child and look upon -it as an interloper. But very shortly he finds himself loving the -new-comer not one whit less than the first-born.... If love can become -miraculous in this manner—inexhaustible like the loaves and fishes—with -respect to children, cannot it be the same with respect to women? -Kendall had seen the first develop in the case of a friend, had heard -the friend speak in confidence before the coming of his second child, -and had observed him after the passage of a few weeks. He took it as the -basis of an argument and, using it as a stepping-stone, reached a -conclusion which was disturbing ... but not lacking in a certain -allurement.... And what of countries where there are plural marriages? -How in the case of a man lawfully possessed of more than one wife? Does -such a man love all, or only one, or none?... - -It was in this uncertain frame of mind that he went to the Wagram and -called Maude Knox’s room on the rather difficult house telephone. - -“Captain Ware!...” said her voice. “I hardly expected you, but it’s good -of you to have come. I’ll be right down.” - -She appeared presently, not in her uniform, but in such a dress as she -might have worn at home in America when going out for the evening with a -young gentleman. - -“What are you doing in Paris?” he demanded. “I thought you were busy -being the queen of the doughboys.” - -“The division’s being moved, I don’t know where, and I was sent in to -wait for orders. Some of our men marched on the Fourth.” - -“I suppose it seems good to get back into the world again.” - -“Anybody can be in Paris,” she said. “I’ve been having the time of my -life—and, really, I think I was some good. I believe I was. The men -liked to have me there.” - -“Naturally.” - -She shrugged her shoulders. “Do I understand that you are taking me to -dinner?” - -“You do. Where shall it be?” - -“Anywhere, so long as there is food I don’t have to cook myself.... I’ve -been living on things out of cans—except when the officers’ mess had -something particularly good and sent some over.” - -“It hasn’t hurt you a bit.... You look mighty well.” He was thinking -that she did look very well, indeed. Not exactly beautiful, but -satisfyingly good-looking—the way he liked to see a girl look. A fellow -might be proud to be seen with her. She showed class.... - -“How about the Continental?” he asked. - -“I’d like it. I’ve never eaten there.” - -They passed out of the hotel and strolled up the rue de Rivoli to the -rue Royale, and then dodged careless taxi-cabs to cross the broad avenue -which stretched with an air of pride to the face of the Madeleine. Two -or three American officers were loitering about the entrance to the -Continental, and Ken experienced a sense of satisfaction as he became -conscious of their surreptitious stares of admiration at his -companion.... They traversed the court and entered the big dining-room -which stretched along the rue de Rivoli and through whose windows one -may look out upon the Place de la Concorde and across the river to the -Palais Legislatif. The occupants of the room were mostly -Americans—officers, officials of the Red Cross, and women of that -organization and the Y. M. C. A. - -“What have you been doing? Tell me all the news,” Maude said, as they -seated themselves at a table close to the windows. - -“I?... Working as usual, and there isn’t any news. Never come to the war -if you want news of the war. I knew a lot more about it when I was back -in Detroit than I do in Paris.” - -“Our division was full of rumors of a big American offensive.” - -“And Paris is full of rumors of a big German offensive. It was to have -started on the fourth of July, but now it has been postponed to the -fourteenth—Bastille Day.... You can hear anything.” - -“I think something is going to happen. The Blue Devils are up the other -side of Meaux. I’ve seen them. Everybody tells me their presence is a -sign that something is going to happen.” - -“Frankly, I don’t believe it. If anything comes I think it will be a -German attack. I don’t look for the Allies to do much before spring—” - -“When our aeroplanes get here?” she interjected. “My! but our boys have -grumbled about aeroplanes. It makes them irritable to see German planes -buzzing around.” - -“Don’t blame them. There are rumors about aeroplanes, too. A _poilu_ -asked me the other day if it was true that we had twenty thousand of -them over here.” - -The conversation was following a matter-of-fact, commonplace, impersonal -lane—just such a way as Ken had determined it should follow. Yet he was -dissatisfied with it. He felt that it lacked something, and that, -consequently, Maude and himself were not getting the most out of each -other’s company. He had resolved not to talk about himself nor about -Maude nor about the sentiments they inspired in each other, but he found -himself wanting to do so. The staple, as well as the most absorbing, -topic for any young person is himself. It becomes doubly absorbing if -two young persons can join and discuss _themselves_ and their reactions -to each other.... Maude seemed a trifle bored, he thought. Then, -suddenly and with a touch of impatience, she said: - -“What has been happening to _you_?... And that pretty little girl? What -was her name?” - -She, too, seemed to desire to alter the character of the conversation. - -Nothing had been happening to him—at least that he could tell her about. -He insisted that life had been a dull affair of work and sleep for him. - -“Nonsense! I’m interested.... Oh, I remember her name—it was Andree. -Tell me about Andree.” - -“She’s a mighty nice little girl. I see her every now and then.” - -“Every now and then,” she mocked. “When did you see her last?” - -“Yesterday.” - -“And before that?” - -“I was away for a few days.” - -“But you saw her the night before you went away?” - -“Yes.” - -“And if I hadn’t interfered you’d have seen her to-night.” - -“No—we had no engagement for to-night.” - -She laughed. “You’re not especially subtle. Are you really in love with -this girl?... Do tell me all about her. I know I’m prying and -curious—but—Oh, I’m just curious about her.” - -“I—there’s nothing to tell.” - -“There must be. How is she different from us American girls? She seemed -very attractive—and sweet.” - -“She says the difference between French and American girls is that you -don’t know how to dress your feet,” he said, with an uneasy laugh. It -rather pleased him that Maude looked blank an instant and then made an -evident effort to look at her footgear. “Do you want to go to the Casino -or some other place to-night?” - -“Not until I’ve found out more about your friend. You know I liked her -looks very much.... Why can’t I meet her? She wouldn’t be jealous, would -she? You did introduce her, you know. Can’t we have a little party—the -three of us?” - -“No,” he said, with flat finality in his voice. - -“Why?” - -He did not want to reply, did not know what to reply. The reason that he -did not even want to put into definite thought was that Maude ought not -to meet Andree—because Andree was to him what she was.... Maude was an -American girl, a compatriot living under the laws of the Medes and the -Persians, and it would not be proper for her to associate with Andree. - -“Why?” she repeated. “You said she was _nice_.” She accented the _nice_. -“If you don’t let me meet her I shall think she isn’t nice at all—and a -great many other things.” - -“She is nice,” he said, sullenly. “She’s good.... You wouldn’t -understand her. I don’t think I’ve ever known anybody who was as good as -Andree—really good.... But ...” - -“I think I understand,” she said, slowly. “It was really what I wanted -to know.” She frowned a trifle and became thoughtful. Then: “You know I -said before that—that I didn’t blame these girls.... It’s the war—and -their men being killed—and—Well, there’s something in the air.... I -don’t suppose I shall ever understand them, or be able to see as they -see—but I’m—well, I have a lot of sympathy.... A great many of us are -going to look at things more broadly when we get home to America. We had -never come into contact with other standards and other ways of trying -for happiness.... I know I’m talking in a muddle, but I hope you -understand. What I mean is that I wouldn’t object to meeting Andree....” - -“In Paris,” said Ken. - -“In Paris? What do you mean?” - -“Would you be willing to meet her in New York or Cleveland or Chicago?” - -She wrinkled her brows. “Honestly, I don’t know.” - -“Here she would be just one of the sights of France—an experience. Well, -I’m not going to have her on exhibition, like Notre Dame.” - -“It isn’t that. It isn’t curiosity.... Really, I don’t know just what it -is, but I want to be acquainted with her. I think it is so I can find -out if it is really true that she—that she can live as she does and -still be—_nice_.” - -“I tell you she is nice.” - -“But you are in love with her? Aren’t you in love with her? Somehow that -makes a difference. It would seem sordid and inexcusable if you -weren’t.” - -“I am very fond of her.” - -“Do you _love her_?” - -“Yes,” he said, desperately. - -She was just picking up her fork. At his words it dropped and her lips -compressed, but he did not notice. Perhaps he would have attached no -significance to these signals if he had noticed, because he was fully -occupied in thinking about himself. He had never taken time to consider -Maude Knox’s possible feelings toward himself, although he had more than -once tried in an inconclusive way to assay his own sentiments toward -Maude. Not that he was exceptionally selfish or self-centered. He was -only at that stage in his relations with Maude when he was trying to -make out what those relations might develop into. Until a young man is -fairly sure he wants a young woman very much he does not start to worry -about whether she will want him. - -And Maude ... she had advanced a trifle farther than Ken, perhaps. Ken -had attracted her from the first, and, peculiarly enough, the rather -open mystery of his affair with Andree had made him a more striking -figure, if not more desirable. It had accented him.... She had never -confessed to herself that she wanted to establish proprietary rights in -Ken, but she did realize that he was of some importance to her. He was -the one individual in Paris that she had been anxious to see. When she -had been ordered to Paris her first thought had been that she would see -Ken. These things were only indicative. They proved nothing to her.... -But when she heard Ken baldly admit that he loved Andree she was close -to proof. Undoubtedly it had been a shock and an unpleasant shock. Ken -was more important to her than she had supposed. She was glad that the -waiter appeared at that moment with the _viande_, for it gave her an -excuse for silence and attention to her plate. - -She wondered if this feeling were jealousy.... Then she repeated to -herself, “He loves this girl,” and refused to believe it, and then was -doubtful, and then was afraid.... Other aspects of the affair did not -present themselves to her then—only the fact that this man, who might -have been, whom she wanted to be, something to her, was in love with -another woman, an alien, a Frenchwoman. Then she asserted to herself, -“It’s only an affair....” There was some comfort and promise in this. - -She looked up suddenly. “What are you going to do, Ken?” she asked. “Are -you going to marry her?” - -He stammered, hesitated. This was very disquieting. She had no right to -ask such a question. “I—I’ve never thought about marriage—in connection -with Andree,” he said. He was almost honest in his statement. They two -had been living in the present, had eaten of the lotus, and the future -was only a vague time that might have to be faced when it arrived. He -had been living in a world which was not a world of reality. It had been -a species of imaginary world into which practical matters like marriage -do not obtrude. - -“You don’t think of—of settling in France? I hear some of the men say -they want to.” - -“No.” He was certain of that. America was his home, and the homing -instinct was strong in him. He was a citizen of the United States, and -it seemed unnatural and impossible for him to give up that citizenship. -To do so appeared to him to be in the same category as divorcing a wife, -a thing which seemed incredible to him. But to leave America -permanently, to become a citizen of some other country, seemed more -impossible than divorce. It was simply an act so absurd as to be beyond -consideration. This was not patriotism, but a habit of mind. He was an -American, and it was a natural impossibility to become anything -else—that was it. - -“Then, if you married her, you would take her home?” - -“Let’s not talk about it,” he said, uncomfortably, for this opened up a -field of disagreeable apprehensions that he did not want to undertake. -“We’re talking too much about me. Let’s talk about something else.” - -“But I want to talk about you.... I’m afraid—afraid you’re getting into -an entanglement that will be—a bad thing for you.... If you do marry -this girl and take her home, what will your people say? How will your -friends receive her?... Because the story would leak out. It would be -sure to leak out. People know about you. Your chum knows, and others -know....” - -“Andree is good,” he said, “and it doesn’t make any difference what -people think.” - -“Not in Paris. But in America it would make a lot of difference.... She -would be whispered about and talked about—and people might—might refuse -to receive her.” - -He was angry now. “People are rotten and narrow. Andree is better than -all of them put together. What do I care for what they say or think?” - -“You would care a great deal—and so would she. She would soon find out -what people were thinking. Here she may be able to go along and believe -that she is not doing anything wrong. Mind, I don’t say she is bad. I’m -almost able to sympathize with her. If I weren’t your friend, if I -didn’t know you, and this were all happening to a stranger, I’m sure I -should be able to understand and not to blame her.... As it is, I’m -truly sorry for her.... But I do know you, and that makes it seem -different. Things are always different when they strike close to -home....” - -“I suppose so.” - -“Well, she would find herself in a different world, a world that lives -in a different way, and that world would make her feel as if she had -done wrong, and she would be very unhappy....” - -“I don’t believe it. Not if I were with her.” - -“But you—when you get home _you_ will think differently about this.... -You wouldn’t marry an American girl who had—done as Andree has done.... -Would you?” - -He thought briefly. “No,” he said, honestly. - -“So, if you married her, you would begin to think about that some -day.... You would.... And you would wonder what she had done before she -met you—if—if you had been the only man she ever loved. Don’t you -see?...” - -“I don’t see. I know her. You don’t know her at all. You don’t know how -sweet and gentle and decent she is. You don’t know how she thinks.... -She is wonderful....” He was loyal, at least, and she could not help -being glad of it. Loyalty was a quality she especially admired. - -“She may be all of that, Ken, but it wouldn’t matter. Other people -wouldn’t know it and wouldn’t believe it.... Your mother ...” - -His mother!... He knew what his mother would think and what his mother -would do. If he took Andree home his mother would be suspicious of her -because she was French. Then, if the story should leak out, or a hint of -it should be sent to do its slinking work, his mother would hate -Andree—no less. She would make it her business to eliminate Andree and -to render her life unendurable. - -With unconscious strategy he made a counterattack. “And you,” he said, -“would you marry a man who had—had that sort of an experience?” - -She looked up at him suddenly to determine if there were anything -personal in this question, but could not make up her mind. - -“I—I don’t know.... I—I’ve never imagined—” - -“Of course not.... But you might have to imagine it. Suppose you were in -love with a man—suppose you were in love with me”—she concealed a gasp -at his clumsiness—“would you marry me?” - -She tried to protect herself, and said, with a forced laugh, “Am I to -consider this as a proposal?” - -He disregarded her flippancy. “I suppose I shall marry some day, and if -it isn’t Andree—if it is some American girl like you—what will she -think? I want to know. You have asked me a lot of questions, and that -sort of gives me the right to ask you this one: Would you marry me?” - -“I can’t answer—now. I don’t know.... I don’t think so.... I should have -to think....” - -He regarded her. Mentally he paid her the compliment of thinking that -she was a splendid type. He could not help thinking that she was just -such a girl as he would like to marry and to live with always. She -exerted an attraction that drew him toward her strongly.... A wife! She -would be a splendid wife, a wife that his mother would receive joyfully, -about whom there could not be the slightest question.... He wondered if -she liked him at all—and that was a sign and a portent. Suddenly the -answer to her question became of large importance to him. He leaned over -the table and looked into her eyes—and saw her cheeks color under his -gaze. - -“I wish you would think,” he said, slowly, “and tell me what you think—” -Then he added something he had not at all intended to say: “And tell me -if it is possible for a man to love two girls at the same time....” - - - - - CHAPTER XX - - -Kendall Ware leaned out of a window of the apartment, looking down at -the avenue beneath. He had an unobstructed view of the sidewalk as far -as the corner. It was time for Andree to arrive, and he was watching for -her. Taxicabs rattled past, a huge _camion_ manufactured in America and -driven by an American rumbled along; a French officer, resplendent with -gold braid and medals and red trousers, walked by gaily, a beautiful -woman on each side; the _concierge_ was sweeping the sidewalk in front -of the entrance; a child or two in the inevitable black outer garment or -smock played near a bench ... and then came Andree. She was all in -white, as he loved to see her best. Perhaps it was because she had been -all in white when he saw her for the first time. She looked very tiny -from his place four stories above the street, and he watched her with -something of the tender amusement with which one watches a child when it -is unconscious of one’s presence. - -Andree approached in a determined, business-like manner. One could tell -at once that she had a destination in view. The quaint stiffness of her -gait was accentuated by the angle from which he looked at her, as was -her slenderness. He watched to see if she would turn her head or allow -her eyes to vary from that intent, straight-ahead gaze which seemed to -see nothing. They did not vary. She was prim. Prim was the word, he -thought.... The white tam was jaunty, but it did not give her an air of -jauntiness; instead of doing so it gave quite another impression—that of -inexperienced youth, youth untouched by the events of life, youth that -had yet to come to a knowledge that there was evil in the world. That -was a great deal for a tam-o’-shanter to tell, but somehow it managed to -tell it. Ken leaned farther out to watch her as she came directly -underneath, wondering if she would glance up at the windows. - -She did glance upward, suddenly, as if something had fallen at her feet -and startled her. She saw Ken, but she neither smiled nor waved, and -dropped her eyes again as quickly as she had raised them. But there was -about her then an air of relief, as if she had sighed audibly.... He was -there waiting for her eagerly; she had seen it, and her apprehensions, -if she had any, were quieted. - -Ken listened for her step upon the stairs, but heard no sound until the -door-bell rang with a sort of tentative, hesitating ring. It seemed as -if she could touch nothing without imparting some character, something -of her mood of the moment.... He opened the door and she raised her eyes -to his and looked into his face a moment, her face perfectly immobile. -She stood very straight and still, her arms stiffly at her sides. - -“My dear,” he said, and held out his arms to her. - -She smiled shyly, diffidently, as she allowed him to take her in his -arms and kiss her. She was not responsive, but seemed rather -speculative.... As if she were allowing this thing to happen to see if -it were really going to happen.... And then she returned his kiss -gravely, as much as to say: “Yes, this can really happen. It is so. I am -much relieved.” - -“You are _triste_,” he said, anxiously. - -“_Mais non.... Mais non...._” - -“Then smile.” - -“When I have climb’ many stairs I cannot smile.... But I am glad.... Who -is here?” - -“Nobody.” - -“Not Arlette?” - -“Oh yes, of course. But Bert won’t be home to dinner.” - -“It is well.... _Non, non_, you mus’ not take my _sac_. It is ver’ -valuable—yes. I mus’ watch it ver’ careful. It has my tickets of the -bread.” - -“I’ll hang it right here, and your jacket, or whatever you call it.... -What have you been doing?” - -“I have work _beaucoup_. Oh, it is ver’ tiresome to work! It is much -better jus’ to play all the days.... And you? Have you theenk of me?” - -“Yes.” - -“I do not believe—no, no, not once have you theenk of me. You are ver’ -wicked—_très-méchante_. I shall to weep.” - -“I think of you when I wake up, all the morning, at noon, all the -afternoon—” - -“_Non, non, non!..._” She was laughing now. “Maybe one leetle -theenk—only. But I—oh, I have theenk of you ver’ much. I have theenk you -are _pas fidèle_.” - -“I!... Not faithful!” - -“Yes.” She nodded her head decidedly. - -“Why do you say that? You know I am _fidèle_.” - -“I have see’ you.” - -“Seen me—where?” - -“Oh, you are ver’ wicked.... You deceive me mos’ cruel.” He could not -tell if she were serious or if she were teasing him. “Also I am mos’ -_jalouse_. It is thees yo’ng girl—thees yo’ng American girl. I have see’ -you with her las’ night.” - -“Oh yes. We had dinner together. She has just come back to Paris for a -day or two.” - -“Oh yes,” she mimicked. “I know thees leetle dinner. She tries to steal -you away from me.... You like her more than me. It is so. I see it.... I -shall take me a dagger and make her to die—so.” She laughed gaily. - -“You don’t really believe I’m unfaithful at all. You’re just making fun -of me.” - -“Did you bring her _here_?” - -“Eh?... What’s that? Here? Maude Knox here?” - -“And why not? Since you are not _fidèle_.” - -“But you don’t understand. Maude Knox is an American girl. She -wouldn’t—I couldn’t—” - -“Oh, it is so?... Then these American girls, they do not love. They are -stone or wood, is it so?... I do not onderstan’ these American girls.” -She was delightfully disgusted. “Sometime I shall cross the ocean to -observe these girls. It will be ver’ droll. America mus’ be a ver’ -droll, ver’ serious country—where the girls do not love.” - -“They do love. Of course they love.” - -“Well, then, Why do you make such astonishment when I speak that she -comes here?” - -He waggled his hand helplessly, and she, perceiving that she was teasing -him, put on greater pretense of seriousness. - -“Ah, I see,” she said. “The American girl she say, ‘I love,’ and then -she enter into the convent.... She goes in the _jardin_ and see the bud -about to blossom, and she cover it weeth a veil. Is it not? Oh, such -love as thees! It is the love of the ice for the snow.” - -“It’s different, Andree. I can’t explain it to you because I can’t -explain it to myself.” - -“_Pouf!_ Different! Do you theenk I cannot perceive it is different? Oh -yes, monsieur. I perceive ver’ clearly ... the difference between alive -and dead.” - -“You’re wrong. American girls can love—” - -“How do you know?” she interrupted, impishly. - -“—can love,” he persisted, “but all nice American girls marry—” - -“To be sure. Ah, marriage—that is ver’ well. There is nothing against -marriage. Not in the least. Many people marry, and it is ver’ well. Why -not?...” - -“I never can make you understand.” - -“Nevair.... I cannot to onderstan’ what is not natural. Do you -onderstan’ if you see the river ron up the hill? _Mais non._ To love is -to love; to marry is to marry. It is not the same theeng altogether....” - -“America is different.” - -“You have say that bifore.... It mus’ be the fault of the girls. -_Oui...._ So far as I observe the men they are willing enough.... -Perhaps they are so willing bicause at America they are always denied. -It is mos’ fortunate for them they come to Paris. Otherwise they would -die and not ever have been alive at all.” - -“You’re a dear child and I love you and I almost understand what you’re -talking about. But you could never understand America—and sometimes I’m -glad of it.... And America never will be able to understand you.” - -“What would Americans theenk of me if I come to New York?” - -“They would think you were very lovely.” - -“I do not mean _that_. I am not lovely. I am ver’ hideous. See, I cover -my face bicause you are afraid.” - -“Let’s not bother about America—just about us.” - -“But I am _jalouse_. I hate thees American yo’ng girl.” - -“Fiddlesticks!” - -“For all you say, I theenk she come here las’ night.” - -“Now, look here—” - -She laughed gaily and ran to the window. “See, I shall jump down and -die.... _Bon soir_, Arlette....” - -“_Bon soir, mademoiselle. Dîner est servi._” - -“It is well.... How does your little granddaughter carry herself?” - -“Very well, mademoiselle. Even now she is in the kitchen and very -impatient to visit you and Monsieur Ken.” - -“She must dine weeth us, mus’ she not, _cher ami_?” - -“Of course. Set a place for her, Arlette. And tell her we shall have -some American cakes that I got at the commissary store.” - -Arlette beamed with pride and satisfaction and padded about, setting a -third place at the table, waggling her head and whispering to herself as -she went. Ken and Andree seated themselves, and then Arlette appeared in -the door with little Arlette concealed among her skirts. The tiny head, -with its birdlike features, peeped out at them timorously. - -“Enter, mademoiselle,” said Andree. “See, she has eyes only for Monsieur -Ken, is it not? She is my rival.... I shall not dine weeth her. She is -ver’ bad and wicked.” - -Arlette pushed her granddaughter ahead of her, muttering to her in -French. - -“_Bon soir, monsieur. Bon soir, mademoiselle_,” she said in a tiny -voice. - -“Arlette!” prompted her grandmother, and set her head on one side and -made her eyes very large and round while she awaited the result of her -prompting. Little Arlette looked at her grandmother, then at Ken and -Andree in turn, and said, with the most comical manner of pride in -achievement, “Goo’-by, gent’men.” - -“Oh,” exclaimed Andree, “she has learned English to make me sad! With -these accomplishments she will make short work of me.” - -Ken lifted the child into her place and tilted her delicate, fragile, -fairy face upward. “You shall give me a kiss and make her very jealous,” -he said, whereupon she kissed him, keeping one eye on Andree to observe -results, and was much gratified to see her rival cover her face with her -hands to hide her grief. - -“I go to America with him,” she said to Andree. “I do not know if it is -America of the North or America of the South. It does not matter. I am -to be his wife.” - -“Ah, already you are American,” said Andree, slyly. “You theenk only of -marry.” - -“And we shall live in a toy-shop and eat nothing but candy,” said Ken. - -“Americans are very rich,” observed little Arlette. “My grandmother has -told it to me—and that I must teach my husband that it is wicked to be -careless with one’s money.... We shall not dine upon pullet.” - -“You see what it is to marry,” said Andree. “Already you are denied what -you desire.... I theenk mademoiselle makes a marriage of money.” - -“It is not a marriage of money, is it, _mignonne_? No. It is for true -love you marry me, is it not?” - -“Oh yes, yes! I love monsieur very much.” - -“But what is to become of me? I, too, love monsieur ver’ much,” said -Andree. - -Arlette observed her gravely and pondered. “You, too, shall be his wife, -mademoiselle,” she said. - -“Ah ... it seems I was wrong. After all, little Arlette is not wholly -American.” - -The dinner was finished and Ken carried little Arlette into the _salon_ -on his shoulder. She cuddled between him and Andree on the sofa, -insisted upon holding his hand, and looked at Andree with calculating -eye. - -“Have you no new _chansons, petite_?” asked Ken. - -“_Oui, monsieur._” And she stood up with a most serious air, taking her -position just so and smoothing down her skirts. Then she tilted up her -little chin and, with her eyes fixed gravely on Ken’s face, she sang a -song of many verses while her grandmother stood in the door and bobbed -and grinned and made signs of a great satisfaction.... It was not like a -child singing, Ken thought, but like some playfellow of elves and -fairies. There were about her a daintiness, an ethereal quality, a -purity which was something more than merely human and of the flesh.... -He wondered what life held for her; wondered if Andree might not have -been just such a child with just such characteristics as she. He thought -it possible ... for Andree retained some of those characteristics even -now. - -He lifted the child in his arms and kissed her, and Arlette took her -away. - -“You must come often,” Ken said, “because we are to be married.” - -“Yes, monsieur. That is understood.... It was America of the North, was -it not?” - -“It was.” - -“I shall remember.... _Bon soir, monsieur. Bon soir, mademoiselle._” And -she was gone. - -“I have many rivals,” said Andree. “It is not well.” - -“There is only one _you, mignonne_.” - -“But yes, there is only one _me_, but there are many others. Little -Arlette, thees yo’ng American girl.... I wish to know thees yo’ng -American girl. I will meet her.” She nodded her head several times. “You -will have her come here or we shall dine together.” - -“Nothing doing!” - -“Oh, what is thees you say? I do not onderstan’. Give me the -_dictionnaire_.” - -“The dictionary won’t help. I mean I won’t do it.” - -“_Pourquoi?_” - -“There you are again. _Pourquoi.... Toujours pourquoi._” - -“It is well to ask why many times. If one does not ask why, then many -unpleasant theengs may happen. If one asks why—then one knows and can -weigh the results. _N’est-ce pas?_ I like to know where I am marching.” - -“I don’t want you to meet Miss Knox, because you would not understand -each other at all.” - -“I theenk we would. But I shall meet her jus’ the same. ... She is the -kind of girl Americans marry. I wish to study why.” - -“She would be studying you, too.” - -She shrugged her shoulders. “Of course. One woman always studies -another. It is natural.... I do not know why, unless it is to determine -if the woman can take one’s lover away, or if one can take the woman’s -lover away from her.... I theenk that is it.” - -“But suppose you didn’t want the woman’s lover?” - -“That is of no importance. It is still ver’ well to be able to say to -oneself that it would be possible to take that woman’s lover if it was -desired.” - -“1 don’t like to hear you talk like that!” - -“_Pourquoi?_” Andree’s eyes were big with surprise. - -“It doesn’t sound nice.... It sounds—oh, it doesn’t sound like _you_.” - -She put her cheek against his. “Then I will not say it if you do not -like.... I do not want any other man. I want only you.... Do you love -me?” - -“Yes.” - -“No, I do not believe. You love this yo’ng American girl because she -theenks only of marry.... You will marry thees yo’ng girl.” - -“I’m not going to marry anybody.” - -“Americans always do. It is the law of the country. You have said it.” - -“You know I love you.” - -“I am afraid bicause of thees yo’ng girl.” - -“Nonsense. I can’t marry anybody, Andree. All I have in the world is my -captain’s pay. Nobody can tell how long the war will last, nor how long -I will be held in the service after it is over—and when I am discharged -... well, what then? I don’t know. There’s nothing to look forward to -but war ... just this and nothing else.” - -She stroked his hand reflectively. “It is well,” she said, after a -moment. “While there is war you shall be here. We shall theenk of -nothing else.... _Après la guerre_”—she made a little gesture with both -hands—“then we shall see.... I theenk you will be _fidèle_ w’ile it is -that you remain in France. I am satisfy—for now.” - -“You don’t believe I love you.” - -She mused, and then with that characteristic gesture of poking downward -with her index finger she said: “I theenk many things. I theenk that I -know jus’ one kind of love, and it ees _love_, it ees for all time and -for all thing’. It ees for marry or for not marry. But I theenk you have -two kinds of love—_oui_. Perhaps it ees _américain_—the custom of the -country. One love for pleasure and—how do you say?—one love for -business.... Listen, my friend. Do the pleasure love and the business -love never come at the same time and for the same yo’ng girl? Eh?” - -“I have never loved anybody but you.” He paused. “You know all about -such things, _mignonne_. Is it possible for a woman to love two men at -the same time—or for a man to love two women at the same time?” - -She laughed. “It ees the las’ half of the question you wish for to have -answer.... I theenk it ees different weeth man and woman. The woman she -love only one. She give all.... The man—maybe. It ees ver’ difficult. -But I theenk if there ees one large love that it ees all.... And I -theenk, Monsieur Ken, that one day you go away and leave me _solitaire_. -Oh, I shall to weep.” She clenched her fists and dug them into her eyes, -and then laughed up at him. “See, I am ver’ _triste_.... You mus’ make -me to be joyous.” - -She was right, he thought. There could be but one love, one great love. -How could he think otherwise, for was she not there, close beside him, -her breath upon his cheek, her wonderful eyes turning up to his face -every now and then with that inquiring, wondering, speculating glance -that spoke to his heart? ... One love, marvelous, sweet, _good_. He -could even pause to assert its virtue.... Maude Knox became very dim, -intangible. Andree was here, present, living—in all the mystery of her -and all the foreign allurement.... This was love. This was an amazing -sweetness without which his life would be immeasurably the poorer. It -was a permanent thing—could not be uprooted at a moment’s notice. He -knew that it had altered, was altering, his whole life, and he was glad. -Whatever might come of it, he was glad.... Something had been given to -him which would remain a miraculous possession so long as light entered -his eyes or reason blossomed in his soul.... - -“Andree,” he said, tremulously. “Andree....” - -She sighed with content. “I am ver’ happy,” she replied. “Ever’thing is -ver’ well....” - - - - - CHAPTER XXI - - -Paris awoke to the 14th of July—Bastille Day—without knowing that, as it -had marked the beginning of the end of the _ancien régime_, it was now -to mark the last hour of the peril of France. It was fitting that this -great national fête should bring to an end the days when the _boche_ was -to be feared, and that to-morrow was to see the beginning of the end. -But Paris did not know. The air was heavy with portent; events -impended.... There was present in every heart the apprehension that the -unthinkable might happen, and that their beloved city might, within a -period of days, fall into the hands of the enemy.... Bastille Day was -the last day of the reign of fear.... The event was still on the knees -of the gods; Paris could not read the future, but it could make holiday -with destruction at its door. The heart of Paris was steadfast.... Its -fortitude was on the eve of its reward. - -Paris did not know that to-morrow the boche would lunge at its throat, -throwing a weight into the thrust that it had never been able to throw -before; nor did Paris know that its armies and its allies would receive -that thrust without faltering, and would hurl upon it such rain of fire -and steel as would crush it to the ground futile and staggering.... -Paris did not know, nor did the brain of any human being know, that but -three days must pass before that man of infinite patience and courage -who was generalissimo of the forces which barred the path of the Hun -would make his first mighty stride toward victory, a stride which should -become a steady march, never flagging, never stopping, until his armies -should have won the precious right to march with heads erect under that -great pile which dominates their city—the Arc de Triomphe. - -It was such events which impended on this 14th of July.... - -Kendall Ware and Andree had chosen the Place des Ternes as the most -advantageous point from which to see the parade, and though it was -raining a trifle when they started out, with skies which promised a -drizzly day, they were not to be deterred. The little concrete oval -which is the meeting-place of the Boulevard de Courcelles, the Avenue de -Wagram, the Avenue des Ternes, and the rue du Faubourg St.-Honoré was -already crowded. People splashed about in its shallow puddles and -jostled one another between its flower-booths, which were doing a -thriving business. The parade was already passing with martial music and -amid much clapping of hands, but less shouting than would have obtained -in an American city. - -Ken edged Andree as near to the street as he could. For him it was easy -to look over the heads of the people and to see the marching soldiers, -but little Andree might as well have been at home across the river. She -could see nothing, and there was no box nor chair to be had. - -“Shall I lift you up?” he asked. - -“_Mais non._ You cannot. I am of such a largeness!... But I shall see.” - -“I’ll sit you on my shoulder and tell folks you are my granddaughter,” -he said. - -“_Regardez!_” She took a small rectangular mirror from her _sac_ and -held it before his eyes. Then she turned her back on the parade and, -holding the mirror at an angle above her head, looked into it with -quaint intentness. - -“Oh, I see!” she exclaimed. “Behol’, the parade it marches in the -glass.” - -Ken laughed, but he was a trifle annoyed and embarrassed. Andree -herself, he thought, was so natural, so herself, that she would have not -the least thought in the world of making herself ridiculous or -conspicuous, but this absurd makeshift of hers would certainly attract -the attention of the crowd—and nobody knew what a Parisian crowd might -do. He hesitated, looked about him uncomfortably, and decided to hold -his peace. It was well, for within a radius of thirty feet a dozen men -and women were doing exactly as Andree did. They had come prepared. Each -of them stood facing away from the procession, a mirror held above the -heads of the crowd, and it was with difficulty Kendall restrained his -laughter. Their expressions were all so eager, so interested. It was -absurd. With all that was going on behind them, they peered as if -bewitched into rectangles of glass, and shouted, or lowered their -mirrors to clap their hands just as if they were seeing living soldiers -instead of tiny reflections.... - -The crowd interested him more than the marching men. There was a -good-natured simplicity, a lack of reserve, a childishness about them, -yet there were a bigness, a pathos, and a grandeur in their bearing.... -Boys and young men mounted into trees; couples carrying bouquets -scurried up and down the line, seeking a point where they might -penetrate to the street; here was a woman weeping and smiling at once. -She was in black.... And everywhere flowers! Now and then a girl would -run out from the curb to hand a blossom to some _poilu_ or Italian or -Englishman or Portuguese.... Every French soldier marched with a smile -and with a posy nodding from the muzzle of his gun. The street was thick -with flowers and the air rained flowers. - -The Americans passed. In their guns were no blossoms, on their tunics -were no bouquets. They marched very stiffly, erect, business-like, with -eyes to the front. The French had shuffled by jovially with nods and -smiles. One could tell they had seen the war and were marching men, but -there was no stiffness, no rigidity. They were like the defense of their -great general—elastic. The Italians grinned cheerfully; so did the -Portuguese; even the English were somewhat relaxed—but all these had -known four years of war.... The Americans, marching like one man, like a -splendid machine, seemed, somehow, sterner, of more warlike stuff. They -struck the eye and won the applause of the multitude.... But they were -of no sterner stuff, nor would they have asserted themselves to be -better fighting-men than the sturdy _poilus_ or the wiry Tommies.... -They were younger—that was what impressed one. Their youth cried -aloud.... Amid those soldiers of France and England and Italy and -Belgium they looked like boys—and yet their age might not have been -greater than these others—for the others had seen four years of war.... -But they were splendid, these young men from another world, and the -heart of Paris went out to them.... - -A hand touched Kendall’s arm and he turned. - -“Why, Maude!” he exclaimed, and shot a startled glance toward Andree. - -She had not seen, but was peering into her mirror. - -“How glad you are to see me!” She laughed. “Really, I’ve nothing -catching. What’s the matter?...” She glanced about and saw Andree. “Oh!” -she said. “I’m glad. I wanted to know her.” - -“I told you—” he began; but it was Andree who interrupted. - -“_Bon jour_, Mademoiselle Knox,” she said, gravely. “We have met one -little time.” - -“Yes, indeed, and I have wanted so much to meet you again. I have told -Mr. Ware....” - -“And I, too, have wanted to know you. I have said it to him, yes, many -times. I have said that I shall to know thees Miss Maude Knox—but”—she -shrugged her shoulders—“_les Américains_ are droll.... He would not.” - -“He can’t help himself now, can he? Now that we know we want to be -acquainted with each other, there’s nothing he can do about it.” - -“Oh, I do not onderstan’. You speak _trop vite, mademoiselle_. My -English it is of the worst.” - -“And my French is non-existent. But that doesn’t matter in the least, -does it? We shall get on.” - -For those girls there was now something of much greater importance than -the parade, and they promptly forgot it. Maude moved over to Andree’s -side and they began the sort of conversation that women use when they -are appraising each other with serious intention. Ken listened uneasily. -There was nothing he could do. This thing that he had desired not to -happen _had_ happened, and that was all there was to it. He pretended to -watch the parade, but his mind was concentrated on what the girls were -saying. The girls appeared to have forgotten him as well as the marching -men. - -Ken was acutely apprehensive, but of what he was apprehensive he did not -know. The thought that Andree and Maude were together, chatting, -becoming acquainted, seemed to him very threatening. He had been in a -holiday humor, but that humor was gone. He frowned and was conscious of -both irritation and depression. It was not right for them to meet. -Something was sure to come of it. - -It was not at all that he felt that Andree was not a fit companion for -Maude Knox. That was not it. He was not ashamed of Andree, and, -strangely enough, when one considers his temperament and the hereditary -impulses which stirred within him, he was not ashamed of his relations -with her. It was an intangible apprehension, a feeling that one woman -whom he knew he loved and another woman with whom he might be in love -could not meet without unpleasant results to him. - -There was curiosity, too, which grew stronger. More than once he had -compared Andree with Maude Knox when neither was present, but now they -were together, at his side, under his eyes.... He edged away a trifle -with elaborate unconsciousness, and presently reached a point from which -he could study the girls with covert glances. - -It was not so much their appearances that he compared as it was their -_selves_ as he knew them, and as they were indicated by what met the -eye. He was trying to arrive at a knowledge of what each girl meant in -his life, what she could contribute to his life. Perhaps this was wholly -selfish, but choice must ever be selfish. It is after choice is made -that one may be generous and self-denying. - -The contrast between Andree and Maude was so extreme that they seemed to -have nothing in common but their sex, and as Ken considered he saw they -had not even this in common. At least their conception of it and of its -duties and possibilities and obligations and uses were as different as -the color of their eyes or the expressions of their faces. One could not -see Andree without being conscious that she was a woman, of the -femininity of her, and that the chief business of her life was to be the -complement of some man. The first emotion that Andree excited was -tenderness.... As one looked at Maude Knox his first thought was -comradeship, followed by a mental note that she would be reliable, -capable of taking care of herself. Maude was not beautiful, but she was -pretty, with a clean-cut, boyish prettiness that spoke of health of mind -and of body. She was not the sort a man would fall in love with at first -sight, but rather one who would first be admired and then loved.... -Andree would be loved first, then admired as the sweetness of herself -unfolded under the urging of love. Andree was fragile. Ken looked at her -lips, perfectly drawn, delicate, sensitive—her most eloquent feature. -They were lips to kiss, lips to give kisses. There, perhaps, stood the -chief difference between these girls and their attitude toward life: -that Andree would give, give, give—asked no other happiness but to give -of herself and her sweetness and her tenderness and her love—while Maude -would demand an exchange. She, too, could love, but always there would -be inhibitions and reservations. She would take thought of practical -matters, be efficient in love and marriage. Not that she would be -selfish, Ken felt sure, but that she would see to it her relations with -the man she loved would be well organized and stabilized. She would be a -wife and a comrade to the man she married, and perhaps a dominant force; -Andree would be wife and sweetheart, with no thought of dominating, but -only of giving, of adding to the happiness of the man she loved. - -If love were cruel to Andree, and the man she worshiped unkind, she -would fade silently, withdraw into herself, and suffer; Maude would have -suffered, but she would have faced the matter and held her own. It would -be possible for Maude to go through life alone; that Andree should do so -was utterly unthinkable. This was, perhaps, because Andree thought of -herself only as a woman, and as a woman whose life must be bound up with -the life of some man. Maude Knox thought of herself as an individual, a -distinct entity with rights and purposes which must not be invaded or -interfered with. - -A man might expect help, encouragement, even dynamic career from Maude -Knox. He might expect a wonderful fidelity from her. She would take an -interest in his life and would want to have a finger in the shaping of -his destiny. Andree would play her part in his life less obtrusively, -but perhaps as powerfully by keeping alive his love and by lavishing her -love upon him. She would ask nothing, demand nothing except a -continuance of love and a lavishment of tenderness. So long as love -endured she would follow him to the highest success without taking any -great thought of that success, or she would have descended with him to -the depths of failure without bewailing that failure—for success to her -meant but one thing, and that thing was love. - -Maude was the ideal wife in a partnership of man and wife as Americans -have come to look upon that relation. The vestibule of the Presbyterian -church would receive Maude with fulsome compliments and would -congratulate Ken upon making a wise selection. Everybody would say that -he had won a splendid wife ... and it would be true. She was a typical -American wife—that is to say, she embodied those things which Americans -have set as their ideals of wifehood.... He wondered what the vestibule -would say of Andree, even granting that Andree’s conception of virtue -were the American conception. He could not imagine, though he could well -imagine the stir she would create. She would be too beautiful—so -beautiful as to excite righteous suspicion. She would be beautiful in a -foreign sort of way, and therefore a sinful sort of way. The vestibule -would never forgive her because she had lived in Paris and because she -did not pronounce English as well as it did—through its nose. They would -never be able to see into her heart nor to understand the marvel of her -goodness.... She was as far outside their experience as she was actually -outside Ken’s experience, who studied her hourly, but never understood -her and never would understand her.... She would always be a mystery and -an anomaly to him. She would always be to him a creature who was guilty -according to his inherited conscience and yet escaped the accusation or -the stain of guilt. She was bad, yet she was wholly good. - -He said this to himself, and then hotly denied it. She was not bad. In -his heart he knew she was not bad, and he knew as well that he had never -approached a soul which was as clean, as unselfish, as purely tender as -hers.... Maude Knox was good, too, capable of unselfishness and fine -tenderness. But she could never accomplish what Andree had accomplished. -She could never do as Andree did and retain her purity.... He did not -realize that this was because Maude herself would have believed herself -to have lost her purity. - -For Kendall the matter marched back to the attitude he had absorbed from -his mother—that relations between the sexes were wicked in themselves -and could never be anything else, but that by some miraculous quality -belonging to a formula pronounced by a parson it became permissible for -designated couples to practise wickedness without fear of punishment. -The wickedness remained, but the formula remitted the punishment. That -was his mother’s belief.... She had been bitterly ashamed when Kendall -became evident, because he was testimony to the world that she had been -guilty.... - -Ken realized that he was getting himself into a state of mind, that he -was reviving those disturbing thoughts which had such power to make him -miserable ... and he had been very happy with Andree. He had loved his -happiness, and now he wanted it to persist. It had been something new in -his life, very precious, very wonderful ... and he was not willing that -it should be dimmed. - -He stepped behind the girls and spoke. - -Andree turned and smiled. “You shall go away,” she said. “We do not need -you. You shall watch the parade while Miss Knox and myself make thees -ver’ interesting talk. Yes?” - -“What are you and Miss Knox talking about?” - -“What should we be talking about?” asked Maude. “About ourselves, of -course.” - -“It is ver’ nice subjec’,” said Andree, with an impish twinkle. - -“Let me come in. Talk about me, and I’ll listen.” - -“_Pouf!..._ You! If we talk about you, then you are ver’ angry.” - -“Why?” - -“Bicause we shall say the truth, and men want only to be praised. -_N’est-ce pas?..._ Oh, all men are greedy for praise. _Oh, là là là -là._” - -“There, Captain Ware. Will you behave now?” - -Ken laughed. “Andree is always very disagreeable. I don’t see how I -endure her.” - -She nodded. “Yes. I am mos’ disagree-able.” She accented the last -syllable quaintly. “It is bicause I do not like you.” - -“Mademoiselle is very much interested in America,” said Maude. - -“And _Monsieur le capitaine_ he tell me so ver’ leetle.” - -“America is a large country. It has a hundred million of population. The -Woolworth Building is sixty stories high. Everybody owns an automobile -and goes to the movies. Baseball is the national game....” - -“And ever’ man ees marry and ees faithful to his wife,” interrupted -Andree, “and all are ver’ _sérieux_ and mos’ religious, and they are -asham’ when they love. I know! I have study monsieur.” She laughed with -childish gaiety. “Oh, mademoiselle, it mus’ be ver’ droll.... Regard -them—they are born, these Americans, they become ver’ rich, they marry, -they die—but they never live. It is that I believe they are afraid to -live....” - -“Yes, mademoiselle,” said Maude, “you have hit on something there. We -are afraid to live, all of us. We want to live. We want a great -happiness, but we are afraid of it. You can’t understand us better than -we can understand you.... You have learned to live and be unafraid. We -have not learned to get the best out of life, and our greatest terror is -of our neighbors’ tongues.... It has been wonderful for me to come to -your country and to see....” - -“And has mademoiselle really seen?” asked Andree, her eyes on Maude’s -face. - -Maude hesitated. “I have tried to see, and I think I have understood a -little. I have changed. I am not the same.... No, I am not the same girl -at all who landed in France a few months ago.” - -“May one ask what mademoiselle have see’?” - -Maude answered, speaking slowly and feeling her way: “When I left -America I thought I was broad-minded and tolerant. My father had brought -me up to be less narrow-minded than most girls.... He is a professor of -philosophy. But I have found out that I was very narrow-minded indeed. I -could see only one side, and that was the viewpoint of those among whom -I was brought up. The thing I have come to see is that my home town was -right in setting up its own standards and in maintaining them—because -those standards were best for my home town.... But I have found out that -other towns and countries have an equal right to set up their own -standards and arrange their own modes of living. I think I can believe -now that a thing which is very wrong in Terre Haute, Indiana, may be -right in Paris or London or Rome, and that a thing which may be right in -Terre Haute may be wrong in Venice.” - -“I onderstan’,” said Andree, gravely. “The theeng you mean to say is -thees, is it not? That an act it become’ wrong when we theenk it is -wrong? But if one city theenk it is right, then it is right for that -city? _N’est-ce pas?_” - -“Yes, something very like that.” - -“Is that an answer to the question I asked you at dinner a few days -ago?” Ken asked. - -Andree looked at him quickly. - -Maude paused a moment before she replied; then she shook her head. “No,” -she said, “that is more complex.... If you were a Parisian I think I -could answer, yes, without hesitation. But you are an American, who, -possibly, should cling to American standards, no matter where you find -yourself.... It is different.... No, I don’t know what the answer -is—yet.” - -“And thees question?” asked Andree, directly. - -It was something like this that Kendall had feared from a meeting -between Andree and Maude, that some subject such as this would spring -up, that he would be subjected to embarrassment and discomfort. He was -embarrassed now because he fancied Maude would be embarrassed and -because he feared Andree, in her child-like frankness, might say -something which would shock Maude’s American prudery. He did not make -use of the word _prudery_, but the state of mind for which it stood was -in his thoughts. He flushed and was about to attempt some stammered -diversion, but Maude answered, perfectly calm and without hesitation. - -“Captain Ware asked me if I would ever marry a man who had had an affair -with another girl.” - -“Ah....” said Andree. Then: “And why not, mademoiselle? What has that to -do weeth the marriage? It was a silly question, was it not?” - -Ken regarded her anxiously, but she gave no sign that she had attached -any significance to his question other than a faint note in the -long-drawn “Ah....” with which she had heard it stated. - -“Yes, it was a ver’ silly question,” Andree repeated, “for if it ees not -then there shall nevair be any marriages at all.” - -“I don’t know....” said Maude. - -“Perhaps it ees bicause mademoiselle ees ver’ yo’ng and does not know -the worl’,” said Andree, with an air of age and wisdom. - -“No. It is something in myself. I resent the idea.” - -“Then there is but one hope for mademoiselle.... She mus’ marry the -monk.” - -“Now, listen here,” said Ken, bruskly. “This—this—Oh, darn it all, let’s -talk about something else.” - -Andree laughed gaily and pointed a finger of ridicule at him. “Oh, see! -We have frighten’ him.... He is ver’ droll. Sometime’ he is same theeng -as yo’ng girl jus’ from the convent.... But he is ver’ good, -mademoiselle,” she said, suddenly and seriously. “He is mos’ good and -gentle and kind, and I love him ver’ much.” - -Maude touched Andree’s hand, and her eyes were not guiltless of -moisture. “I am sure you do, dear,” she said, “and he must love you very -dearly, too.” - -Ken felt that the situation demanded something of him; that if he did -not prove himself adequate to the demand he would sink in his own -estimation and take a lower place in the regard of both the girls. It -was awkward. No situation could be more awkward, but a thing was -required of him if he desired to be true to himself and worthy of the -love that Andree had given him. - -“By God! I do!” he said, desperately, and had his reward in the depths -of the smile which came into Andree’s eyes.... - -There threatened to come an uncomfortable pause, but Andree averted it. - -“Monsieur Ken and I go soon for the _déjeuner_. Mademoiselle, of course, -comes also.” - -“I wish I might,” said Maude, her voice a trifle dulled and her eyes not -altogether happy. “But I promised to help out in the club on the Avenue -Montaigne.... And I must be going.” She looked at her wrist watch. -“Indeed I must. I can cross the street now.... Good-by, Captain Ware. -Good-by, mademoiselle.” - -“_Au revoir_,” said Andree, holding out her hand. “We mus’ meet again. -There are many theengs we mus’ speak of.” - -Maude looked down into Andree’s dark-shadowed black eyes and smiled. -“Yes,” she said, “we must speak of many things....” - - - - - CHAPTER XXII - - -In the morning Paris stopped in groups to whisper and to point off to -the northeastward. Paris was apprehensive. It had been awakened before -dawn by the distant rumble of cannon, such a rumble as had never before -come to its ears, and it wanted to know the reason for it. The guns had -never sounded so loudly. Was it that the _boches_ had made a fresh -advance and were by that much nearer to the defenses of the city? Or had -it been some huge air raid turned abortive before it reached its -objective?... It was the 15th of July. - -Slowly, by devious channels, the news spread. The enemy had struck -again, had launched such a blow as warfare had not seen up to this -period.... And Paris waited for the outcome. Then dull explosions were -heard in various parts of the city at regular intervals.... Big Bertha -was at her work again; the long-range cannon was once more bombarding -Paris. As in the days past, one might see wagons loaded high with trunks -and personal belongings moving toward a gate of the city or toward a -railway station as the more apprehensive abandoned their homes for -places of greater security. These were days when it was impossible to -find tenants for the top floors of apartment-houses. There was a feeling -that one was safer from Bertha and the bomb with at least one _étage_ -between him and the roof.... - -Papers were eagerly snatched from kiosks and from news-venders, who ran -through the crowds with such speed that it was almost impossible to buy -their wares—but the news was scanty. At least the guns were not heard -again. After that first tremendous artillery preparation there was no -sound from the direction of Château-Thierry and Reims. The silence, the -pall which the censorship threw over events, was portentous, -threatening. People recalled the inexorability of the last two German -attacks. If this one proceeded as its predecessors had done, Paris would -be made untenable. There would be a siege.... There was talk of complete -evacuation. - -Then tidings of a more encouraging nature filtered in. The _boches_ had -advanced a little here and there, had been checked at this and that -point. There had been no breaking through, no headlong rush upon Paris, -no marching down roads in columns of four with guns over shoulders. - -On the 16th the apprehension was less, but the tension was still -present. The 17th saw Paris again almost at the normal of war-times. It -was reassured. It was rumored that Foch had given his word that Paris -was safe. The magic of one man’s name was potent to reassure the -millions of citizens of the metropolis. If Foch said Paris was safe, -then Paris was safe. - -Then came the 18th, which dawned as other days dawn, with the same sun -rising in the east, with the same blue skies above, and the same breezes -moving over the surface of the same earth. But it was a day not like -other days. History may well set it down as the Day of Days, for it -marked the beginning of the end, the first note of the finale of the -crashing, discordant Germanic opera.... The Allies had counterattacked, -and fear was dead. That was the significant thing. The 18th of July, -A.D., 1918, marked the death of fear in the heart of Paris. From that -date onward there would be no news but good news. Terror of the Hun had -become a thing which one remembered but would no more experience. - -The Élysées Palace Hôtel knew by night that our First and Second -divisions had struck at the base of the German salient about Reims and -that our Twenty-sixth Division had battered the apex before -Château-Thierry—and at last the American Expeditionary Force was in the -war. The Americans had come! The Americans were ready! The Americans had -started! Number 10 rue Ste.-Anne knew these things, as did the American -censorship high up in the Bourse. It was a day of exultation for -Americans in Paris.... - -In spite of censorships, in spite of military secrecy, in spite of -minute precautions, rumors circulate through armies which have an -undeniable basis of fact. On the 4th of July Kendall heard the soldiers -of the First Division stating confidently that they would march through -Paris streets on Bastille Day. No one had told them. Nobody knew how the -rumor earned its life, but it was there, and the event proved its -reliability. So an army rumor receives a degree of belief which does not -seem to be warranted. Rumors were a plentiful harvest now; big rumors -and little rumors ... and among them, circulating through the officers -of the Intelligence Department in Paris, was the whisper that some -officer or officers were to be sent back to America either on a mission -or to undertake permanent work. - -Ken heard this prophecy early in the morning, and it troubled him. He -had no cause for imagining that he would be selected, yet he might be -selected. The chances were, perhaps, minute, but, nevertheless, they -were present, and it was far from his desire to be returned to America -to run down German sympathizers in Hoboken or to take a desk in some -crowded bureau in Washington. While he was in France there always was -the hope that he might be transferred to active duty with some regiment -at the front. Like all men in the American Expeditionary Force, he -wanted to serve at the front, and he did not want to return to -America—at least until the work was done. Man after man Kendall had -heard to speak longingly of America, but to couple with his homesickness -the quick statement that he did not want to return until the job was -done. It was a sort of religion—the cleaning up of that job. Somehow -each man seemed to feel that the success of the army depended on his -presence, and that to be sent home before victory arrived would be to -deprive him of something precious which he had earned.... It was so with -Ken. - -But he had a stronger motive than most for wishing to stay in France. It -was Andree.... - -Suddenly and very poignantly he realized what it would mean if he were -compelled to part from Andree. It seemed to him that she had become a -part of him, an essential part without which he could not continue. She -had brought an essence into his life which was sweet and desirable and -wonderful. He knew that no other woman could bring to him what Andree -had brought so unconsciously, yet so generously.... She was Andree!... -Andree! The world could show but one. - -What was to be the outcome? It was a question he had evaded time and -again, well knowing that it must some day be faced. He did not face it -now, though it urged itself upon his attention. He did not believe the -world had seen a more precious thing than their love—and yet, because of -his training and the imprint of heredity, that love was questionable, -tainted with irregularity. It was good, sweet, pure, but it was -irregular as the Middle West and Plymouth Rock perceived irregularity. - -He had never known Andree to utter an immodest word or to think a -thought that was not clean and good. He had wondered at a certain -diffident loftiness in her thoughts. She was a woman whose soul was to -be regarded with awe, as any virtuous soul is to be regarded with awe. -He did not believe he saw her falsely, nor that love blinded him to -defects which should be apparent. He knew he saw her truly, and that she -was worthy of all his love.... And yet his friends, his neighbors—above -all, his mother—would despise her as a woman of light virtue, as a thing -of evil.... He could see the seething among the gossips if Andree were -to be set down in their midst, and he despised them.... But— - -Again he evaded. He had not the courage to ask himself what he would do -when the moment for doing arrived.... He could not give her up. That was -the thought that came now—that she was indispensable.... But would he -have the courage to face the vestibule of the Presbyterian church with -her? He did not ask. - -One of those moods of depression to which he was liable when his -reflections were troubled settled upon him. He was acutely unhappy. -Those moods possessed a physical sensation, not a pain so much as a -consciousness of the existence of his body, which was very disturbing. -It was as if his arms and legs had suddenly become vivid. At such times -he did not want companionship, could not have answered conversational -advances. The life within him seemed to become as putty—a dead mass. The -only relief was to walk and walk and walk. - -He left the office to trudge to the apartment, meaning to eat lightly -and to wander about Paris until the obsession was ejected.... At the -entrance to the building the concierge was standing, waiting for him. - -“Oh, monsieur ... monsieur,” she said, and broke forth into weeping. - -He was not surprised. Such scenes were to be expected in those days when -every mail brought word that some loved one had been demanded of his -country. He patted her shoulder awkwardly. - -“You have had evil news, madame,” he said. “I am so sorry.” - -Through her tears rage flared. “The _boches_,” she exclaimed. “Why is it -that the good God allows such creatures to be!... What good can it do -them? But they would laugh and be joyous. It is so. I have read.... -These killers of babies!” - -“What is it, madame? Your son? Have you had the news?” - -“My son, monsieur, is gone these two years,” she said, not without a -lift of the shoulders. “It would not be that. When one is a soldier one -must march.... To kill the men—that is war. But the babies—the helpless -little babies!... They are not men, monsieur, but monsters....” - -“Yes.... Yes,” he answered, not knowing what to say. - -“And monsieur loved her, did he not? It was Arlette who declared it to -be so. Always she spoke of the fondness of monsieur for the _petite -fille_—the tiny Arlette.” - -“Little Arlette! What do you mean, madame? What has happened to little -Arlette?” - -“_La longue portée, monsieur._ Again it began to fire this day. It is -that you have heard its explosions.... This Big Bertha of the boche that -murders babies!... _La pauvre enfant!_ She is playing in the street -before her home. Out of the sky comes the shell of this so wicked -cannon. There is a noise of great frightfulness.” She covered her eyes. -“When the smoke makes to lift itself and one can see—there lies little -Arlette....” - -“Killed!” Kendall felt something that was rage and grief clutch his -throat. “Have they killed that child?” - -“She still lives, monsieur, and asks for you. It is so.... But she will -die. It is dreadful. Yes.... Both legs, monsieur, at the knee. They were -swept from beneath her as with a scythe ... and she still lives—asking -for monsieur.” - -“Where?” - -She told him the hospital, and without a word he turned, running, to -search for a taxicab. The thing was incredible. Little Arlette, that -mite from fairyland, maimed and bleeding and dying. Such things could -not be. This was not war.... He raged, though tears were wet upon his -cheeks.... As he rode, the dainty figure of the child stood before him, -chin upraised, mouth opened birdwise to sing. He saw her as if she were -real.... And then he saw that scene in the street: children playing, the -sun daring to shine.... A sudden rushing in the air above, a tremendous -detonation. He saw it all, even to the most minute happening. He saw -little Arlette standing erect, stricken with sudden fear, saw the burst -of the explosion, saw the child diminish suddenly in stature as her -little legs were flicked from under her and she dropped upon bleeding -stumps before toppling to the pavement.... He uttered a hoarse groan of -protest.... He cowered back into a corner of the taxicab and shut his -eyes, as if that could shut out the pictures of his imagination. - -And she had called for him! - -It seemed he was expected at the hospital, for he was escorted -immediately to the little bed upon which Arlette lay. He had dreaded to -see her, flinching from a sight which he apprehended might be horrible. -He forced himself to look ... and the horror passed. The little face -upon the pillow was bloodless, her eyes closed. She seemed not alive, -but a thing of fragile loveliness carved from some material brought into -being by the fairies for this very purpose.... There was no trace of -pain—only motionlessness, a mysterious gravity ... and peace. Old -Arlette sat with eyes fixed unwaveringly on the little face; the child’s -mother cowered with her face against Arlette’s ample shoulder.... Ken -stood in silence. - -The nurse touched his arm. “Speak to her,” she whispered. “It will make -no difference. She has asked many times for you.” - -“She is—alive?” - -“And conscious.” - -“It will not—harm her to arouse her?” - -“Nothing can harm her.” - -Kendall understood. Little Arlette was past hurt now, and he had been -brought there to give to the child her last little moment of -happiness.... He knelt by the cot. - -“_Mignonne_,” he said, softly. - -She opened her eyes and stared at him, and then smiled. - -“He is come. Regard him. I said he would come.” Her voice was so faint -as to be almost no voice at all. - -“Of a certainty I have come,” he said. “What could keep me away from my -little sweetheart?... Does—does it hurt?” - -“Hurt?” She seemed vaguely surprised. “What should hurt, monsieur?” She -did not know what had happened to her. - -“May I kiss you?” he asked. - -“But yes. Is it not that I am to be your wife? I wish you to kiss me.” - -“Do you love me very much, _mignonne_?” - -“Oh, very much.... We shall be very happy, monsieur, in this America of -the North. I am too little to be married now, is it not? But it will not -be long.... My grandmother says I grow very fast.” - -“I have seen it myself.” - -She sighed. “I am glad. I had fear that you might grow tired of -waiting....” - -“I would wait for you forever, _mignonne_.” - -Again she smiled. “I shall sing for monsieur. One should stand up to -sing ... but grandmother says I must not stand up to-day.” - -“Will it harm her?” Kendall asked, quickly, of the nurse. - -“Nothing will harm her,” she repeated. - -“Then sing, dear ... sing ‘Madelon.’” - -The birdlike lips opened and the song came forth, faint as a morning -breeze, that song of the little barmaid who stands to the _poilu_ for -the wife or sweetheart at home, the little barmaid whom he kisses in his -loneliness, and in kissing her feels that he is touching the lips of one -far away.... It was a song which, to Middle-Western ears, sounded -strangely on the lips of a dying child, but it did not offend -Kendall.... It sprang from the soul of France. - -There ceased to be any semblance of an air to the song; it became a -faint whisper, halting, coming now a word at a time. Arlette’s eyes were -closed.... Now her lips moved, but there was no sound.... Presently the -lips ceased to move.... - -Kendall turned to the nurse, who nodded. He arose suddenly, looked down -upon the child and then rushed from the room ... and as he traversed the -corridor he found himself repeating again and again: “With a song on her -lips.... With a song on her lips....” - -For two months experiences had been jostling one another to enter -Kendall Ware’s life. It seemed as if there was a conspiracy among events -to modify him, to change the fiber of him, and to break down the -structure that had been himself when he landed in France. As compared -with these past sixty days the previous ten thousand days of his life -had been colorless and without life.... It had required twenty-seven -years of personal existence and more than one generation of predecessors -to make him what he was—and now a mere fraction of time, a handful of -minutes, were striving to undo all that had been accomplished and to -create a new being. The question to be answered was: Can the present -overcome the past? Can events master the fiber growth of heredity? It -seemed an experiment to determine if individuality is a fixed quantity -or if it is subject to revolution.... So far it might be asserted that -Kendall had been modified—but no more. - -Little Arlette had been a bit of humor in his life—no more. He had been -unconscious that she was anything more. But now in her catastrophe she -loomed larger and assumed significance. His was a world of symbolisms, a -religion of symbolisms. As his mother saw the hand of God in every -event—the hand of God interposed with direct reference to herself—so -Kendall, in a minor degree, and perhaps with something of -unconsciousness, was subject to the same obsession. He looked for the -lessons of events. He was apprehensive of the warnings of events. An -implacable God regarded him under lowering brows and now and then caused -an event to occur for his guidance.... So he looked for the significance -of Arlette’s murder. - -He had an uncomfortable feeling that innocence had been caused to perish -for his benefit—as a lesson to him. It made him a sort of accessory -after the fact. He rebelled in a vague way, feeling dimly that God had -no right to implicate him in such a crime. Old catch phrases came back -to him as he walked toward his home, phrases such as that one must -search for the divine purpose behind the event; that the ways of God -pass human understanding; that it is all for the best!... There was no -comfort in these. He could descry no divine purpose. For that matter, he -could find no divine purpose back of the war.... Yet God permitted it, -furthered it, as it were.... And because it was, because Divinity -permitted it to occur, it followed indisputably that it must be right -for it to occur.... He would not have dared to define his creed as -stating that his God was one who committed wholesale crime that a remote -benefit might accrue. Yet that was his creed and the creed of hundreds -of thousands of his fellow-countrymen.... It was strange that he should -remember Andree’s attitude toward God at that moment—her saying that the -eyes of the good God must be wet with tears to see a wickedness. But he -did remember, and was grateful to her. - -He wandered in a maze of gloomy theorizings, a maze which was nothing -but a maze, which led to no desired center. It was the struggle between -present and past, and it was a drawn battle. It only left him bewildered -and gloomy, treading a bog and miring at every step.... Then he became -aware that he wanted Andree, that she was necessary to him, because -there was something simple and sure about her. She gave him a handhold -to cling to. He felt that she knew, and he wanted the security and -uplift of her knowledge. The universe was toppling, and Andree could -stabilize it again—but Andree was not coming.... He felt he would never -need her more than at this moment, but she was residing in her land of -mystery, and he had neither her name nor address.... - -The stark fact was that little Arlette was dead—and with a song on her -tiny lips. He would never again think of France without thinking of -Arlette ... without seeing Arlette as a symbol of something at once pure -and ruthless.... - - - - - CHAPTER XXIII - - -Now began a phase of Kendall Ware’s life which was to continue for a -matter of six weeks, a period full of conflict between anomalies, of -indecisions, of procrastinations. There stood out high moments of -happiness, and there were dark descents into unlighted realms of -self-distrust. He questioned everything, doubted everything, and most -especially did he doubt his own ability to weigh events and to choose -between the better and the worse. He almost doubted if he had the power -of choice and felt a dour leaning toward predestination. Much of this -was self-deception, and conscious self-deception. He was becoming -increasingly aware of a day when he would have to make a choice and -reach a decision, but he was afraid of that day. He knew the choice was -his, and could belong to no other individual or force. _He_ must choose. -The event was in his keeping. - -Three major questions presented themselves: First, what was he going to -do about Andree? Second, what was he going to do about Maude Knox? And, -third, which was interwoven with the first, what about the vestibule of -the Presbyterian church? - -Ken had not the least doubt that he loved Andree. That was the one sure -fact in the whole confused mass. He loved Andree and Andree loved him. -To many young men, perhaps to most, this alone would have answered all -his questions. Perhaps the ordinary young man would have thought of -nothing else, but, perceiving that Andree was essential to him, he would -have taken her and made her his own in permanence with due forms of -marriage. This would have been the natural step for youth to -take—disregarding consequences and challenging the future. But Ken was -not an ordinary young man. He was a young man who was afraid of the -future, who had been brought up to know a lively fear of the opinion of -the community among which he lived. “What will folks say?” was a -question he had heard propounded from his earliest childhood, until the -thing that “they” would say had assumed a place of importance in his -affairs second to nothing. It had almost confused his perceptions of -right and wrong, for, even as a small boy, it had been made to appear to -him that his mother was not so much concerned with the righteousness of -any given act as she was by the effect of that act upon her circle of -neighbors. Undoubtedly this was a mistaken notion, but it had at least -the color of truth. - -He recalled vividly how a certain prominent member of his church had -become an absconder and the coming of the news of it into his household. -He remembered how his father had said: “Mother, we don’t know all the -ins and outs of it. Maybe he’s more sinned against than sinning. We -don’t know....” His mother had rejected that view harshly. “Whatever -will people say about him? It’ll be terrible on his wife, and him so -prominent in the church.” She had not said, “What will God say about -him?” but, “What will people say?” His sin, so it had seemed to Ken’s -young mind, had not been so much in absconding with money as it had been -in creating adverse talk.... This attitude of mind had altered somewhat -with years, but never had his fear of clacking tongues diminished. It -stood for the supreme punishment of evil ... not hell, but gossip. - -So his first and third questions stood together, and he dared not force -himself to answer them. The second question could not be answered until -he had satisfied the other two.... There came a fourth question, upon -which, ultimately, must hang the answers to all, and that was, “Can a -man marry a woman with whom he has had such a relation as I have had -with Andree?” In other words, could he, by his own act, unfit Andree to -become his own wife? This question did not present itself poignantly for -some time, but it was beginning to formulate in the back of his mind. As -yet he was considering only the expediency of matters; later he would -find trouble with their moral and sociological aspects. - -Matters further complicated themselves when Maude Knox informed him that -she had been assigned permanently to an administrative position in -Paris. He would be compelled to see her frequently. He would want to see -her frequently. Somehow this seemed unfair to Andree, but he knew that -Maude could not remain in the city without his seeing a great deal of -her. Andree would discover this, and what would Andree do about it? With -Maude Knox absent her importance receded, was held in abeyance; if she -were here she would grow increasingly important—and what would come of -it? - -“You don’t seem overjoyed,” she said. - -“I’m glad you’re going to be here,” he said, “but just the same, I wish -you weren’t.” - -“Why? You aren’t compelled to have anything to do with me if you don’t -want to.” - -“That’s it. I am compelled, and I don’t know whether I want to or not.” - -“Well!...” She drew the word out to its full value. “I must say you’re -frank.” - -“Please don’t be offended. I don’t mean to be offensive, but things have -gotten so rottenly complicated with me that I’m afraid of another -complication.” - -“And I’m a complication?” - -He nodded. “You know it,” he said. “I think you know more about what a -complication you are than I do.” - -“You are thinking Andree will be jealous.” - -“I’m thinking she may have cause to be jealous.” - -“And you don’t want her to have?” - -“That’s just it. I don’t know.... I don’t want anything ever to happen -to make her unhappy. You and I have talked pretty frankly, haven’t we? -Somehow you seem to understand things over here, though you are as -American as I am—and you—well, you don’t make a fuss. But even at that, -you don’t know how I feel about her.... Maybe I’m going to be in love -with you, and maybe I’m in love with you already. I don’t know.... But I -do know that I love her.” - -“If you are by way of making love to me you’ve invented a new method.” - -“I’m not making love to you. I guess I’m trying to reason things out -aloud.” - -“Using me as a wall to bounce your ball against.” - -He smiled without mirth. “Something like that. I know I love Andree, but -yet I can see myself in love with you.... I’ve asked you before if a man -can be in love with two girls at the same time.” - -“I don’t know. Not in the same way, anyhow.” - -“It would be different. If I did love you I would be thinking about -marriage all the time. It would mean marriage. I would want you for my -wife.... But Andree—she doesn’t mean that. At least marriage doesn’t -figure in it. I can’t explain exactly, but it’s as if there never had -been such a thing in the world as marriage—only love.” - -“I’m not sure but that is better. Even if I am American I don’t know but -I’d rather have that kind.” - -“Andree isn’t just an adventure, an incident. She’s more important than -that—the most important thing that ever happened to me.... I can’t -explain. I can feel it, but I can’t express what it is. It isn’t that I -couldn’t marry her, nor that I wouldn’t be mighty lucky to have her for -a wife.... It seems, somehow, that marriage doesn’t signify—isn’t -necessary.” - -“I’m sure I don’t know what you’re trying to get at.” - -“I don’t, either. I’m trying to find out.... But I do know that I don’t -want to hurt her or make her sorry she has loved me.” - -“How about me?” she asked, suddenly. - -“You?” - -“How about hurting me?” she asked. “You’ve made a weird sort of love to -me. You’ve balanced on the fence and told me you might fall in love with -me. You’ve carried on a sort of rubber-elastic courtship—ready to snap -back out of reach if I seemed likely to catch you.... Have you thought -about me at all? Really, I’ve some right to be considered.” - -She was right. Undoubtedly he had not been fair to her. He had thought -only of himself and of his sentiments toward her, but scarcely at all of -her sentiments toward him. - -“Why,” he said, “I don’t believe I’ve thought of that side of it. It -never occurred to me that you—that you might be in love with me.” - -“Well, I’m not.” She spoke sharply. - -“Do you mean you never could be?” - -“There! Of all things!... You want me to tell you that if you make up -your mind to condescend to love me I’ll be ready to drop into your -hands. You want to have your cake and eat it. I’d say you were the most -completely selfish person I’ve ever encountered.” - -“Really I’m not. It isn’t selfishness.... It’s just that I am so -confused by the whole situation that I don’t know what to do.... You -don’t know how relieved and happy I would be if there was nobody but -you, and we were going to be married. You are just the kind of wife—” - -“That your neighbors would approve of,” she interrupted. “I know. What I -don’t know is why I keep on talking to you like this. I ought to send -you about your business and tell you never to come near me again ... but -I’m not going to. You’ve told me in effect that you would be in love -with me if it weren’t for somebody else, and that the only reason you -are pleased to consider me as a candidate at all is because you are -afraid your family and your neighbors would make a fuss if you took the -other woman home. That’s the truth, and you know it is.” - -“Well,” he said, ruefully, and not wisely, “so long as you don’t love -me, what does it matter?” - -“So long as I don’t love you it doesn’t matter in the least.” - -“But—” - -She shook her head. “We sha’n’t talk about my loving you. I’m not going -to love you.” - -“Do you mean that?” - -“Decidedly.” - -“You wouldn’t marry me?” - -“Of course not.” - -“Why?” - -“Really, I think you’re out of your mind. Even if I loved you—which I -don’t—do you think I’d sit and wait for you to reason out that you had -better fall in love with me, and then grab you with wild eagerness—after -you make up your mind to chuck another woman whom you have assured me -that you do love?” - -“But suppose I do love you? Would the fact of my—my affair with Andree -prevent you from marrying me?” - -“If you loved me and I loved you nothing in the world would stop me from -marrying you.” - -“Anyhow, I’ve got that question answered.” - -“And much good may it do you.” - -“Why?” - -“Because the condition doesn’t exist. If it did exist I might answer -differently. I might think then that I could never marry a man who had -done such a thing.” - -This conversation took place at noon in a little café on the rue -St.-Honoré not distant from the Y. M. C. A. headquarters. Kendall had -met Maude Knox as he was seeking a place to lunch, and they had gone -together. Now he wished he might sit and argue the question until his -status with her was definitely settled, if it could be definitely -settled, but she refused to pursue the subject. - -“No, that’s all we talk about that. You can pick out any subject you -want to, but we are through talking about you and me.... And, besides, -I’ve got to get back to work.” - -“When shall we have dinner together?” - -“I don’t know.” - -“You’re angry with me.” - -“No, but I’m disgusted with myself because I’m not. If I had a spark of -pride I’d never speak to you again.” - -“Why?” - -“Ken Ware, you are a miracle of denseness. Don’t you know that this -whole conversation has been impossible—that it couldn’t have happened? I -never imagined such cool effrontery! But I’m not offended, and I don’t -know why.... I’ll dine with you some evening soon—but not to touch this -subject again. Don’t ever mention it—never! I’ve got some rights to be -thought about, and I’m going to think about them. There are just two -things you may do: either propose to me out and out, so I can refuse -you, or else treat me as a friend, and no trimmings. I mean it!” - -“But I don’t want to do either.” - -“You’ll have to.” She laughed, and slid deftly from behind the table. -“Are you going to walk up the street with me?” - -“Let me pay the check.” - -He called a waiter and asked for _l’addition_ and then walked to the -corner of the rue d’Aguesseau with Maude. She did not permit him to -linger. - -“Good-by,” she said, turning abruptly away. “Drop me a note when you -feel in a condescending mood.” - -That evening when he got home he found Bert and Madeleine there ahead of -him. - -“Andree’s coming, too,” said Bert. “I met her this afternoon and told -her there was going to be a party.... This is a farewell. See -Madeleine’s tears?” - -“Farewell?” - -“Yes. I’m going away for a couple of weeks—some buildings to look after. -I don’t mind, but Madeleine’s darn near heartbroken.” - -“Oh yes,” said Madeleine, gaily. “My heart it break. I am so lonely.... -You see, Monsieur Bert he is the on’y American _officier_ in France. -When he is gone, there is no other.” - -“You don’t mean that,” said Ken. - -“Of course she does,” Bert said, with a grin. - -Ken shrugged his shoulders and went to his room to tidy up a bit for -dinner. He heard them laugh, and Bert’s voice said, “He thinks we are -very naughty.” - -He did think so, but in spite of himself he liked Madeleine, indeed, -felt a real friendship for her. She was not like Andree, but she -possessed qualities which could not pass unnoticed. She was generous, -kind, always concerned for Bert’s comfort and financial welfare. There -was not a mercenary hair in her head, if there was not a serious hair. -Even though there was nothing deep and enduring and lofty in her -relations with Bert, there was nothing sordid. She was seeking her -little moments of happiness, seeking them lightly, gaily, carelessly.... -Ken excused his own conduct because it was concerned with a great love -and a beautiful fidelity. There were no such matters between Bert and -Madeleine, yet Ken could not find it in his heart to denounce her as -bad. According to all his standards she was bad—a light creature. But, -somehow, he did not see her as a light woman nor as wicked. - -It would have been difficult to find any one more different from -Andree.... Ken had become used to accepting Andree’s judgments in large -measure, and Andree did not declare Madeleine _méchante_. She, too, -liked the girl, accepted her as a friend and equal.... It was all a part -of this strange world with its upsetting standards.... - -The bell interrupted his moral reflections and he hurried to the door -with that thrill of anticipation which Andree’s arrival always -caused.... There she stood, very straight and still and grave, just as -he knew she would be. She raised her eyes to his exactly as he knew she -would raise them, and smiled appealingly. He drew her inside, into his -arms. - -“I’ve been needing you, _mignonne_,” he said. “Everything goes wrong -when you’re not with me.” - -“I am here,” she said, brightly. “Behol’! all is now well. I shall let -nothing trouble you.” - -“Do you love me?” - -“Yes.... And you?” - -“You are very beautiful.” - -“That is well.... No, I am not beautiful, but it is well you theenk it -is so. I am happy.” - -She regarded him solicitously. “You are ver’ tired. Have you work’ -_beaucoup_? It is not that you have an illness?” - -“No.... No. Everything is all right now that you are here. You are the -only person who is _right_ in the whole world.” - -“Oh!... Oh!... I am ver’ wonderful! I do not know thees till I meet you. -I theenk I am only a yo’ng girl, but behol’! I have ver’ suddenly -become—how do you say?—The _dictionnaire_—queek. The _dictionnaire_!” -Laughing gaily, she searched with ludicrous haste for the word and could -not find it. “Oh, it is terrible! W’at I am I cannot say. I am something -that ees not in the _dictionnaire_. To be a thing that is not in the -_dictionnaire_ is mos’ grand and étonnant—astonishing. I shall to be -ver’ vain.” - -Her eyes were dancing with an impish light. She seemed very young, a -child, endowed with some magical quality which reassured him, dispelled -the heaviness which rested on him. - -“Have Monsieur Bert and Mademoiselle Madeleine yet arrive’?” - -“They’re in the _salon_.” - -“Come. We shall see them—now.” Again that quaint gesture of poking -downward at the floor with a slender finger. “Thees minute.” - -The girls shook hands formally and lapsed into an amazing splutter of -French. Ken looked from one to the other, from Andree, tiny, fragile, -dark, elfin, to Madeleine, tall, slender, fair of hair, always laughing. -Madeleine seemed nothing but embodied laughter; Andree seemed to him now -as she always seemed to him, a mystery, incomprehensible—a being come to -him out of a land of wonders. - -“Bert is going away,” he said. - -“For how long?” - -“Three weeks.” - -“Oh, it ees a lifetime. Mademoiselle will be ver’ sad.” - -“She says not,” Ken said. - -“It is not possible. She will be mos’ sad.” - -“Not Madeleine,” said Bert. “She’s going to find another American -officer to keep her happy while I’m gone.” - -“But she could not—_non, non!_ You do not theenk!” - -Madeleine laughed gaily. - -“What would you do if I went away for three weeks?” Ken asked. - -“You do not go!... It ees not true.” Her eyes grew big and her lips -parted as she waited for his answer. - -“No, I’m not going any place.... But if I should go, what would you do?” - -“I should be ver’ _solitaire_. Ver’ often I should weep. And I should -work ver’ hard at all times—to make the days go more fast.” - -“Would you find another American officer to help you pass the time?” - -“You know,” she said, simply. - -“_Oh, là là!_” exclaimed Madeleine. “Regard these children. It ees the -great love. _Toujours fidèle._ It ees mos’ beautiful.” - -“It is ever’thing,” said Andree. “You, mademoiselle, love a ver’ little. -So you are happy a ver’ little. _N’est-ce pas?_ I love ver’ much, so I -am happy ver’ much. It is clear. You theenk you are mos’ happy, but you -do not know. It is not until you love, mademoiselle, until you love -weeth all the love there is that you have the great happiness.” - -“It may be so.... But also the great sadness. Is it not so? Regard me. I -love thees Monsieur Bert a leetle. He makes to go away, so I am sad a -leetle. Yes? But, then, I love him so ver’, ver’ much and he makes to go -away. And then?...” She shrugged her shoulders. “Behol’—then I am in -despair. I theenk my way is more better. Not the great joy, but also not -the great sadness.” - -“_Non!... Non!..._ It ees not so. There is the great sadness, it is -true. _Certainement!_ But even that, mademoiselle, is sweet. Bicause one -remembers the great love and the great joy. The so great happiness has -been. It will nevair die. No. For so long as one lives the happiness -will remain.... The grief—one must expect grief.... It is a part of the -worl’.” - -“_Vous êtes un poète, mademoiselle...._ You write the poetry. Therefore -you are different. The poet makes of sadness a great thing, a wonderful -thing.... But I—I, mademoiselle, am cashier in a shop. I do not have the -so beautiful thoughts. No, I am jus’ a girl that loves to be happy -always. I cannot think the wonderful thoughts like the poet—_non_. To me -it seems that ver’ many leetle happinesses without a sorrow are more -better than one great, wonderful happiness of the poet—but also with the -terrible grief that makes to kill.... So I love a little and laugh all -the days and am ver’ content.” - -“Would you not wish to love—to have forever one man and to love him -weeth the great love?” - -“Ah, that is another matter. Always to have one lover, one husband! It -is different. Then I would love—yes. I would love as much as any one.... -But it is not possible. Do I not know? Where do I get the husband? -_Pouf!_ There is no husband for me, and as for lovers—thees American -lovers—they come, and it is a little while when they go. So I do not -love. I make believe to love, and so I am happy.... But why, -mademoiselle, give to one of them the great love when one knows well it -is but for a day? It is to throw away the love, is it not?” - -Andree was silent; all were silent. Madeleine had thrust the situation -before Kendall and Andree baldly. Ken drew Andree to him, but she did -not respond; she was cold, frightened. - -“But for a day ...” she said. - -“Monsieur Bert and I we do not deceive ourselves. We tell each other -that thees is not for always.... It is play—so there is no cloud between -us.... But you—oh, you are ver’ wrong, mademoiselle. In your heart you -know.... You love Monsieur Ken and he loves you—it is true. But—ask him -the question, mademoiselle—does he stay forever? Or, when the day comes -on which he mus’ depart, will he take you weeth him to thees America?... -Ask him, mademoiselle, and if he tell you you shall be weeth him always, -then I am wrong.” She looked at Ken. He was conscious that Andree was -looking at him appealingly, and that even Bert was demanding something -of him with his eyes. - -He might have lied. He might have assured Andree that she should never -leave him, but with her eyes upon him he could not lie.... He did not -know. This was the thing that was making him miserable—the question of -whether he should take Andree to America with him.... He did not know. -Therefore he answered, lamely: - -“I love you, _mignonne_.” - -“It ees not an answer,” said Madeleine, inexorably. - -“I can’t answer.... I can’t see the future.... I don’t know. All I know, -Andree, is that I do love you. Why can’t we be satisfied with that until -we have to decide?... The war will be long. I shall be here for years, -perhaps.... Oh, my dear, I cannot think of a life without you—but I do -not know....” - -He was conscious that he was proving inadequate to the situation, that -he was not measuring up to what Andree had a right to expect of him, and -he was afraid of what she might do or say. Madeleine shrugged her -shoulders expressively. He looked at Andree apprehensively, saw her eyes -flash with anger, her little figure grow tense, her lips compress. It -was the first time he had ever seen her angry.... He had offended her. -She was in a rage with him, and rightly in a rage.... She stepped close -to him and clasped his arm with both hands, turning her face toward -Madeleine and Bert. - -“See!” she exclaimed, and her black eyes flashed, “you have make him -unhappy weeth your questions.... I shall not have questions asked of -him.... _Non!_ He shall not be troubled. It is not the affair of any one -but himself and me.... I will not permit it.... What is it to you? It is -for us alone. If it is _nécessaire_ that he leave me one day—that is for -him to say. Is it that I have ask or demand anything? _Non, non, -non!..._ He is ver’ good, and I love him—jus’ like he love’ me.... I -know that and I am satisfy.... You shall not make him to be unhappy -weeth questions....” - -She faced them, tense, breathing rapidly. Her hands clutched his arm and -pressed it to her breast.... - -“Andree ...” he said, hoarsely. “Andree ...” - -She smiled up at him, her face softening, her eyes becoming big and -tender. “Ever’thing is well,” she said. - -Bert drew a long breath. “By Jupiter!” he said, and there was admiration -in his eyes. “I’ll tell you what, Andree, if you’ll have me, if you can -put up with a roughneck like me, I’ll take you for keeps ... and to hell -with the consequences.” - -Madeleine laughed and shook her head. “You see how _fidèle_ thees -Monsieur Bert is.... _Là là!_ But you shall not have heem, mademoiselle, -until I am through weeth him.... See, there is the head of Arlette.... -Let us have the dinner and be gay!” - - - - - CHAPTER XXIV - - -There are persons who seem to have their emotions under the control of -push-buttons, as it were. They are capable of friendship and anger and -love and jealousy, but they have been given the faculty of suppressing -these emotions until it is their desire to allow them freedom. Maude -Knox was one of these. It would be unfair to say that she was coldly -calculating, but she was careful. Many of the minor inhibitions which -rule American girls did not signify to her; she was broader of mind, -capable of perceptions of which her sisters were incapable. But she did -not fly into passions, nor was she given to headlong tumbles into love. - -Her condition with respect to Kendall Ware was noncommittal. As a matter -of fact, she was not in love with him, because he had not committed -himself. If Ken had come frankly to her, declaring his love, and had -asked her to be his wife she would by this time have been as much in -love with him as he could have desired. Nobody could deny that they were -suited to each other, and nature has seen to it that young people who -are suited to each other, and enjoy propinquity with each other, do fall -in love. It seems to be the law that everybody must love somebody; it -also seems to be the law that propinquity is nine-tenths of the -matter.... So Maude was in a receptive mood. She was ready to let go and -be very much in love with Ken when a suitable moment arrived—if it ever -did arrive. - -Once she had released her controls she would be tender, faithful, a wife -such as any man might boast of. His life would be her life. His concerns -would be her concerns. Her career would be to make him happy and to make -a success of the family of which he would be the head. - -Just how much she realized of this condition it would be difficult to -say. Just how much she desired Kendall to fall in love with her she -herself did not know; but she did like him, liked him a great deal. He -was on her mind, and perhaps she even schemed a little to have him near -her frequently and so to give him the opportunity to love her if such a -thing were to happen. But at the same time she held a serious doubt if -she would marry him in any event—because of Andree. - -True, she was of broad mind, and her life abroad had enabled her to -perceive and to understand many matters which are obscure in America. -These she could understand and condone or pronounce to be good and even -virtuous—when they did not touch her directly. They were all right for -others, but—but when they entered her own life that made of it another -matter. - -If she had been told that in a time past Kendall Ware had carried on an -affair with a French girl—an affair that was wholly of the past—she -might have dismissed it after small bitterness and have accepted him -without more than a slight question. But this was present, going on -under her eyes. She saw the workings of it, and saw that he actually -loved this girl. That it was the sort of love he would one day give to -his wife she did not believe. That did not seem possible to her.... On -the other hand, there were many periods when she knew a fear that -Kendall would marry Andree. She asked herself why he should not marry -Andree. She had seen the girl, talked with her, found her beautiful and -sweet—even good. Maude even felt a sympathy for Andree to the extent of -warning Kendall against tampering with the girl’s happiness. Her -sympathies were with Andree rather than with Kendall. She had never -experienced the slightest aversion for Andree, none of that aversion -which a woman safe in the possession of what she terms her virtue is -entitled by ruthless custom to feel for the girl who is no longer a -maid. She was able to conceive of a union such as Andree’s with Ken as -possessing a sort of regularity, as being made more or less regular by -the standards and conceptions of the society in which they were -living.... But, nevertheless, when it came to marrying Ken her American -prejudices and conceptions took on life and set themselves up as a -barrier. - -It was natural that she should be very curious about Andree and should -wish the opportunity of meeting and studying the girl. She was rather -frank and outspoken herself and could imagine herself discussing the -situation with this girl and, perhaps, arriving at some determination. -But the opportunity failed to present itself for days and weeks. Her -brief chat with Andree on Bastille Day had proved nothing, and it was -not until early August when a chance meeting in the Galeries Lafayette, -where both girls happened to be shopping, gave her the opportunity she -desired. - -They met on one of the broad winding stairways of that enormous store, -Andree descending, Maude ascending. Of the two Andree was the more -self-possessed. She looked at Maude with that quaintly inquiring -expression with which she seemed to greet all the world, but gave no -other sign of recognition until Maude smiled and extended her hand. - -“_Bon jour, mademoiselle_,” she said. - -“_Bon jour_,” responded Andree. - -“I’ve been hoping to see you for a long time. We hardly got acquainted -in that little chat we had a month ago.” - -“You are sure you wish to be acquainted?” - -“Oh, very.” - -“_Pourquoi?_” - -“Why? That’s difficult to put into words, isn’t it? But I know about -you—and you must know about me. We just ought to be acquainted better.” - -“Eet is possible. You will know me. Ver’ well. I also would know you.” - -“Suppose we have _déjeuner_ together, then. Have you finished your -shopping?” - -“Ever’thing—all is completed.” - -Maude turned and walked down the stairs with Andree. They did not speak -until they had traversed the crowded aisles and reached the street. Each -was thinking about the other, but with this difference: Maude was -wondering what Andree thought about her, while Andree was not concerned -in the least with Maude’s opinion of herself. She thought of Maude only -as some one in whom Ken was more interested than she liked, and wondered -what this American girl would say to her.... Maude was impressed, not -exactly in spite of herself, with Andree’s appearance and manner. The -girl was so slender, so dainty, so appealing, so childlike and fragile! -One could not help wanting to defend her and befriend her.... But it was -not befriending her to wish to take away the man she loved and who loved -her, which was the thing that could not but rest in the back of Maude’s -mind. She had a feeling that Andree knew that desire was in her mind.... - -“Let us go to the Petrograd—it is only a few steps. I am living there -now. A great many of us American girls live there.” - -“Ver’ well,” said Andree, who, it seemed, had placed herself on the -knees of the gods and was prepared to let events wait upon her at their -will. - -They made their way to the rue Caumartin and turned to the right. -Presently they entered the courtyard of the Hôtel Petrograd and made -their way to a dining-room well filled with American girls in the -uniforms of the various war-service organizations. Selecting a table in -a sheltered corner, they ordered luncheon, nor did they speak except of -casual matters until they had finished. Andree addressed herself to her -plate with that quaint absorption which always delighted Kendall. It -touched Maude now, as everything about this appealing little girl -touched her. She found herself actually growing fond of Andree as one -might grow fond of a lovable child.... And yet she had a certainty that -she would not find Andree altogether childlike; that in all matters -appertaining to her love she would be all woman and amply potent to -defend herself and her rights. - -“Now we shall speak,” said Andree, looking into Maude’s face with -directness, almost with challenge. Her own face, if it showed any -expression at all, spoke of hesitation, diffidence. - -“What shall we talk of?” Maude asked, experimentally. - -“It is for you to say, mademoiselle. It is you who make the suggestion -that we speak together....” Then, with disconcerting directness, “You -wish to speak about Monsieur Ware, is it not?” - -“Yes,” said Maude, “I should like to talk about him—and you.” - -“It is ver’ well.” - -Now that it reached the point of discussing Kendall, Maude was -nonplussed for a moment. How should she open the discussion, if -discussion there were to be? What could she say that would not be an -impertinence to this girl, whom, somehow, she did not want to offend? -Maude even respected her, perceived that about Andree which demanded -respect and consideration. She hesitated. Andree smiled and leaned a bit -forward. - -“Mademoiselle,” she said, “perhaps it is that you are in love with thees -yo’ng man also. Is it of that you wish to speak?” - -“I am not in love with him, mademoiselle.” - -“Ah ... but that is not the ver’ truth—no. I have seen. I do not -know—maybe you theenk you do not love him, but you do love him. That is -why I am willing to speak weeth you.” - -“I don’t understand.” - -“I am willing to speak weeth you about Monsieur Ware bicause I love him -ver’ much and bicause you also love him. I theenk it mus’ be bicause I -know we both wish ver’ much to have him always be happy. Is it not?” - -“But I do not love him.” - -“Then, mademoiselle, it is not of a necessity for us to speak at all. If -you are merely his frien’, his acquaintance, you have no right to speak -weeth me about him. It is so. _Mais_, if you love him”—she lifted her -shoulders—“that is ver’ different.” - -“He has not asked me to love him.” - -“That is well. I theenk he loves me very _fidèle_. Yes. But also he -theenk of you ver’ much. I have seen. You are of his country and are -ver’ pretty. He theenk of you and compare you weeth me. I am French.... -That is not American. He theenk about w’en he goes back to America, and -then bicause I am ver’ French and not American he is troubled. He theenk -I do not onderstan’, but I onderstan’ ver’ well. He say that he love -Andree in Paris, and in Paris Andree is ver’ nice, but in America, where -all is so different, then he does not know what to theenk.” - -“And then?” - -“And then he theenk of you, mademoiselle, of you who would not be -foreign and strange and at whom his friends would not make to shrug -their shoulder’ and lift the eyebrow’—bicause I do not know the manner -and the custom.” - -“Is that all that troubles you—not knowing the manners and the customs?” - -“What else could there be, mademoiselle? I am not _très-jolie_—ver’ -beautiful—but also I am not so hideous. I do not know.” - -Maude shifted the subject because she was not ready to speak about the -thing which would be troublesome more than manners and customs. - -“Has he asked you to go to America with him?” - -“No, mademoiselle. We have not speak of that.” - -“But you would go? You would leave your France and your people and go to -a strange land?” - -“I theenk, mademoiselle, that I would leave the worl’ for Monsieur -Ware.” - -“As his wife?” - -“As to that, I do not care. If he wish, then ver’ well. If he do not -wish, then ver’ well, also. The marriage—makes nothing to us. It is only -the love.... But you, mademoiselle, you make of marriage the necessity.” - -“I would not marry him—I do not think I would marry him.” - -“You would love him—as I do?” - -“No.... No.... You misunderstand. Even if I loved him I do not think I -would marry him.” - -“And why? It is ver’ strange. Perhaps it is some American custom.” - -“Of course I am American.... But the reason is yourself.” - -“Myself!... Oh, I do not onderstan’.” - -“I do not believe I could bring myself to marry him when he has loved -you—as he has. When he has—been your lover.” - -Andree’s eyes were wide with surprise. “It is ver’ strange,” she said. -“What have I to make weeth it? Suppose one day he do not love me any -more, but loves you ver’ much. Then you will not marry him bicause of -me? Oh, that ees ver’—how do you say?—ver’ silly.” - -“It is hard to explain. Something inside me rebels against it. I would -always think about it.... It would seem to me that he was tainted ... -not clean as a husband should be.” - -“_Mademoiselle!_” Andree sat very erect, her lips compressed. - -“Don’t misunderstand me.... Please! I do not mean to offend. I expressed -myself clumsily—and yet that was what I meant. It is nothing against -you.... I have seen you, and I believe I can almost understand you. You -are sweet and good—but you are different....” - -“Much different, mademoiselle, for that if I love then nothing matters. -I give, and I do not ask questions. I theenk not of myself, but of him. -It is the truth. I say, can I make him ver’ happy.... But I do not ask -if I am so ver’ good that he is not so good as I am?” - -“I wish I could explain. I can never understand you wholly, and you—I’m -afraid you will never be able to understand me at all. We have grown up -in different worlds. You here, I in America.... Do you know that what -you are doing is very bad in America? that a girl who does as you have -done is an outcast? that no one will receive her in their homes nor have -anything to do with her? ... People would say you were bad....” - -“Oh, thees America! It is ver’ _sérieux_. Is there not love in America, -then?” - -“Love is proper only when people marry.” - -“And in America I would be a bad girl?” - -“Yes.” - -“Bicause I love ver’ much and am _fidèle_?” - -“Because you love without marriage.” - -“And that makes Monsieur Ware bad also—bicause he love’ me?” - -“It makes him—yes, people would say he was bad.” - -“It is a lie. He is not bad, but ver’ good and kind. Do I make him bad? -Oh, mademoiselle, that is a ver’ silly thing. I would only make him good -and happy. It is the ver’ truth.... And bicause of me he is made bad and -you must not marry him!... Regard me, mademoiselle, what harm do you -theenk he has from me?” - -“No harm from you. Oh, I mean it.... I—I don’t blame him. If I were a -man I think—yes, I’m sure—I should love you as he does.... But—” - -“But he is bad, and I have made him bad?” - -“It isn’t you who make him bad....” - -“Then he is not bad, for there is no other. I am ver’ sure. He is -_fidèle_.” - -“You don’t understand. It is not _you_ who make him bad, but the thing -he is doing ... his relations with you. They are bad.” - -“It is mos’ difficult—like some philosophy in a big book. I make him -bad, but I do not make him bad, yet he is bad bicause of me....” Her -eyes began to flash as she arose in Kendall’s defense. “It is not true. -What you say is ver’ bad and wicked. For he is nevair bad.... As for me, -I do not theenk I am bad. No. I do not theenk _le bon Dieu_ believes I -am bad. You yourself, mademoiselle, have seen me and speak weeth me. Do -you theenk I am bad?” - -“No, dear. I believe you are good.... I mean it. From the bottom of my -heart, I believe you are good.” - -“It is well. Then, can one take something bad from one who is good? See! -To be bad is to offend the good God. Have I offended the good God who -smiles when there is a great love? I do not theenk. Have I made Monsieur -Ken to offend the good God?... I should not be happy as I am if it were -so.... Have I made him to do a wickedness? Am I a woman of that sort? It -is not true. All I have desire is for him to be good and to be ver’ -happy.... That is not a sin, and it does not make a sin for him.... And -you would not marry him even though you love him.... Mademoiselle, that -is not a good love, not such a love as make the good God to smile.... It -is a wickedness to love so....” - -“My dear—” - -“No.... Let me speak. Suppose thees Monsieur Ware have love me and marry -me—and I am no more. I am dead. Then you would not marry him?” - -“That is different altogether. There would be no reason why I shouldn’t -marry him then.” - -“But I tell you, it is the same. Behol’! he loves me so ver’ much, and -one day he does not love me bicause the war is done and he mus’ go home, -and it is not possible for him to carry me weeth him.... The theeng is -ended. It is as if I were dead—as I should desire it to be. The love was -the same as if I have marry him.... He would then nevair be weeth me any -more. I would be as if I were not.... And he would have taken no -harm.... To say that he would be harmed is to say that to love a man -more than any other theeng in the worl’ is to harm him, and to say that, -mademoiselle, is _impie—blasphématoire_—to say a theeng which is an -insult to God.... No!... No!... You make a wrong.... Because he have -love’ then he is better—not more wicked.... I say to you, mademoiselle, -that the love like I have for Monsieur Ware makes to keep him from a -sin. I know.” - -Maude’s eyes were not dry. She was listening to a thing that rang with -truth and with goodness. She saw what she had never been able to -perceive before, and it showed her that Kendall Ware could take no harm -from Andree, let their relations be what they might, for Andree was -good, with a simplicity and a faith and a purity greater and better than -any she had ever known. American as she was, reared upon the traditions -of Plymouth Rock, which are as unbending as the laws of the Medes and -Persians, she perceived the truth, saw that to judge is a power withheld -from mortals and jealously guarded by God.... - -“My dear!... My dear!...” she said, tremulously. “I—Can you forgive -me?... You are right—_right_. Nobody could be harmed by you.... You are -sweet and—and wonderfully good....” - -Andree smiled wanly. “So we need speak no more. We have done. There -remains but one little thing, mademoiselle. You love thees yo’ng man, -and I love thees yo’ng man.... He loves me now, and until I am dead I -shall keep him—keep him.... I shall make to fight for him as I can.... -But I am sorry that it mus’ make you sad—if I can keep him. I am ver’, -ver’ sorry.... Good-by, mademoiselle, we shall not be friend’—no, that -ees not possible—and one of us mus’ be ver’ sad.... I mus’ pray that it -shall not be myself....” - -“Good-by,” said Maude, extending her hand. - -Andree turned and walked with quaintly stiff tread and daintily erect -body out of the dining-room. Maude ascended to her room to think, to -readjust herself.... Her state of confusion was almost as great as -Kendall Ware’s. She was conscious of her own inadequacy and of her -inability to pierce to the true heart of events and see them as they -would be seen by a mind at once perfect in logic and perfect in -purity.... But, in spite of prejudices bred into her being from youth, -she could not see Andree as otherwise than _right_, Andree as untainted -by evil ... and it seemed a thing impossible that Kendall Ware could -have been made one whit unworthier by any contact with her.... - - - - - CHAPTER XXV - - -Kendall Ware went to his office on September 1st just as he went to it -on any other day, anticipating a day like a hundred of its predecessors -had been. He enjoyed the walk through the clear sunny air of Paris and -felt not the slightest foreboding of heavy events to come. Fifteen -minutes after his arrival the day had taken upon itself the importance -of marking the close of an epoch in his life.... He was ordered to -report himself in Brest on the morning of September 4th to board the -first returning transport for America. - -The order partook of the essentials of a calamity. It came so -unexpectedly, with such sudden shock, that he did not sense immediately -the full meaning of it nor what it involved. In the beginning he saw -only the misfortune of being sent home, of being removed from proximity -to the war. That alone was enough to give him keenest distress, but as -he returned to his desk and sat staring gloomily at the wall before him -this first effect was swallowed up and lost forever by the inrush of -cold dread of the major consequences of his enforced departure. - -“_Andree!..._” - -He was face to face with the inexorability of the postponed decision. -There was no time to work matters out gradually now, to hope for some -miraculous solution. He must decide; he must answer yes or no.... What -should he do about Andree?... Within twenty-four hours he must determine -if she was to remain in his life, or if they had reached a point in the -journey where one must turn to the right and one to the left to follow -roads that never joined again on earth. He must determine whether or not -he should marry Andree and take her home. It would be possible. There -was time. He felt sure he could obtain the necessary permission to have -her accompany him on the transport because he knew women were constantly -returning on transports. Even failing that, she could demand her -passport as his wife as a newly made citizen of the United States and go -to America by way of Bordeaux and the French line.... But only as his -wife could she cross the ocean; in no other way could she obtain the -essential passport.... - -So that became the one question—to marry or not to marry! - -If he did not take her with him, then what? How could he tell her?... -What would she do if she discovered that she had lost him? There came to -him a vision of the bridges crossing the Seine ... and it was harrowing! - -The breaking of evil news is, perhaps, the most feared task that can -fall to man. He fears it as he fears no other demand that can be made -upon him.... It was inevitable that Ken should consider eluding such a -black responsibility. Why not? It would be perfectly simple.... He was -to see Andree to-morrow night. Well, there was no need to see her, and -the night after that he would be on the train for Brest. He could step -out of her life without a word, abandon her without farewell.... It -would remove all complications—except the complication of conscience. It -was a temptation which did not persist. Kendall Ware was no hero, but he -was immeasurably above such an act of black cowardice. Besides, he could -not bear to go without seeing her again ... if the decision were to -leave her. - -He must decide.... - -It was a sentence from which there could be no reprieve, implacable, -inevitable. He had arrived at the most critical, the most momentous -crisis in his life ... and nowhere could he turn for help. He stood -alone, sole judge and executioner. There was no jury to pronounce -verdict, no expert who could advise. He—Kendall Ware—must speak the -word.... Never had he been so conscious of himself as an individual, of -his existence as a distinct entity, of _himself_. It frightened him—that -idea of himself as a responsible thing, of which life could require -decisions. For the first time he realized the meaning of the words “free -will” and he resented them. God had endowed him with the perilous gift -of freedom to mold his own life, and he felt a cowardly resentment -toward God.... But the stark fact was there. There was no avoiding it. -There _must_ be a choice, _some_ choice ... and the combined populations -of the earth could not take it out of his hands.... - -He was thankful for some minor matters of routine which would demand his -attention until noon. After that he would be relieved from duty, with no -occupation but to make ready for his departure.... It was a trifling -postponement and he welcomed it eagerly. At eleven-thirty he left the -office and walked down the Champs Élysées, almost for the last time. He -pretended that he was walking aimlessly, but it was not true. He had a -destination, and that destination was 12 rue d’Aguesseau and Maude Knox. - -It was not that he felt the necessity of seeing Maude Knox, but that he -wanted to talk to somebody, to talk to somebody who might have some -understanding of his plight. It was not advice he sought so much as -sympathy. Maude was the sort of person he could talk to, and talk was -necessary.... He waited in the archway of the building until she came -down. - -“Well?” she said, in some surprise. - -“I’m waiting for you. Can you lunch with me?” - -“What has happened?” she countered. “I can tell by your face that -something has happened.” - -“I’ve been ordered home.” - -She did not reply for a moment, for his announcement brought her also -face to face with a climax in her life. _He was going home!_ The _status -quo_ which had been endurable, if difficult, was to be altered. While he -was there and she was there their relations might go on as they were, -somewhat anomalous, but requiring no immediate decisions or -arrangements. They could drift and allow events to take care of -themselves.... But now he was going, and she realized that she did not -want him to go. She realized what she had repressed and concealed was -now insisting upon recognition—that Kendall Ware was very important to -her, that his presence was very important to her, and that for a time to -which she was unable to set an exact limit she had been hoping that -their relations would be determined in a manner satisfactory to -herself.... She was bolder in facing the fact than Kendall had been. She -faced it promptly and adjusted herself to it ... and the fact was that -she loved him.... - -“Where shall we lunch?” she asked, and it would have been impossible to -tell from her tone that in the brief pause that came before her question -she had withstood a shock and mastered a crisis. - -“The Oasis is quiet and we can talk.” - -“But they’re so slow!” - -“That doesn’t matter to-day. There’s—there’s so much to say.” - -“To me?” - -He nodded. “I’ve got to talk it out with you ... because you are the -only person who can do any good. The same things are behind both of us. -We know the same sort of people back home.... Don’t you see?” - -“I think so. But, remember, I’ve been here as long as you have. I’m not -the same. I’ve seen things, too.... I can’t judge anything the way I -would have judged it back home. I’ll never be able to again.” - -They walked to the rue St.-Honoré and presently turned up the rue -Boissy-d’Anglas to the quaint, quiet little English tea-room with its -soft lights and absurdly carved fireplace and decorations. That -fireplace, Bert had once said, looked like the life-work of a lazy man -who loved to whittle. There they found a table—there were but three or -four—and gave their orders to the thin, very serious Englishwoman who -was the only member of the staff of the place who ever became visible. -Nobody knew if she were the proprietress or merely a waitress—and nobody -cared especially. - -“It’s rotten luck,” said Ken. - -“Yes.” - -“I’ll be stuck at some desk job in Washington. It wouldn’t have been so -bad if they had given me a few months at the front—” - -“Or if they never had sent you to France at all.” - -He looked at her a moment, then shook his head. “No. I wouldn’t have -missed these months over here. I’ve really lived; really appreciated -being alive. No.... Whatever happens now, nobody can take this away from -me....” - -“It has been wonderful,” she agreed. - -“Just to see it—Paris, the people, the war going on—would be -wonderful.... But I believe I’ve done more than merely _see_. I’ve -_felt_.” - -“You’ve seen and felt, Ken, but how much has it changed you?” - -“What do you mean?” - -“I mean, what has seeing and feeling done to you? Has it made any -permanent changes in you? Your experiences here have impressed you a -great deal—but how long will the effect last when you get home?... When -Paris is just a memory—and a subject for conversation? In ten years will -you be any different as a result of all this than you would have been if -you had never come?” - -He hesitated. “I don’t know,” he said, slowly. “What do _you_ think?” - -“I think,” she said, “that we will get back into the old environments -and the old habits and will become just what we would have been. If we -were to stay here, then we might change, broaden, really profit by our -experiences. But we go home. We see the same faces, hear the same sort -of talk, and are tied by the same sort of prejudices and theories and -narrownesses that we used to accept without question. We will know -better for a while, and then we will revert.... It takes something -pretty big and startling to change a person forever.” - -“Big and startling.... You mean something in his own life and -experience—something personal to him—that is big and startling?” - -“Yes.” - -“Like—” - -“Oh, like committing a crime, or making some supreme decision or -sacrifice.... Anything that strains the very soul of a person so that it -can never get back into its former shape.” - -“Love?” - -“Not love itself, but something wonderful or terrible that comes as the -result of a love.” - -“Then you don’t think experiences change people, that it is—well, just -making decisions that grow out of the experiences. It is reaching a -crisis and then making a choice of which way you will go.” - -“I think that is it. I don’t see how any event can change a person if he -remains merely a spectator. I don’t think any sort of happening will -really alter a person for good and all unless it has compelled him to -use every bit of his will and courage and intelligence to make up his -mind what he will do about it. If he chooses the right way, then he -becomes stronger; if he chooses the wrong way or dodges the decision, he -becomes weaker.” - -“There’s no dodging the choice,” he said. - -“And that is what’s the matter with you, isn’t it?” - -“Yes.” - -“And the choice?” She knew very well what problem he was laboring over. - -“Is Andree,” he said. - -“She was bound to be the problem. Couldn’t you see that from the -beginning?” - -“That doesn’t matter now—what I saw at the beginning. All that has -happened has happened”—he paused and stared down at the table-cloth—“and -I’m glad it did happen.... But now I’ve got to settle the bill.” - -“And you want my advice?” She looked at him queerly. “You have come to -_me_ for advice about this?” - -“Not for advice. I just want to know what you think.” - -“About what—definitely?” - -“Whether I should marry Andree?” - -“Why shouldn’t you?” - -“So many reasons.... There’s my mother. There’s the vestibule of the -Presbyterian church, if you know what I mean.” She nodded her -understanding. “There are all the things that have come down from -Plymouth Rock.... There is something in me, something I can’t get rid -of, that is a result of all these things, which makes me hold back from -marrying a girl who—with whom I have—who has been to me what Andree has -been.... And there is _you_.” He uttered the last sentence defiantly. - -“That isn’t fair—it isn’t _fair_! You have no business to say such a -thing to me.... You’re the most tremendously selfish man I have ever -met.” - -“Selfish!” - -“In this whole thing you are thinking of nobody but yourself. You -haven’t thought of Andree—and then you—you say such things -without—considering me.” - -“I do think of Andree,” he said, quickly. “I’m afraid—for her. I can’t -bear to think of making her unhappy.... And you—It’s a confused mess, -Maude!...” He leaned across the table. “Maude, if there was no other -woman in my life—if Andree were a thing of the past—would you marry me?” - -She stared at him, biting her lips. “Ken Ware,” she said, “that is the -most impertinent—and selfish—question a man ever asked.... Don’t ever do -it again! Don’t ever mention such a thing again! The idea! You want to -have your cake and eat it, too. You’re always at it—carrying on a sort -of left-handed courtship with me.... Always hinting—and—and playing -safe. If you decide you don’t want this other girl, then you want to -have me all prepared to fall into your arms.... I won’t stand it. Never -dare speak of it again—until you can come to me honestly and say that -you _love_ me—and that there is no other woman in your life—and that you -want me to marry you. Then I’ll tell you whether I will or not.... Do -you understand?” - -“I’m sorry. I’ve been clumsy ... and selfish.” - -“You have.” - -“But you’ll tell me what you think—how this whole thing over here -affects you? Don’t think about my case in particular if that is -offensive, but about the whole system, the whole idea of the relations -between men and women as we see them here.” - -“I will, because I would like to find out just how I _have_ been -affected....” Suddenly she laughed. “I used to have an uncle who spent -his life arguing abstractions. I remember he took the stand once that -there was no reason why women should not smoke as well as men, that -there was nothing inherently masculine about smoking and nothing -immoral. He declared that women had as much right to smoke as men. My -aunt listened to it until she got tired, so one evening she waited until -uncle lighted a cigar and then took out a cigarette and put it between -her lips.... Uncle stared at her and _roared_. He fairly snatched that -cigarette, and it looked as if he was going to put my aunt out of the -house.... Smoking for women was all right as an abstract question, but -when it touched him personally it was quite another matter.... I think I -am a little like him. I can sit down and say that these girls are within -their rights. I can even see that they are good.... I believe your -Andree is wonderfully good.... I can even say that if so many Americans -were killed in this war that I would never be able to find a husband I -might do the same thing—and I believe it would be _right_ and moral for -me to do it ... in the _abstract_. I can feel these things in Paris. But -as soon as I come to a concrete instance and one which touches me -personally—why, I’m Middle West and Plymouth Rock again.... One can -never tell. Things can happen here—even to an American girl like me—that -never could happen in America in normal conditions. With this war going -on, with this horrible state of affairs, nothing else seems to matter -much. Personal moral considerations seem to be so minute and unimportant -as not to count at all.... There is something in the very air.... You -see we don’t know France—only a small section of it that we see about -the streets. We don’t know how the classes of France who stay in their -homes and are never seen on the boulevards look at this matter. They may -be as straitlaced as we are ... and we’ve been judging all of Paris by -the Champs Élysées....” - -“That doesn’t decide the thing that’s worrying me.... It doesn’t even -help.... I wonder if this war and everything connected with it won’t -change people back home.” - -“So that they would tolerate—Andree?” - -He nodded. - -“Never—if they found out that Andree had violated their laws.” - -“But you—what do you think about her?” - -“Is that fair?” - -“I don’t see why it isn’t. You’ve met her and talked with her. What do -you think of her?” - -“Ken, she is one individual, and I can tell you what I think about her -... but that doesn’t make her stand for the whole code of ethics. The -other thousands of girls may not be like Andree at all—they may be bad. -Don’t you see? It comes down to a matter of personal, concrete -experience again.... But Andree....” She looked at him gravely. “I -should hate to feel that I had broken faith with Andree or been unfair -to her or caused her grief. She is very sweet and childlike—and _good_. -She has no consciousness of having been other than virtuous because she -has loved you.... I had lunch with her the other day. It was the first -time I had ever lunched with a woman whom I knew to be violating our -standard ... and it didn’t hurt me in the least. I felt no repulsion or -disgust ... but that was because I couldn’t help feeling that she was -good....” - -“Then you think—” - -“I think this: that all of us come to fit into our environment very -readily. We come over here, and soon we are being absorbed by the things -around us.... Presently we will go home, more or less in the frame of -mind created by Paris ... and then the environment of home will begin to -work. In no time at all we will have adjusted ourselves again and Paris -will be almost as if it never had been.... I believe that is exactly -what will happen. If we stayed here we should become as nearly Parisian -as we could be made, but, going home, Paris will very rapidly be -eradicated.” - -“And all that has happened here?” - -“Will be part of a memory—something in a dream.” - -He shook his head. “I can’t believe that. I know I shall never be just -the same as I was before. I see your point of view, but it doesn’t help -me ... and I don’t believe you are right.” - -“You don’t want to believe it.” - -“I know—Andree makes all the difference. If you were a man and there had -been an Andree you would have felt as I have. Somehow France means -Andree to me. I never dreamed of any one like her. You don’t know -her—what a quaint, childlike, womanly, fairy kind of a girl she is. When -I think of her she doesn’t seem real, but like some mysterious being out -of a magical country who has come to visit for a little while—to make me -happy.... She does come from a mysterious country. Do you know that I -don’t know her name—just Andree? I have never asked. I don’t know where -she lives or how she lives. I don’t know anything about her except that -she appears and is with me a little while—and then disappears again.... -That has made a difference—that quality.” - -“I would hardly have suspected you of being so romantic.” - -“It isn’t sentimentality, at any rate.... And nobody can ever convince -me that I’ve done wrong or that I’ve taken any harm from her.... Even if -this should prove to be only an episode, it has been a beautiful episode -with nothing but good in it.... But this mystery, this fairy element, -has somehow kept the realities at a distance. I have simply gone along -and _lived_.... Why, I have hardly thought of such a thing as marriage -in connection with her. Possibly you won’t understand that, but I -understand it perfectly.... To marry Andree would be to make her real, -material. The mystery would be gone.” - -“I think I understand.” - -“But to marry her and take her to Detroit!... Suppose I should take her -home and then this story should come out—and it _would_ come out -somehow. What then?... When I think of that smug, gossiping crowd in the -church vestibule, and of their looking at her and pointing at her and -whispering about her—it seems like a profanation. I couldn’t bear it.... -And then—well, I’ve inherited some of it myself. I belong to that crowd. -I’ve their ideas of marriage ... and the vestibule doesn’t marry a girl -who—has lived with a man....” - -“You’re afraid of them.” - -“I am,” he said, and flushed. - -“But if you loved her—really loved her—” - -“I do,” he said, quickly, “but can’t one love without wanting to marry? -That is a thing that puzzles me.” - -“I don’t believe anybody can love and be willing under any circumstances -to part with the person one loves.” - -“I don’t know.... Isn’t it, possibly, better to love and to be a part of -a beautiful, rather mysterious, glowing episode and to have it end while -it is beautiful and mysterious?... Then something always -remains—something dreamlike and lovely. To come down to actualities, to -marry, to take this mystery into the land of grocers’ bills and -house-cleaning and the every-day problems of marriage—why, it wouldn’t -be the same thing at all.” - -“I don’t think you believe that. You’re arguing with yourself and trying -to salve your conscience.... You’re afraid to marry Andree and take her -home—” - -“That is part of it. I admit it. But—and I am sincere when I say it—I -don’t know whether I want to marry her. I love her and she loves me.... -She would be a wonderful wife—and yet, love and all, I don’t know -whether I want to marry her.” - -“You are just trying to deceive yourself. Either you don’t love her at -all....” - -“Would you marry a woman who had done what Andree has done?” - -“It would depend on the woman—and upon how much I loved her.... You -can’t generalize about that. It is a matter that nobody can decide -except for himself in a particular instance. I do think, if I were a -man, that I could marry your Andree without a thought....” - -“But to take her out of her world—away from Paris where she is as -natural and unconscious as the birds in the trees—and set her down for -life in Detroit ... to be stared at and lied about and suspected ... it -would make her miserable.” - -“Would it make her as miserable as to lose you altogether? If she had -you and your love, no matter what unpleasant things were about, wouldn’t -that be better than to be left behind here alone?” - -“Yes,” he said, honestly. “Yes.” - -She looked at him a moment, studying his face, which was set and anxious -and overcast, his eyes, which were dull and brooding, and a wave of -compassion surged up within her. - -“It has made you miserable,” she said. “I’m so sorry.” - -“I deserve to be miserable.” - -“Possibly not. Nobody can judge, but—this affair has been almost -inevitable. It wasn’t your fault and it wasn’t Andree’s fault.... The -circumstances were here, and you two got tangled up in them....” She -glanced at her watch. “I must go now. I’m sorry I haven’t helped -you—for—I wish I might help you.... Shall I see you again before you -go?” - -“I’m afraid not.” - -“Then this is good-by.” She held out her hand steadily. “I hope matters -turn out for—for your happiness.... Good-by.” - -“I shall write you.” - -She looked at him and smiled queerly, but made no rejoinder. “No, don’t -come with me,” she said, as he walked to the door. “I’d rather go -alone.... Good-by and a safe voyage.” - -And so the first of the two women with whom his life had become involved -stepped out of his life.... - - - - - CHAPTER XXVI - - -When Kendall went to the apartment for dinner Arlette came bustling into -the hall as she heard him open the door, and, poking again and again -with a pudgy finger toward the rear of the place, she exclaimed, -excitedly: “Monsieur Bert!... Monsieur Bert!...” - -“Here?” - -“_Oui, monsieur._” She grinned with delight. - -“Hey, Bert!” shouted Ken, delighted, for he had feared he would not see -his friend again before he sailed. Bert came out of the door, half -shaved, with a towel about his neck, and shook hands after the manner of -healthy young men. - -“Howdy, old-timer! Gosh! it seems good to get back to you and Arlette. -How have things been going without me? Seen Madeleine?” - -“Haven’t seen her. Things have been going all right till to-day. This -morning the blow fell.” - -“What blow?... You look as if somebody had stolen your pet goat.” - -“I’m ordered to America. Leave Wednesday.” - -“The devil!... Oh, say, that’s rotten luck! What’s the idea?” - -“Don’t know. Just my confounded luck, I expect.” - -“Wait a minute till I finish this shave and I’ll help you weep.... How’s -Andree?” - -They were walking back to Bert’s room, and Ken did not answer until his -friend stood before the glass, razor in hand. - -“She’s all right.” - -“How did she take the news?” - -“She doesn’t know.” - -“Doesn’t know!” - -“I just got my orders this morning. Won’t see her until to-morrow -night.” - -“Coming to dinner?” - -“Yes.” - -“We’ll pull a party—farewell party with all the trimmings, eh? I’ll get -Madeleine and we’ll dig up a bottle of champagne and wring a _poulet_ -out of Arlette if we have to call in the police to help us. I’ll bet -they would, at that.” - -“It won’t be a very merry party,” said Ken, lugubriously. - -Bert turned and looked at Ken. “Huh!... Something eating you again?” - -“It’s a rotten mess. I don’t know what to do.” - -“About Andree? It isn’t any mess at all. You’ve had a good time and -she’s had a good time. That’s all there is to it. Now you’ve got to go -home. She didn’t expect anything else.” - -Ken was silent. - -“Unless you’ve made her expect something else.... Now Madeleine and I -had an understanding right at the start,” said Bert. - -“I wish I could get it off my mind for a couple of hours.” - -“Get it off, then. We’ll go to the Folies or the Olympia or some place -to-night. To-morrow I’ll look up Madeleine.” - -Ken was willing to go anywhere, to do anything, so long as he was helped -to keep Andree off his mind, and to think about something besides the -inevitability of the decision. So, after, they went to the Folies, -arriving after the performance had begun. They did not take seats, but -made their way through the big table-filled room to the theater proper, -and stood up with the crowd behind the railing. The house was full, but -even when the house was not filled many of the spectators remained in -the promenade to walk about and smoke and, possibly, to put themselves -in the way of being accosted by some of the numerous and sometimes -pretty _habituées_ of the place. - -The entertainment was directed to the American soldier, and much of it -was in English. But it could not hold Kendall’s attention. It was, in -fact, a mediocre performance, with an act or so that was deserving of -attention. After seeing the perfection of the performances at the -Comédie Française Ken wondered at the halting stage management of this -popular music-hall. It hitched along. Choruses seemed to improvise -rather than to have been drilled. Nobody seemed to know just how to get -on and off the stage, and when a scene or an act or a chorus number -ended, it simply ended.... Every now and then animated conversations -broke out in the back of the theater, and ushers walked about through -the crowd, saying: “Hush!... Husss-sh!” The whole thing depressed Ken -instead of lifting his spirits, and he actually experienced a feeling of -disgust at the grand closing number in which the _première danseuse_ -appeared as an American cowboy, in white tights and waving an American -flag. - -“Let’s get out of here,” he said, impatiently. - -“Suits me,” said Bert, and they jostled their way to the street, -ignoring more than one tentative “_Bon soir, monsieur_,” from young -women whose cheeks were not guiltless of what the phrase of the streets -termed camouflage. - -“Want to walk home?” suggested Bert. - -“Yes.” Ken did want to walk. He wanted to tire himself so that he could -sleep, for he was afraid of a sleepless night. So they started off -briskly, cutting through dark and narrow streets to the Boulevard -Haussmann and thence into the Avenue Friedland, which they followed to -the rue Beaujon and into the Avenue Hoche. They climbed the stairs of -the apartment, and Bert, as was his custom, searched the cupboards to -see if Arlette had left anything unconcealed that might be eaten. But -Arlette had been careful, as usual, and nothing was to be found except a -box of dry cookies. It was not Arlette’s intention that her young -officers should waste their substance by eating up her supplies at -unexpected hours. - -Ken dreaded to go into his room alone and turn off the lights, so it was -Bert who made the first movement to go to bed. Ken carried in with him a -sleep-provoking book on militarism which an earnest friend had forced -upon him, undressed, and stretched himself on the bed with the small -light on his table to read by. He forced himself to read ... and -presently fell asleep. - -The next day was filled with errands and shopping. He wandered about the -stores, selecting inexpensive souvenirs for his friends and presents for -his mother and father. It was hot, and it irritated him to push and -shove in the milling crowds that jammed the Printemps and the Galeries -Lafayette, but it kept him busy and gave him an excuse for pushing his -decision another hour and still another hour into the future.... His -last errand was the selection of a present for Andree, a farewell gift, -or a gift of some other sort. There had to be a gift, so he spent more -money than he could afford in a little bracelet of gold set with tiny -pearls.... Then he went home, for it was near the dinner hour. - -Bert was there before him, wearing such an expression of sheepishness -and chagrin as Kendall had never seen before on his friend’s face. - -“Where’s Madeleine?” he asked. - -Bert grinned mirthlessly. “Don’t know,” he said. - -“Isn’t she coming?” - -“I left a note at her hotel inviting her.” - -“Didn’t see her?” - -“No. I went around to the hotel and there was a small boy in the -_concierge’s_ room. He said Madeleine was out with an American -officer.... Then I went up the street, and pretty soon I thought I saw -her with a lieutenant. They were a block away and I hustled up to make -sure, but they turned off and disappeared. Looked like she caught sight -of me and ducked.... Anyhow, I went back and left a note. Maybe I was -mistaken.” - -“Serves you right,” said Ken. “You were so darn sure—you with your -understandings.... Three weeks were too much for her, and she’s passed -you up for somebody who isn’t always telling her she’s just a temporary -arrangement.” - -“Go chase yourself,” said Bert. “It makes no difference in my young -life.” - -But Ken noticed that every minute or so Bert strolled with elaborate -nonchalance to the window and looked down the street. Ken smiled. Bert’s -manner was not that of a man whose heart suffers, but who has taken an -injury to his pride.... - -“Here comes Andree,” said Bert. - -Ken did not go to look, as he usually did. It was not that he did not -want to see Andree, but her arrival brought his affairs to the acute -stage. He had put off and put off the struggle to reach a decision; had -occupied his mind with other matters, crowding out as much as was -possible any thoughts of Andree and of what he was going to do about -her. True, the thing had been with him always, lurking in the background -and ready to step out at the least encouragement. But he had not -approached it directly. It had been a sort of dull ache that he was -always conscious of, but which he had been able to stifle. Now she was -coming, was almost at the door. It would be a matter of minutes only -before he would have to tell her that he was going away.... Even now he -did not admit to himself that he had reached a partial decision, indeed -that he had not required to make a decision upon one point. That was -taking her with him. He had told himself that it would be possible to -marry her and to take her on the transport that carried him, but it was -self-deception, and he knew it was self-deception. In his heart he knew -now, as he had known, that to-night he would say good-by to Andree and -go to America without her.... He might come back for her, might even -marry her before he went away, to have her follow him on another vessel. -But there would be a parting, temporary or permanent.... - -He had never asked himself if Andree would marry him. The idea that she -would not do so had never entered his head, which was significant. It -was that which made his decision doubly difficult, for she was wholly in -his hands, had given herself to him to do with as he pleased, and her -life was his to break if he wished to do so.... He persuaded himself -that his hesitation was more on her account than his own, that it would -be impossible for her to be happy in the conditions which would be found -in America, or that perhaps it would be impossible. He believed that he -was trying to decide what would be best for her—or almost believed it. -It may be that he was not wholly selfish, not thinking solely of himself -and of the effects of his marriage with Andree upon himself. At any -rate, his anxiety for her was very real and very disturbing. - -She was coming up the stairs utterly unconscious of what awaited her, -confident in a future with him which would not be disturbed for so long -a time that it need not now be considered. An event that is a year -distant is very far away to a young girl. If Andree had known she would -lose Kendall in a year she would not have thought about it now ... nor -until the year was drawing to a close. It is the ability to hope that -makes this possible. Something might turn up within the year.... But now -she was stepping into the event! In a few minutes she would hear his -voice telling her that he was going away to-morrow—not in a year, not in -a month, but _to-morrow!_... When he told her that he must tell her -more. A mere announcement of his departure would not suffice; he must -supplement it by telling her if their good-bys were forever, or for a -few days or months.... - -The bell rang and he went to the door and opened it. She stood there -very demure and self-contained and grave—dressed in white as he had seen -her first. She lifted her eyes to his and smiled and then became grave -and wistful again, for she saw that he was not happy.... He held out his -arms to her and drew her in, realizing that it was the last time he -should ever draw her slender daintiness through that door, the last time -she would ever enter that apartment. It was the beginning of the end of -that phase in their lives, of the untrammeled romance, the quaint -mystery, the adventurous sweetness. - -“You are _triste_,” she said, anxiously. “Is it that you have worked too -hard?” - -He shook his head. - -“You are not _joyeux_ to see me.” - -He took her face between his hands and looked down into her deep-shaded -eyes. “You must not say that.... You must never say that. It is not -true.” - -“Then I am ver’ glad.” She smiled. “Monsieur Bert and Mademoiselle -Madeleine they are here?” - -“Bert is here, but Madeleine hasn’t come.” - -“I desire her to be here.” She stepped into the _salon_ and spoke to -Bert. “You shall go to fetch her. Now.... Now. You shall run ver’ fast.” - -“I asked her to come,” said Bert. - -“And she would not?” Andree’s voice showed profound astonishment. - -“I’m afraid she got tired of waiting for me to come back to Paris.” - -“But no, that ees not possible. She would not be tired to wait. She -would be ver’ glad when you return.” - -“We’ll see. If she isn’t here in five minutes she won’t be coming.” - -“Why do you theenk?” - -“Because I guess she has another American officer. I think I saw her -with one to-day.” - -“Oh, _non, non, non!_ That would be ver’ bad. I do not believe. -Mademoiselle Madeleine is _fidèle_. You shall see.” - -“Why are you so sure, mademoiselle?” - -“_Pourquoi?..._” She shrugged her shoulders. “Bicause it would be so. If -Monsieur Ken should go for three week, for three mont’, for three year, -I should wait and be _très-fidèle_. I should find no other _officier -américain_. _Non, non_, it would not be well.” - -“There’s Arlette’s head,” said Ken. - -“No need to wait,” Bert said, irritably. “She won’t come.” - -“We should wait,” said Andree. - -“Until a quarter past seven, then.” - -But a quarter past seven arrived and Madeleine did not arrive. - -“Let’s eat,” said Bert. “She’s given me the sack.” - -“_Pauvre Monsieur Bert._ It ees ver’ sad. Oh, she is _très-méchante_, -ver’ naughty. I do not onderstan’.” - -They went out to the table and sat down. Kendall sat in gloomy silence, -Bert was suffering from wounded vanity, and Andree looked from one to -the other uncomfortably. - -“It is _nécessaire_ to smile,” she said, and touched Ken’s hand with her -finger-tips. - -“I don’t feel much like smiling, _mignonne_.” - -“_Pourquoi?_” - -Arlette entered with the _potage_ to save him from replying to her -question, and, placing the huge bowl in the middle of the table, stood -regarding Andree dolefully, with two big tears standing on her fat -cheeks. - -“Even Arlette makes to weep,” said Andree. “It is ver’ strange. What is -happen?” - -“_Pauvre mademoiselle! ... pauvre mademoiselle!..._” said Arlette, and, -turning very abruptly, she scuttled out of the room. - -“_Qu’est-ce que c’est?..._ Why does she speak this theeng?” She turned -startled eyes upon Ken. - -He hesitated, bit his lip, then he reached out and took her hand and -pressed it to his lips. “I have been ordered to America,” he said, -baldly. - -She did not speak, did not stir. It seemed to him that her expression -did not alter by so much as a shade. She was _still_. It was almost as -if animation were suspended. Andree did not turn her eyes from his face, -nor did she move or speak. She did not gaze at him questioningly nor -accusingly nor imploringly—she merely gazed with that accompaniment of -_stillness_!... He felt that he must speak and break that quietness -which he could feel as with a physical pain. - -“I got my orders yesterday.... I—it didn’t seem possible. I couldn’t -believe it.... I only knew yesterday.” He felt that he must clear -himself of any guilt of concealment, of having known of this thing and -kept it from her. - -“_Quand?_” she said. - -“I go to-morrow night—to Brest, and then to America.” - -She turned to her plate and began to eat. She had uttered no complaint, -shed no tear, done none of the things he had dreaded she might do. There -had been no painful scene, but he was not relieved. She was so _still_! - -He fumbled in his pocket and took out the little jeweler’s package and -removed the bracelet. She watched him gravely, with no outward sign of -emotion, and when he reached for her hand she gave it to him -unprotestingly. He snapped the bracelet about her wrist. She looked down -at it, and then up into his face. - -“It is ver’ pretty,” she said, “and you are mos’ good to me....” That -was all, but every now and then he saw her staring at the bracelet and -staring at it as if it were something strange and inexplicable. Once she -reached across with her other hand and touched it, felt of it, as if to -assure herself that it was really there, an actual thing and not -imagined. - -Ken tried to talk, Bert tried to talk, but the effort was futile. Dead, -cold silences fell.... The sensations of that meal would remain with -Kendall as long as he should live, a recurrent nightmare. Presently Bert -arose. He did a thing which he had never done before—lifted Andree’s -hand and touched it with his lips. - -“I must go, mademoiselle,” he said. “Good-by.” - -“Good-by, Monsieur Bert,” she said. - -Then they were alone! - -In the _salon_ he drew her down beside him on the sofa and held her -close. - -“I am very sad, _mignonne_,” he said. “I love you....” - -She studied his face a moment and smiled at very trifle of a smile. -“That is well,” she answered. - -“I am not going away because I want to. It is orders. I have to obey.” - -“_C’est la guerre_,” she said, gravely. - -“Yes, it is the war, but it’s cruel—it’s rotten. I want to stay here, to -stay with you.” - -“I wish that also,” she said. - -Something was demanded of him. He must say something, must not keep this -child in agony, not knowing what he intended to do with respect to her. -It was her right to know.... He must decide, and he must tell her.... -But again he put it off. There was time enough, and before he told her -there was still the chance of one last happy evening.... He wanted that, -wanted the memory of it, if nothing more. - -“_Mignonne_, do you love me?” he asked. - -“It is certain.” - -“Very much?” - -“I cannot say how much.” - -“America is not far,” he said, with some idiotic intention to comfort -her. “The ocean can be crossed in a week.” - -“That is true,” she said. - -Her head was against his breast, her eyes staring into her lap. Ken -looked straight before him, thinking, thinking. His mind was very clear, -as if lighted by that painful white light which seemed to pour in upon -his consciousness in moments of mental stress. It seemed to him as if -his eyes could pierce the walls if he willed it, as if his memory could -show him every minute incident in his whole life, as if he could see and -understand everything—everything. He drew her to him fiercely, but even -as he was sensing the softness of her slender body against his side he -was seeing the vestibule of the Presbyterian church, he was watching it -function. The individuals stood before him as if alive, every well-known -feature distinct. It was photographic. He could see changes of -expression, hear whispers, see cautious hands placed before gossiping -lips ... and he could see himself passing through that little group with -Andree on his arm!... - -He could see his own home—his return to it. He could see his mother and -feel the hostility that sprang to life the instant her eyes rested on -Andree. He could read his mother’s thoughts ... and his father’s. There -was the one bright spot. He could see his father kissing Andree -diffidently and patting her hand and telling her how glad he was to see -her and asking how his son had ever managed to capture such a pretty -girl.... There would be no doubt of her welcome at his father’s -hands.... But his mother—that cold hostility, that hard-eyed -suspicion!... And then, when she had him alone, the catechism he would -undergo, and the resentment and jealousy she would exhibit.... - -He could see his friends and the neighbors of his childhood with their -crass curiosity and their hints and whispers.... He knew their every -thought ... could see their eyes fixed on Andree speculatively ... some -of them hopefully! - -It was that he would have to take her, too.... And then, if the story -should come out!... But that would be little worse.... Perhaps he -exaggerated, perhaps he saw his old friends and acquaintances in -characters which were not truly theirs. There might have been more -charity among them than he perceived, more kindness and less narrowness -and insularity.... But he did not see them except as he feared they -might be. - -What of himself? How would he feel to find himself married to a girl who -had violated the standards of Plymouth Rock, even though he had been the -one to profit by that violation?... Even if none ever found it out but -himself? He would know it.... It would constantly be recurring to him—or -would it not? He did not know. The thing did not affect him now. It did -not make Andree the less desirable and lovable and _good_. Perhaps that -would persist—but his prejudices were deep-seated, had their roots in an -older generation and were not lightly to be cast out.... - -But he loved her.... In spite of all that he saw and felt and feared, he -knew that he loved her, and that to know she was removed forever from -his life would be to lose a wonderful thing that he could not bear to -lose.... The decision lay between love and expediency.... If only he -could live in Paris and never return to America! How easy it would be -then! - -“Will you miss me?” he asked, clumsily. - -She stirred in his arms and held her face up to his. “I shall be ver’ -sad,” she said. - -“Suppose—suppose something should happen to me and I could never come -back?” - -She held his hand very tightly. “I do not know,” she said. “I cannot to -theenk of that.” - -He must decide.... He must decide.... But he was afraid; he _could not_ -decide—not now, not yet.... There were hours ahead of them. - -She asked nothing of him, made no demands, but waited, waited. He could -feel her waiting, hoping for some word, some assurance that he was not -going to desert her forever, that he would come back to her—and he could -not give that assurance ... not yet. - -“It might be six months; it might be a year before I could come back.” - -She smiled. “I would be here,” she said. - -“And _fidèle_?” - -“You know,” she answered. “There would be no thought only jus’ for -you....” - -“But America is strange. It would not be Paris. You might be unhappy -there.” - -“That ees ver’ silly.... Where you are I shall always be happy.” - -He leaped to his feet and paced up and down the room, then stopped -suddenly before her. “What shall I do?... What shall I do?” he said, -hoarsely. - -“I cannot say. I do not know.” - -“You know I love you.” - -“I believe.” - -“I can’t decide. I can’t tell what to do.... I don’t know what I can do, -what will be possible.” - -She made no answer. - -“Can’t we pretend just for a while, just for a few hours, that I am not -going and that everything is going along just as it is? Can’t we have -just one more little moment of happiness?” - -“It ees not _facile_—not easy—to pretend so.” - -“But we will try ... I want to see you smile. I want to see you happy -once more. I’ve got to see you happy.” - -She sat erect and smiled, then the smile faded and she clenched her -little fists in her lap. “Oh, I shall be so _solitaire_, so lonely—so -lonely....” It was her only departure from that still calmness, her only -approach to emotion, to giving away to grief, and it passed swiftly. - -“See, I make to laugh now. For thees night I shall laugh, bicause you -wish it, and I do not wish you to be sad and to make thees _grimace_.... -You mus’ sit here beside me now thees minute. You mus’ to sit here and -love me so ver’ much, and we shall be mos’ happy.... Oh, I shall theenk -of thees Monsieur Bert and how ver’ fonny his face made itself to look. -He is ver’ droll—thees high yo’ng man.... It ees ver’ bad that you do -not have a piano, for then I can dance for you.... You must to get a -piano ver’ quickly—now, now.... You shall send out to fetch one or I -shall go away....” - -“_Mignonne ... mignonne...._” he said, and buried his face in her -lap.... - -She sat looking down at him very gravely, stroking his hair with her -soft, slender fingers.... - - * * * * * - -The taxicab hurried them down the Champs Élysées through the cool -morning air—on their last ride together in Paris.... He was conscious of -the city about them, of the essence of the marvelous city from which he -was so soon to depart.... There is something in the air of Paris, -something that one cannot escape, something intangible, enticing, -exciting.... He would miss it, miss it very much.... Andree, too, was -looking out of the window. She sat very still and did not speak. Her -face was grave and expressionless with that look of abstraction which -she wore as some wild bird of the forest wears its protective -coloring.... He reached out and took her hand, holding it silently.... - -His decision had not been made. He had given her neither assurance of -his return nor had he told her that they were about to part forever.... -He did not know, and he could not decide ... there were now only -minutes—seconds. He could see the Élysées Palace Hôtel ahead, his -destination, where he would say good-by to her.... And again, with a -weakness which made him despise himself, he evaded the issue. - -“You will write to me—often?” he asked. - -“Yes.... And you?” It was her first question since he had told her he -was to go; the first time she had demanded anything of him. - -“I shall write. I shall tell you everything.... Everything will come -right somehow. It must come right.” - -“I have not your address.” She spoke very calmly. - -He wrote it on a slip of paper and handed it to her. - -“But you have not my address—nor my name.” She smiled with that quaint -lightening of the face which always stirred him to tenderness. - -He had not wanted to know her name nor her address. He had loved the -mystery of it and of her. But the mystery must end. He gave her his -memorandum—book and she wrote, but he did not look at the page, closing -the book and placing it in his pocket.... She was still a mystery—he -would look when it became necessary to look, and not before. - -The taxicab was stopping. They looked at each other, but even now she -gave no sign of distress, shed no tear. - -“_Mignonne...._” he whispered, and drew her into his arms. “Good-by.... -Good-by.... I love you....” - -“Good-by,” she said, gravely. “I also love you ... and I shall be always -_fidèle_.” - -He opened the door and alighted; then he turned and lifted her hand to -his lips. She did not smile; her face was immobile, her eyes were fixed -on his face with a strange expression of detachment, of abstraction. He -kissed her hand again and turned abruptly away. But he could not leave -her so.... He turned; the taxi was starting. He called and ran toward -the curb, but the chauffeur did not hear.... He was too late; the -machine gained headway and swept around the corner—and she was gone.... - - - - - CHAPTER XXVII - - -After a sleepless, uncomfortable night, spent sitting bolt upright in a -compartment of the Paris-Brest train, Kendall arrived at the dirty, -unkempt, unattractive seaport which was his destination. His baggage was -taken from him by the branch of the army which looked after such -matters, and he found his way to the provost’s office, where he showed -his orders and was told to report daily to see if his name was posted in -the list of those to sail. No further information was given him as to -the date of his departure nor the vessel upon which he should sail. - -He secured a room at the Continental Hôtel, the best the city afforded, -and found it unspeakable—and then for six interminable days he wandered -about the town, waiting, waiting for the convoy which seemed destined -never to arrive. He played innumerable games of bridge, walked a dozen -times a day to a vantage-point on the old fortifications from which he -could gain a panoramic view of the harbor and its jostling craft.... Far -out at the entrance swayed and tossed an observation balloon, keeping -ceaseless watch of the sea for lurking submarines.... - -No vessels came save one, the torpedoed _Mt. Vernon_, which had sailed -early on the morning of his arrival. It staggered into port with a great -hole in its side, and presently disappeared into dry dock farther into -the bay.... Then the report spread that cholera had broken out in the -town and was magnified to appalling proportions.... There was nothing to -do but play bridge and walk to the harbor to look for an incoming -convoy, and to eat and sleep. It was maddening.... - -The harbor ceased to be interesting. German prisoners compelled to labor -on the docks became commonplace; scurrying destroyers failed to stir the -imagination.... And then one morning Ken walked to his usual -vantage-point and saw at anchor the gigantic _Leviathan_.... - -Presently orders were posted and his name appeared upon the list. He was -to report himself with his hand-baggage at a certain point early next -morning.... The morning was overcast and cold, with a chilling, slanting -drizzle of rain, and everybody was out of spirits and uncomfortable as -they waited for the lighter to carry them out to the transport. There -was no shelter, and they stood about the deck of the little boat, backs -to the slashing rain, for no sooner had they left the wharf than the -rain descended in earnest. - -Finally they were on board and were assigned to rooms, but this was not -the end of the waiting. Forty-eight hours remained while the vessel was -being coaled, but at last she started, a consort on either side and a -flock of destroyers for convoy. - -The voyage was not unpleasant, and it was interesting, at least, to -watch the little destroyers plunging and rolling through the great waves -until one night they disappeared and left the three transports alone.... -There were six days and a half of plowing westward through the Atlantic, -days when one wore constantly his life-jacket and rather expected to -hear at any moment the detonation of the defensive guns or the explosion -of a torpedo against the vessel’s sides.... But at last land came into -view—only to be obscured by fog that compelled the _Leviathan_ to crawl -along, feeling her way with the lead.... And then, as suddenly as it had -come, the fog vanished and they were in the harbor, with the Goddess -visible ahead and the sky-line of the metropolis over to the right.... -Nobody left the deck. It was an experience and every man wanted to feel -every second of it, witness every manifestation of it.... Vessels -cheered them and they cheered in return.... It was America—home. They -had been to the war and had returned, some of them battered, broken, but -nevertheless returned. It was exhilarating, wonderful. - -An early morning ferry-boat, crowded with civilians, ran under their -bows, and some competent individual led the cheering. _Crash, crash, -crash_, sounded the enthusiastic welcome of those who had remained -behind, and every man on the transport knew that those cheers were for -_him_.... - -The great vessel swung about and docked by the aid of snorting, grunting -tugs, and after more delays and formalities they set foot on shore.... -Kendall went directly to the Pennsylvania station to book a lower berth -for Washington. - -A week later he was in Detroit on furlough—in his old home, amid -familiar surroundings ... under his own roof with his father and mother. -It was very much the same. The war touched the life of the city but -lightly. It was all as he remembered it, all as he had expected it to be -... and Paris and the distant war seemed to be matters that had occurred -in a dream.... On Sunday he went to church with his mother and father -and received the homage and congratulations of the vestibule.... - -That afternoon he went to his room to write—to write the promised letter -to Andree. It was not easy ... for the decision had not yet been made. -He wrote and destroyed and wrote again. He promised to return; he -assured her of his love ... but when he read he was not satisfied.... He -was in Detroit, in another world, and Andree did not belong to that -world. He was surprised to find how well this world satisfied him and -how unreal that other world he had known and loved had become.... This -was _his_ world, these were the things _he_ was meant to do and the -thoughts _he_ was meant to think. This was America, and he was an -American!... - -He tried to think of Paris, to get back again into the spirit of Paris, -but could not do so.... It had become unreal, distant, not appealing.... - -But Andree ... she was not unreal, not distant. She was very real, -present in his heart—and yet she was of that other world, a stranger, an -alien.... He loved her—but—There was always that _but_. - -He wrote still another letter and read it. Yes, he had decided. He could -not give her up. He would bring her here and let the consequences be -what they might.... The letter was placed in its envelop and he drew out -his note-book to look for her address.... It was there, those written -words which should forever remove Andree from the land of lovely -mystery.... But he did not open the book. It lay in his hand, but he -dared not open it.... He went to the window and looked out upon the -street, that typically American, typically Middle-Western street.... He -stood so for many minutes, then walked toward the fireplace and tossed -the note-book into the blaze.... The thing was done, the decision was -made and was irrevocable ... and Andree would always remain a glowing -mystery.... - -He went again to his desk and wrote another letter. It was brief: - - DEAR MAUDE—There is no woman in my life but you. When you come - home I shall come to you for my answer. - -He inclosed it, addressed it, stamped it, and went out to the post-box -on the corner. Even now he hesitated a moment, but it was only a -moment.... The letter dropped inside. It could not be recalled. - -But he did not move from the spot. For a long time he stood staring -before him with eyes that did not see the typically American street, -with a consciousness that did not feel his typically Middle-Western -surroundings.... What he felt was that something true and faithful and -beautiful had found a place in his life never to be removed. What he saw -was a vision of Andree, waiting ... waiting.... - - THE END - - - - - -End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Little Moment of Happiness, by -Clarence Budington Kelland - -*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LITTLE MOMENT OF HAPPINESS *** - -***** This file should be named 57884-0.txt or 57884-0.zip ***** -This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: - http://www.gutenberg.org/5/7/8/8/57884/ - -Produced by Roger Frank and the Online Distributed -Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was -produced from images generously made available by The -Internet Archive) - -Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will -be renamed. - -Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright -law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, -so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United -States without permission and without paying copyright -royalties. 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You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of -the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at -www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you'll have -to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. - -Title: The Little Moment of Happiness - -Author: Clarence Budington Kelland - -Release Date: September 10, 2018 [EBook #57884] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: UTF-8 - -*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LITTLE MOMENT OF HAPPINESS *** - - - - -Produced by Roger Frank and the Online Distributed -Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was -produced from images generously made available by The -Internet Archive) - - - - - - -</pre> - - -<div> - <h1 class='c000'>THE LITTLE MOMENT OF HAPPINESS</h1> -</div> - -<div class='pbb'> - <hr class='pb c001' /> -</div> -<div class='figcenter id001'> -<img src='images/frontis.jpg' alt='' class='ig001' /> -<div class='ic001'> -<p>Kendall regarded her. She was a little thing with clear eyes and a rather pretty face.</p> -</div> -</div> - -<div class='pbb'> - <hr class='pb c001' /> -</div> - -<div class='nf-center-c1'> - <div class='nf-center'> - <div class='c001'><span class='c002'>THE LITTLE MOMENT OF HAPPINESS</span></div> - <div class='c001'><span class='sc'>By</span></div> - <div><span class='c003'>CLARENCE BUDINGTON KELLAND</span></div> - <div class='c001'><span class='sc'>Author of</span></div> - <div>“<i>The Source</i>,” “<i>The Hidden Spring</i>,” “<i>Sudden Jim</i>,”</div> - <div>“<i>The Highflyers</i>,” <i>etc.</i></div> - <div class='c001'><span class='small'>FRONTISPIECE</span></div> - <div class='c001'>A. L. BURT COMPANY</div> - <div>Publishers New York</div> - <div><span class='small'>Published by arrangement with Harper & Brothers</span></div> - </div> -</div> - -<div class='pbb'> - <hr class='pb c001' /> -</div> - -<div class='nf-center-c0'> - <div class='nf-center'> - <div><span class='c003'>THE LITTLE MOMENT OF HAPPINESS</span></div> - </div> -</div> - -<div> - <h2 class='c004'>CHAPTER I</h2> -</div> - -<p class='c005'>Those low-lying hills were France!</p> - -<p class='c006'>They had not lifted into view suddenly, but had -rather emerged from the east, solidifying slowly out of a -slate-colored blur which to the eyes of unaccustomed -voyagers might or might not have been land. There was -no ebullition of spirits. The two thousand men and -women aboard the vessel crowded to the rail and strained -their eyes toward that land in which great events awaited -them, for the most part in utter silence. Conversation -failed. There was an impressiveness about the moment -akin to the impressiveness of entering some great cathedral—there -was awe!... There, rising out of the east was -France!... <i>France</i>!</p> - -<p class='c006'>The sentiment that stirred them was more profound -than a thrill. The day had held its thrill for them—a -thrill that for many of them had followed a sleepless -night. Those who had slept had done so fully clothed, -with life-jackets within instant touch of the hand. For -the kindly ocean had been made dangerous, not by the -elements, which throughout the voyage had held themselves -in restraint, but by men. It had been a morning -of mists which lay upon the placid waters and glowed in -response to the touch of the rising sun. Then, as the -luminous grayness dissipated, there came into view far off -to the northward, a spot which grew and approached until -it became a grim and business-like French destroyer to -be greeted with cheers of relief. It was the convoy. -There was a thrill. It spelled safety—that little boat -with ready guns—but it spoke of danger as well. The -early passengers who watched the approach of the little -vessel of war warmed with affection toward it. It was -their guardian, come out of nothingness to protect them -through the remaining perilous miles of ocean.</p> - -<p class='c006'>In the cabin a little party of women had remained -through the night, fearful of the unseen, impressed by -the perils which might hide beneath the dark waters -which the bow of the vessel turned up into wonderful -patterns of phosphorescence. They had grouped together -to draw what comfort they could from companionship. -Now they emerged on deck relieved, almost jubilant, -until one of their number said, suddenly, “I am told -it is the last ten miles which is most dangerous.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>The destroyer ran alongside, and a sailor with two -little flags waved a long message to the bridge; then she -dropped back astern, and with her passed that thrill -which had stirred the ship’s company.</p> - -<p class='c006'>No, it was no thrill that moved the passengers on the -vessel as the hills of France arose before them; the emotion -was more profound, more impressive. To many of them -it was the first sight of a foreign shore, but, more than -that, it was their first sight of France—of that France -which by the greatness of her spirit during three years of -peril, of suffering, of horrors, had become not a country, -but a <i>symbol</i>.</p> - -<p class='c006'>For the most part the passengers were in uniform. In -these days there were no tourists, none who traveled -abroad for amusement or recreation or to accomplish that -object so dear to Americans—to improve the mind. -These voyagers went as servants, to take their part, great -or small, in that war which America had come to see at -last was <i>her</i> war.</p> - -<p class='c006'>There were many young officers among the first-class -passengers, boyish lieutenants proud of unaccustomed -uniforms, a little set up because they were not as other -men; but all eager to be at their grim work. In a month -their swanking would be a thing of the past, for they -would have encountered reality, and out of the reality -they would emerge as men. There was a captain or so, -themselves boyish; there were Red Cross men who, -before assuming their uniforms, had been lawyers, merchants, -brokers. Older men there were, wearing well-tailored -uniforms and carrying themselves with assurance. -There was a considerable company of Y. M. C. A. workers, -on their way to do what came to hand. They were not -certain yet what it was to be, but they would learn. -Their uniforms were not so well tailored, their puttees -were not of expensive leather like those of the officers and -Red Cross men. As one reviewed them he saw that all -but a few were not members of the <i>executive</i> class, but -workers. They were coming to drive trucks, to sell -meager supplies over the makeshift counters of huts and -canteens, to serve the soldier in such ways as offered.</p> - -<p class='c006'>And there were women—Red Cross women, Y. M. C. A. -women, a few musicians and entertainers come to lighten -the tedium of the boys in khaki. There were a few civilians, -French people, returning from America for purposes -important only to them. And there was a sprinkling of -French officers, among them a boyish hero much followed -by women’s eyes because he was a handsome boy made -more handsome by the splendor of his uniform—trousers -of red, long coat of black, and most of all, perhaps, by the -cluster of medals upon his breast. He was only a youth, -but he was France’s most famous aviator.</p> - -<p class='c006'>There were third-class passengers. Forward were six -hundred Poles in vivid red coats, recruited in the United -States and Canada for the Polish Legion, going to fight -for their country, which could only be a member of the -family of nations if the Allies succeeded in crushing the -enemy. Aft there were six hundred American boys—machine-gun -men and a signal-corps unit.</p> - -<p class='c006'>All of them—officers, men, women—knew that those hills -concealed something, something tremendous. Resident -in each individual was a consciousness that beyond there -lay a new world, but how new and how different none was -capable of realizing. The old life, the old ways, the -accustomed rules of the game of life, had been left behind -and few had the vision to perceive that they were left -behind forever, that nothing could again be as it had -been, and that they were standing poised for a step -through a doorway which led into a new era.</p> - -<p class='c006'>They were about to find contact with another civilization, -with another philosophy, another method of life. -It was not alone that they were to be set down in an -alien land, amid a people speaking a tongue which was -meaningless to them, and living their lives according to -a manner which seemed good to them—and which <i>was</i> -good to them and to all who saw it with clear eyes and -open mind—but because they were about to become a -part of events through which no soul can pass without -being so modified and molded as to emerge a different -soul, detached, unrelated, cut off by experience and -knowledge from the soul that had been.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Behind those low-lying hills lay France.... What -was France? It was, for every man and woman aboard -that vessel, the great adventure of the soul. Just that. -Each one of them was to be born again. With the -touch of the soil of France beneath their feet would come -a new birth, the entrance into a new life in which each -would find much to wonder at, much to admire, much to -puzzle over.... But they would find <i>themselves</i>. Moreover -they would find a world which had resolved itself -into genuineness, a world which was true, because war had -stripped it of pretense.</p> - -<p class='c006'>The American soul is a peculiar affair. It is circumscribed -by environment, by inherited prejudices. It is, -for the most part, incapable of comprehending itself, -much less the soul of another people of another temperament -and genius, ripened by plenitude of years and by -a hundred generations of genius which has studied the art -of living. The American soul is a living thing imprisoned -in a cage of concealments. It was to come into intimate -contact with a people who do not believe in imprisoning -the soul, who have sought for and discovered the essentials, -and have cut away—perhaps have never found the -necessity for cutting away—the shame, the self-deceptions, -the glossings-over, the self-imposed blind spots, which -make us what we are. The American soul recognizes food -and admits it to thought’s decent society, but it declines -to recognize the existence of processes of digestion. The -French soul knows that food must be digested as well -as eaten. To the French soul digestion is respectable.</p> - -<p class='c006'>So the American soul was to meet the French soul—a -meeting of the poles. From such a meeting must result -something worth while to the world....</p> - -<p class='c006'>From that day, the 18th of May, <span class='fss'>A.D.</span> 1918, those men -and women would calculate the events of their lives. -It was the beginning of a new dispensation. As the world -dates events as <span class='fss'>A.D.</span> or <span class='fss'>B.C.</span>, so these Americans would -date their events as, “Before I landed in France,” or, -“After I landed in France.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>It was from the port side of the vessel that the best -view of the now distinct land was to be obtained, and the -rail was crowded from end to end of the long deck with -men and women who looked and looked as if land were a -new and tremendous curiosity, a something which they -had never seen before and might miss altogether if their -attention wavered for an instant. Tea and wafers had -just been served by the deck stewards. Well forward -stood a young man with the bars of a captain on his -shoulders; he stood back from the rail, alone, looking -over the heads of the other passengers, as his height -made it practicable for him to do. He held in his right -hand a cup of tea and was eating one of a handful of -square wafers. Not as a man eats who is dallying with -the quaint foreign custom of afternoon tea did he bear -himself, but as a young man who is honestly hungry. -He addressed himself to those biscuits and washed them -down with tea because it had been long hours since the -midday meal and because his big young body was -demanding food.</p> - -<p class='c006'>In his uniform he presented a figure to admire, as did -most of the young officers aboard. His back was broad, -his legs straight, and, though not bulky, gave one the -impression that he was graciously and strongly made. -One may read much from a man’s legs. More especially -is this so in uniform and leather puttees. Indications of -character are resident in a calf, but more especially in -knees and ankles. These things are concealed by the -trousers of civilian life. Some day an astute judge of -character will write a monograph on masculine legs and -revolutionize the appraisal of men. The captain’s legs -were a credit to the United States, the army, and himself.</p> - -<p class='c006'>He was not handsome, nor was his face delicate with -overmuch intellectual labor. If you had met him in a -crowd you would have said immediately that here was a -young man who could play a bully game of football. -That was the impression his features gave—of ability to -play a rough game splendidly. It was not the face of a -pugilist nor of a society man. It was the face of an -average young American of the class which goes to college, -acquires enough education to make him easy in the -presence of gentlemen, and upon which to base a greater -success in life than had been possible to his father who -came before him. When you looked at him you thought -in physical terms before you considered his possible -mentality. There was nothing dull about him; there -were indications of a reasonable amount of good nature, -and some intolerance, and much of boyishness. His attention -was equally divided between France and biscuits.</p> - -<p class='c006'>A young woman just in front of him turned and looked -up at him. “Here comes something,” she said, pointing.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Dirigible,” he replied, following the direction of her -finger.</p> - -<p class='c006'>The dirigible buzzed out to the vessel, looked it over, -and evidently with satisfied mind turned and hurried -away toward shore again....</p> - -<p class='c006'>“There’s a convoy or something,” said the young -woman.</p> - -<p class='c006'>The captain was interested. “Probably coastwise -ships coming down from England. Six of them, aren’t -there?... And see all those other little boats in there. -Must be close to the harbor.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“We’re slowing down.... See, there’s that little boat -like a tug with a cannon up in front. It’s signaling us.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Pilot, probably.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>The vessel lost headway and everybody watched the -pilot come aboard as if it were some strange phenomenon—as -it was to all but a few.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“I wonder if we’ll be allowed to cable home that we have -arrived?... What do you think, Captain Ware?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Haven’t the least idea in the world. Don’t see why -not, though, Miss Knox.... War Department ’tends -to it for us.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“My people will be terribly worried until they hear I -am safe, and then they’ll keep on being worried until -I’m back in New York again.... I’m going to sit down. -Come on.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>Maude Knox’s tone approached the proprietary, not -that she had asserted any permanent claim to Captain -Ware, but only those property rights <i>in transitu</i> which -arise even in war-time aboard a transatlantic liner. She -had promenaded with him, had played bridge with him, -and had sat out on deck—the lightless decks—with him -as other young men and women aboard ship had embarked -on friendly alliances for the voyage. These two had -talked, or rather Miss Knox had talked and Captain Ware -had listened, and rather liked each other—that was all. -There had been nothing sentimental in their relations, -even under the moon and in the not unromantic precautionary -darkness enforced by the peril of the submarine. -They were recognized by the passengers as having -paired off, just as a dozen other young couples were -similarly indulgently recognized. It was youth making -the best of its every moment. That was all.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“I simply can’t imagine what it is going to be like—living -over here,” she said. “It must have been terribly -interesting for an American to live in France before the -war—but now, with all the effects of war to see, it will -be like living in a thrilling book, don’t you think?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>Ware had thought of France mostly in terms of war, -of ruined villages, lines of trenches, strategic positions. -The romance of going to war in France had not missed him; -he felt it, but he felt it with a vagueness, an ignorance of -what he was to find, and a chaotic conception of the -French people that, perhaps, but made the adventure -the more romantic to him. He was aware that something -great, something that was going to interest him as he had -never been interested before, was about to happen to him. -But what it would be like he could not picture, did not -try to picture. He knew he wanted to see Paris, because -he had heard tales of Paris. Most of them he was inclined -to discount, but enough remained to make him feel -that the city was well worth his investigation. That is -as far as he had thought of civilian France.... What his -thoughts and sensations were, now that he was nearing -those shores, he was unable to put into words, and if he -had been able the natural reticence of the young man -afraid of appearing sentimental would have caused him -to remain silent. Not so Maude Knox.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Maude was the daughter of a professor of philosophy in -a Mid-Western university. From her babyhood she was -accustomed to the dissection of souls. She had seen her -own soul on her father’s mental operating-table, and, -somehow, the reserves which are inherent in the common -run of girls seemed to be what she called <i>piffle</i>. She had -grown up with her father and a housekeeper, and theories -and philosophies and iconoclasms had been the commonplace -staple of her mental diet. A great many of them, -too, she catalogued in her small head as piffle. On the -whole, she was a bit <i>queer</i>, or so her girl friends said, but -by no means unwomanly or otherwise than girlish. She -had a way of liking to look facts in the face, and of discussing -them critically. That made her queer. She liked -to talk about things, and inquire into things, and was -fairly capable of analysis. She fancied she knew a great -deal about life and the complexities of human conduct—because -she had heard them discussed and had discussed -them herself. Actually she was an exceedingly unworldly -young person, with more than the usual amount -of tolerance for the peculiarities of other folks.... She -was rather small, with hair that crinkled close to her head -and which no amount of breeze seemed ever to disarrange; -her eyes, when she laughed, closed to twinkling slits, and -tiny wrinkles ran out from their corners in a droll sort -of way; her cheek-bones were high, and her cheeks not -at all rounded. She was pretty, but she was also undoubtedly -<i>chic</i> and agreeable-looking.... She wore a -leather coat, and when she walked she thrust her hands -into the side pockets and strode with a swing of the -shoulders from side to side that was almost a boyish -swagger. One might have been excused for concluding -that she had only recently emerged from tomboyhood. -She had a certain confidence of bearing that was at once -attractive and a safeguard. There was something about -her which seemed to say to young men who looked at her -with interest, “No nonsense here.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>There are girls who are advertised by their appearance -as amenable to shaded porches, moonlit nights, and -sentimental interludes. Maude Knox was not one of -these. Yet she did not impress one as being exempt from -emotions and sensations; she gave no warning that one -must expect no warmth. It was rather that emotions, -sensations, warmth were there, but surely controlled, not -to be manifested lightly or frivolously. Somehow it was -easier to think of her as a wife than as a sweetheart....</p> - -<p class='c006'>Ware was thinking how his father would enjoy all this, -the arrival in a strange land, the sights, the anticipation -of events to come. His mother would not have enjoyed -it. There was too much bustle and confusion for her, -too much to upset the nerves. In all likelihood she would -be confined to her cabin with one of those nervous headaches.... But -his father—his father was one of those -men who never grow beyond their enthusiasms nor beyond -naïve manifestations of their enthusiasms.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Yes,” he said, in answer to Miss Knox, “the folks will -worry, of course.... Dad won’t worry so much, but -mother’ll be in a stew. She’s usually in a stew.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“I had a <i>time</i> to get father to let me come. He said -a war was no place for a young lady.... But this seems -to be a different kind of a war, doesn’t it. Women are -going to it.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“I can understand nurses....” he said, hesitatingly.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“But not the rest of us. That’s because you’re old-fashioned -and Middle-Western.... The army wouldn’t -let us come if we weren’t useful.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“What, exactly, are you going to do?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Why, ... <i>something</i>—something <i>useful</i>.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“There’s that girl that plays the harp, and a choir-singer, -and a couple of actresses. I can understand them -more or less, but you ... I really don’t. You’re not a -stenographer, nor anything like that, nor an entertainer, -nor a nurse, nor an ambulance-driver.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Maybe I’ll be a chaperon,” she said, taking refuge in -lightness, for she really did not know what she <i>was</i> going -to do. She was classified as a canteen worker. Her -uniform was that of the Y. M. C. A., and she had remarked -with feeling that the hat was already beginning -to fade....</p> - -<p class='c006'>“I presume you know as much about it as any of us do.... -I wish you could hear dad on the war and on -Germany. He reads the papers to the last punctuation -mark, but, somehow, he never seems to grasp it. Possibly -most folks are that way, but father always says what -he thinks, and goes ahead pronouncing the names of -French towns, and has opinions about everything. He -gets excited and pounds on the table.... Dad’s all -right. We’ve always done things together since I was a -kid. He’s that kind.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>She was able to see that a very real affection for his -father was stated in those phrases. She wondered about -the father—if he resembled his son in appearance or -character.... He did not. The father was a middle-sized -man of no education except what an undirected -reading of many books had given him. He was a great -reader of novels, especially of historical romances, and his -knowledge of the past of the nations came from these.</p> - -<p class='c006'>His idea of France was Athos, Porthos Aramis, and -d’Artagnan, with Miladi and a few cardinals and intriguing -duchesses thrown in.... He owned a grocery -in Detroit which did moderately well. His soul was filled -with admiration and love for his son. He had a temper -given to sudden, brief flashes ... and he had no bad -habits except that he chewed tobacco surreptitiously. -People liked him, especially children. He was good -personally, but had no vindictive attitude toward evil. -Every Sunday he went to church without complaint and -without thought of it; though he would have enjoyed -himself much more in a boat with a fish-line. When -Captain Ware was younger and got into difficulties which -his mother magnified into crimes and wept and foresaw -disgrace, Mr. Ware would say, “Now don’t you worry, -mother; that boy’s coming out all right....”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Mother’s more worried about my coming to wicked -France than about my being shot up,” he said, presently, -and smiled.</p> - -<p class='c006'>His mother was the dominant member of the family. -She was the last word in orthodoxy and was stubbornly -dogmatic. She was religious after the manner of a zealot, -but in her life economy took place just before religion. -One had to save money and be economical to enter the -kingdom of heaven; she could even overlook a few moral -lapses in an individual who was frugal and laid by systematically -for a rainy day.... All his life Captain -Ware had been afraid of pulling down on his head what -he privately called his mother’s “tantrums.” These were -hysterical outbursts following some escapade of his, or -possibly following a mere argument in which economy -or religion was mentioned. She could cast stinging -darts with her tongue, and when she was opposed, it did -not much matter where, she was reckless in dispensing -them. Anybody who stood near was likely to be wounded.</p> - -<p class='c006'>But she loved her son savagely and jealously, and lived -her life and practised her economies for him. Anything -which appertained to the perpetuation of the species -was somehow abhorrent to her. Here, as everywhere, -she was an extremist. Before her son was ten years old -she was already in a state of mind, and embarrassed him -so that he exerted himself to avoid being alone with her, -by questioning him and by very frank warnings.... At -ten she gave him a book to read entitled <i>Plain Facts</i>. -She worked as she thought, frantically, without sparing -herself or anybody else ... and the result was that she -was burning herself out.... She was a remarkable -woman, sometimes a lovable and companionable woman, -but so intense, so intolerant of any belief which did not -agree perfectly with hers, that people always felt the -necessity of being on their guard with her so as not to -“set her off.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>It was from these parents that Captain Ware inherited, -and he was like neither of them.... But traces of both -were easy to find in him. When one looks for explanations -of his acts, one would do well to study his parents -and to see if his acts did not spring from inherited characteristics -and tendencies, or were not the result of a -revulsion against parental characteristics which had irked -him as a boy.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Now, for the first time in his life—and he was twenty-six -years old—he was cutting loose from family contacts, -and cutting loose in this total and revolutionary manner. -His first adventure in freedom was into a new world which -would not understand him and which he was not equipped -to understand himself.... He had always lived at home, -except for his four years in college, and his mother’s figure -had been always present, for she had made it her business -to keep it ever present.... In a few hours he would set -his foot on the soil of France.... With one sudden -wrench, war had snatched him from an environment -dominated by his mother—and set him down in France.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“I wonder if we’ll get ashore to-night,” said Miss Knox.</p> - -<p class='c006'>That question presently answered itself. After a short -progress up the river, the vessel dropped her anchor, -there to remain until morning.... That night Captain -Ware sat late on deck with Maude Knox, watching the -strange river thick with anchored craft which busied -themselves by sending flashing signals to each other—mysterious -signals that seemed to say: “You have arrived -at the war. We are busy about the war....”</p> - -<p class='c006'>The Polish volunteers forward sang the weird songs of -their land; the Americans aft manifested their relief at a -safe arrival by wildly cheered boxing-bouts followed by -enthusiastic, if somewhat ragged, singing of many popular -songs.... There was a preference for that sentimental -type of song which had to do with weeping sweethearts -left standing on the pier, and with mothers dedicating -their boys to death for the flag....</p> - -<p class='c006'>In the morning came the distress of customs examination -and the woes of finding and identifying baggage. -Ware assisted Miss Knox as other young officers were -assisting their partners of the voyage.... The vessel -tied up to the dock. Miss Knox shook hands and said -good-by, marching down the steep incline of the gangplank -with the members of her party.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“I wonder if I’ll ever see him again?” she thought.</p> - -<p class='c006'>As for Captain Ware, the girl passed completely from -his mind. He had other things to think about and a -great curiosity to satisfy.... So far as he was concerned, -she had passed out of his life.</p> - -<p class='c006'>He stood at the rail, looking down upon the wharf. -Below him an American soldier thrust his head out of a -port-hole, looked about him sternly, and then demanded of -a Frenchman below, “Say, mister, where’s all this trouble, -anyhow?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>His attitude was typical of those boys. There was -trouble some place and they wanted to get to it and -settle it with promptness. It was the attitude of a -policeman a little late at the scene of a fight....</p> - -<p class='c006'>Kendall Ware arrived in Paris early on the evening of -May 19th and alighted from the crowded train in the -Gare d’Orléans. He was excited. It was impossible that -he should actually be in Paris, but he was unmistakably -there. It rather astounded him and he wanted to rush out -of the gray old station to see it at once.... To arrive in -Paris was a fitting climax for such a day as he was completing, -a day that had given him his first glimpses of -beautiful France, glimpses from a rapidly moving train -that had caused him to say to himself, “It’s no wonder -the French will fight for such a country.” Already he was -impressed by France; already admiration for it was beginning -to grow within him.... That beautiful, smiling, -rich, clean expanse of hills and fields and vineyards, -punctuated by little red-tiled villages and by ancient -sprawling stone farm buildings, had touched the sentimental -in him. He thought he understood why Frenchmen -love their land ... but he had not scratched the -outer husk of that reason yet. It would require weeks -for him to discover that it was not the material, not land -nor soil nor the structures reared by men, that caused -the Frenchman’s passionate love; it was, he would discover, -the imponderables, the immaterial—it was the -soul that resided in the material....</p> - -<p class='c006'>He climbed the stairs from the train-shed into the -station proper, and paused a moment to regard with -boyish interest the crowd composed of women and soldiers, -of <i>poilus</i> carrying full equipment—sturdy little men -whose age seemed greater than it was by reason of four -years given to such affairs as Verdun, the Marne, the -battles in the Champagne. These men had been in it. -They had heard cannon roar with deadly intent; they -had taken part in charges and in retreats; the trench -and the dugout were more their homes to-day, through -years of custom, than their own farms or cottages.... -They were <i>soldiers</i>, and they looked to be soldiers.</p> - -<p class='c006'>There were uniforms of other nationalities, too: of the -British, the brown and tasseled caps of the Belgians, the -gray and peaked caps of the Italians—and the khaki of -Americans. There was a boy with an arm-band bearing -the letters M P, with which he was to become very familiar—the -everywhere present and remarkably efficient military -police of the American Army....</p> - -<p class='c006'>Presently he was in the dark street. The darkness -came as a surprise to him until he recalled that Paris -nights slept under the constant threat of German <i>Gothas</i>. -The street lights—casting a dim-blue glow—were shaded -above so that no light might rise to tell hostile raiders -that a great city lay here.... Strain his eyes as he -would, he could not see Paris, only a vague hint of buildings -that might be palaces or warehouses, for all that he -could see.... He looked for a taxicab.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Then it occurred to him that when he found a conveyance -he had scant language with which to direct the -chauffeur. He was going to the University Union, once -the Palais Royal Hôtel, now taken over by American -universities and colleges as both club and hotel for -American university men in the army.... A tiny taxicab -rattled up to the curb—all Paris taxicabs rattle in this -way—and he approached it with some embarrassment.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“University Union,” he said to the chauffeur.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“<i>Comment?</i>”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“U-ni-versity Union,” said Kendall, speaking very -slowly and distinctly.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“<i>Comment?</i>” repeated the chauffeur, waggling his head.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Out of the crowd stepped a Frenchman, smiling. -“What is it monsieur desires? May I be of assistance to -monsieur?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“I want to go to the University Union, and I don’t -know how to tell this man.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“The University Union? I do not know it. Is it that -it is an hotel, monsieur? Do you know its location?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>Kendall searched for a note-book and read the address. -“Number eight rue Richelieu,” he said.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“<i>Huit rue Richelieu</i>,” the Frenchman said to the -chauffeur.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Thank you,” Kendall said, and took the hand which -the Frenchman extended cordially.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“It makes nothing, monsieur. I am delighted to -serve <i>Monsieur l’Officier Américain.... Bon soir, -monsieur! Bonne chance!</i>”</p> - -<p class='c006'>Kendall’s heart was warmed by the little courtesy. It -was a sort of welcome to him. It surprised him, rather, -for in America one does not expect assistance to leap -to one from a crowd of strangers. He was soon to learn -that it was different in France; that all Paris seemed -to be on the lookout to be of service to American soldiers, -on the lookout almost to the point of embarrassment. -He was to discover that the heart of France had a very -special niche set aside for Americans. Even though it -had already a saying, “<i>Tous les Américaines sont fous</i>,” it -loved them for their very madness....</p> - -<p class='c006'>The little taxi rattled and strained at breath-taking -speed around the corner, across the Pont Royale, under -the arches which allow a street to pass through the -Louvre (though he did not know it was the Louvre), past -the Comédie Française, and finally brought up with a -lurch before the building that had been the Palais Royal -Hôtel before the coming of the Americans.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Here he registered, passed through a lobby filled with -American officers and sergeants and corporals and privates—for -in this one spot in all France military rank ceases -to exist and men are not soldiers, but university men—and -up-stairs to the Bureau of the University of Michigan.... -In half an hour he was in a comfortable room with -windows which opened upon a balcony facing toward the -east.... He stepped out upon it and gazed into the -darkness. Scarcely a hundred feet away, across a narrow -street, was the dark bulk of a mammoth building, and the -black silhouettes of a multitude of quaint chimney-pots.... -It was the ancient Royal Palace. Kendall did not -realize this, nor that his eyes were gazing at a spot rich -in history, in intrigue, in romance—and not unbaptized -with blood.... But one thing he knew—at last he was -in the heart of Paris....</p> - -<div class='chapter'> - <h2 class='c004'>CHAPTER II</h2> -</div> - -<p class='c005'>Captain Ware felt singularly young, boyishly -exhilarated, as he walked out early next morning -for his first view of Paris. It was not yet eight o’clock, -but the day was beautiful, promising warmth; the skies -were clear; the whole appearance of things one of perfect -peace and quiet. The city did not seem one threatened -by war. The streets, as he walked up the rue de Rivoli, -were almost deserted. It was early for Parisians to be -abroad.</p> - -<p class='c006'>The city astounded him, captivated him, gave him a -feeling of humility. He was familiar with Detroit, had -seen Chicago and New York, but Paris—Paris was different. -His experience gave him nothing with which to -compare it. Chicago and New York were unsightly -upheavals; the fantastic work of tremendous industrial -forces in irresistible motion. They reared. Paris did not -rear; it reposed; it had not been upheaved tumultuously—it -had been dreamed and dreamed by genius which -comprehended beauty.</p> - -<p class='c006'>The city affected him almost to breathlessness as it -opened before him when he passed the ancient grayness -of the Louvre. He turned to the left and stood between -the wide jaws of the Louvre, the mouth of the Place du -Carrousel, and, standing there, looked westward through -the reaches of the Tuileries and beyond to where, silhouetted -with massive grandeur, uprose Napoleon’s Arc de -Triomphe.... It was impossible—incredibly magnificent. -At that instant began the first great change in his life. -He might not consciously have dated it from that instant, -and possibly he never dated it at all, but Paris had set the -hand of her beauty upon him; her spell had touched him -with its magic.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Why,” he said to himself, “anything could happen -here!” And presently, “The Germans drop bombs on -this ... they try to destroy this.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>For the first time came an appreciation, not yet a full -appreciation, but far more than an inkling, that a great -event had overtaken him: he had left the Middle West -behind him; he felt that he was not only about to see, -but to be a part of, a new and wonderful mode of life and -of thought. There came to him a hint that there might -be something to life besides merely living it. Though -he did not know the phrase, he felt something of the -meaning it bears—<i>Joie de vivre</i>. Later he would, perhaps, -appreciate a remark made to him by a French -officer. “It is not <i>savoir faire</i> that is the great knowledge, -it is <i>savoir vivre</i>.” It is not so important to know how to -conduct oneself as it is to know how to make the most -of life....</p> - -<p class='c006'>He retraced his steps to the rue de Rivoli, stopped to -regard the golden Jeanne d’Arc about which he said to -himself that he would have liked it better if it had been -bronze or marble, and that the sculptor had made Jeanne -“huskier” than he had pictured her to himself. That -was the word he used—“huskier.” Somehow he had -always conceived Jeanne d’Arc—what slight conception -he had of her—as rather anemic and thin and fragile.... -His conception of Jeanne was like the conception many -good Americans have made for themselves of France. -Two millions of them would soon be on French soil to -see for themselves that it was not an anemic, fragile -country, but robust, healthy, capable not only of visions, -but of battles....</p> - -<p class='c006'>He walked on to pause again in the Place de la Concorde -and to marvel at such prodigality of open space in the -very heart of a great city. He even tried to calculate to -himself the money worth of so many acres in the retail -section of New York, say along Fifth Avenue from -Thirty-fourth Street north and west.... It was a -typical American calculation. Beyond him the Champs -Élysées reached on, climbing its little gradient to the -Arc dc Triomphe. It was splendid and beautiful. It -“got under his skin,” as he phrased it.</p> - -<p class='c006'>He stood there looking off across the river toward the -Chamber of Deputies, over the roof of which could be -seen the dome of Napoleon’s Tomb. Then he turned and -surveyed the path he had just traversed, that reach of low, -symmetrical buildings facing the Jardin des Tuileries. -He was not exactly inarticulate, but he was not eloquent. -“I’ll be damned,” he said under his breath. “Well, I’ll -be damned.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>Now he was hungry, and, walking more rapidly, he -returned to the University Union to find the dining-room -open and a few American officers at <i>petit déjeuner</i>. For -the most part they were eating bread and confiture and -washing it down with chocolate. A few were taking the -American breakfast, actually eating <i>two eggs</i> and other -food—a thing to convince the Parisian that these visitors -were indeed mad, or at least barbarians.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Yea, <i>boy</i>!” said a loud voice, just as Captain Ware was -endeavoring to give his order to one of the two pretty -French girls who were the waitresses. It was his first -sight of the Parisienne, and it had rather surprised him. -They did not wear short skirts and high-heeled slippers, -with more than enough black-stockinged ankle to regard. -They had not saucy eyes and <i>rétroussé</i> noses, nor did they -whisk about flirtatiously. They were pretty, indeed they -were charming, but they were quiet, even subdued, and -they looked <i>nice</i>. That was a good American word he -could apply to them. He liked their looks, even if they -failed to come up to his ideas of what a French waitress -should be.</p> - -<p class='c006'>He looked up from the pad on which he had been -checking off the <i>petit déjeuner</i>, to see facing him across -the table, in a captain’s uniform and Sam Brown belt -which made him almost unrecognizable, a man with -whom he had been more than friendly through four years -in Ann Arbor.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Bert Stanley!” he exclaimed, jumping to his feet and -extending his hand.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“They all come here,” said Stanley to himself, “all of -them—if you just wait long enough.... When did you -land?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Day before yesterday.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“And got to Paris so soon? How did you work that?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Ordered.... What are you doing here?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Making marks on pieces of paper. That’s what I -got for knowing anything about architectural engineering. -I’m in the Signal Corps and I’m drawing plans for -aeroplane-sheds.... What are you?” He looked down -at Kendall’s collar markings.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Intelligence! I’m one of the fellows who find out -everything about everything in the world and tell it to -the army for its good.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Stationed here?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Don’t know. Report this morning.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Fix it, son, fix it.... It’s a great <i>guerre</i>, and this -battle of Paris—”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“<i>Beurre, monsieur?</i>” asked the waitress.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Eh? What’s that?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“She wants to know,” explained Stanley, with exaggerated -patience, “if you want butter. It’s extra.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>Kendall signified his desire for butter. “I’ve just been -out looking at the town,” he said. “The fellows that built -it knew what they were doing, didn’t they?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“They knew how to do a lot of things. Staying here, -of course.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Didn’t know where else to go. You, too?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Have been a month, but if I’m going to live here for -the duration, and it looks as if I were, I’d like to get -somebody and take a little apartment somewhere.... -Over in the Quartier Latin or up on one of the streets -off the Étoile. Have some comfort. Live cheaper, too. -Get a cook for sixty or seventy francs, and be regular -people.... Say, if you’re set down in Paris, come on in -with me.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Sounds reasonable,” said Kendall, tentatively. -“Haven’t the least idea what they’ll do with me, though.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Well, you run up and see, and, whatever happens, -meet me here at half past six and I’ll take you to a regular -place to eat, and then we’ll go out and look at the sights.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“You’re on,” said Kendall, “bigger than a house.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>Captain Ware had hoped to be assigned to active duty -with a combat unit. He had studied and trained himself -for the duties of an intelligence officer at the front, and -for months had looked forward with enthusiasm to those -interesting and invaluable duties which such an officer -performs. He was not a young man to welcome a desk -job or to be contented with a position in the Safety of the -Service of Supplies region. In that he resembled thousands -of other young officers whose fortune it would never -be to hear a cannon fired in battle, to take part in a -charge, or to be nearer to the front than some small -town in the interior of France. None of them had -chosen their places. They had been sent where they were -most needed and where their work was essential to the -victories to be won against the enemy.... Captain -Ware, like these others, must perform the task set for -him, wherever it might lie—hoping always for a new -assignment that should carry him to the dugout and to -the trench. It was, therefore, with grievous disappointment -that he learned he was to be stationed in Paris, -apparently in permanence. He could still hope, for in -the army in France no man can tell what to-morrow will -bring him. Orders come and men go.... Somehow it -did not seem possible to him that he would thus go to -war without going to war; that he should journey across -the ocean to this mightiest of all conflicts without the -experience of battle....</p> - -<p class='c006'>At half after six he was again at the Union, where he -found Bert Stanley waiting for him in the lounge, whiling -away the time very pleasantly in conversation with -charming Annette of the pert face, white teeth, and busy -chatter—a chatter made up in very large part of excellent -American idiom learned from the patrons of the cigar-and-candy -case of which she was custodian. Hundreds of -American officers will return to their country after the -war with pleasant memories of wise little Annette, the -little French girl who sold cigarettes and candy and wrist -watches and post-cards at the stand in the Union.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Kendall ascended to his room in the queer little elevator -whose conductor was a tiny Belgian boy, proud of a few -words of American, and presently walked down the five -flights—for in France it is not considered good manners -in war-time to use an elevator for descent—and rejoined -Stanley.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Well,” said Stanley, “what luck?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“It looks like Paris for mine,” said Kendall, still depressed -by his disappointment.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Might be worse.... Might have been Chaumont.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>They walked north on the rue de Richelieu, past the -Molière fountain, and by the door of Marty’s which -Kendall was to know very well later on. At the rue -St.-Marc they turned to the left until the Opéra Comique -uprose before them, and then made their way into the -up-stairs dining-room of the Café Poccardi on rue Favart.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“It’s early. The crowd doesn’t show up before seven-thirty, -so we can get a table up front where we can see the -show,” said Stanley. “Besides, there’s a waiter there -who speaks English.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>They found seats with their backs toward the windows, -a point of vantage from which they could view the large, -mirrored room with its rows of small, closely set tables. -Only a few were occupied, but gradually the patrons -straggled in—a truly Parisian gathering. There were -handsome men in officers’ uniforms with many gold -service stripes on the sleeve, and some with two, three, -or even four wound chevrons on the opposite sleeve. -They were accompanied by well-dressed women, mostly -young, always very neat.... It was their shoes that -demanded Kendall’s attention. This was a matter that -had been impressing itself upon him through the day—that -the Parisienne knew how to dress her feet. There -were <i>poilus</i> on leave, each with his girl, or even with two -girls. There were one or two old but immaculate men -with women young enough to be their granddaughters. -A few women entered alone and seated themselves -quietly at tables to await their partners—perhaps the -café was their place of rendezvous.... Two women, -beautifully dressed in black, with widows’ veils, occupied -a table just across from Kendall and his companion. -They were very young, and one was remarkably lovely.... -The sight rather depressed Kendall. This was one -of the meanings of war—this youthful widowhood! Here -was the cruelty of it, the bitterness of it!</p> - -<p class='c006'>“France must be filled with widows,” he said to Stanley.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Bert grinned. “Camouflage,” he said.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“What do you mean?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“If you’re thinking about our friends opposite, don’t -get too sympathetic. They’re no more widows than I -am. Camouflage. It’s the style. But they’re overdoing -it. Everybody’s next, now, even us Americans. -Bait, sonny, bait, that’s what it is.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>Bert looked over at the widows and smiled, and the -lovelier one smiled in reply, not brazenly, not with the -red-lipped, painted-cheeked smile of the Anglo-Saxon -siren, but demurely, pleasantly, as if she were merely -returning his smile out of courtesy and from an abundance -of gentle good nature.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“See?” said Bert.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“But they look <i>nice</i>.” Again Kendall used that word.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“They are nice.... This isn’t Terre Haute, son.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>Everybody was drinking wine, Kendall noticed. It was -universal, and as the meal progressed he spoke about it.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Everybody is going to the wine,” he said, “but -nobody gets noisy.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Nobody does,” said Bert. “Do we get noisy at home -when we drink coffee?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>Kendall watched. He saw a man half fill his companion’s -glass with red wine, then pour in as much water -as there was wine. This, he saw, was almost universally -done.... Conversation was animated. There was -gay laughter and lightness, but it was not the gaiety of -wine.</p> - -<p class='c006'>At a table well within view sat two <i>poilus</i> with their -wives or sweethearts. Kendall watched them, for it was -by far the jolliest, least restrained party in the room.... -And then he saw the larger soldier throw his arm around -the neck of his buxom companion and kiss her soundly.... -It rather shocked him. The idea of demonstrative affection -in, for instance, the dining-room of the McAlpin, -or in one of the better-class cafés of Detroit, was impossible -to entertain. He watched for a waiter to protest, perhaps -to eject the couple from the place.... But there were -only tolerant smiles when any notice whatever was taken -of the event.... And it was an event which was repeated—the -sound of hearty smacks coming even to -Kendall’s ear.... He saw other men come in, and -before they sat down beside waiting companions they -would stoop to salute with a kiss.... The thing was not -universal, not even general, but there was enough of it -for him to become aware that it was not exceptional.... -But for all that, it made him feel embarrassed and uncomfortable. -Apparently, if people had kissing to do -they simply did it.... He was to recognize this later as -one manifestation of the frank, unaffected genuineness of -the people. Now it seemed rather gross to him, gross and -exotic. The idea did not occur to him then that it was he -with his American notions and antecedents, with his -inheritances from Plymouth Rock, that was exotic.</p> - -<p class='c006'>He wondered who all these people were; he wondered -if they were <i>married</i>. Were these men and women husbands -and wives, or were the women those mysterious, -very French, somewhat exciting persons whom he had -read about in novels and who were called <i>mistresses</i>?</p> - -<p class='c006'>He did not put the question to Stanley because he was -afraid of appearing provincial. He might as well have -done so, for in all probability Stanley, with all of his -month’s experience in Paris, was pondering the same -matter.... Anyhow, he felt that he was seeing life; that -he was beholding things which he could tell about later -to interested audiences.... It is a peculiarity of the -Anglo-Saxon mind that everything which is strange to it -appears to it as necessarily tinged with naughtiness.</p> - -<p class='c006'>At another table, over to Kendall’s left, two girls were -eating alone, and he watched them with interest and -considerable curiosity, wondering who and what they -were. One of them attracted him particularly. She -was young, in the neighborhood of twenty, he judged. -She was dressed in white, a suit of some knit material -that reminded him of a light jersey, and on her very -black and wavy hair was a shapeless white cap of the -tam-o-’shanter variety. Her skin was a delightful -olive, and her eyes black, with shadows under them. She -was not beautiful, unless her eyes made her so. She -was small and almost thin. She addressed herself to her -food in a very business-like manner, not often looking up -from her plate, but once in a while she smiled as she -replied to some comment of her companion, and her teeth -were very white and regular. There was no appearance -of wealth about her, but every feature spoke of intelligence—indeed, -of a certain keenness.... She was very -attractive.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Look,” he said to Bert. “I wonder who she is. She -looks as if she had ‘class.’”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Pretty kid,” said Bert, who, just then, was more interested -in <i>poule au riz</i> than in Parisiennes.</p> - -<p class='c006'>He continued to stare, unconscious of his rudeness, until -she lifted her eyes to his. For a moment she regarded -him, with no especial interest, certainly with no sign -which could be interpreted as provocative, and dropped -her eyes again to her plate.... Kendall was conscious at -once of disappointment and satisfaction. Here was another -girl that he had estimated as “nice,” and this time, -apparently, he was right.</p> - -<p class='c006'>In a moment he heard her name, for her companion -uttered it. “Andree.” Somehow it suited her, Kendall -thought, and he thought, too, that it was a decidedly -pretty name ... “Andree.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>From time to time, as he was finishing his dinner, -Kendall glanced at Andree. But he did not meet her -eyes again. She was not interested in him, apparently, -and even when he walked past her table on his way out -she did not look up or manifest by a sign that she was -conscious of his existence.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Where now?” he said as they debouched onto the broad -Boulevard des Italiens.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Might as well take in the ‘Folies Bergère.’ It’s one -of the sights.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>They walked along in silence, crossing the boulevard -and turning up a narrow street toward the theater. Kendall -continued to think about the little girl with the black -eyes. Somehow she had made an impression of some sort -upon him. He could not have described it nor estimated -it. All he knew was that he liked her looks immensely -and was curious about her. Probably he would never -see her again, but he found himself hoping that he might.</p> - -<p class='c006'>They bought tickets for the “Folies” and entered, -traversing the large hall filled with tables at which the -audience was expected to refresh itself between the acts, -or even during the performance, and, after buying programs, -were conducted to their seats by a girl usher who -stood sternly by until she received her tip—a tip that she -would have suggested if it had not been tendered.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Then the performance began—a very disappointing -performance to a Middle-Western young man who had -heard tales of the naughtiness of the French stage. It -turned out to be a rather clumsy musical comedy which -was more vaudeville than either music or comedy. It -was not naughty at all, he said to himself—but perhaps -that was because he failed to understand the dialogue. -Anyhow, he had seen much franker costumes and much -more suggestive incident in Mr. Ziegfeld’s “Follies” or -at the Winter Garden.</p> - -<p class='c006'>The audience was more than half American; the music -was adapted from American shows, and between the acts -a jazz orchestra, “straight from Broadway,” made the -ears ring. Everybody got up between the acts and -promenaded or sat at the little tables.... Girls wandered -about and spoke to one, and made Kendall feel -uncomfortable and embarrassed again. He was glad -when they returned to their seats.</p> - -<p class='c006'>The performance rather bored him, and he suggested -leaving. Bert was ready, too, so they sauntered out onto -the dark streets, making their way to the Avenue de l’Opéra -and past the huge bulk of that wonderful building which -France had erected even while she was paying to Germany -the billion-franc indemnity exacted after 1870. Once -or twice soft voices accosted them out of the darkness, but -they walked on toward the Union, and presently were -ordering ice-cream and listening to a lieutenant play ragtime -on the piano.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Then, suddenly, the air was rent by a startling, metallic -shriek, a long-sustained, nerve-twanging, raucous blast.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Raid!” said Stanley, getting to his feet.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Bomb raid?” asked Kendall, instantly excited.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Yes. Let’s go out and take a look.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>So, with characteristic foolhardiness, they sallied out and -hurried up the rue de Rivoli to the Place de la Concorde, -where they sat on a stone balustrade and waited. They -were not alone. About that open space were scattered a -dozen Americans impelled by absurd curiosity—a curiosity -they would discard very shortly and become more circumspect -in their behavior as well as more respectful -toward the <i>Gothas</i>.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Still the <i>alerte</i> sounded, more terrifying than the sound -of the barrage which was presently to begin. Sirens -mounted on fire-engines were giving the alarm, tearing -madly through the black streets, and with horrid voice -commanding Paris to seek sanctuary in <i>abri</i> or in the -tunnels of the Metropolitan.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Kendall was not frightened; he was hardly apprehensive. -Even when the guns opened toward the north -and he could see bright star-flashes as shrapnel burst high -above, he was only exhilarated and very interested. The -thing did not seem serious to him. But it <i>was</i> serious, -he knew. It was war, and such barbarous war as held -the world in a spell of horror. Presently the air was filled -with the crashes of cannon, and one could trace the course -of the enemy by the spreading of the ring of fire about the -city.... Once in a while would come a deep, dull, -thunderous <i>boom</i>, as a bomb, released by a <i>Gotha</i>, would -fall in the distant suburbs, perhaps upon the home of -some laborer, burying himself with his wife and babies in -the ruins, or destroying them utterly so that no trace of -their human shell would ever be discovered.... The -firing moved westward, and then swung around to the -south as the hostile aeroplanes strove vainly to penetrate -the city.... This continued for half an hour. Then -there was a time of quietness, after which came the -pleasant voices of bugles notifying a cowering population -that all was clear.... The raid had been abortive—it -had succeeded in killing only half a dozen defenseless -civilians!</p> - -<p class='c006'>Kendall and Stanley walked back to the Union—to -have another dish of ice-cream. As they walked up-stairs -in the darkness Kendall said to his friend: “I wonder -who that girl was ... the one in the restaurant. Her -name was Andree.”</p> - -<div class='chapter'> - <h2 class='c004'>CHAPTER III</h2> -</div> - -<p class='c005'>Kendall Ware had been two weeks in Paris; he -had learned many things, absorbed many things, -but as his observations grew he discovered depths to his -ignorance that were not apparent to him on the day of his -arrival. The greatest advance he made in those first -weeks was in arriving at a knowledge of how little he -understood or was equipped to understand of France—and -when he said <i>France</i> he did not mean a country, but -the people who inhabited the country. Continually he -was amused by superficialities; daily he was impressed by -profundities. Gradually he came to perceive that one -cannot know France by looking at the surface any more -than one can gather a knowledge of what is transpiring -in the ocean by sailing a little boat over its waves.</p> - -<p class='c006'>A people which can produce Joan of Arc and Robespierre, -a St. Louis and a Louis the Eleventh, a Madame Roland -and a Madame du Barry, a Clemenceau and a Calliaux; -which is capable of an 1870 and of a 1914, of the Terror and -of Verdun—is not one whose complexities can be solved -by a twenty-six-year-old American in fourteen days.... The -American will make no impression on France, but -France will make a profound impression on the American.</p> - -<p class='c006'>From being interested in a city, in its buildings and its -beauties, Kendall became interested in its people.</p> - -<p class='c006'>His first reaction to the people was rather romantic. -He saw romance in every one. Hotel porters with one -arm, wearing the Croix de Guerre and the Légion d’Honneur, -and perhaps the Médaille Militaire excited him. -Each one was, in truth, a hero. These men had seen and -done. Now they worked at menial tasks, still wearing -uniforms, and with those medals on the breast which -raised them into the aristocracy of manhood. It was -strange to him that a man could be at once an honored -hero and a porter.... <i>Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité</i> were -inscribed on every public building. This was one of the -manifestations of Liberty, Equality, Brotherhood. These -things really existed, and so a porter could be a decorated -hero.</p> - -<p class='c006'>If one addressed a taxi-driver one called him <i>Monsieur</i>, -just as if one were addressing the President of the Republic -itself. One addressed the <i>gendarmes</i> as <i>Monsieur</i>. One -addressed even the turbaned and besashed and betrousered -Moroccan street-sweepers as <i>Monsieur</i> if one addressed -them at all. Monsieur Poincaré or Monsieur Clemenceau -would have given them the same salutation. It was not -an affectation; it was not what strangers have called -French politeness. It was but a manifestation of Liberty, -Equality, Brotherhood. At first it had seemed rather -absurd to Kendall, American and republican though he -was, but he grew to like it, and somewhat to understand it.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Everywhere he saw heroes wearing medals. It made -him feel insignificant and somehow lacking. One could -not walk a block without passing officer or <i>poilu</i> with the -red ribbon of the Legion of Honor, or the rarer, even more -precious, broad yellow stripe of the Military Medal. -The narrow green stripe of the ribbon of the War Cross -was everywhere. Sometimes the ribbons were elongated -to give space to two or three, or, as was the case with -one boyish officer, to eight palms.... And every palm -the token that its bearer had fought back out of the clutch -of Death, performing some act of valor which raised him -above the level of an army of heroes....</p> - -<p class='c006'>These soldiers were the first to command Kendall’s -interest, but it expanded to cover every one. Ancient -drivers of <i>voitures</i> whose horses were always too tired to -take him where he wanted to go; the chauffeurs of taxi-cabs -who could never understand his French, and who, -when he had made them understand, told him they could -not take him to his destination because they happened to -be heading the other way; the crowds who occupied the -tables under the awnings on the sidewalks of the rue de la -Paix or the rue Royale; the old women who came to -collect two sous if one took a seat along the Champs -Élysées or the Avenue du Bois de Boulogne; the soldiers, -French, Belgian, Italian, Austrian, Canadian, English, -Moroccan, American, who promenaded of evenings and -Sundays from the Place de la Concorde to Rond-Point, -and the girls with whom they promenaded—all these interested -him, and each, as he studied them with boyish -<i>naïveté</i>, added something to his education.</p> - -<p class='c006'>He worked hard by day, and often far into the night, -but for the most part his evenings were free to investigate -life with Bert Stanley, whose investigations were merely -of the surface and were rather questings for an hour of -amusement.... Sometimes he played bridge with three -other Americans at the Union, but he liked best to stroll -about the darkened streets, without object or destination.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Little by little he added to his meager store of the -language. When he spoke to friends about securing an -instructor they laughed at him. “Pick it up.... Talk -to people,” they told him. “Sit down on a bench along -the Champs Élysées and talk to a girl. They’re as eager -to learn English as you are French.... It’s better than -a teacher—and a darned sight more pleasant.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>He voiced his distaste for this suggestion. He had been -but two weeks in Paris, and very mistakenly had classified -all the girls who promenade the Champs Élysées in the -evening as women of the streets. His natural decency -revolted at any contact, no matter how slight, with these.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Nine out of ten of those little girls work in shops or -offices,” Bert told him. “You haven’t got ’em right, son.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>But Kendall was suspicious. He continued in that -attitude until one evening a little girl—she appeared not -more than seventeen—sat rather diffidently on the other -end of his bench.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Good night, monsieur,” she said, with quaint pronunciation.</p> - -<p class='c006'>He did not answer, but turned his back with a gesture -of repulse.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Oh, monsieur, please,” she said, timidly. “I am not a -bad girl.... See.” She turned her face so that the -dim light shone upon it and pointed to her cheeks. “There -is not paint. You see. No.... I am a good girl, but -monsieur, I am—how do you say <i>solitaire</i>? I learn -English.... It will not harm monsieur if I talk with him -a little and learn English.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>Kendall regarded her. She was a little thing with -clear eyes and a rather pretty face, whose cheeks, as she -pointed out, were guiltless of paint. She was not well -dressed, though she was neat, <i>chic</i>. And she was so -young.... It was apparent to him that she told the -truth, and his manner changed toward her.</p> - -<p class='c006'>They talked. It was a conversation which would have -aroused the mirth of a listener ... but it was remarkable -how well each made the other understand; she with -slowly pronounced French and a few words of quaint -English—he with his small stock of atrociously articulated -French.... She worked in a chocolate-shop. She was -a refugee from Soissons and an orphan. Her two brothers -had been killed at Verdun and her mother and father had -died of the war.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Now I must make to work,” she said, simply. “But -I am very <i>solitaire, monsieur.... Oui, je suis -trés-solitaire—trés-solitaire</i>.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Poor kid!” said Kendall.</p> - -<p class='c006'>She shrugged her shoulders and said, with that calm -resignation which is so much to be met with, “<i>C’est -la guerre....</i> It is the war.” That is a phrase which -explains everything, excuses anything in France to-day. -“<i>C’est la guerre.</i>” One offers it to explain the lateness of -trains, the price of cheese, poverty, the lack of sugar, -morale, everything great or small. “<i>C’est la guerre</i>” is -the countersign of the epoch. It embraces everything.</p> - -<p class='c006'>After an hour she arose, offered her hand charmingly, -and said good night and “<i>Merci</i>.” Kendall sat looking -after her, feeling the first life movements of a comprehension -of the womankind of France. From that moment -they assumed a higher place in his thoughts, not yet so -high as they deserved, but one rung nearer to the truth. -He did not even begin to understand them—not their -philosophy of life nor their conception of the relations -between the sexes; but he began to ask himself questions -to which his education and prejudices and narrownesses -could provide no answer. He began to wonder if all he -had heard were true; he began to consider, if it were true, -was it then necessarily evil. He had been brought up -to regard the drinking of any beverage containing alcohol -as inherently wicked and as something to be done surreptitiously -and with a sort of “devilish” feeling. Here -everybody drank wine, and wine contained alcohol, and -they did it with no concealment and with no thought -that it could be other than normal and perfectly respectable. -He considered that, and from it attempted to form -a judgment of other things which to him seemed not as -they should be. Apparently drinking in France was not -a thing of moral turpitude, done as it was done by the -French.... Perhaps, then, other matters were the same: -evil in Detroit because custom and inherited moral conceptions -had made them so; right in Paris because custom -and inherited moral conceptions had made them so.... -Dimly he was feeling for the conception that an act in -itself is not a sin, but the manner of the performance -of that act.... This may have been sophistry; it may -have been alarmingly faulty moral philosophy, but it -marked a step ahead for a young man come of such -parentage as Kendall came of. It marked a willingness -to listen to argument and to maintain an open mind. His -mother, he considered, had never maintained an open -mind. She had been dogmatic. To inquire into things -was a sin to her. Nothing had been so quick to arouse -her anger as an impulse on his part to look for the reasons -of things, particularly religious things.... His father -had not been like this. True, he had not been of an -inquiring turn of mind, but he had seen no especial reason -why somebody who wanted to inquire should not be allowed -to do so. There was a certain sweetness about -his father, a tolerant attitude toward life in general and -toward transgressions in particular, that came nearer to -the attitude of Jesus Christ than did the hard, unbending, -dogmatic almost cruel religion of his mother.... He had -inherited from both parents; each had given him something -distinctly traceable to each, and both had joined -to give him other qualities which were a strange composite -of both of them. He was inclined to judge at first sight -like his mother, harshly and dogmatically; he was inclined, -on second thought, to look for excuses and to forgive -what must be judged as evil, like his father. It was -a quality composite of the characters of his parents that -he placed the abstraction of <i>goodness</i> on a lofty throne, -but was inclined to apply its laws with gentleness and -mercy rather than with narrowness and hardness.... -There were days when he was inclined to narrowness and -dogmatism; there were days when he bent quite in the -other direction and became over-indulgent.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Following his first experience in conversation with a -casually encountered girl, and finding himself to have come -off none the worse for it, he repeated the experience -several times, and enjoyed it, and came to look forward -to the evenings because of the possibility of a pleasant -and instructive talk with some girl he would never see -again, but from whom he would learn some French and -considerable of France.... It was rarely that his sense -of propriety was offended or that the attitude of one of -his chance companions was other than “nice.” He made -no effort to follow up any of these casual meetings, or to -centralize his attention upon a single girl. He preferred -matters as they were. But he was learning that the -ordinary French girl did not resent being accosted by an -American, and that when he was lonely he might find -charming company without fear of being rebuffed.</p> - -<p class='c006'>On his third Sunday in Paris he was sitting among the -trees that border the Champs Élysées. He was lonesome, -for Bert Stanley had been absent on a mission for -several days. He and Bert were sharing a room at the -Union now, a room with two beds, which cost them -jointly ten francs a day—and he missed Bert. He had -lunched alone that noon and now did not know what to -do with himself. It was the first time he had been -really homesick, but now he was homesick and uneasy and -rather at loose ends. He wished something would happen; -that some friend would appear with an entertaining suggestion. -So he sat and smoked and watched the passage -of the colorful crowd.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Presently he stiffened to interest. In the distance he -saw approaching a girl dressed in white. It was the -white tam-o’-shanter that had caught his eye. It was -familiar. For a moment he could not remember where he -had seen it, or why it stirred him to interest, and then he -recalled the little girl of the Café Poccardi. He even remembered -her name—“Andree.” She came abreast of -him and he identified her certainly. It was she, and -really more attractive than he had remembered her to be. -She walked along with little steps, her body very straight, -her bearing very staid. As she walked her eyes remained -straight in front of her, as though her mind were on -some interest at her destination.... Her profile was prettier -than his first picture of her full face had been; there was a -daintiness about her lips and her straight little nose, and -about the whole of her. If one had been compelled to -limit himself to a single word in describing her, he would -have been forced to use that word “dainty.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>She passed, and his eyes followed her. Suddenly he -stood up with a resolution half formed, a resolution to -speak to her. Then he hesitated. She did not look like -a person one speaks to without permission or presentation. -But it was a chance.... He was lonely and this was -rather an adventure, and, besides, he had learned that one -is not often rebuffed when making a casual advance. -Still Kendall was a bit apprehensive. He walked along -behind her irresolute, wondering if he dared, and keying -up his courage to dare. At any rate, he would wait until -they were out of the crowd; he did not wish the embarrassment -of being rebuffed too publicly.</p> - -<p class='c006'>The girl tripped along, almost birdlike in the carriage -of her head and in the <i>ensemble</i> of her daintiness. At the -Place de la Concorde she turned to her left up the rue -Boissy d’Anglas, on one corner of which is the Hôtel -Crillon and on the other a high, blank wall of brick. -The street was deserted.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Kendall summoned his resolution and overtook her as -she entered the shadow of the brick wall. He was rather -excited and apprehensive, and stammered a bit as he -lifted his hat and said in his best French, “<i>Bon jour, -mademoiselle</i>.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>She stopped suddenly and slowly raised her eyes to his -face. She was not startled, not frightened, not thrown -from her poise in the least.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“<i>Bon jour, monsieur</i>,” she said, with a rising inflection, -as one who expresses surprise and inquiry.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Kendall was at a loss. He did not know how to proceed -or how to make plausible his action. What little -French he knew departed from him, and he stood awkwardly -by her side, feeling very idiotic indeed. She -waited gravely, with no twinkle in her eye at the rather -absurd figure he must have presented.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“<i>Voulez-vous promenade avec moi?</i>” he managed to -articulate, at last.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“<i>Pourquoi?</i>” she asked.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Why? Why should she promenade with him? He felt -his face reddening, and it was his impulse to clap on his -cap and beat a hasty retreat. What answer was there to -that <i>why?</i> He could think of nothing whatever to say, -and the pause became awkward.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“<i>Parlez-vous anglais?</i>” he asked, desperately.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“<i>Non.</i>”</p> - -<p class='c006'>In sheer desperation he touched her arm and began -walking. She walked with him, the merest hint of an -amused smile at the corners of her mouth.... At any -rate, she was walking with him. That much was accomplished, -but, now that he had progressed to this -point, what was he to do with her? She was difficult, and -not inclined to help him in the least.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Mademoiselle,” he said, desperately, “I speak very -little French. I am very lonesome.” Then, of necessity, -he lapsed into his own tongue. “Why in thunder don’t -you speak English!” he said, testily.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Where are you going?” she asked.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“With you—if you permit,” he replied.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Again that appalling why. He was to come to know -that she used it often; that she shot it at one like an unexpected -little arrow when one least looked for it, and -rather upset one with it. There came a time when he -called her Mademoiselle Pourquoi because of this. “Because—” -he answered. “Because— Oh, confound it! -I don’t know why. I haven’t any idea. No reason at -all. I just want to.... Now if you could only understand -that we might get somewhere.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>She was amused—a little. She regarded him gravely, -and it was apparent that she was appraising him, satisfying -herself as to what sort of a barbarian he was, and -possibly as to what he had in mind.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Will you dine with me?” he asked. That was a -phrase he had by heart.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Why?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Same reason,” he said, ruefully, in English. “I’ve -got to dine, you’ve got to dine, we’ve got to dine.... -<i>Pourquoi, pourquoi, pourquoi—toujours vous dit pourquoi.</i>” -This was not remarkably excellent French, but she comprehended, -and for the first time she uttered a little -laugh. He amused her. From that moment they got -along better, for, apparently, she had appraised him as -not dangerous.</p> - -<p class='c006'>She began to ask questions, not idly, he judged, but -the better to satisfy herself about him.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Where do you live?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>He told her.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“You are an American?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Yes.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“From what city?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Detroit.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“I do not know it.... What is your grade?” She -meant his military rank.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Captain.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Are you married?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>He had rather been expecting that question, for it had -been put to him by almost every girl he had talked to. -Apparently it was an important question.... In a land -where so many, many young men have been sacrificed to -war an unmarried man is an important personage. He -offers possibilities. Suppose that one million, two millions -of men of marriageable age have been slaughtered, -there remain at home one or two millions of young -women who have no one to marry. This, in France, is -not a theory, but a condition, a very real and very terrible -condition. A million girls of an age for marriage and -no men!...</p> - -<p class='c006'>“No,” he said.</p> - -<p class='c006'>She was silent while they walked the greater part of a -block. He repeated again his well-learned phrase, “Will -you dine with me?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Yes,” she said, in the tone of one making a decision -of some moment. “Where?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Anywhere you wish.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>They were just passing a little café not distant from the -Madeleine, and she stopped hesitatingly, rather speculatively, -and there was a subdued twinkle in her eye.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Here?” she asked.</p> - -<p class='c006'>She was looking for information about this young -American, and this was an experiment. The cafe was -one of the most expensive in Paris, and doubtless Andree -wanted to see how he would act at her suggestion, for -reckless spending of money is a thing which your -Parisian does not indulge in. Possibly she wanted to -find out just how much she attracted him, and one way -to do it was to discover if he was willing to spend money -on her. It is not impossible that she wondered a bit if -he had lots of money, as all Americans are said to do. -Your Frenchwoman is not mercenary, but she is practical—and -lots of money is an excellent thing to have.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“All right,” he said, in perfect innocence, for he had -never seen the place before. It looked rather dingy and -not especially attractive. It was very small. So they -went in. There was a passage down the middle of the -room, with tables on either side, set in solid rows. The -waiter moved a table out to admit Andree to the leather -bench which ran along the wall. Kendall waited for the -table to be replaced so that he could sit across from her, -American fashion, but she motioned for him to sit by her -side. Young women and men in France sit side by side, -not <i>vis-a-vis</i>—and it is a custom not without its advantages.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Ordering was a difficult matter, first because of lack of -the language, and second because he was beginning to be -very anxious to please this girl and to make a favorable -impression on her. With characteristic American generosity -or love of displaying his willingness to spend, he -would have ordered more than four could have eaten, -but she interfered and took the ordering into her own -hands—a thing for which he was grateful when the -check was presented.... Even when she was making an -experiment she could not bear to see money actually -wasted.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Kendall studied her covertly. She impressed him as -being a grave, very self-possessed young person. The -word demure conceals in its meaning something of the -provocative. If it were possible to remove that shade -of meaning from it, then it would have described Andree -exactly. She was demure without being provocative.... -And how pretty she was. She grew on one. Those -heavily shadowed eyes were really beautiful, and her lips -delicately sweet. He made up his mind that she was -what he had been accustomed to designate as a lady, -which was but another way of saying “nice.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>Out of the corner of his eye he watched her eat. She -was very dainty about it, but also very interested. -Indeed, she ate in a thoroughly business-like manner, -giving her attention fully to her plate. He thought of a -bird. Indeed, there was something birdlike about her, -but what bird she resembled Kendall could not determine. -Possibly it was a composite resemblance.... He liked her -very much, but was puzzled by her. She was something -quite outside his experience. Her manner puzzled him. -She was not what he would have called “offish.” She did -not seem wholly at her ease, yet she was much more so -than he. She was gravely expectant; concealing herself, -perhaps, while she waited for self-disclosure on the part -of Kendall.</p> - -<p class='c006'>She would drink but a fraction of a glass of wine and -declined a cigarette at the end of the meal.... Then he -called for the check and discovered that the rather light -repast was to cost him seventy francs. He wondered if -Andree were accustomed to eating seventy-franc meals, -not knowing that this was the first experience of the kind -she had ever had. Seventy francs would have sufficed -nearly for her food for a month.... On the whole, she -was a mystery to him, and as long as he knew her she -continued to remain something of a mystery. He was -incapable of solving her.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Now what shall we do?” he asked.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“We shall walk,” she replied, in quaintly stilted and -accented English. The effect was charming.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Eh?” said Kendall. “You—why, you said you -didn’t speak English!”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Yes,” she said, and smiled, but offered no explanation. -But the explanation was clear, even to Kendall. It was -because she was making no admission whatever about -herself in those first few minutes. It was because she was -on the brink of a new experience, was meeting her first -American, and because she wanted to find out as much -as she could about him without permitting him to learn -anything whatever of her—until she was ready to permit -it.... He was pleased. Evidently her judgment was -favoring him.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“That’s fine,” he said. “Now you can teach me French -and I can teach you English.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Maybe,” she said, with her reserved smile. “We -shall see.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Let’s take a taxi out to the Bois de Boulogne,” he -suggested.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“It is very expensive.... It is not <i>nécessaire</i>. No, -we shall walk.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>They retraced their steps to the Place de la Concorde -and walked slowly up the Champs Élysées to the Étoile, -and then diagonally to the left and so along the Avenue -du Bois de Boulogne, that wonderful promenade so dear -to Parisians. There they found chairs beside the broad -graveled walk and seated themselves. They had progressed -very well conversationally, for, though Andree’s -English was but little more extensive than Kendall’s -French, the two supplemented each other splendidly. -A little pocket dictionary which Kendall always carried -worked wonders. The little dictionary was a splendid -thing, anyway. It grew to be a little joke between them -and they laughed over it gaily; Andree became less -restrained.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Kendall would start a sentence in French and arrive at -a point impassable. Neither English nor French could -supply his meaning. “<i>Attendez</i>,” he would say, with -mock solemnity, and then would produce the little book, -and with heads close together in the dusk they would -search it for the word. When they found it Andree -would laugh at Kendall’s pronunciation of it.... The -dictionary was a great promoter of acquaintance.</p> - -<p class='c006'>He was more and more curious about her. He wanted -to know who she was, and what she did, and if she worked -for her living, and where she lived, but he could not screw -up his courage to direct questions, and she volunteered -nothing.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Finally she said, “I must be at my home, for every day -I have very much work.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“What do you work at?” he asked, brashly.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“I must study. Many, many hours every day I must -study.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“What are you studying?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Many things.... I must study much, much, for the -time is not long.... So I must be at my home <i>now</i>.” -She pointed down at the ground with a pretty gesture, a -childish gesture, the first manifestation of the sort she -had shown him. “I must be at my home <i>now</i>—at this -minute. Make me to be there—instantly.” Then she -laughed gleefully.</p> - -<p class='c006'>What a charming little thing she was, he thought, and -was enchanted by her.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“<i>Nous cherchons un taxi</i>,” he said, trying out his -French. Apparently he did reasonably well, for she -shook her head.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“It is not <i>nécessaire</i>. No, I shall go on the Metro.... -Good-by.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“But—oh, now listen. I’m to go home with you, of -course. And we must see each other often—to learn -French and English, you know.... You’re not going to -send me away now.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>She considered a moment.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“You may come with me—<i>some</i>.... When I say, then -you shall tell me good night. Do you promise?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Yes,” he said, “but—”</p> - -<p class='c006'>She arose and he accompanied her to the nearest -station of the Metropolitan, into which they descended, -he very curious to know where they were proceeding, and -entered a passageway labeled “<i>Direction Châtelet</i>.” The -train was crowded and there was little opportunity for -speech until they changed to take another subterranean -train which discharged them at Place St.-Michel—the -heart of the Quartier Latin.</p> - -<p class='c006'>So, Kendall thought, she is a student and she lives in -the Latin Quarter! There was magic in that thought, -romance in it; the very fact of her residence in that -fascinating quarter of the city gave her a higher valuation.</p> - -<p class='c006'>They entered the big lift which should have carried -them to the street, but the lift declined to rise. They -waited amid bursts of laughter from the crowd, and then -everybody marched off again in perfect good nature—indeed, -rather delighted at a little adventure, for the old -soldier who operated the elevator had dined too well that -Sunday evening, and in his abounding good spirits had -forgotten how to operate his machine. The crowd -trudged up-stairs, laughing, not at all peevish as an -American crowd in like circumstances would have been; -indeed, they were rather in sympathy with the old -fellow. Just as they arrived at the top of the stairs the -elevator came slowly into view, the conductor stepped off -with the air of one who had done a noteworthy thing. -He removed his hat and bowed low to the company.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“<i>Regardez!</i>” he said, magnificently. “<i>Voilà.... -Voilà!</i>”</p> - -<p class='c006'>Andree laughed prettily and Kendall laughed, and they -were advanced another step in their acquaintance by the -little incident.</p> - -<p class='c006'>The streets were black as they emerged, and Andree -took his arm, leading him diagonally across the Place, -past the fountain, and up the Boulevard St.-Michel—the -“Boul’ Miche” of fable and story. She permitted him -to accompany her for a few blocks, then she halted.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“It is here you must go,” she said. “You must go -now.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“But—”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Your promise!”</p> - -<p class='c006'>He acquiesced. “I shall see you again?” He essayed -the thing in French, “<i>Voulez-vous donnez moi un rendez-vous, -mademoiselle?</i>”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“No, no, no, no. It is not so. Écoutez. The right -way to say is this, <i>Voulez-vous me donnerai un rendez-vous?</i> -It is the future time, do you onderstan’?... You wish -to see me again?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Yes.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“<i>Pourquoi?</i>”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Mademoiselle Pourquoi.” It was the first time he -called her so.</p> - -<p class='c006'>It was a liberty, perhaps, but it pleased her, for she -gave a little laugh. “You really wish to see me -again?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Yes, really.... I want to see you—to beat the -band.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“To beat the band?... What is that, monsieur? I do -not onderstan’, oh, I do not onderstan’.” She had a -way of failing to understand with despair in her voice -and her gestures that was very charming.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“<i>L’argot américain</i>,” he explained. “American slang. -It means I want to see you very much.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“It is well.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“When?... To-morrow? <i>Demain?</i>”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“I cannot to see you to-morrow, for I must work, as I -said. <i>Mais</i> in the evening, yes. <i>Sept heure et demi.</i> Do -you onderstan’? In the Place St.-Michel, <i>près de la -fontaine</i>.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“At half past seven near the St.-Michel fountain.... -And you will be there—<i>certainement</i>?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“<i>Oui—et vous?</i>”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“<i>Certainement</i>—surely—you bet,” he said, with increasing -emphasis.</p> - -<p class='c006'>She held out her hand. “<i>Bonne nuit, monsieur.</i>”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Good night, mademoiselle.... To-morrow evening at -half past seven.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Yes,” she said, and disappeared into the darkness.</p> - -<div class='chapter'> - <h2 class='c004'>CHAPTER IV</h2> -</div> - -<p class='c005'>Kendall stood a moment looking after Andree until -the blackness of the boulevard swallowed her up. -He was exhilarated. The girl had had a tonic effect upon -him; the incident was not an incident, but an adventure, -and he tingled with it.... He wondered why. He -wondered why he wanted to see her again when he had -not cared whether or not he saw again any of the other -girls he had talked to. He hoped she would appear -next evening as she had promised ... and then he felt -a twinge of apprehension. The twinge was not an inheritance -from his father.</p> - -<p class='c006'>If he did see her again—then what? Would he see her -again and still again, and what were the meetings to lead -to? What sort of affair was he getting mixed into?... -He felt a sense of naughtiness, and, when he tried to discover -why he should feel naughty, he was unable to say. -Certainly there had been nothing in the least to warrant -it in any word or action of the evening. But Andree -was French—and she lived in the Latin Quarter.... -What <i>was</i> he getting himself into, anyhow?</p> - -<p class='c006'>The part of his being inherited from his mother was -in the ascendant. She suspected anything she did not -understand. Because she did not understand it she -believed something wicked must lurk in it somewhere.... -He remembered how he had once dug a cave in a -vacant lot next his home and how his mother had almost -gone into one of her “tantrums” over it. She could not -understand why a boy should want to burrow into the -earth. It must be some squalid desire for wicked concealment -on her son’s part. She almost convinced him that -it was a sin for a boy to dig a cave, just as she had almost -succeeded in making him believe that so many of his other -perfectly natural desires and impulses and doings were -wicked.... She had a way of connecting everything -with <i>sex</i>, and she suspected <i>sex</i> above everything else in -the world. It was her nightmare. It was a squalid, -wicked sort of a thing, to be thought of only in terms of -aversion. Always she had hammered this into him, and -though he could not quite believe her, he never quite -outgrew her point of view. In this moment he knew -exactly how she would regard his meeting with Andree.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Then his father came to his rescue—his father, whose -dominant note was tolerance and a sweet inability to see -evil, or, if he saw it, to see palliation of it, or even a -vein of goodness running through it. His father never -suspected anything or anybody. His father had never -suspected <i>him</i>. Somehow that had always been very -wonderful to him, because his mother had impressed it -upon him that he was a person always under suspicion. -He knew exactly how his father would regard Andree and -what he would say and do. He could hear his father saying -it and see him doing it. His father would have patted -Andree on the shoulder and smiled. He would have said, -“She’s a pretty little thing, isn’t she?” Then he would -have proposed taking Andree and his son for an ice-cream -soda. His father always did that—for ice-cream soda or -candy. And then he would have whispered in Kendall’s -ear: “Got enough money, son? ’Cause if you hain’t—”</p> - -<p class='c006'>Kendall wondered if it were better to see wickedness in -everything and sometimes to be justified by finding it, or to -see wickedness in nothing at all, and sometimes to be -disappointed by having it suddenly thrust upon one.</p> - -<p class='c006'>He walked slowly toward the Place St.-Michel and -there descended into the Metro. His antagonistic inheritances -struggled within him, and his youth and his -youthful desire for the joys of life took sides with his -father. In one moment he determined he would never -see Andree again, and then he would call himself an idiot -and ask what harm could possibly come from it.... If -ever he had seen a “nice” girl, Andree was nice. Well, -then?... But he was disturbed, and had not been able -to conquer his disturbance when he entered the Union. -There he found Bert Stanley waiting for him.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Here comes the wicked old man,” Bert saluted him. -“What you been up to, with me away? Have I got to -keep my eye on you every minute?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Just walking around,” said Kendall. Some young -men would have wanted to tell about Andree and to -discuss her, but not he.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Let’s split a bottle of beer.... Say, I heard about -an apartment to let—up near the Étoile. What say to -having a look at it to-morrow?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“How much?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“I heard it was three hundred francs—and we’re paying -that much here for one room with two beds.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Sounds good, but I don’t know. Anyhow, we can -look it over.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“’Tisn’t far from the office. We can walk over at noon.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>Kendall yawned. “Let’s go to bed,” he suggested.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“What’s the use? There’ll be an air raid to-night. -Better to sit up than just to get nicely asleep and have -to roll out. I never get to sleep again.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>Kendall persisted and walked up to his room, where he -was soon in bed, but not to sleep. He was excited and -restless. He wanted to sleep, not to think, but his mind -persisted in its activity, and his thoughts became incisive, -whitely clear as one’s thoughts do of sleepless nights. It -was rather the sensation of being subjected to a blinding -light which hurt the brain.... It was not alone of -Andree that he thought. He could concentrate on nothing, -but kept running down <i>cul-de-sacs</i> of memories and -speculations and plans which overlapped and confused -one another maddeningly. He would shut his eyes and -try to curtain off his mind so that no thought could -penetrate, but it was not to be done, so he tossed and -rolled and submitted.... Just around the corner of -every avenue his thoughts followed Andree, lay in wait. -Before he knew it he was building air-castles about -her....</p> - -<p class='c006'>It was really a relief to him when the <i>alerte</i> sounded. -He said to himself that he would not get up, and composed -himself to wait. In a quarter of an hour the barrage -started, sporadically at first, then worked itself up to a -fury of sound such as he had never heard before. It -sounded nearer, more menacing. Really, cannon might -have been going off in the street below his window. So -imminent did the sound become that Kendall got out of -bed, not frightened, exactly, but impressed. He considered -that there was nothing above his head but the -roof. Half determined to dress and go down, he fumbled -for the light-button and turned it before he remembered -that there would be no light, that all light was turned off -at its source with the sounding of the <i>alerte</i>.... In his -pajamas he went to the windows which opened out on the -little balcony which overlooked the Palais Royal, and -stood there looking off toward the east, where the firing -was most furious.... Over his head he could hear the -angry humming of aeroplanes, and wondered uneasily -if they were defenders or hostile bombers. Tremendous -detonations rattled the windows and rocked the buildings, -and these, he fancied, were falling bombs. The sky was -alight with up-leaping flares from the mouths of the -cannon and from shells bursting high above the city, -searching the heavens for flitting <i>Gothas</i>.... Then came -a series of tremendous upheavals which seemed to his -tingling nerves to be almost at hand.... And then the -sky was red with flames which uprose and spread and -glanced and billowed over the tops of the buildings. -Metallic fragments rattled on the roof of the Palais -Royal, fifty feet away, and on the roof of his hotel and in -the streets below. Kendall ducked inside, for he knew -this was falling shrapnel from the defensive barrage.... -For the first time he was seeing a real air raid, a serious -raid, and one that was meeting with success. Already a -tremendous fire had been started, and what might not -follow?... It was enough to shake one’s nerves, for the -individual is so helpless! All one can do at such a time is -to hope and to argue that Paris is large and a bomb small; -that the chances of a bomb falling where one happens to -be are almost infinitesimal.</p> - -<p class='c006'>The sound came very near indeed. Kendall could not -see what caused this, but it was an anti-aircraft gun -mounted on a truck which had come to a stop at an open -space at the mouth of the Avenue de l’Opéra and was -industriously blazing away at the moon.... Kendall -wished he were dressed and down-stairs with company at -hand; he would even have consented to descend into an -<i>abri</i>, an experience which had not so far been his. He -wondered what an <i>abri</i> looked like. At any rate, there -were plenty of them, for nearly every building in Paris -was defaced by a poster announcing, “<i>Abri, 30 places.... -Abri, 60 places.</i>”</p> - -<p class='c006'>The sound, the terrific crashings and retchings and -tearing bursts of tremendous potentiality, gradually -ebbed, then surged up with renewed vigor for a time, -then subsided again, and, after a series of fitful outbursts, -ceased.... But the light which glowed and danced over -the roofs from the distant Faubourg St.-Antoine silhouetting -the tangle of chimney-pots on the Palais Royal -did not subside. The fire burned on....</p> - -<p class='c006'>Kendall returned to bed—and slept.</p> - -<p class='c006'>If that raid had made Kendall Ware fearful, what had it -done to the teeming populations of the Faubourg St.-Antoine, -to the closely packed poor who massed about the -Bastille, and to the eastward of this monument to an -event that owed its being to their own ancestors, to those -who used to dwell in St.-Antoine, mother of revolutions!</p> - -<p class='c006'>Next noon Bert Stanley and Kendall lunched at a -table on the sidewalk of a little café on the Place de -Ternes and then walked down the Boulevard de Courcelles -a few hundred feet or so to the number that had -been given Bert as a place where a desirable furnished -apartment was to let.</p> - -<p class='c006'>They entered through an archway and rang the bell of -the <i>concierge’s</i> apartment. A pleasant, motherly, smiling -old woman came to the door and bowed them in. It was -not difficult to make her understand that they were in -search of an <i>appartement meublé</i>, whereupon she jangled -a huge bunch of keys and invited them to follow her up -four flights of stairs, and ushered them into the rooms -that were for hire.... The apartment of five rooms was -to be had for three hundred francs a month, with twenty -francs extra for the <i>concierge</i>. Yes, a cook could be -obtained, and madame would undertake to have her on -hand when needed. Her wages would be seventy francs -a month. Everything was very easy.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Where is the bath?” asked Kendall.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Oh, monsieur, we have a bath. Of a surety. It is -but three blocks away....”</p> - -<p class='c006'>So it was arranged. They were to move in when they -desired, and they left the building feeling quite like -family men and proprietors. They discussed the apartment -from all angles and were exceedingly pleased with -themselves for accomplishing it....</p> - -<p class='c006'>“All France needs,” said Bert, quoting some epigrammatic -American friend, “is open plumbing to make it the -greatest country in the world.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>On the broad stairs of that huge hotel which the -United States Expeditionary Force has taken over for its -headquarters in Paris Bert stopped suddenly.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“I can’t help you move in to-night,” he said. “But -there isn’t much to do. Get a taxi to take up our boxes -and bedding-rolls. I’m going to be busy.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“So am I,” said Kendall, Andree recalled to his mind -after she had been absent from it since morning.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Huh!” grunted Bert. “Same one you were with last -night?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Go chase yourself,” said Kendall.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“If it is,” Bert continued, “we might make a mixed -quartet of it. Dinner and then <i>promenade avec</i>. Eh?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>Kendall hesitated. It sounded pleasant, but he was not -sure Andree would like it—and he was not sure about -the sort of girl Bert might have chosen for a companion. -Andree, he had made up his mind, was not the sort of -girl who would take up with anybody.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Nothing doing,” he said.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Why?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Who’s your girl?” Kendall countered.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Girl I’ve known quite awhile. Cashier in a shop.... -Say, what you getting at, anyhow? Madeleine’s a darn -nice girl, I’m here to tell the world. Looks it, too. I’d -just as soon take her over to the Y. M. C. A. and introduce -her to the head guy—and she’d get past, too.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“I don’t know.... I don’t know Andree very well. -She might not like it.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Rats!” Bert said, scornfully. “They might as well -get acquainted one time as another.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>Kendall wasn’t so sure of that. He saw no reason why -the girls should ever get acquainted. In short, he didn’t -follow Bert’s reasoning nor comprehend the point he made.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“We can move in to-morrow,” Kendall said, and there -was an end of it.</p> - -<p class='c006'>It was a long afternoon for Capt. Kendall Ware, but -at last he found his day’s work at an end and himself in -the street. He went into a café for a hurried meal and -then took the Metro to the Place St.-Michel, arriving -there a good half-hour ahead of the appointed time. He -took a seat at a sidewalk table in a café from which he -could watch the fountain, and ordered a glass of coffee -into which he squirted <i>saccharin</i> from a bottle with a -nozzle like those used by American barbers to put bay -rum on one’s hair. At ten minutes past seven he was -fearful Andree did not mean to keep her appointment. -At a quarter past he was sure of it.... And she was not -due until half past. He was to learn that she was one of -those persons who are never ahead of time, who never -hurry, but who may always be depended upon to arrive -eventually.</p> - -<p class='c006'>It was almost exactly seven-thirty when he saw her -coming across the Place. At first he did not recognize -her, for he had been expecting that white suit topped -by its cunning tam-o-’shanter; but she was not in white -this evening. Her dress was of some light summer -material and she wore a dark tam. He never saw her -wear anything but a tam.... She looked more slender, -younger, than before. Why, she seemed to be nothing -but a child! He knew she saw him, but she did not seem -to see him, for she came forward sedately, with those -staid little steps of hers until she was almost at arm’s-length. -Then she looked up and smiled.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Again he found that difficulty in opening the conversation, -in organizing his French for action, and she—she -seemed to have forgotten her English. But each was -glad to see the other. He tried to tell her he was glad -to see her, but made frightful work of his attempt to pronounce -the word <i>joyeux</i>. It necessitated resort to the -dictionary—and immediately awkwardness was dispelled.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“I have worked so—<i>so</i>—hard. All the day.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“At what?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>She held out her book. It was a volume of Racine. -“I have been studying.” She opened it to show him. -“Regard this so long part. It is necessary for me to -learn it. You do not know Racine.... You do not know -this play. Oh, it is very sad, very <i>tragique</i>. But it is -very beautiful....”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“What are you learning all that for?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“I must.... I must learn many things. It is for the -examination. I must to enter into the <i>Académie</i>. First -I must pass the examination. If I can succeed to enter -into the <i>Académie</i>, then I shall some day go onto the -stage of the Comédie Française and be a great actress -and make much money, and you shall sit and clap your -hands. I shall then come to New York like Madame -Bernhardt, for there is much money, and you shall be -proud I am your friend. <i>N’est-ce pas?</i> But it is very -<i>difficile</i> to enter the <i>Académie</i>. One must know a famous -actor or musician to recommend one.... Do you know -actors and musicians in Paris?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“No.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“You must to meet these actor, then, and know him -well, so you will say to him, ‘Recommend my friend to the -<i>Académie</i>.’ It is very necessary.” She looked up at -him and smiled gaily at her little joke, which was uttered -half in seriousness.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“So you’re an actress, are you?” An actress! It -rather startled him. He had ideas about actresses—American -actresses! But a French actress!...</p> - -<p class='c006'>“<i>Non.... Non.... Non....</i> I am nothing. I am -a young girl only, me. But I must do something. I -have to live, is it not? Yes.... Then to be the actress in -the Comédie Française is to be well.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>He was rather relieved. There is a difference between -being an actress and desiring to be one. He had an inspiration. -“Maybe you would like to go to the Comédie -Française to-night,” he said.</p> - -<p class='c006'>She clapped her hands. “But yes—yes. Let us -hurry. It is already late and we shall miss something.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>They went to an adjacent bus-stand, where Andree -tore two numbers from a packet fastened to a post. The -bus appeared, passengers alighted, and the conductress -began calling off numbers. Only those were allowed to -mount whose numbers were called, for overcrowding is -not permitted. The bus rolled away without them, but -presently another appeared, their numbers were called, -and in ten minutes they were walking down the Avenue -de l’Opéra toward the theater.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Kendall bought seats, the most expensive in the house, -and they entered, mounting the broad stairway to the -gallery, where they permitted themselves to be shown -into a species of box by an attendant. The play was -just commencing.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Do you onderstan’ it?” Andree asked.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Not enough to do any good.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Then I shall explain it to you.” And as the action -progressed she pattered on with explanations and observations -very cunningly and charmingly. “You see thees ol’ -man? He is in love with thees yo’ng girl. But she—she -does not love him. It is ver’ sad. Thees yo’ng man who -is ver’ handsome, she loves him.” Suddenly she turned -to him and asked: “Are men in America—oh, how do you -say—what is the word? <i>Fidèle.</i> Do you know <i>fidèle</i>?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Faithful—constant—is that it?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Yes. Are American men so?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Why—generally, I guess.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>She shook her head somberly. “Frenchmen are not. -They are most <i>infidèle</i>. It is ver’ sad.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“How about French girls?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Oh, some are <i>fidèle</i> and some not. Some Frenchmen -are <i>fidèle</i>. The poor. <i>Oui.</i> It is the rich men and -women who are not <i>fidèle</i>.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Are you rich?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>She laughed. “No, I am ver’ <i>fidèle</i>.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“So the poor folks always marry and are faithful?” he -asked, with real curiosity.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Oh, they are faithful. Not always do they marry. -No. Sometimes they are too poor, sometimes they do -not want to, but they are <i>fidèle</i>. But yes. Do young -men and young girls in America always marry?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Yes.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“It is very strange. Not so in France. No.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“What then?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“A young man love a young girl, and a young girl love -a young man.... They marry, maybe. That is well. -But maybe they do not marry. It is expensive to marry. -Then they see each other very often and he gives her -money so she can live.... That is well, because they are -<i>fidèle</i>.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>Kendall gasped mentally. What would Detroit, what -would his mother think of such a theory of life as this? -How would they regard a mode of living which places -fidelity over the solemn forms of marriage? Here was a -people who apparently valued love and fidelity more -than marriage licenses and wedding-rings!... It sounded -very naughty to Kendall. Also it made him think. His -mother and his father tried to function in him simultaneously -and made a chaos of his thoughts....</p> - -<p class='c006'>The play continued. “Oh, you should onderstan’ -French better. You must speak it well, <i>well</i>!” she -exclaimed. “Then I can read poems to you. Do you -know French poetry?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>He laughed. “I know one poem,” he said.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Tell it to me.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>He recited:</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>“<i>Je vous aime,</i></div> - <div class='line'><i>Je vous adore,</i></div> - <div class='line'><i>Que voulez-vous encore?</i>”</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c006'>She turned to look full in his face, her lovely, childish -eyes alight with mischief. “It is not a poem,” she said; -“it is a declaration.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Exactly,” he said, half seriously.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Oh no, no, no! You do not love me.... It ees not -<i>possible</i>. No. You do not know me enough yet.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>Without thought he made the leap. “Of course I do. -How could I help it?... Don’t you love me?” He talked -to her as he would talk to a child.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“I do not know—yet. I have not known you. We -shall see.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>She was perfectly serene and perfectly serious. It -startled him. “By Jove!” he said to himself, “things -move rapidly in this country.” He was right. France -has a way of omitting unessentials and of disregarding -shams and subterfuges. If there is a destination to -arrive at, France does not walk around the block to -reach it, but cuts straight across.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“You are sure you are not married?” she said. “You -tell the truth?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“I’m not, and I’m not going to be,” he said, decidedly. -At least he would put an end to any such speculations.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“<i>Pourquoi?</i>” There it was again, that direct, troublesome -<i>why</i>.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Because I don’t like it. I don’t want to be married.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>She nodded. Apparently the reason was perfectly good -and sufficient to her. She directed her attention to the -play.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Now,” she said, “thees ol’ man he has make love to -thees yo’ng girl. Also he has promise her much money, -and she will love him.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“I don’t like that,” he said. “I can see, maybe, why -people should love each other and all that, but the money -part of it! I don’t like that at all. That isn’t—good.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“<i>Pourquoi?</i> It is that a girl must live. She must eat. -Because she loves must she starve?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>There was practical France speaking, and France, in -spite of temperament, in spite of surface excitability and -eccentricity, is eminently practical—especially your France -of the poorer sort. France may jump, but she jumps -with her eyes open, and with a pretty sure knowledge of -where she will fall.... The play moved on to its climax, -Andree translating, but little translation was necessary, -for the pantomime carried the story.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“It will be better for you to see a tragedy,” said Andree. -“This is <i>comédie</i>. The actors speak fast in <i>comédie</i>; in -tragedy they speak more slow.” She showed him how -tragic actors speak, and it was deliciously funny.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Then came the climax in which “thees ol’ man” took -“thees yo’ng girl” to the railway station and delivered her -into the hands of her youthful lover. Andree was in tears. -The magnificent acting affected Kendall himself, touched -his emotions. He felt Andree’s hand move spontaneously -to touch his arm as though in sympathy with the bereaved -and forsaken old man, and Kendall took her little fingers -in his palm and patted them very much as he would have -stroked the hand of a weeping child.... She was so -fragile, so childlike, so <i>nice</i>. He regarded her covertly, -wondering what was going on under that curly black hair -... assuring himself that it was impossible for any one -to think of anything but sweetness in connection with her. -Yet she was a mystery. He was incapable of understanding -her, and never came to understand her. A -mystery she always remained to him—but a sweet -mystery, a dainty mystery, a mystery never touched by -unworthy things or thoughts.... And that was another -mystery which he might one day understand dimly. -He might come to a height from which his vision would -be so clear that he could understand that she was good -with that natural goodness which comes from God ... not -with that conventional, rule-of-thumb goodness which is -a product of narrow beliefs and set dogmas. Kendall -was good himself, but he was not capable of attaining to -a goodness such as Andree’s, for he could never approach -her naturalness, the instinct which was in her for following -always a path upon which God could smile, even if men -should frown.... Doubtless the frowns of men weigh -but little in the judgments of God....</p> - -<p class='c006'>They left the theater silently, the emotions evoked -by the drama still moving them and drawing them -together. He felt a great tenderness for her and almost -fancied he was in love. It was a fair imitation. Whatever -it was, it was not bad, but good. He would not be -the worse, but the better, for having experienced it.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“My friend and I have rented an apartment,” he said, -suddenly.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Your friend? What is his name?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Bert Stanley.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“You will live together?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Yes.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“I will know him then.... You shall show him to -me.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“If you like.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Where is thees apartment?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>He told her.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Is it very <i>grand</i>?” She used the word in the French, -not the English signification.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Two bedrooms, dining-room, <i>salon</i>. It is very comfortable. -We shall move in to-morrow—and we’re going -to have a cook.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Cook? What is cook?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>Again recourse must be had to the dictionary, and -there followed a lesson in pronouncing the rather difficult -word <i>cuisinière</i>.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Has thees friend, this Monsieur Stanley, a friend—like -me?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“I think so.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“You do not know? You have not seen her?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“No.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“That is droll.... And thees cook?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“I haven’t seen her.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“I must come to see thees apartment and thees cook. -I must know how much you pay, and if it is too much.... -Ah, you shall have a dinner and she shall cook, and I -shall be there, and your friend, thees Monsieur Stanley, -and <i>his</i> friend. We shall know each other.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“I don’t know,” he said, doubtfully, thinking of the -proprieties and wondering what the <i>concierge</i> would say -if he were to give a dinner such as she suggested. His -acquaintance with <i>concierges</i> was limited.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Again they were walking up the dark Boulevard St.-Michel, -and again she would not permit him to accompany -her to her door. “Good night.... It was ver’ nice, -and I think you are ver’ nice—perhaps.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“But you don’t love me?” he asked, trifling with -destiny without intention, as young men will trifle.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“I do not know—yet.... I do not know you. And -you do not love me. Oh no, no! It is not possible. -You make fun of me. I can see you make <i>grimace</i> even -in the dark.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“When do we play together again?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Soon.... I cannot see you to-morrow, but the day -after—yes.... It is not a good place to meet, the -Place St.-Michel. It is far. No, it shall be the Metro, -Place de la Concorde, at <i>sept heures</i>.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Seven o’clock.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Yes.... And you will not fail?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“No.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Good night.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>He was of a mind to kiss her good night as he had kissed -American girls whom he had taken home from parties -and with whom he had played about, but he hesitated. -He didn’t want to spoil things, to make her take fright -and disappear. She was becoming too much a delightful -element in his life for him to take a chance of losing her -now.... And while he hesitated she was gone.</p> - -<p class='c006'>As mysteriously as she appeared out of the mazes of the -enormous city she disappeared into them again, and Bert -was apprehensive lest she fail to reappear. He need not -have been apprehensive. There is in life a thread of fate, -of destiny, which attaches one person to another, so that, -even though they separate to the ends of the earth, -they will be drawn together again at some spot in some -hour.... Destiny had woven a strand between Andree -and Kendall....</p> - -<div class='chapter'> - <h2 class='c004'>CHAPTER V</h2> -</div> - -<p class='c005'>Kendall Ware and Bert Stanley went early to -<i>petit déjeuner</i> in the dining-room of the Union, for -they had decided to move before the day’s work began. -The waitress laid her order-slips on the table, and as she -did so Kendall noticed that her eyes were red and swollen -with weeping and that it was with difficulty that she -restrained her sobs.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Mademoiselle is sad this morning,” he said, sympathetically.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“<i>Oui, monsieur</i>, very sad.... Oh, it is my brother! -The word came in the night. The <i>boches</i> have killed -him....”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Poor kid!” said Kendall. It was his first direct contact -with the sadness of war, and it affected him strongly. -Evidences of this sort had been all about him, but this was -so close!</p> - -<p class='c006'>“He was the last,” she said, finding comfort in his -sympathy. “There were three brothers ...”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“It’s rotten,” Kendall said when she moved away. -“Rotten. These poor women!...”</p> - -<p class='c006'>Bert made no reply. He was not the sort to voice -sympathy if he felt it, nor was he the sort to be moved -as Kendall was moved. He was more objective, less -emotional—a trifle boisterous and swanking and not given -to peering below the surface of events. It was his motto -to take what came and make the best of it. On the -whole, he was a careless, buoyant, thoughtless young -American whose two great objects in life were to get on -in the world and to have a good time. He had none of -the scruples and inhibitions that made Kendall Ware more -complex—not that he was unscrupulous; not that he was -not an ordinarily square, able, decent sort of boy, but -there did not reside in him that meticulous ethical sense -that Kendall had inherited from his mother, and which -had been softened and made finer by inheritances from -his father.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Four sons out of one family,” said Kendall, “and -there are thousands of such cases, I suppose.” He -stopped. “And every man killed is not a loss to his -mother and sisters alone—but to the girl he was going -to marry or had just married. After this war, Bert, -where in thunder are the girls of France going to find -enough husbands to go around?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“They aren’t,” Bert said, and then he grinned. “That’s -why the American Army is so popular with them. Every -one of us is a possible husband, so look out, young fellow.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“A million—maybe two million—girls with nobody to -marry.... It’s hell!”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“It’s up to us to do our best to keep them from worrying -about it,” said Bert, characteristically. “Come on, -we’ve got to hustle.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>They loaded down a taxicab with their trunks and rolls -and were driven to their new home. The <i>concierge</i>, -naïvely proud of having two American officers as her -tenants, bustled about them in genuine, motherly welcome. -Kendall liked the brightness of her smile, it was -so brisk, so alert; he liked her looks as a whole.... -Why, she might have been his aunt, he thought. She -had the look of an aunt, the sort a nephew would delight -to visit.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“I have your <i>cuisinière</i>,” she said. “I recommend her. -She will please messieurs.... But she is large, <i>une bonne -femme</i>. She comes to-morrow and she is called Arlette. -All things may be left to her, do you understand? Yes, -yes, Arlette will see to all, to the marketing and the -accounts—if <i>messieurs les officiers</i> desire. Shall you dine at -home to-morrow evening?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>Bert looked at Kendall.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“I had an engagement with Madeleine. Don’t see -why we shouldn’t dine here, though.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Why,” Kendall said, hesitatingly, “Andree said she -wanted to meet you and Madeleine—and to see the -apartment. We might—” He was still reluctant.</p> - -<p class='c006'>But Bert settled the thing for him out of hand. “Dinner -for four, if you please. At seventy-thirty.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“A nice dinner,” Kendall added, rather apprehensively. -“There will be ladies.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>He watched the <i>concierge’s</i> face to see how this news -would affect her. Apparently it did not affect her at all.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Of a surety,” she said, “Arlette shall be notified.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>The young men disposed of their traps temporarily -and walked to their offices.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“I heard of a bully place to eat,” said Bert. He was -always finding new and excellent and quaint cafés. “Up -on the rue de Richelieu. Marty’s they call it. A French -officer told me about it—says it’s mostly patronized by -actors from the Comédie and artists and newspaper men. -Suppose we take a look.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Suits me,” said Kendall. “Meet you in the Union at -seven.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>Kendall was more anxious to see Marty’s than he -would have admitted to Bert; as soon as Bert mentioned -the fact that its <i>habitués</i> were actors he wanted to go to -the place very badly. He wanted to see what French -actors were like—and actresses. In his whole life he had -never seen an actor off the stage, had never been especially -curious about them, but now it was different. Andree -was going to be an actress if she could, and he wanted to -see for himself what sort of creature she would be when -she came to be one.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Since he left Andree the night before he had been filled -with uneasiness. Again and again he reviewed his conversation -with her and found it disturbing. He had -rather lost his head, he perceived. He had told her he -loved her when, so he declared to himself, he did not love -her in the least, and the fact that she had made light of -his declaration and had refused to believe in the possibility -of a so-sudden affection helped the situation very little. -What troubled him most was that he had made a start of -some kind, to travel some sort of path. He didn’t know -what sort of path it was nor whither it led, but he was -vaguely apprehensive of it. He fancied that half-meant -declaration of his had altered the status of himself and -Andree altogether, and placed them on a different basis. -But he was wrong.... He remembered that he wanted to -kiss her, but was not inclined to take himself to task for -that. What could be more natural than to want to kiss -Andree? He never saw anybody who was more kissable.... -Again and again he consoled himself by conjuring -up her face and studying it, and by remembering her -modesty, her reserve, her sweetness and goodness. Of -course it was all right. There wasn’t the slightest danger -with a girl like Andree—if, of course, they didn’t actually -fall in love with each other. He didn’t want to do that. -Andree was a <i>foreigner</i>. She was not American, but of -another race, speaking another language. This may -sound droll, but how many Americans are there who -would have felt exactly as Kendall felt!</p> - -<p class='c006'>Therefore the idea of marriage did not occur to him as -of the possibilities. He could not imagine himself marrying -a foreigner. Here his mother functioned without -hindrance. She had been against all foreigners. To her -a foreigner had been a sort of freak of nature, a distressing -accident. Anybody who was not English had -been guilty of some sort of obscure offense against nature. -Of course there were degrees of foreignness—some, as the -Chinese, were more guilty than others—but it was a -difference in degree and that was all. This was a basic -<i>fact</i> to her, a part of her, and, without consciously instructing -Kendall, she had impressed her way of thinking -upon him until it was his own. He did not think of marriage -with Andree any more than he would have thought -of eating a rose....</p> - -<p class='c006'>As a matter of fact, he didn’t know just what he did -think of in connection with her. He had no definite -hopes. She had occurred in his life and now he was -drifting along, letting matters take care of themselves. -He simply was without intentions of any sort.... But -he was vaguely uneasy.</p> - -<p class='c006'>At seven-thirty Kendall and Bert entered Marty’s a -bit diffidently, as young men do who go to a place where -they are uncertain of just how to behave. It was a dingy -little café, poorly lighted and rather crowded with things. -One passed a sort of bar upon which were piled <i>langoustes</i> -and melons, and behind which was madame, very fat -and capable, surrounded by bottles of various kinds, and -keeping an efficient eye on her patrons and upon the -finances of the institution. A half-partition of glass -separated the bar from the rest of the room, which was -filled with tables in parallel rows, with a narrow aisle -down the middle. When filled to capacity the café might -contain as many as thirty persons.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Madame bade them welcome with a smile and a <i>bon soir</i>, -and motioned them to proceed to a table. They seated -themselves and looked about. Only a few persons were -present, but before a stout waitress dressed in black had -taken their order a considerable party entered and took -seats directly opposite. There were four men and two -women. Almost simultaneously a fifth young man entered -noisily. He waved his cane in the air as he hobbled -in, for he had an artificial leg, and shouted greetings to -everybody. He was rather tall and very thin and pale, -but exceedingly jaunty. His felt hat, a disreputable -affair, was askew on his head, and there was something -rakish about even his limp. With many gestures and -apparent great excitement he rushed from one table to -the other, shaking hands with everybody, and once in a -while stooping to kiss a girl on the cheek. Everybody -laughed with him and at him. At last his eyes perceived -Kendall and Bert and he came lunging across -to them.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Ha!” he shouted, throatily. “Americans! Welcome! -I shall sit at your table and we shall be acquainted, is it -not? You see I spik Engleesh ver’ fine. Behol’! I shall -sit here.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Have nothing to do with him,” a handsome young -man called to Kendall in French. “He thinks you have -sugar.” And everybody laughed.</p> - -<p class='c006'>The young man leaped to his feet, waved his arms above -his head, and glared at his accuser. “<i>Bah!</i>” he shouted, -explosively. “You are nothing ...” and sat down very -suddenly, apparently forgetting the whole incident, for -he leaned over the table to Kendall and said: “It is an -argument—yes. You shall decide, is it not? A foolish -argument. Behol’—if there is a king in Siam—eh, you -observe?—and he is rich, oh, ver’, ver’ rich. You -onderstand? Yes? Also, if there is a—what you call—a -electric button here”—he turned wildly and shoved his -thumb against the partition as if he were ringing an -electric bell—“if I could press this button—do you understand?—and -thees king in Siam is dead—oh, queek, -sudden, like thees”—he caught a long thumb-nail against -his upper teeth and snapped it—“so.... Now, then, -if I can so to push the button and thees king is dead, and -all his money is mine—the argument, messieurs, is—shall -I do it. <i>Voilà!...</i>” He leaned back and regarded -them gravely.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Give it a push,” said Bert.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Ah, you theenk!...” He leaped again to his feet -and extended his hand across the table to Bert, who took -it and shook hands rather embarrassedly.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“I am Jacques,” said the young man. “We must to -know one another. You are named—ah, Monsieur Bert.... -Monsieur Ken-dall. Ha!... All my friends there, -regard. Messieurs Bert and Ken-dall—my frien’s.... -My frien’s—Messieurs Bert and Ken-dall. Now we are -acquaint’, is it not? So.... You see that yo’ng man -who spill soup on his coat. He is Monsieur Robert, great -comedian at the Comédie Française. <i>Oui</i>, he make the -first prize at the <i>Académie</i> one year ago.... That other, -with the hair <i>so</i>.... He is <i>espagnol</i>.... <i>Oui</i>. Also -an actor, but not a comedian. He does <i>so</i>.” Jacques -illustrated by scowling horribly in imitation of the tragic -method. “He also make the first prize at the <i>Académie</i> -before two year.... They are ver’ clever.” Both young -men so described got to their feet and came across to shake -hands. “Those others,” continued Jacques, in full -voice, “are jus’ boys an’ girl. You onderstand? Not -anybody.... That one who look so jealous at hees girl—he -make the dress for ladies. <i>Oui.</i> He have much -money, but no brains.” At this <i>mot</i> everybody shouted -with laughter, and the girl who accompanied the maker -of dresses disentangled herself from him and came across -to sit down by Kendall, putting her cheek up to him.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“She wants you should kees,” said Jacques, and -Kendall shamefacedly planted a hurried kiss on her -cheek. “And now you shall see—thees yo’ng man with -her, he is ver’ jealous. Perhaps he shall beat her w’en -they arrive at home.... <i>Oui....</i>”</p> - -<p class='c006'>Kendall proffered a cigarette to Jacques, and then -extended his case toward the young actors across the -aisle. They were real American cigarettes, one of which -will do more to carry you into the good graces of a <i>poilu</i> -than many bottles of <i>vin ordinaire</i>. Both young men -came across, not too eagerly, and helped themselves. -Monsieur Robert, the younger, and a very handsome, -boyish, pleasing young man, seated himself in the chair -the dressmaker’s companion had just vacated. He understood -a word of English, but dared not venture an -attempt to speak it; however, he was exceedingly cordial -in French. Kendall managed to understand most that he -said. It was a very laughable, but somewhat <i>risqué</i>, -account of a conversation he had essayed with an Englishwoman -during a recent engagement in London, carried -on through the agency of a dictionary. Purely through -accident the young man’s finger had pointed to a certain -word when it should have been directed to quite another—with -the result that he received a sound box on the -ear. He told the thing with such boyish delight, and -with such naïve joy in the outraged prudery of the Englishwoman, -that Kendall laughed as he had laughed at -nothing for months. This pleased the young actor. -If Kendall had been diplomatically angling for Monsieur -Robert’s friendship, he could not have contrived better.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Suddenly he remembered Andree. “You must know -a famous actor,” she had commanded him. Andree -desired the good offices of an actor in her effort to enter the -<i>Académie</i>—and this young gentleman had carried off the -first prize in that national institution but a year before.... -He regarded Monsieur Robert with new interest.</p> - -<p class='c006'>While Kendall and Monsieur Robert made merry, if -difficult, conversational progress, Bert was instructing -Jacques in colloquial American in a manner to which -his rather grotesque sense of humor was peculiarly -adapted. “If you meet a lady,” he was saying, “and she -bids you good afternoon, the thing to say, if you want to -be really polite, is, ‘Go jump in the lake.’ Of course you -don’t say this to a lady the first time you meet her, -because it is rather friendly, but possibly the second time. -Do you understand?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“But surely.... Go jump in the lake.... Ah, it has a -sound, has it not? I like that.” He stood up, placed -his hand on his heart and bowed to Bert profoundly. -“Ah, madame,” he said, in honeyed tones, “you should -go to jump in the lake.... Is it so you say it? It is a -phrase. I shall remember it. And what does one say -if—”</p> - -<p class='c006'>Kendall lost the next lesson, for Monsieur Robert -arose and shook hands warmly. “I hope you shall dine -here often,” he said. “Me, I always dine here.... So -we shall become better acquainted.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>Others of the company took their departure to their -theaters or with their actor companions, or to write -their criticisms, and as they went out, laughing and -jostling, each stopped at the table of the Americans to -shake hands and to say good evening. It was all very -genial and companionable—a sort of family affair—but -very un-American and droll.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Kendall and Bert took their departure soon afterward. -The evening was rather hot, but they determined to walk -home, a distance of a couple of miles. As they were passing -the Hôtel Wagram, Kendall glanced inside and saw, -standing just within the lobby, the Miss Knox who had -been his playmate on the voyage across the Atlantic.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Wait a minute. Here’s a girl I know,” he said to -Bert, and led his companion inside.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Well, Captain Ware!” she exclaimed. “I was wondering -if I should ever see you again. What have you -been doing? Have you been to the front?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“No. I’m anchored in Paris. And you?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“I’ve been down at Tours, but now I’ve been ordered -to report at headquarters here. I don’t know where I -shall be sent.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Better get assigned to Paris,” he said, rashly, “then -we can play around together.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“I don’t know.... I’d rather be nearer things. It’s -more interesting.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Anyhow, you’ll be here a day or two. Can’t you -take dinner with me to-morrow”——he stopped, hesitated, -got a bit red, and finished, lamely—“soon?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“It looks as if I might have competition as a playmate,” -she said, dryly. “Is she nice? Who is she? Red -Cross or Y. M. C. A.?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Neither.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>She laughed. “And your French is so miserable,” she -said. “How do you talk to her?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“She speaks some English,” said Kendall, falling into -a trap which had not been set for him, and Bert and -Maude Knox laughed as he reddened with embarrassment.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Is she pretty?” Miss Knox demanded of Bert.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“I don’t think so,” Bert said, solemnly. “He keeps -her under cover. She must be homely or he’d let her be -seen.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Now I won’t buy you a dinner,” Kendall said.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“When I am so hungry!” she said, dolefully.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Don’t blame Ken,” Bert said. “She hardly lets him -have an evening to himself.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Well,” said Miss Knox, “if you do get a night off -I’ll be glad to see you. Probably I won’t be here but a -couple of days, though. You come, too, Captain Stanley, -if you like.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“And pay for half of the dinner,” said Bert. “That’s -fair. Half the young lady, half the dinner-check. Simple -justice.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Now I’ve got to run up to my room. I think—mind, -I only think—I’m going to have a bath. If the bathtub -is still there, and if the water hasn’t stopped running, -and if a few other things haven’t happened to the plumbing—Good -night.... Don’t think of coming, Captain -Ware, if it will make any trouble with your friend.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>The two young officers walked on up the street. Kendall -did not feel like talking. He was thinking about Andree -and comparing her with Maude Knox. He was wondering -what Andree would think of Maude, and what Maude -would think of Andree. Also he wondered a bit what -Maude thought about <i>him</i> and what sort of an affair she -believed him to be carrying on with Andree.... Not -that it mattered to him in the least what she thought, -but—</p> - -<p class='c006'>At last they stood before the building in which their -apartment was located. Bert pulled the bell and presently -the lock clicked. They pushed open the huge door and -stepped into the blackness of the court, lighting matches -to find the light-button. It was a climb of four flights -of stairs to their rooms, which they entered with some -pride of possession and sat down to have a final smoke -before going to bed.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“I wonder what the <i>concierge</i> will say to our bringing -the girls here for dinner to-morrow night?” Kendall said, -for the point still worried him.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Young man,” said Bert, drowsily, “you aren’t in -Detroit. Go to the window and reassure yourself. This -is Paris....”</p> - -<div class='chapter'> - <h2 class='c004'>CHAPTER VI</h2> -</div> - -<p class='c005'>Kendall was awakened next morning by the sound -of some one shuffling about his room. It was a -woman, and she was moving toward the door with his -shoes in her hand, and for an instant he wondered if -he were in the presence of some new sort of burglar. The -woman was short and very fat, with a large head scantily -covered by that colored hair which does not turn white -at sixty. Her face was broad, her nose was broad and -had a peculiar and laughable up-tilt, her mouth was -broad, and her eyes were very large and kindly. She -had one generous double chin and a quite respectable -growth of whiskers. Her eyes and her nose were the most -notable features. One liked her eyes and one could not help -laughing at her nose. As a complete figure she was droll.</p> - -<p class='c006'>She saw that he was awake and grinned timidly.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“<i>Bon jour, monsieur</i>,” she said, and then, waggling his -shoes, followed her greeting by a torrent of French in -which the word “<i>chaussers</i>” occurred frequently. She -spoke very rapidly and was unintelligible to Kendall.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Arlette?” he asked.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“<i>Oui, je suis Arlette</i>,” she said, with a broad grin of -delight, and then scudded through the door suddenly, as -if she had been overtaken by a fit of embarrassment.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Kendall got out of bed and called Bert, who was still -asleep.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Hey, somebody’s swiped my shoes!” came presently -in a voice of complaint.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Shut up!” said Kendall, going into his friend’s room. -“It’s Arlette. I saw her sneaking out with mine when -I woke up.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Arlette? ... Oh, <i>she’s</i> here, eh? What’s she want -with my shoes? I’ve heard these French cooks could—”</p> - -<p class='c006'>But just then Arlette pushed the door open, regardless -of the state of her young employers’ toilets, and deposited -the shoes on the floor, carefully cleaned and -polished.</p> - -<p class='c006'>The boys looked at each other, weighing this event in -the light of their experience with American domestics. -It was so surprising as to be upsetting.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Seventy francs a month—including shines,” said -Bert.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“And seventy francs is fourteen dollars.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“And my mother pays her cook twelve a week—and -hires another girl to wait on the cook! ... Come to -France to solve the domestic-servant problem! ... I -wonder if she bathes us.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>They hurried into their clothes and went to the dining-room, -where a great pitcher of chocolate stood in the center -of the table, flanked by a pot of jam and a basket of -rolls. On each plate was a bowl—not a cup. Arlette -entered and stood with her stomach against the table’s -edge, whence she looked first at the food and then -at her employers. She pointed accusingly at the confiture -and said, “<i>Abricot!</i>”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Apricot, eh? <i>Très-bien.</i>”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“<i>Mais non, messieurs.... Mais non.</i> It is not well.... -Oh, the price—it is terrific, it is wicked. Of a -surety, you are robbed. We shall have no more. <i>Messieurs -les officiers</i> shall not so be robbed. I shall see well -to it. But I was directed to procure confiture!” She -crossed her pudgy hands on her ample stomach and -rolled her eyes to heaven, calling upon Divinity to witness -that apricot jam at four francs a jar was a thing to excite -horror in any well-regulated and economical mind.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Kendall strove to comfort her, but it was impossible. -No quantity of assurances that it was <i>très-bien</i> could -remove her mind from the enormity of the cost of that -delicacy, and she went out shaking her head and muttering -and sniffling a trifle. In a moment she re-entered to ask -what was desired for dinner. It was the first and the -last time she made such an inquiry. In the future she -made suggestions herself, but never did she ask outright -what these strange young savages would have to eat.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“<i>Poulet</i>,” said Bert. “Chicken.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>Arlette rested her hands on her hips and stared at him -aghast. She repeated the word after him as if unwilling -to believe such a thing had been mentioned in her presence. -“<i>Poulet? ... Poulet? ... Non, non, non.</i> But no. It -is too dear. The cost, consider the cost! Veal, perhaps, -but never pullet.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Young ladies are coming and we wish a suitable -dinner,” said Bert.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“But pullet—oh no. There shall be a suitable dinner, -but there shall not be pullet. It is a thing unthinkable—at -the price. Before the war—yes, but now! <i>Mon Dieu!</i> -do the American officers consider what price is demanded -for pullet?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>The American officers did not, nor did Arlette enlighten -them, but she continued stubbornly to refuse to -procure it.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Ken shrugged his shoulders. “It looks as if we were -going to be henpecked,” he said, ruefully.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Bert laughed. “Anyhow we get no chicken. I wonder -if we can have a salad?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>Yes, a salad was thinkable, and even string-beans or -cauliflower or peas—but pullet! Arlette’s mind refused -to be diverted from pullet.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Very well, then,” Bert said. “Whatever you want, -Arlette. You’re the boss. But get enough for four.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>Arlette turned around and made for the door again, but -paused on the threshold to turn and stare at them -unbelievingly and to utter in a voice of anguish the word, -“<i>Poulet</i>.” She said it as one might say bubonic plague.</p> - -<p class='c006'>As Kendall left the dining-room and went for his cap -he saw a tiny, big-eyed face suddenly whisk out of sight -around the corner of the hall which led to the kitchen. -It had been the merest glimpse, such as a believing mortal -might hope some day to catch of a fairy.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Hey, there!” he called in English, for he had a way -with children and children had a way with him. There -was no response, so he gave chase. The fairy had scudded -into the kitchen, and was standing close to Arlette, -concealing herself in the old woman’s ample skirts. -Arlette gazed at him with some apprehension as he came -into the little kitchen, wondering, doubtless, what these -barbarians would do to her for bringing a child into their -lair, but a sight of his face reassured her, and she smiled -a bit dubiously and placed her pudgy hand on the little -girl’s head.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Kendall got down on one knee and held out his hand -gravely. “<i>Bon jour, mademoiselle</i>,” he said.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“<i>Bon jour, monsieur</i>,” she said, with the cunningest -little lisp, her face very sober and a little frightened, -and she shook hands with him primly.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“How is your husband and all the family?” Ken asked.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Her eyes opened wide—blue and sweet they were—and -she looked up at Arlette before replying. “But, -monsieur, I have not yet a husband.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“No.... That is bad. You must find a husband. -What, at your age? Oh <i>là, là, là, là!</i> And what is -mademoiselle’s age?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Eight years, monsieur.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>He shook his head. “And no husband.... Would -you like an American husband, mademoiselle?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Oh yes, monsieur. The Americans they are very -nice.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>She was the tiniest of mites with such a creamy-pink -complexion as Ken had never seen. Her face was oval -and beautiful, with a fairy-like childish beauty that -deserved to be immortalized by some master of the -brush and canvas. He looked from her to Arlette and -was unwilling to admit a relationship between them or -the possibility that this sprite could ever grow with the -weight of years and labor to resemble the old woman. -He wanted to kiss her; he wanted to kiss her on those -little lips, parted a trifle now in her interest, but usually -resting so lightly the one upon the other with the merest -pursing which seemed to say they were made for kisses. -He drew her to him, and she came diffidently, but not -bashfully, and he lifted her to his knee. She seemed -almost to be without weight.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“How do you name yourself?” he asked.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Arlette,” she said.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“My granddaughter,” Arlette explained. “Her father -is a prisoner of war in Germany—in consequence of -which her mother is dead....”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“<i>Pauvre Mignonne</i>,” he said, and drew her close to -him.</p> - -<p class='c006'>She looked up into his face briefly, and then, for the -first time, she smiled.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“You will come often to see me,” he said. “We must -be friends—and then, who knows, but I may have to take -you to America with me. You have no husband; I -have no wife. I shall, perhaps, ask your grandmother -for your hand.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Yes, monsieur, I shall come often if monsieur permits.... -And I shall sing for monsieur.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“I shall like that. And now let me see your hand. -Something is the matter with it.” He examined her -palm gravely, then placed a franc upon it and closed her -fingers tightly. “There, that will cure it, I think.... -And you will not forget me—and you will think about -going back to America with me?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Yes, monsieur,” she said, very gravely.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Kendall rejoined Bert and they walked together to the -Étoile and down the Champs Élysées to the hotel which -sheltered the huge office staff of the American Expeditionary -Force in Paris.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“I hope everything goes off right to-night,” said -Kendall, who was still a trifle dubious despite Andree’s -expressed desire to meet Bert and his friend.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Sure. We’ll make it a regular party,” Bert said, -confidently. “What’s worrying you?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“You never can tell how strange girls will get on -together.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Fiddlesticks!... Madeleine will get on with anybody. -See you at the house at seven.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>Promptly at seven Kendall was awaiting Andree at the -entrance to the Metro in the Place de la Concorde, and -promptly at the hour she appeared, walking leisurely, as -she always seemed to do, and with an air of not seeing -him at all until she was very close to him, an air which -he came to associate with their meetings. There was -something diffident about it, something modest and -maidenly that he liked.... Then she would pause, -always hesitatingly, as if she rather doubted her welcome, -and look up into his face without the vestige of a smile, -expecting him to extend his hand, and then she would -shake hands very gravely. It was always so.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“You have made much work to-day?... You are -<i>fatigué</i>?” she asked.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“But, no.... And you?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“I have been—what do you say?—<i>ennuyée</i>?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Bored.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Yes, yes, bored.... Have you thought of me?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>He had intended to be most circumspect, to make no -repetitions of his half-joking declaration of their last -meeting, but with her delightful presence beside him, -with that half-veiled, appealing glance from her darkly -shadowed eyes, good resolutions were forgotten.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“I’ve thought of nothing else,” he said, and was near -to the truth.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“But no”—she shook her head childishly—“you have -not thought of me at all. It is not possible.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“I thought of you when I got up, I thought of you all -the morning, I thought of you at noon and all the afternoon—and -I am thinking of you now.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>She laughed quietly. The drollery of his protestation -pleased her and made her gay. Thereafter it became a -formula, a sort of ritual. She would ask him if he had -thought of her, and he would recite, “When I got up, all -the morning, at noon, all the afternoon,” and always she -would laugh as if it were very new and very funny and -very delightful.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Where do we go?” she said, as he took his place by her -side.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“To dine with Arlette.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“With Arlette!... Who is thees Arlette?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“My cook,” he said.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“At your apartment?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Yes.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“I do not know....”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Bert and Madeleine are coming, too. You said you -wanted to know them.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Yes.... Yes.... I will know them. And this -yo’ng girl, this Madeleine, does your friend love -her?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>He spread his hands and shrugged his shoulders. “How -should I know?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“He has not told you?... He is your friend and he -has not told you?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“No.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Have you told him about me?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“A little; not much.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“<i>Pourquoi?</i>”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Mademoiselle Pourquoi!... Oh, because you were -none of his business.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Oh, I do not onderstan’, I do not onderstan’.” She -clasped hands together with mock despair, and with the -cunningest expression of bafflement on her face. “I do -not onderstan’.... It ees ver’ difficult, ver’ difficult.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Shall we take the Metro or a taxi?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“The Metro, of a certainty. It arrives, does it not? -And the taxi—oh, it is very dear.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“You’re a great little economist,” he said, laughingly, -but nevertheless wonderingly. American girls had never -been so careful to choose the less expensive of two methods.</p> - -<p class='c006'>As they were descending into the Metro they came -suddenly face to face with Maude Knox, and Kendall -felt himself blushing hotly, and was ashamed of himself -for it, so he blushed even more hotly than before. He -stopped determinedly, and held Andree’s arm.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Miss Knox,” he said, “I want you to meet Mademoiselle—” -He hesitated, for he did not know Andree’s -family name. This piece of ignorance had never presented -itself to him before. She had been Andree to him, -and nothing more. She had needed no other name. “I -want you to meet Mademoiselle Andree,” he finished, -rather defiantly.</p> - -<p class='c006'>The girls looked at each other, Miss Knox with a -humorous twinkle in her eye, but nevertheless with a -glint of keen appraisal; Andree rather timidly, as if she -would like to hide behind Kendall as little Arlette had -hidden behind her grandmother’s skirts that morning, and -peer out big-eyed at this woman of another race.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Maude Knox extended her hand. “Delighted,” she -said, and smiled.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Mademoiselle is very agreeable,” said Andree, but she -did not smile; instead she studied Miss Knox’s face intently -and very gravely.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“There’s our train,” said Kendall, at a loss how otherwise -to proceed with the conversation, and he snatched -Andree away before another word could be exchanged. -Maude Knox stood looking after them with a smile that -had in it a hint of something that was not humor, that -mingled curiosity with pique.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Andree and Kendall alighted from the Metro at the -Étoile and walked to the apartment. He was rather -taken aback to see the <i>concierge</i> sweeping the walk in -front of the entrance, for he had hoped subconsciously -to smuggle Andree in without being seen. He could -hardly have explained this had he been asked. But he -need not have been apprehensive. The <i>concierge</i> stopped, -peered at Andree keenly for a second, then smiled and -bade them good day. Kendall did not know it, but -Andree had been inspected and had passed the inspection -handsomely. Andree, however, was well aware of it.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Bert and Madeleine had not arrived, and Kendall -showed Andree into their <i>salon</i> with something of a -flourish. She stood looking about her at the massive gilt -furniture, at the large bronze statue of Diana with a bent -arrow in her hand which stood on a pedestal in a corner, -and at a bronze monstrosity depicting Ceres which, half -life size, overweighted the mantel. Her little nose was -curling.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Oh,” she said in disappointment, “thees is not good. -No, no. It is ver’ bad.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“It is sort of fussy,” said Kendall, more than half -afraid that she would take fright at so much wretched -taste on exhibition and refuse to remain. She seemed of -a mind to beat a retreat. “But don’t blame me for it,” -he hastened to say. “It isn’t my furniture, you know. -This is a furnished apartment—<i>meublé</i>, you know. I -don’t like these gimcracks any better than you do, but -I couldn’t help it.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>She continued to shake her head dolefully; then her -eyes spied a sort of throne between the windows, a fearful -example of what a piece of furniture can be, and clapped -her hands with childish delight. “Oh, it ees for me. -See!” She ran to it and seated herself on the threadbare -seat, her tiny feet dangling above the floor. “Behold!... Regard -me!... I am a queen, is it not? You -have not the manners. It is that you should kneel. -Here ... at once.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>Laughingly he humored her whim and, dropping on -one knee, he lifted her hand to his lips. She laughed delightedly. -Then she stepped down. “Come. I shall -see the rest. You shall show me.” And she insisted upon -being shown over the apartment, making little sounds of -approval or disapproval as she went, and finally they -reached the kitchen where Arlette was busy over the -stove.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“<i>Bon soir, madame</i>,” said Andree.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“<i>Bon soir, mademoiselle</i>,” Arlette replied, and swiftly -scrutinized this young woman whom her master was -bringing into his home. It was a frank appraisal, for -Arlette felt a sort of responsibility for these strange, -rather boisterous, difficult-to-understand, but kindly -young savages of whom she had taken charge. Then she -smiled and released a flood of French upon Andree, who -smiled and chattered back at her. Kendall caught only -a word here and there, so rapidly did they speak, but it -was evident to him that they approved of each other, and -there was something very pleasing to him in that. He -felt that Arlette would not have approved of everybody.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Presently they returned to the <i>salon</i> and Andree said, -seriously: “She is well. I am satisfied. She is of a -trustworthiness. Yes....”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“I don’t know what I’d do if she hadn’t suited you,” -said Kendall, with a chuckle.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Oh, I do not onderstan’.... I do not onderstan’. -And why does your left eye laugh when your right -does not? It ees ver’ fonny.” She pointed. “Oh, see! -It is laugh! It is laugh!”</p> - -<p class='c006'>He wrinkled his nose at her, so bold and familiar had -he become, and she pretended anger.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“You make <i>grimace</i> at me. It is not good. Why do -you make <i>grimace?</i>” Then her mood changed. “Thees -American girl—she is your friend?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“An acquaintance.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“You love <i>her</i>. I know it.... You love her.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Nonsense!”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“You see her often—and you love her.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“I didn’t know she was in Paris until last night, and -I certainly don’t love her.” She had withdrawn into -herself and become a stranger to him. It startled him, -frightened him, not so much because she had withdrawn -herself from him, for he guessed that it was mostly -pretense, but because he had a glimpse of what it would -mean to him if she should withdraw herself utterly. -“I don’t love anybody but you,” he said, and he said it -without wishing or intending to say it.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“No,” she said, decidedly. “It ees not possible. -You mock me.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>Before he could enter upon protestations Bert opened -the outer door and handed a young woman into the apartment. -Kendall could see that she was tall and rather -slight, but that was all. He was anxious for her to -appear, first out of curiosity, but principally to be reassured -as to Andree’s reception of the stranger.</p> - -<p class='c006'>In a moment Bert appeared in the door with the girl -at his side, both laughing as at some joke which had -just been uttered.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Hello, children!” Bert said, a trifle noisily. “Mademoiselle -Andree, is it not?” He advanced and took the -hand which she held out to him primly while she studied -his face with a calm, inscrutable expression. “Mademoiselle -Andree, Monsieur Ken, this is Mademoiselle -Madeleine.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>Both shook hands with the laughing girl, Andree still -with that restraint which was always hers at a first meeting, -Kendall with relief, for he liked Madeleine’s looks. -She was taller than Andree by inches, and not at all -beautiful as Andree was beautiful. The key-note of her -character at first glance seemed to be joyousness, a lightness -of heart, good nature. Her mouth was rather broad, -but not displeasingly so, for it was always showing her -white teeth through a smile that seemed to be the commencement -of a laugh. She was always laughing, -always moving her body or her hands as if the young -life that was in her could not be still.... And yet there -was a shrewd look about her eyes which advertised that -here was no empty head, but a capable young person indeed.... She -was a distinct blonde, with hair which -seemed always just on the point of being disordered, -yet which never seemed to lose control of itself and -become disordered. Later Kendall wondered if Madeleine -and her hair were not very much alike in character.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“All right, eh?” said Bert, proudly, patting Madeleine’s -shoulder.</p> - -<p class='c006'>She threw him a laughing, affectionate glance, and in -another instant she and Andree were chattering to each -other with a rapidity which was not only astonishing, -but utterly unintelligible to the boys. If Andree spoke -with bewildering rapidity, what could one say of Madeleine? -Kendall laughed.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Mademoiselle Mitrailleuse,” he said, and it was a name -that clung, for it was so apt. She was a veritable machine-gun, -shooting out words with a rapidity almost incredible.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Arlette appeared in the door of the dining-room and -announced that dinner was served. The quartet of -young people took their places at table, and Kendall began -serving a wonderful pea soup from a big bowl while Arlette -stood in the door with hands folded across her stomach, -watching anxiously and shooting quick glances at -Madeleine.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“It is soup,” she said, suddenly, and then darted out of -sight with startling abruptness.</p> - -<p class='c006'>The soup was followed by meat, which Arlette placed -on the table with something like a flourish, then stepped -back and addressed Andree.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Veal,” she said. “Oh, mademoiselle, the meats are -too dear. It is not my fault.... Perhaps this will be -tough. Who knows?” She paused anxiously to look -first at Bert and then at Ken, who was carving.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“It’s all right, Arlette,” he assured her, but she was not -satisfied, remaining as close to the table as she could -press and watching with an expression of the most comical -anxiety while Ken cut off a morsel and put it in his -mouth. She then, apparently, calculated the difficulty -he encountered in mastication, her jaws working a trifle -as if to aid in the process, and presently uttered a deep -sigh of relief. According to her judgment, Ken had not -chewed too laboriously and the meat was satisfactory. -Only then did she retreat to the kitchen.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“She is very droll,” said Madeleine, restraining her -laughter with difficulty.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“She is very <i>well</i>,” said Andree, nodding her head -prettily, “but also she is droll.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Monsieur Bert also is droll,” said Madeleine, reaching -out to bestow a little pat upon Bert’s hand.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“All Americans are droll,” said Andree, solemnly.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“<i>Tous les Américains sont fous</i>,” said Ken, quoting a -saying of Paris, which adored Americans at the moment -and delighted in their peculiarities and their absurdities, -and laughed at them as one laughs at the antics of children, -deciding, as its dictum had it, that all the Americans -were mad.</p> - -<p class='c006'>The <i>viande</i> was served alone, as is the French custom, -without a vegetable, but with a delicious sauce which the -girls, disdaining butter, sopped from their plates with -their bread—not at all a manifestation of ill-breeding, -but the proper and natural and habitual method of eating.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Ken turned to Andree. “I met your actor for you last -night,” he said.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“You have known an actor?... What actor?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Monsieur Robert, of the Comédie Française. Do you -know him?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“I have seen him. He is a very good actor—and very -handsome, <i>n’est-ce pas</i>? Have you spoke of me?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“No, my dear. Give a fellow time.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“But you must, you must.... It is ver’ <i>nécessaire</i>—oh, -you do not know how ver’ <i>nécessaire</i>. It is my need to -enter into the <i>Académie</i>, and he must help me. You will -know him better.” It was a command. “You will then -make me to know him.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“I should say <i>not</i>.... He’s too handsome. I’m not -going to take any such chance as that—I should say <i>not</i>.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“<i>Pourquoi?</i>”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Because I should be jealous,” he said.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“<i>Non, non, non!</i>... You do not care. You only -<i>say</i>....”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“How am I going to convince you?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“I do not know. It is not possible.... I will not -believe.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>Ken turned despairingly to Madeleine. “She refuses -to believe that I love her. How shall I make her believe?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>Madeleine laughed at him. “How should I know?... -It is for you to do. It is a thing easy of accomplishment.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Is it easy to make her love me, too?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“French girls are not cold,” she said, in the most matter-of-fact -way imaginable.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“He loves an American girl.... I have seen her this -night—yes. She is not beautiful. American girls do not -know how to dress.” Andree shook her head and frowned -at Ken.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Arlette appeared presently with the vegetable, which -she named and waited to see approved, and afterward -with the salad and a like procedure. When the fruit -appeared she made no observation, but asked, calmly, -as if it were the most natural question in the world, -“<i>Petit déjeuner</i> for four?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>Breakfast for four! It was dropping a thunderbolt -on Kendall’s plate. He was shocked. He was frightened, -and shot a quick glance at Andree and Madeleine. Andree -was sipping her wine and appeared not to have heard; -if she had heard she was not disturbed nor shocked nor -angered. Madeleine was laughing.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“<i>Arlette est très-méchante</i>—Arlette is very naughty,” she -said.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Bert shouted with laughter as at some superlative -witticism, and both the girls looked at him rather surprised. -Then Madeleine laughed a bit, as one laughs who -does not quite see the point. Kendall watched Andree -in consternation. What would she do? What would -she say? What would she think?... She did nothing, -said nothing, apparently thought nothing, but pared a -banana with quaint intensity as if a banana were a -strange and interesting fruit. She seemed always to be -interested in her food with a sort of naïve curiosity and -a very real appetite. Her appetite seemed to Kendall -to be the only material thing about her. The rest was -mystery, dainty, rather elfin, mystery.... And here -was a new mystery—her attitude of unconcern in face of -Arlette’s <i>faux pas</i>. Why, the question had not touched -her at all! It might as well not have been asked.... -Or, in this strange country, was it possible that the -<i>cuisinière</i> always expected her master’s feminine guests to -remain for breakfast as well as dinner? He wondered....</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Will they take Paris—the <i>boches</i>?” Andree asked, -suddenly.</p> - -<p class='c006'>The Germans had broken across the Chemin des Dames -and were rushing headlong toward the Marne. News was -filtering through only in driblets. Paris was uneasy. One -saw nondescript vehicles, piled with trunks and hampers, -making haste for the railroad stations, as frightened inhabitants -betook themselves to the country. Nobody -knew what would happen, but for months the fortune -had been bad—and Paris was asking if it had reached its -worst.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Of course not,” said Bert, dogmatically.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“But they are very strong—they have great numbers.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“There are the Americans,” said Madeleine.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“To be sure—the Americans. But they are in Lorraine. -The journals say they are in Lorraine.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“You will see,” said Madeleine, for she had more than -her share of Paris’s enthusiasm for its newest ally.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Don’t you worry. The <i>boches</i> are going to get themselves -thrashed.... Paris!...” Bert shrugged his -shoulders disdainfully.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“You really think they can be beaten?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Just wait.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“And the war will end?... When will it end?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“In a year.” Bert was very confident.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Oh, a year—so long.... Monsieur Bert, it is terrible, -this war. One hardly remembers when it was not. -We are so tired of it. The women are so tired of it.... -It makes me sad—sad. Everybody suffers.” Andree’s -eyes grew bigger and blacker, and her wistful mouth -became more wistful.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“It is true,” said Madeleine. “I have an aunt who -lives in the country—in a very little village. Before the -war were thirty families and fifty men. I was there two -years ago. The men were all at the front—all.... But -the fields were planted and the harvests reaped. It was -the women. They labored for the men.... I was -there again—it was a month ago.... The fields were -not planted. Matters were bad. It was not beautiful, -and all was neglected.... The women no longer worked. -And why? Ah, it was because there was no longer a -reason for them to work.... There were no men to come -home to those fields.... Of the fifty who went to the -war, fifty were dead.... Forever it will be a village -without men!...”</p> - -<p class='c006'>There was a silence. Every one was feeling the weight -of the calamities of war.... Then Madeleine laughed, -but it was a laugh without her customary gay, careless -ring. “This is the last generation of the French,” she -said, half mockingly. “Our men are gone.... You -shall see. The next generation will be what? Look -you. It will be English, Belgian, Italian, American, -Moroccan, Chinese....”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“For example!” exclaimed Andree.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“It is so,” affirmed Madeleine.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Already the government offers one five hundred -francs for a son.... I think the government is satisfied -if it is half French, is it not?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“A son is a son,” said Andree.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“To become a soldier when he is a man—and fight the -<i>boches</i>!”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“There will be no more wars,” said Bert. “When we -are through with this one nobody will ever have to fight -the <i>boches</i> again.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“If one could believe,” Andree said, in a low voice.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Kendall was disturbed. It was within his power to be -sympathetic, to feel deeply, to know pain because another -was suffering pain. He wished this subject had not arisen -and he wanted to have it changed ... because the -plight of the women—especially the young women, the -marriageable girls of France—was making itself apparent -to him. Millions of them, and no men to marry them! -It was appalling. It was appalling that they should -realize it, and the consequences of their realization were -appalling.... Life was denied them; the fullness and -beauty and the joys and sufferings of womanhood were -denied them. He wondered, with his Middle-Western -conscience, if one could really blame them for snatching -what little minutes of living came in their way. He -wondered if the conventional—in these terrible circumstances—could -be the <i>right</i>. Would the morals of -Plymouth Rock answer in this emergency?... And -then came the inevitable question, What are morals?... -His mother could not answer this question for him to -his satisfaction, nor could his father—with all his father’s -leniency. One had to see the thing to comprehend it, -and neither of his parents had seen. For the first time -he asked himself if the conventions, the cut-and-dried -rules of living under which he had grown to manhood, -really sprang, full-armed, from the will of Deity, or if they -were evolved by expediency.... It was deep speculation -for one of his equipment, and dangerous speculation for -a young man set down as he was set down among manners -strange and customs so divergent—and in such an -emergency.</p> - -<p class='c006'>He moved back his chair. “Let’s go in the other -room,” he said, “and—and suppose we talk about something -besides the war.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“It makes you sad?” Andree said, and looked at him -with a strange expression of sympathy, of understanding—of—of -something that made her seem nearer to him, -less mysterious, more human than she had ever seemed -before. “Come ... we shall talk awhile and then I -must go to my house, because it is ver’ <i>nécessaire</i> for me -to lift up at an early hour.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>Kendall laughed. “Lift up?...” The literal translation -uttered so soberly was exquisitely funny, made more -so by Andree’s solemn little face.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“It is fonnee? For example! And what should one -say?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Get up,” said Ken.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“It is not well.... I shall say lift up.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“You may say whatever you want to—<i>mignonne</i>,” he -said, with a sudden access of tenderness.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“<i>Mignonne!...</i>” She looked up at him and smiled -timidly. “It is ver’ pretty—for you to call me so. It -is ver’ well.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>Madeleine was singing now. She always sang, Kendall -discovered, mostly popular <i>chansons</i>. And Andree joined. -It was that song dear to the <i>poilu</i>—“<i>Madelon</i>”—with -its catchy air, its characteristic Frenchness. Madeleine -sang gaily, carelessly, Andree seriously and without -a smile.... Then the girls chattered with each other, -becoming acquainted, while the young men smoked and -tried to edge into the conversation, or to catch a stray -word here and there. At last Andree rose.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“You must take me to my house.” she said.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“So early?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“It is ver’ <i>nécessaire</i>.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Coming?” Ken said to Bert, who cast a sidewise glance -at Madeleine, and said: “No. We don’t go your way, -anyhow.... See you later.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>So Kendall and Andree said good night and went down -the stairs, counting the flights gaily, he offering to become -an elevator to carry her down if she became tired, and -she demanding that he do so at once, without delay. -“Your friend, he is a high yo’ng man,” she said, suddenly.</p> - -<p class='c006'>And that became a joke between them. Ever after -that they referred to Bert, not by name, but as the “high -yo’ng man.” When people begin to have private jokes -between just themselves they are getting on very well -indeed....</p> - -<p class='c006'>Once more he took her to the Place St.-Michel and a -little way up the Boulevard. There she dismissed him, -but they lingered with their good nights. She seemed -very gentle, very desirable, very sweet.... He was not -afraid of her as he had been before. Some sort of message -had traveled between them.... Kendall took the hand -she extended, then he drew her to him and kissed her. -She submitted, but did not return his kiss.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“When?” he asked.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“The day following to-morrow. Place de la Concorde. -Metro. <i>Sept heures.</i>”</p> - -<p class='c006'>It was becoming a part of their ritual. And then she -disappeared into the darkness—whither, he did not know; -back into that mystery which was her life, from which she -emerged from time to time as mysteriously as she disappeared.... -He was impressed by this mystery tonight. -He did not know her name—only Andree. She -was a sort of apparition that manifested itself daintily, -primly, conducted itself bewitchingly, and withdrew itself -into the unknown....</p> - -<p class='c006'>He took the Metro back to the Étoile and walked home. -The light was burning in the hall. When he hung his -hat on the hall tree he found it still encumbered by -Madeleine’s hat and jacket....</p> - -<p class='c006'>Kendall went to bed in a frame of mind.... Madeleine -had seemed such a <i>nice</i> girl. She <i>was</i> a nice girl. Why, -Andree had liked her.... His mother in him was -shocked, affronted. Yet, somehow, Kendall was not so -shocked as he expected himself to be. He didn’t know -how he felt ... his thoughts were a turmoil, and he kept -repeating to himself, “She <i>is</i> a nice girl ... she is a nice -girl,...” as one who is bewildered in the presence of -some incomprehensible phenomenon....</p> - -<div class='chapter'> - <h2 class='c004'>CHAPTER VII</h2> -</div> - -<p class='c005'>Kendall dressed and went in to breakfast feeling -no slight awkwardness. He was apprehensive, too, -apprehensive of the <i>concierge</i>. The affair had upset him -in a complex sort of way. It had startled him, yet it had -not shocked him especially, and he was inclined to take -himself to task for not being shocked. He was disappointed, -and yet he was not disappointed in Madeleine. -Anyhow, he was reluctant to meet her, for fear that the -meeting would set him against her irrevocably and so -cause trouble between himself and Bert.... And yet he -was enjoying the experience as an experience, though -he did not quite appreciate that he was enjoying it. -Half a dozen times he said to himself, as if carrying on a -subconscious argument: “But she’s a <i>nice</i> girl.... Darn -it all, she’s a nice girl....” He was afraid a meeting -with her would dispel this impression of her niceness.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Bert and Madeleine were already at table, waiting for -him. Bert said good morning nonchalantly, and Madeleine -smiled brightly and wished him “<i>bon jour</i>” without -the least hint of embarrassment or self-consciousness. He -was conscious of a feeling of relief. “By Jove! she is a -nice girl,” he said to himself, and took the hand which -she arose and offered.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Then Arlette came in with the pitcher of chocolate, -and Kendall scrutinized her and then shook his head -rather bewildered. Arlette might have been serving -breakfast to the most circumspect of families. The only -thing one could say of Arlette was that she served breakfast. -She was normal, everything was normal. Kendall’s -bewilderment increased.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Mademoiselle Andree? Where is she?” Madeleine -asked, presently.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“At home,” said Kendall.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Ah....” Madeleine’s eyes twinkled.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Now listen here,” Kendall said, “Andree and I are -friends, just friends. We—how do you say it?—<i>camarades</i>. -That is all.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“And you do not love thees Mademoiselle Andree? -Not at all?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“I—” Kendall hesitated and did not answer, and -Madeleine’s eyes twinkled as she went on with her cross-examination.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“And thees Mademoiselle Andree—she do not love -you?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“I tell you we are just friends....”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“For example!... I understand. You are just -friends. Oh yes. It is possible, because the French girl -she is so col’.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>Kendall applied himself to his chocolate and confiture -industriously, while Madeleine looked at him with -twinkling eyes. If he failed to understand her or her -system of life and philosophy, she was equally unable -to understand him. If he found the present situation -bewildering, she, for her part, regarded him as a strange -phenomenon that bordered on the impossible. As a final -conclusion she did not believe him in the least, but thought -of him as absurdly discreet. No other solution was -possible to her.</p> - -<p class='c006'>They finished breakfast and went down the four flights -of stairs, Bert and Madeleine chatting gaily, Kendall -following apprehensively, for they must pass the omniscient -eye of the <i>concierge</i>. He was inclined to make an excuse -to go back to the apartment so that he would not be -compelled to take part in the scene he feared.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Bert and Madeleine passed out of the big doors into -the concrete-floored passageway that led to the street, -and Kendall drew himself together as he saw the <i>concierge</i> -busily sweeping between them and the outer doors. She -looked up and nodded and smiled. Madeleine stopped -and they chatted! Actually chatted as if—why, as if -there was no reason why they should not chat. And that -<i>concierge</i> was a gray-haired, motherly soul who in Detroit -would have gone to foreign missionary meetings! Kendall -could not follow the conversation, but he caught fragments -of it. It was just casual chatter, with here and -there a question dropped in to make for a better acquaintance. -Then they bade each other good-by in the -most friendly way imaginable and the trio went out to the -street.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Kendall was suspended in mid-air, feet off the ground, -nothing solid within reach. He was in an element that -was not his, in a universe where two solids could occupy -the same place at the same time, or where the shortest -distance between two points was a curve. All his rules -and axioms were useless.... He began to realize that -the years he had lived were more or less useless to him, -and that if he wished to judge his present life and the -people among whom he lived he must start at the beginning -with an open mind. As an American he could -never comprehend them; he could not think their thoughts -nor understand their mental language. The part of him -inherited from his mother could never get into <i>rapport</i> -with France; the part inherited from his father never -could quite comprehend, though it might tolerate with -a kindly toleration, and say: “Well, I don’t understand -this way of doing things at all.... But maybe it’s all -right—for the French.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>He kept glancing at Madeleine. Every glance reassured -him. She was a <i>nice</i> girl. He liked her. There -was nothing reprehensible about her, but, on the contrary, -she was charming as he liked to see a girl charming, and -modest, and <i>good</i>. He felt instinctively that she was good, -just as he had felt that Andree was good.... Somewhere -there must be an explanation. Somehow the thing -was reconcilable.</p> - -<p class='c006'>They left Madeleine at the Metro and walked to their -offices. Neither boy referred to the situation; Bert, -because he saw no reason for it; Kendall, because he dared -not. Strangely, it was not Madeleine and Bert that -troubled him; it was himself. He was not accustomed to -studying himself, but he was doing so now. He had -rather fancied himself a man capable of thought and -understanding, a man who could look at the world and -comprehend it. He had regarded himself as wise in his -generation, not blatantly so, but with a certainty born -of inherited dogmas and local dogmas. For the first -time he saw dimly that one may understand the world -from the Detroit point of view and be utterly at a loss -in New York; that he may understand life from the -American point of view and be grossly ignorant of the -French. He even asked himself this question:</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Is one who lives up to his code of ethics, his moral -conceptions, good and moral, even if those ethics and -conceptions are utterly at variance with some other code -of behavior?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>Could it be that a thing abominable in America because -America’s code was set against it could be perfectly -proper in Persia because Persia’s code permitted it? That -there was an abstract <i>good</i> he believed, and that there -was an abstract <i>evil</i>. But could a definite act be made -universally evil by legislation or by the custom of only -a part of the world? It was deeper reasoning than he had -ever essayed before, and he limped sadly as he traveled -toward no conclusion at all. The result was multiplied -bewilderment....</p> - -<p class='c006'>One conclusion he reached: If Madeleine had been an -American girl he would have been shocked, outraged.... -This led him to think of Maude Knox, and suddenly he -wanted to see her, to talk to her, to be with her because -she was American as he was American. He wanted to -get his feet on solid earth and to tread accustomed paths -for a while. He determined he would see her.</p> - -<p class='c006'>At noon he told Bert he would not be at home for dinner, -and then at six o’clock he hurried to the Hôtel Wagram -and telephoned Miss Knox’s room. She was in, and -would be delighted to dine with him if he would wait -twenty minutes. He sat down in the spacious lobby and -smoked and waited.</p> - -<p class='c006'>She came down the stairs very trim and American and -pleasing to the eye. He noted the little swagger—the rather -charming swagger—to her walk. It was accentuated -by the fact that she carried her hands in the side pockets -of her coat. She was not in uniform; had left it off -for the evening as the women in the various services love -to do. He arose and walked to the stairway to meet her, -and they shook hands in the frank American way.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Well?” she said, with a humorous twinkle in her eye.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“I got to wanting to see you this morning,” he said, -“and it grew. So I just came along and took a chance.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“To-morrow would be too late. I’ve got a job with a -combat division and I’m going out to-morrow. Maybe -I’ll get close to the front.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Congratulations. You’re luckier than I.... We’ll -make this a celebration. Where would you like to eat?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Any place.... I don’t care—somewhere where -we won’t see an American.... Have you seen the -papers?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“No. I’ve been grubbing all day, but a hint of the news -has dribbled in to me.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Then you’ve heard that the Hun is stopped! And -that we did it. Isn’t that glorious? We—Americans—saved -Paris. I wonder if it can be true.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>They bought a <i>Herald</i> from a kiosk and found a brief, -unsatisfactory, much-censored story, but it was a confirmation. -The marines had been in it. Apparently they -had been thrown in to stop a gap, and had stopped -it effectively. Kendall knew that this meant the second -division, comprising two regiments of marines and some -of the old Regular Army. They had been thrown across -the Paris-Metz road—and the <i>boches</i> had been halted -abruptly. It was glorious, thrilling news.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“How would you like to go to a little restaurant where -I eat once in a while? It’s very Parisian. There will -be no Americans there, and while it doesn’t look much, -the food is bully and the crowd amusing.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Fine!” she said, and he stopped a passing taxicab. -By dint of many repetitions he was able to make the -chauffeur comprehend that he wanted to be driven to -Marty’s on the rue de Richelieu.</p> - -<p class='c006'>They were a trifle early. Few of the regular <i>habitués de -maison</i> were present yet, and they had their choice of -tables. Ken selected the one at which he had sat the -other evening. One by one the regulars appeared and, -recognizing Kendall, smiled and nodded. Monsieur -Robert appeared with the Spanish tragedian, and Monsieur -Robert came over to shake hands and be very cordial. -Ken presented him to Maude and watched her -face with amusement when the handsome young actor -bent over her hand and kissed it. Then entered the elderly -critic with the pointed white beard who was invariably -accompanied by a beautiful girl—a new beautiful -girl every evening. And then appeared Monsieur -Jacques, swinging his artificial leg hilariously, waving his -cane, and with his hat awry, as was its custom. He -shouted greetings to all, then, espying Kendall, he rushed -to his chair, clapped the captain on the back, and, turning, -harangued the room. His subject was Americans. The -Americans were heroic. They had appeared in France’s -hour of need. They were shedding their blood in France’s -quarrel, and France should proclaim her gratitude. Had -not these so-much-to-be-loved Americans saved Paris -from the <i>boche</i>. But certainly! That very day.... -<i>Vive l’Amérique!...</i> Suddenly, in a transport of enthusiasm, -he threw his arm about Kendall’s neck and -kissed him resoundingly on both cheeks....</p> - -<p class='c006'>Kendall was frightfully embarrassed, especially when -he heard the room laugh until the dishes rocked. He was -angry, but before he could give vent to his anger his eye -encountered Maude Knox, mirthful tears rolling down -her cheeks. Then he himself laughed, if a bit ruefully. -Jacques threw himself into a seat across the table and -began talking in his wild way to Maude Knox, who -spoke French very well indeed. There was no need for -introductions here. Jacques never thought of such a -thing and Maude appeared perfectly willing to forgo -the ceremony. Kendall was rather out of it temporarily. -He looked across at Monsieur Robert, who was bobbing -his head and laughing and writing on the back of a -<i>carte de jour</i>.... Then he arose and handed it to -Kendall.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Monsieur had a trifle of English of which he was very -proud, and this communication, relating to Jacques, -was couched in that language. Ken read it and then -laughed in real earnest, for it made this rather amazing -announcement:</p> - -<p class='c006'>“It is not a bad boy, but he is a few mad!”</p> - -<p class='c006'>What more could one ask of a single sentence?</p> - -<p class='c006'>“If you are looking for something un-American you -get it here,” he said to Maude.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“I like it.... I’m enjoying every second of it,” she -said, delightedly. “They’re just like children.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“But Jacques here has an artificial leg, a silver plate in -the crown of his head, the Médaille Militaire and the -Croix de Guerre,” he said.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Jacques, meantime, had possessed himself of Monsieur -Robert’s note and, leaping to his feet, was heaping scorn -and derision on the young actor’s head, while Monsieur -Robert feigned terror and made as though he would hide -under the table.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Are they always like this,” Maude asked, “or is it -relief—now that Paris seems to be safe?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“They are always so,” he said.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“I envy them.... But it couldn’t happen in America, -could it? Imagine this in Cleveland or Detroit. Why, -everybody would be put out by the management, or the -police would be called in! And why?... I’m learning a -lot since I came to France.... There’s something in the -very air here. One could do things never dreamed of at -home.... I don’t know what it is, but that’s the way I -feel. Maybe it is the freedom from restraint, maybe it’s -the example, maybe it is that the war is so tremendous -that nothing a single individual can do is of the least -importance.... But the feeling is there. Other girls -have told me the same thing.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Paris does get you,” said Ken.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Things don’t seem to matter,” she said, thoughtfully. -“It’s like being in a different world where none of the -old rules hold good.... I can’t imagine myself talking -like this or feeling like this. I couldn’t have a month ago.... -I think,” she said, with a little laugh, “that I shall -have to keep my head very level.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>Ken was astonished. So the thing was getting Maude -Knox, too! She saw a difference, felt a difference, felt -the challenge of a difference! “It gets you.... It gets -you,” he said, helplessly.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Sometimes I have a feeling that I’d like to throw up -the whole show and live here forever—be a lotus-eater,” -she said, with more seriousness. “If I were a man—”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Yes?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>She shrugged her shoulders. “What’s the use?... -But I’ll say this—I’m never going to see things with the -same eyes again. I think I’ll be able to understand that -there are two sides to a story.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>This was the same Maude Knox he had known on the -vessel crossing the ocean—a Maude Knox who quite -typified his ideas of the <i>nice</i> American girl, the sheltered, -protected, almost prudish creature of his experience! -She had traveled far—and yet she was not less nice because -she had seen more of the life that inhabits the planet, -nor because she had acquired a certain tolerance for -manners and customs that were impossible for herself. -It seemed as if she were passing through much the same -mental conflict as himself. Perhaps it was not so pronounced -with her because her experiences had not been so -pronounced. But she seemed to have reached a surer -conclusion than he. However, she had never had his -mother. Her inheritances were different, and her upbringing -by her philosopher father had, perhaps, made it -possible for her to progress more rapidly in understanding -and clear seeing than himself.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“For instance,” she said, “if I had met you with that -little French girl a month ago I should probably have cut -you.... Especially when you wore such a guilty -look....”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“It wasn’t a guilty look. I—Andree is a mighty nice -girl. I introduced her to you, didn’t I?... Well?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>Her eyes twinkled. He could not decide whether it -were derision or unbelief, and he felt very uncomfortable -in consequence. “Just because she’s French ...” he -commenced.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“The young man doth protest too much,” she said. -“But what I was going to say was that it didn’t seem to -matter in the least. I suppose it ought to, but it didn’t.... -She looked like such a nice, sweet little thing.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“She is.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“And that’s why the life here in Paris is so bewildering. -It upsets all one’s preconceived notions. It makes one -wonder....”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“It does,” he said, emphatically.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“I presume I should be just as intolerant back home as -I ever was.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“It’s different back home.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Extremely,” she said, dryly.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Jacques turned suddenly to Maude as the male dressmaker -came in with his pink-cheeked companion of the -other night. “You see her,” he said, as one about to -make a statement of distinct interest to the one addressed. -“She ees his girl—yes.... I theenk she look for anozzer -boy. Bicause thees dressmaker, he is ver’ selfish. He -make mooch money, but he theenk only of himself. It ees -so.... For example!... He make that yo’ng girl do -<i>so</i>—how you say?” He went through the pantomime -of shining his shoes. “That ees not pleasant. <i>N’est-ce -pas?...</i> So I theenk she look about for anozzer -boy....”</p> - -<p class='c006'>Kendall felt his ears growing hot, and was on the point -of committing an indiscretion when Maude answered with -a quaver of mirth in her voice, and not the least of the -anger and shocked indignation Kendall expected. “I -should think she would....”</p> - -<p class='c006'>Presently Kendall called for the check and they went -out, Jacques insisting on shaking hands with both of -them, and appearing to be on the point of kissing Ken -all over again.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“How shall we keep up the celebration?” Ken asked -when they were out on the dark, narrow street.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Let’s walk,” she said. “Paris fascinates me at night. -I love to stroll about, but usually I have to go in so -early. Are you too tired to walk up the Champs Élysées -and possibly on to the Bois de Boulogne?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Indeed not!” he said, and they started off with good -American strides, dodging taxicabs that came charging -down upon them out of the darkness with lights so dim -as to be scarcely visible, and almost bumping into pedestrians -who loomed up suddenly out of the blackness -ahead. In a few moments they emerged upon the -broader thoroughfares where visibility was higher, and -presently were walking up the rue de Rivoli toward the -Étoile.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Kendall was feeling a new and different interest in -Maude Knox. He had been attracted to her casually -on the boat, for she had been very pleasant to look at, and -a charming companion. But she had not impressed him -other than with a mild pleasantness, calling forth a -temporary friendliness. To-night he felt that he really -<i>liked</i> her; that there was something to her. She had -disclosed that there was a certain kinship between their -mental processes and their reactions to the new life that -surrounded them, but most of all she had shown herself -adaptable and <i>sensible</i>. Sensible covered a multitude of -meanings for Ken. His idea of girls was that they were -creatures full of peculiar concealments and inhibitions -who had a habit of looking at facts obliquely and interpreting -them without frankness. Somehow they never -seemed exactly sincere to him, but rather as if they felt -compelled to certain pretenses as a measure of self-protection. -His impression was that American girls were -always conscious of the necessity for protecting themselves, -and this destroyed comradeship and good understanding.... -It was his notion that they were constantly on their -guard against a danger which they rather feared did not -exist....</p> - -<p class='c006'>But to-night Maude Knox seemed very different from -all this; she seemed frank and fearless. She had seen -more than her sisters back home, and it had not shocked -her especially. She was capable of entering into the -spirit of the life—at least theoretically—and she treated -him, Kendall, as an equal and a friend rather than as a -male to be kept in his place lest he pounce upon her with -dire consequences.... He liked it. He liked the way she -talked, and he liked the air with which she carried herself.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Half an hour later they were seated on uncomfortable -iron chairs beside the Avenue du Bois de Boulogne, watching -a string of American ambulances whiz by from the -hospital beyond, on their way to one of the stations to -meet a train bearing wounded from the front.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“It makes one realize that we’re in it,” Maude said, -gravely. “It hardly seems possible that those ambulances -will be back in an hour filled with American boys—wounded -in France by the Germans. There’s something -unreal about it.... To think that those boys have -crossed the ocean to be wounded and mutilated over here!... -I wonder if they are sending any of the wounded -home.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“I don’t know.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“The folks won’t realize this war till they see boys on -crutches....”</p> - -<p class='c006'>Before them the promenaders straggled, dim forms in -the dusk, only to be distinguished when they passed within -reach of the arm. There were parties of three or four -girls of the working-class hurrying home with packages -under their arms; there were other parties who dawdled -and laughed and jostled one another and giggled—young -shop or factory girls out to enjoy the evening. There -were young men and young women who walked very -close to each other, sometimes holding hands. There -were single young men and young men in pairs out for -walk and adventure. There were officers of all armies -and a sprinkling of American doughboys ready for whatever -might happen, often three or four of them with a -single girl, all jolly and laughing and having the most -enjoyable sort of time trying to make themselves understood -to one another. At a little distance two neat-looking -girls were seriously giving a French lesson to a -group of American soldiers.... It was such a company -of strollers and dawdlers as the concerns of the world had -never brought together before, drawn from all habitable -quarters of the globe because the Hun, in his ruthless -ambition, had thought to spread his <i>Kultur</i> over the face -of the planet....</p> - -<p class='c006'>There were long lapses in the conversation, for both -Maude and Kendall found a gripping interest in the -passers-by.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Just think,” said Maude, presently, “almost every -girl we see has lost a father or a brother or a sweetheart -or a husband. Almost every one.... A waitress in our -hotel told me this morning that eleven men of her family -were dead.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Yes,” he said.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“But somehow the thing that—that <i>frightens</i> me most -is not to think of the women who have lost fathers and -brothers, or even husbands.... It is the girls who have -lost sweethearts. It is the thought of the boys who are -dead and who were to have been the husbands of these -girls.... Think of the hundreds of them who have -lost husbands whom, perhaps, they have never met ... -whom they can never meet.... It’s awful to think of a -million girls who have <i>got</i> to be old maids! They don’t -want to be, but they’ve <i>got</i> to be.... War has taken -from them the husbands they never had.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“I’ve thought of that,” he said.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“It means these girls have lost more than life—they -have had killed for them the possibility of living.... They -can never have homes and families.... The future is -nothing but a stretch of years for them—lonesome years -without happiness and without sorrow.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“I suppose it is as hard to be deprived of sorrow as it -is of happiness,” said Kendall, slowly.</p> - -<p class='c006'>She paused before replying. “Yes,” she said, “I can -understand that—if the sorrow is brought because you -love. Sorrow is a necessary experience of life. Emerson’s -essay on compensation is all about that....” She -paused again and then broke out with a vehemence -foreign to her. “I don’t blame them—I don’t blame them -a bit. Everybody is entitled to live and to have the -experiences of life. I never thought I should feel this -way, but it is <i>so</i>.... If you can have a life full of living -you are entitled to snatch your little moments of happiness—just -as these French girls are doing. It is their right, -because it is the best life has to offer them.... It isn’t -France alone—it might happen in America. Suppose -half the girls at home were deprived of the possibility of -marriage.... It’s awful.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>The little moments of happiness! Kendall’s mind -seized on that phrase and held it.... It was the essence -of the whole matter. These women, shut out from the -Banquet of Life, were seizing hungrily the crumbs of -happiness that were brushed from the table.</p> - -<p class='c006'>In the pause that followed an American soldier and a -French girl sat down in the chairs at the right of Maude -and Kendall and talked jerkily, half in French, half in -English. They tried so hard to talk to each other, -because each was lonesome.... And then, as Kendall -and Maude eavesdropped shamelessly, the siren sounded—-the -<i>Gothas</i> were coming!</p> - -<p class='c006'>People started to their feet and began scurrying away -to seek for shelter, but Maude and Kendall did not move, -nor did the boy and girl next them. Presently Kendall -heard the boy ask, “Ain’t you afraid of the bombs, -mademoiselle?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“<i>Non.... Non....</i>” She shrugged her shoulders -and then said, in a hopeless voice, a pitiful voice: “I have -not the fear, because what does it matter?... There is -nothing in life for me. If I am kill—<i>pouf!... So....</i> -There is an end, and it will be well....”</p> - -<p class='c006'>Kendall felt Maude’s fingers on his arm, felt their -sudden pressure. “There,” she whispered. “There it -is.... She <i>knows</i>. They all know.... Who has a -right to say they sha’n’t have their little moments?...”</p> - -<p class='c006'>Kendall stood up. It seemed as if movement were -necessary, any sort of movement, of physical action. This -sudden, close contact with terrible reality had seared -through to his consciousness with a terrible, burning -depression.... The thing was unbearable.... And -this, he thought, is what war means!...</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Come,” he said, almost roughly.</p> - -<p class='c006'>She arose obediently and they walked rapidly toward -the Étoile.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“We have fifteen minutes,” he said. “If we walk fast -we can almost make your hotel.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>As they walked the now almost deserted streets, deserted -except for stragglers and for taxicabs which went -scurrying about as they always do, not oblivious to bomb -raids, but in defiance of them, they saw huge, mysterious -bodies arising from the shrubbery, great grub-shapes that -appeared from nowhere and mounted high into the -heavens—the sausage balloons which in time of raid -stretch in interminable line across the sky down the path -of the Avenue du Bois de Boulogne and the Champs -Élysées and the Jardin des Tuileries. They were so silent, -so mysterious, such ghostly-gray blots against the sky!</p> - -<p class='c006'>They reached the Place de la Concorde before the first -gun of the barrage sounded, and in a moment were safely -under the arches of the buildings that face the rue de -Rivoli.... And then the storm broke in all its fury.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Kendall waited for Maude’s reactions. It was a sort of -test. There was danger, real danger, even under those -huge stone arches—if a bomb should strike directly above -them or in the street without. He wanted to see how she -would behave in presence of danger.</p> - -<p class='c006'>She satisfied him. She exhibited, not fear, but curiosity -and a childlike interest, as if it were some sort of spectacle, -and she were disappointed at not having a better seat. -It was impossible to keep her back from the curb, for she -insisted on standing in the very mouth of the arch to see -all that was to be seen.... She had courage as well as -frankness and understanding. His admiration for her -grew amazingly.</p> - -<p class='c006'>In an hour the raid was over and they continued their -way to the Hôtel Wagram.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Good night,” she said, extending her hand and giving -him a pressure of real friendship. “I’ve enjoyed this -evening—more than any other since I’ve been here.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“It has been bully,” he said. “I feel as if I were just -getting acquainted with you.... It’s hard luck you’re -going so soon—but you’ll be back.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>She laughed. “You won’t be lonesome,” she said, -gaily. “There’s that cunning little French girl of yours—who -doesn’t seem to have any last name.... Mademoiselle -Andree.” She laughed again. “What is her last -name? You know it isn’t usual to introduce strangers -by their given names, as you did.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>He laughed ruefully. “I’m darned if I know,” he said. -“I always forget to ask her.” It was a reply that would -have been impossible for him to make to Maude Knox six -hours before.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Her face grew serious and she touched his arm with her -fingers lightly. “She had a sweet face,” Maude said. -“Don’t be unkind to her.... Now good night. To-morrow -I’ll be where I can hear the guns.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Good night,” he said, and turned away.</p> - -<p class='c006'>He was repeating to himself what Maude had said: -“Don’t be unkind to her.... Don’t be unkind to her.” -What was he to do? How was he to deal with that quaint -little person who appeared out of mystery to assume such -an important place in his life?... Was not merely knowing -her being unkind to her?... Or was he giving her her -little moment of happiness?...</p> - -<div class='chapter'> - <h2 class='c004'>CHAPTER VIII</h2> -</div> - -<p class='c005'>All day Kendall had been comparing Maude Knox -with Andree. When he left the American girl and -went home to his apartment he had been under the spell -of her American manner, of her frankness, of the undefinable -something which one finds in all American girls -of the college type, of the cultured type, which is to be -found in no other women the world over. When you -have called it the American manner you have done your -best at description.... It was the old story of like -calling to like, of that to which one is accustomed seeming -to be more desirable than even the most delightful of -novelties. It was the call of home, the call of race, a -thing that can never be negligible in the affairs of mankind.</p> - -<p class='c006'>A night of sleep rounded the sharp peaks of his impressions. -When he awoke in the morning he did not see -Maude Knox so distinctly, but an impression remained -with him that would be permanent—that she was splendid, -desirable, the sort of girl a fellow would like to be very -well acquainted with. He went no farther than that. -He was not so near to being in love with her as he was -with Andree, or, if he were, he failed to recognize it.... -He did recognize that Andree had become an important -personage in his life, so important that he could not -think of another girl without thinking immediately of her.</p> - -<p class='c006'>She was everything that Maude Knox was not and -Maude Knox seemed to be everything that Andree was -not. There was no single point at which their characters -converged and ran parallel—except that both were “nice”.... -And even their “niceness” was different. Kendall -understood Maude’s niceness perfectly; Andree’s was a -mystery to him; it was something he felt, but could not -set down in any known terms.</p> - -<p class='c006'>One could readily imagine Maude playing golf or -swimming or driving a car furiously and capably; it was -impossible to imagine Andree doing any of these things. -Andree was utterly feminine. One could be pals with -Maude; with Andree, Kendall felt one could be bare -acquaintance or sweetheart—nothing else.... One felt -that Andree would give and give and give, asking only -love in return: Maude would give and give, but would -demand, as American women do, a like amount of giving -in return.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Also, in the attraction which Andree exercised were the -elements of mystery and of danger. It was something -that he knew nothing about her; that she appeared as -out of nothingness, and then disappeared into black -night again—and that he was apprehensive as to where -his acquaintance with her was leading him. To a young -man of some imagination these two factors were compelling.... -The more he thought of the girls that day the -stronger grew his desire to be with Andree—to taste the -charm of her presence and to sense the mystery that -surrounded her, the mystery of herself and the mystery -of a great race, apparent in her, and not understandable -by him.</p> - -<p class='c006'>He was at the place of meeting early and there paced -back and forth before the entrance to subterranean -Paris, watching the crowds and waiting with impatience. -The crowd was an old story to him now, but it never -quite lost its fascination, never quite laid aside that air -of unreality, of <i>foreignness</i>, of eventfulness that made the -Paris throng of those days what it was—foreign in the -eyes of the foreigner and foreign in the eyes of the -Parisian.... He saw a slender girl—she seemed not -more than twenty—bidding farewell to a youthful soldier. -Their good-by was unrestrained and affecting. He was -going to the north—to the battle-line—and always was -the possibility that he might never return. It spoke -eloquently in the fervor of that farewell.... They stood, -locked in each other’s arms while their lips met again -and again—with all the world to see. But none pointed -or smiled. The world understood, and the heart of the -world moved in sympathy.... Here was another girl -who might never know the joys of wife or mother. If that -young man did not return, she, fortunate in the possession -of a sweetheart, might descend from her high place of -happiness and security to the drab, hopeless level of her -million sisters.... It was no ordinary parting—it was -a parting with more than a loved one, for it was a possible -parting with the right to live....</p> - -<p class='c006'>Then Andree appeared, in white once more, walking -with tiny, demure little steps, unsmiling, apparently unconscious -that she was not alone on that crowded corner. -So she always came. At one moment she was not there; -the next moment she appeared—from her mystery—appeared -so modestly, so diffidently. Kendall said to -himself that she came like some fairy, afraid lest a hostile -glance or a human touch might send her back all too -soon to the fairyland whence she came....</p> - -<p class='c006'>He advanced to meet her and, as she always did, she -stopped as if startled, raised her eyes to his gravely, as -if she had never seen him before, and then smiled that -little smile which seemed to say that she was uncertain -of her welcome, but hoped she would find it warm. Her -slender hand was in his, with quaint formality, and she -said in French: “Good-day, monsieur. How carry you -yourself?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Very well. Very well. And you?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Oh, I have been bored! I have had to make a visit -of duty. It was very tiresome....”</p> - -<p class='c006'>Then came the short, awkward pause while they adjusted -themselves to each other and sought for words in languages -strange with which to begin conversation. It was always -so—that they spoke little for the first five minutes after a -meeting. Neither seemed to find words to begin. Then -she said, looking at him sidewise, with the merest hint -of a smile in her lovely eyes, “Have you thought of me?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“When I lifted up.” He laughed at this quotation of -her literal translation of the French for <i>arise</i>. “In the -morning, at noon, all the afternoon—always.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“It is well,” she said. “I also have thought of you.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Where shall we eat?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“I do not care.... It makes nothing.... Is Arlette -well?” She laughed a little at recollection of Arlette.</p> - -<p class='c006'>For a few moments they walked along undecided, and -then Kendall looked up to see Monsieur Robert approaching.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Here’s your actor,” he said.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“What actor, monsieur?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Monsieur Robert.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“You know heem?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“I told you about him.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Yes.... Yes.... That was well.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>Monsieur Robert recognized Kendall, and looked -quickly at Andree; then he smiled and waggled his head -in the charming, boyish way he had, and lifted his hat.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Good night,” he said, making a display of his English -and extending his hand.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Monsieur Robert, permit me, Mademoiselle Andree.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>The young actor took her hand and, with a smile that -was half a laugh, bowed over it and made some response -in French which was not intelligible to Kendall.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Mademoiselle wishes to enter your profession,” -Kendall said, with a twinkle in his eye. “She is going to -the <i>Académie</i> in September.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Ah....” Monsieur Robert looked at her more -carefully. “You enter the <i>Académie</i>?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“I do not know—I hope.... I am working very hard.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“And you wish to be an actress?... It is well. But -why?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“So she can come to New York, <i>à la</i> Madame Bernhardt, -and bring home much money, and be too proud to know -an old friend like myself when I sit in the front row and -applaud.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>She smiled up at him. “When I come in New York you -will go to see me?... But I shall be very great and -famous. Oh yes. But I shall remember you, of a surety.... -I shall remember you—a little.” There was an -infinity of subdued roguishness about her.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Monsieur Robert was studying Andree with interest. -“You will be ver’ pretty actress,” he said, haltingly, -speaking in English so that Kendall would share in the -compliment.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“You bet,” said Ken, spontaneously, and then, with -characteristic American directness: “What’s this about the -necessity for having some actor speak for her? She says -she cannot enter unless some actor says a good word for -her.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“It makes the matter with more facility,” said Monsieur -Robert.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Andree looked from Kendall to the young actor timidly, -almost with the shyness of a child.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Why not come and dine with us?” said Ken.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“I should be delighted, but it is not possible for me to-night. -I am—how you say?—<i>très-occupé</i>.... But some -other night—very soon.... With mademoiselle.” He waggled -his head again and laughed his pleasing, boyish laugh.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Shall we say to-morrow?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Oh, very well.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“If it is possible for mademoiselle,” and Kendall looked -at Andree.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Yes,” she said, “to-morrow.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“At Marty’s,” said Monsieur Robert.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Seven o’clock?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“It is well.... <i>Au revoir, mademoiselle et monsieur.</i> -Until to-morrow.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>Presently Kendall stopped. “By Jove!” he said, “I -forgot to tell Arlette I wouldn’t be home to dinner. She -will have it ready. Shall we dine with her?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“As you like.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“And afterward we can sit and talk.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Oh, if only you can speak more French.... There -are so many things we could speak of. I should like to -talk of many things to you—and to read you poems.... -You know French poets?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>Ken shook his head. “You like poetry, don’t you?... -I’ll bet you’re a poet yourself? Don’t you make -poems?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“One leetle book,” she said, with a rueful shake of the -head. “One leetle, small book.... But it was not -good—oh no. In it are only two poems that are good. -The rest are bad, ver’, ver’ bad.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“I don’t believe a word of it. I’ll bet they’re great.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“<i>Non ... non!...</i> I will bring them to you and -you shall see.... But no. It is not possible for you to -read. I am so sad ... so sad.” She laughed a little -to show that she was not sad at all, and tripped along by -his side, almost instantly returning to that quaint gravity -which always baffled Kendall. He never could tell -whether it was real gravity or a sort of protective coloring -such as birds use to make themselves invisible to the -hostile eye.</p> - -<p class='c006'>As they descended into the Metro they met, coming up -the stairs, a handsomely dressed young woman, exquisitely -shod, but so painted as to cheeks that one could not -possibly imagine what her natural complexion might -have been. She looked at Kendall boldly.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Camouflage,” said Andree, serenely, when the young -woman had passed. “I do not like ...”</p> - -<p class='c006'>It was not the first time Kendall had heard that Parisian -term applied to the painted face, but he laughed now as if -it were a fresh witticism to him. Andree made it fresh, -for any sort of slang sounded so unnatural from her lips -as to be irresistibly ludicrous ... like the harmless -precocity of a child.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“<i>Vous êtes très-jolie</i>,” he said, with decision.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“No.... I am not pretty. You do not theenk. -You make mock of me.” And then, as he wrinkled his -nose: “Oh, why do you make <i>grimace</i>?... It is not -nice for make <i>grimace</i> at me.... And now—oh, I see—your -left eye it laughs, and the other it does not. Why is -that? Why does your left eye laugh?” She pointed -accusingly at the offending eye and stopped still, shaking -her head. “Oh, you are ver’ bad. I do not like you.... -No.... No.... I do not like you.” And then -she laughed with that sudden change from mock gravity -to delicious merriment of which she alone, of all the people -Kendall knew, was capable.</p> - -<p class='c006'>When she did that she was so alluring, so cunning, that -Kendall had to hold his arms stiff at his sides to prevent -them from picking her up and cuddling her and kissing -her.... It seemed that humor of hers was given her -to tempt kisses. Yet there was nothing deliberately -provocative about her, nothing. Quite the contrary. It -seemed rather her desire to suppress such things as -demonstrations of affection than to provoke them.</p> - -<p class='c006'>At the apartment the <i>concierge</i> bowed and smiled to -them, and wished them a good evening. Up-stairs -Arlette was manifestly upset by the appearance of an -unexpected guest, but Andree disappeared into the -kitchen, whence emerged a whirlwind of chatter, and all -was well.... Bert was just finishing shaving.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Andree, eh?” he said. “Why didn’t you tip me off, -and I’d have gathered up Madeleine.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“I don’t know.... I—” Kendall was thinking about -the other night.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Piffle!” said Bert. Then, “Do you mean to tell me—”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“I certainly do mean to tell you,” Ken said, belligerently.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“You get me, young fellow. You sure do....”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Oh, dry up, and come to dinner—and behave if you -can manage it.” Kendall went into the <i>salon</i> to rejoin -Andree, more than a little apprehensive of the future -if it should throw Andree and Madeleine together.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Andree was looking about the room with humorous -toleration from a seat in the outrageous piece of furniture -which she had claimed as her throne. “Mademoiselle -Madeleine—she is not here?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“No.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“It is not well. Go and fetch her.... Now.... At -once. Or I shall go away.” She shook her head and -made stiff little gestures with her hand, but when he -stood in front of her she twinkled at him and placed -both hands in his when he held them out toward her. -He retained them a moment and then raised them to -his lips.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“You’re a sweet child,” he said.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Oh, I do not onderstan’....I do not know.... -Where is the <i>dictionnaire</i>?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“No matter.... There’s Arlette announcing dinner.” -It was Arlette’s custom to poke her head through the -door when dinner was ready and to stare into the room -silently and a little affrightedly. She never spoke. It -was necessary to watch for the appearance of her head -if one wanted to know when the meal was served.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Bert came in and Andree asked after Madeleine’s health -as if she considered Bert personally responsible for it, -demanding why she was not present.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Ken’s afraid you don’t like her,” Bert said, mischievously.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“<i>Mais oui.... Mais oui.</i> I do like. I like ver’ -much. Why you theenk?” She turned to Ken with the -question.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Don’t pay any attention to Bert. He thinks he has -a sense of humor,” Ken said, but his ears were red, -nevertheless, a circumstance which did not escape Andree’s -sharp eyes. She let the matter pass and addressed herself -to her food with that detachment from all other matters -which always brought a smile to Kendall’s face. There -were so many quaint, delightful attributes in her....</p> - -<p class='c006'>Toward the end of the dinner the diners heard a subdued -whispering and giggling without, and then appeared -little Arlette, bearing a dessert—a wonderful dessert. It -was a pudding with a white frothiness of beaten egg covering -it. It was a real dessert—the first, if one excepts -fruit and ices without authority, that Ken had seen since -he came to France. Little Arlette carried it to the table, -and stood, big-eyed, mouth pursed, waiting for the -astonishment which the miracle was to cause.... -Arlette herself, wiping her chin on the back of her hand -and grinning with delight, allowed her head to be seen -through the door.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“It is from the <i>concierge</i>,” she said, very rapidly. “She -sends it to messieurs with her compliments.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Now that’s mighty nice. You thank her, Arlette, and -we’ll thank her when we go down.... I guess we haven’t -made a hit with madame, eh?... And, <i>mignonne</i>! We -must have another place, Arlette, and a spoon. But <i>mignonne</i> -does not like pudding, eh?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“<i>Oui</i>,” said little Arlette, her eyes growing even bigger, -and the pucker turning into a smile.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Kendall settled the child at table and then gravely -introduced her to Andree.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“She goes to America with me, you are to understand. -I am about to ask Arlette for this young lady’s hand. -But yes. We are very fond of each other. Is it not so, -mademoiselle?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Yes, monsieur,” replied little Arlette, very gravely.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Oh!... Oh!... You are ver’ naughty. I am -jealous. I shall not stay. I shall go away.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>Little Arlette observed her gravely. “Monsieur will -be my husband,” she said. “It is arranged.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Poor myself!... I am sad. I shall to weep.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>Arlette looked at Andree interestedly and expectantly -and cheerfully, not displeased to have caused this frightful -storm of jealousy and well prepared to rejoice in the -tears of her defeated rival.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Kendall carried the mite into the other room and -placed her on the sofa between himself and Andree, where -she snuggled up to him with a charming little air of proprietorship. -Andree bent suddenly to kiss the child, and -then turned her head away and gazed out of the window....</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Now you shall sing for me,” said Kendall.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Little Arlette stood very erect and sang in a sweet -little voice that carried the airs very accurately, sang -the songs of the street and the music-halls and of the -<i>poilus</i>, while her grandmother stood just within the -dining-room, wrapping and unwrapping her pudgy hands -in her apron and grinning and nodding her head with -enormous pride. The child sang with great seriousness, -her head a little back, looking for all the world like a bird -on the nest opening its beak for the mother bird to drop -in a worm.... When she was through, and both Andree -and Arlette laughed at some of the songs especially, -though Ken could not understand a word, he put a franc -in her hand and kissed her. Andree snatched her up and -held her close and murmured in her ear.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Come now,” said Arlette, and the baby shook hands -ceremoniously.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“You must begin to get ready to go to America,” -Kendall said.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Yes, monsieur,” she responded, and went out, turning -at every step to wave her hand in farewell.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Bert came back into the room, cap in hand, and said -good night.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“And what shall we do?” Kendall asked when he was -gone.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“We shall sit and talk,” she replied.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“About what?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“You shall tell to me many things.... If there really -is a building of fifty stories high in New York, and when -the war will finish, and if actors make much money in -America, and also dancers.... Here the dancers do -not make much money. Even the best.... <i>Non....</i> -A few—yes. Madame Duncan.... But in <i>Amérique</i>—is -it not the same?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“They earn lots of money—heaps.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“<i>Pourquoi?</i>”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“I don’t know. They just do. People go to see them. -Why don’t they make much money here?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>She shook her head. “I do not know. The people -they do not go for see a dancer.... Maybe, if I cannot -enter into the <i>Conservatoire</i>, I shall become a dancer and -take myself to <i>Amérique</i>. But that is very hard.... -One must start in the music-halls, and I do not like.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“I should say <i>not</i>.” Kendall thought of her in the -atmosphere of the Paris music-hall and his soul revolted.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“<i>Pourquoi?</i>” she asked again.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Mademoiselle Pourquoi.... Because you are a nice -child, and the music-halls are not nice.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>She smiled at him. “You theenk I am nice?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“I think so many things about you...”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Oh, I do not onderstan’.” Her mock despair was -very pathetic until her sudden laughter changed it to -delight. In revenge she discharged a volley of rapid -French at him for two minutes. “You see?... It is -not nice to not onderstan’. You must <i>es</i>-tudy French -ver’ hard, and I will <i>es</i>-tudy English so w’en I go to -New York...”</p> - -<p class='c006'>Her mood changed. “I am sad—ver’ sad.... Life, -it is not good.... No.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Life is mighty confusing,” he said. “Why are you sad?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Because I am <i>solitaire</i>—and because there is so much -miserable. <i>Oui....</i> There is little happiness—only <i>les -petites minutes</i>.... But all the time life is not well.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>The <i>petites minutes</i>!... The little minutes! There it -was again, the same thought that Maude Knox had put -into words. The little moments of happiness. Andree -searched for them, too. She felt that the best life had to -offer her were rare and transitory moments of joy.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“<i>Pauvre petite!</i>” he said, and took her hand. “You -should be always glad. It isn’t right for you to be sad. -You weren’t built to be sad.... It’s rotten.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Yes,” she said, pensively, not understanding all his -words, but comprehending their meaning from his tone.</p> - -<p class='c006'>It filled him with anger to think of this child whom -sorrow had no right to touch for years—to think of her -life as clouded at the moment when it should have been -filled with joys. It was unfair.... Life had no right -to treat her so. Sympathy and tenderness moved him, -and he placed his arm about her and drew her to him. -She did not resist, nor did she respond, even when he -turned her face upward and kissed her. Her lips were -cold.... If nothing but little minutes of happiness -were possible for her, he vowed in his heart that he would -make them more numerous.</p> - -<p class='c006'>He continued to hold her, and she lay in his arms -unresisting while he whispered to her as he would have -whispered to an unhappy child—yet not as he would have -whispered to a child. The touch of her, her nearness, -her sweet fragility mounted to his head.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“I want you to be very happy ... because I love -you,” he said, and, saying it, he believed it. There was -room in his thoughts for nothing but her in that moment. -Inhibitions were forgotten, apprehensions laid aside—the -youth in his heart cried out to the youth in her heart—nothing -remained but youth and love and a great sympathy. -He did not look to the future. The sharp voice -of conscience, suspicious, narrow, inherited from his -mother, was silenced. Not that he was consciously -running counter to the demands of that conscience! -He was living that minute with no thought of what the -next minute might bring....</p> - -<p class='c006'>Andree freed herself and looked at him gravely, with -a sad scrutiny. “No,” she said. “You do not love me.... -It is not possible.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“But I do.... I do.... Don’t you love me a little—just -a little?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Oh,” she said in a little voice, “I am afraid....”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Afraid? ... Of what?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“I do not know.... I am so <i>solitaire</i>—so lonely—and -I am afraid.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“If you love me—”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“<i>Non!... Non!...</i> You do not love me. You only -say. And if I love you—in a week, in two week, you go -away to <i>Amérique</i> and leave me to be more <i>solitaire</i>.... -I should be more sad....”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“No,” he declared, and was about to expostulate and -to declare that he would never leave her, but the words -would not come. His mother had stepped in. “You will -love me,” he declared, in spite of his mother. “We will -love each other—and there will be happiness.... If -the best we can have is little moments of happiness, let -us have all we can of them.” He was honest, thought -he was being honest in his sophistry.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“You would go away—in a week, in a month....”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“No, no!”</p> - -<p class='c006'>He saw that she was crying, and suddenly she turned -from him to bury her face in her arms and to sob quietly, -not unrestrainedly, but with such a quietness as went -with powerful impulse to his heart, and he gathered her -to him again and tried to comfort her.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Why do you cry? What is it, <i>mignonne</i>?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>She shook her head. “I do not know,” she said, but -he knew that she did know and would not tell. “I will -go home now.... I am sad, and you will not like me -when I am sad.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“I like you any way you choose to be,” he said, holding -her close. She did not respond to his caresses, neither -did she repulse them. She was simply negative, as if they -were not happening to her at all. “I love you,” he -repeated, insistently.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“No....” She wiped her eyes and got to her feet. -“I must go to my house. Will you come?” she asked, -shyly.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Of course.... But—”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“No.... No.... You do not love me. You cannot. -I do not believe—and I am afraid.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>They walked down the street in silence. Kendall tried -to talk, but grew discouraged, for Andree was intent, -thinking, thinking, thinking, and would not talk.... -He wondered if it were the end of matters between them, -if he had been too impetuous and had frightened her away. -The thought frightened him, and he tried to reassure her, -but could find no words. He did not know how to -reassure her, because he did not know what she feared -or what she was thinking.... How was he to understand? -His eyes were not clear to see into her world, -or his intelligence to understand it. He had declared his -love to her as he would have declared it to an American -girl—that and nothing more. And she—what was she -thinking? What was going on inside that dainty, that -sad little head? He spoke of love in American; she -understood him in French. How was he to know that?</p> - -<p class='c006'>They spoke hardly a word as the Metro carried them -to the Place St.-Michel, nor was the silence broken as -they walked slowly up the darkened Boulevard, so dark -that at times they had actually to feel their way through -a spot of blackness. There was an occasional dim blue -street light, but no lights were visible from any interior.... -The shining out of the feeblest of lights would have -brought next day a summons to appear before the police -to explain the matter. Paris was severe in the matter -of lights. Kendall had seen the people stone an automobile -at night because the driver had neglected to dim -his lamps! The city had no humor in its appreciation of -air raids.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Andree did not make him turn back at the usual spot. -She seemed to have forgotten him, though she clung to -his arm, and they went on to broad rue Soufflot, which -leads off the Boulevard at right angles to the Panthéon. -In the middle of the first block Andree paused.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“It is necessary to go back now,” she said, turning her -face to him, and he bent over so that he might see its -expression.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Why did you cry?” he asked</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Because I was afraid,” she said.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“You are not afraid now?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“I—I have said I shall not have fear.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>He took both her hands and drew her close to him. -There were none to see. The street was deserted. Even -the tables and chairs of the café at the corner were piled -in close to the wall.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“You love me a little?” he insisted.</p> - -<p class='c006'>There was a tiny pause. “Yes,” she said. It was a -queer, decided little syllable, uttered as after mature -deliberation. She was looking up into his face.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“<i>Mignonne!</i>” he said, softly, and kissed her. This time -her lips were not cold, his caress was not tolerated, but -returned. She returned his kiss. It was not the first -girl Kendall had kissed, but it opened his eyes to the -possibilities of a kiss. It went to his head, and he snatched -her up in his arms as if she had been a baby. “You love -me?... You will always love me?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Yes,” she said, in that same voice of calm decision. -“And you?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Always.... Always,” he said.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“<i>Non....</i> I know. For a week, for a month.... -That is all. You are not <i>fidèle</i>.... You will go away and -I shall be sad. I know, but I am lonely.” She kissed -him. “But we shall be glad,” she said, wistfully. “We -shall have happiness—many little minutes of happiness. -I shall pretend that you never go away to leave me -<i>solitaire</i>....”</p> - -<p class='c006'>What could he say? He protested and asserted, but she -smiled a grave smile of knowledge and of resignation. -She knew what she knew. “To-morrow,” she said. -“Place de la Concorde. <i>Sept heures.</i>”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“And you love me?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Do you not believe?” she asked, sweetly.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Yes.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“It is well.... Good night, monsieur. To-morrow.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>She kissed him again and freed herself. In another -moment her daintiness had been engulfed in the mysterious -blackness. Once more she had vanished into her fairy-land.... -Each time he wondered if it could be possible -that there should be another visitation.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Kendall, young, inexperienced in serious thought as he -was, realized that some sort of crisis in his life had arrived; -events impended which were to modify him, which -were to affect him and to continue to affect him so long -as life should last. He did not know what. He did not -realize what had just happened to him and to Andree, -and yet he wondered ... wondered. And he loved her; -he was sure of it. Just as he was sure she was worthy of -his love!</p> - -<p class='c006'>He was exalted, yet he was troubled, perplexed, worried, -so he walked. At the Boulevard St.-Germain he -turned off to the eastward, crossing the Seine upon the -Pont Sully, and swinging to the left on the Quai Henri IV -until he reached the Boulevard de la Bastille, and so to -the place forever marked in the annals of time as the spot, -not where the Bastille had stood, but as the spot where it -had been <i>destroyed</i>.... The great column uprose blackly -before him. At his left was a Metro station, its entrance -surrounded by people, who elbowed and surged, or stood or -sat wearily near to that place of subterranean refuge.... -For so had the <i>Gothas</i> affected the imagination of the -poor of Paris! Their nights were nights of terror, for the -Hun in his malignant ingenuity sought to drop his bombs -in this quarter of Paris, near the Bastille, in the Faubourg -St.-Antoine—St.-Antoine, mother of revolutions! If these -people could be terrorized, they might be driven to a fresh -revolution, reasoned Berlin.... They were in terror, -but there was no fresh revolution.... And so they -cowered about the subway entrances, men, women, boys, -girls, wailing children in arms, ready to descend into -the cold dampness of the tube at the first note of the -<i>alerte</i>.</p> - -<p class='c006'>It was the first time Kendall had seen this thing, and -it went to his heart. He felt an uprush of rage against -the Hun who wrought thus inhumanly, thus without that -sportsmanship which has lifted war from its mire of blood -and horror and degradation, to paint it with the glamour -of chivalry and heroism.... Chivalry was dead, slain -by the <i>boche</i>, who made frightful war upon defenseless -populations, stark naked, hideous, savage war stripped of -glamour and of glory. The Hun pictured war not as a -St. Michael clad in shining armor and mounted upon a -glorious charger, but as a skeleton from which the decaying -flesh had not completely fallen, riding upon a wolf....</p> - -<p class='c006'>Kendall walked on, turning now toward home. He felt -that he could not sleep unless he walked himself to -exhaustion, so he continued on and on and on. His -consciousness was the ground of a battle between the -inheritances that came from his mother and those which -came from his gentle father—in which his own individual, -peculiar reason sought to intervene.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Look out,” said his mother. “She’s French, and she -must be bad. She’s getting you into her clutches....”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Now, now,” said his father, “she’s a sweet little -thing, perty as a picture. I don’t see how there can be -harm in her, and if there should be, it wouldn’t be wilful -harm.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“She’s nice,” said Kendall himself. “She’s a nice girl, -and nothing’s going to happen. Why—I tell you, she’s -a <i>nice</i> girl!”</p> - -<p class='c006'>And so it went, suspicion, accusation, argument, defense, -until his brain whirled and he was miserable, but -always his intelligence, lighted by meager experience, -emerged triumphant with the declaration that she was -a nice girl, and no harm could come of it....</p> - -<p class='c006'>Kendall forgot that he was a guest in a strange world; -that his mode of thought, his code of ethics, his purview -of life and of the affairs of life were foreign, were not of -the currency of this land. It was more than a mere difference -between races; it was a difference between those -elements which make <i>life</i>.... But one thing he was -given to see, and that was, that whatever came to Andree -and himself could not be evil, could not be mean or -squalid or wicked—and, in his limited vocabulary, it all -came back to the comforting assertion, “But she’s a -nice girl.” That persisted, no matter what other paths -of speculation his thoughts might follow. Andree was -good. There was something about her that proclaimed -that she would continue to be <i>good</i>, and it was comforting -to him.... And he believed he loved her....</p> - -<p class='c006'>He went to bed and fell asleep with the remembrance -of Andree’s kiss upon his lips....</p> - -<div class='chapter'> - <h2 class='c004'>CHAPTER IX</h2> -</div> - -<p class='c005'>In the morning Kendall was given orders to leave that -night for the headquarters of the Second Division, -which lay not distant from Meaux—that splendid body -of old Regulars and Marines who had but a few weeks -before proved the worth of the American soldier to the -Hun and to the Allied armies by its splendidly achieved -defense of the Paris-Metz highway—and there to gather -certain information on shoes and ships and sealing-wax -and cabbages and cooties and morale and crops and -transport. He was to acquire this information with all -possible despatch and accuracy, and to return to Paris -with his report. An army automobile, carrying certain -other officers, would leave 10 rue Ste.-Anne at nine -o’clock that evening.</p> - -<p class='c006'>So he was going to the front. He was actually to -penetrate to those not distant battle-lines and to hear the -sound of guns and himself to come under hostile fire.... -He was not, then, to rest safely in Paris for the duration -of the war; was not to return to America a veteran of -the roll-top desk and the ink-well! It was only for a -space of days, but he would actually have been there, -actually have set his feet in a trench—to be a part of a -combat division. He was delighted.... He hoped -something would happen, that his days at the front might -not be uneventful, that he might see and take part in -some manifestation of real war. His sentiments were -very boyish. Why, he might actually be wounded, and -so entitled to wear on his sleeve a golden wound chevron! -He found himself close to hoping it would be so, and, with -a sudden assertion of common sense, laughed at himself -when he discovered he was actually selecting the part of -his anatomy in which he preferred to receive his wound. -He had decided on a leg, the fleshy part of the leg. That -would not be serious, would not incapacitate him for -more than a few days or weeks. It was really a glowing -prospect.... And it would make him a veteran!</p> - -<p class='c006'>However, going to the front that night was unhandy. -He had a <i>rendez-vous</i> with Andree and an appointment to -dine with Monsieur Robert.... But that would be -possible. Number 10 rue Ste.-Anne was just around the -corner from Marty’s. He could dine and then hasten -to be where his orders called him.... Andree was -eclipsed by the adventure.</p> - -<p class='c006'>At noon he packed such things as were necessary and -whisked them by taxicab to rue Ste.-Anne where he left -them in charge of a sergeant in the Assistant Provost -Marshal’s office. This left him free until nine o’clock.... -He was proud that his equipment contained a steel -helmet and gas-mask.</p> - -<p class='c006'>It was an exultant and excited young man who waited -for Andree at the Metro station in the Place de la Concorde -that evening. He wanted to tell her. He wanted -to impress her with the fact that he was a real soldier and -was going into danger. He even rehearsed the nonchalant -speech which would announce it to her.... And -at last she appeared—again in white, again with that -quaint air of detachment and concentration, and still -very lovely in her fragile, slender way.... Suddenly -he was sorry he was going, because it meant an absence -from her.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Now she was recognizing him in that delightfully timid -way of hers—doubting her welcome until he reassured her.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Good evening, monsieur,” she said in French. She -was always formal in those first few moments.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“I’ve wanted to see you—wanted to see you ever since -you left me last night,” he said, rather unexpectedly to -himself, especially unexpected in its truth, for it was true, -though he realized it only then.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“That is well,” she said, and looked up at him quickly, -smilingly, with something shining in her eyes that had -never been there before. “And I have thought of you.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“It has been a long day.... All the days are long -because you are not with me.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“It is true?” She paused, demanding to be assured -that he was speaking in earnest, and he took her arm -and pressed it to his side. “That is nice,” she said. -“You should miss me at all times. Oh yes. Ver’, ver’ -much.... And I shall also miss you.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“My dear,” he said, bending close to her ear, “do you -love me?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Yes,” she said, simply.</p> - -<p class='c006'>And then he knew that his great news had turned to -aloes in his mouth. The thing he had longed to tell her—a -little boastfully—he could not bear to tell her now, -and he wondered vaguely why it should be so. But he -must tell her. He started to do so, and stopped. No—it -would do as well after dinner.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“And you?” she said, after a little pause.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Very much.... Very much....”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“No, no.... I am afraid. It cannot be so. You -only say—that is all. You have make me love you—and -soon you will go away and leave me to cry.... Yes....”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“And if I do,” he said, striving to tease her, “you will -soon find another American. Sure you will.... <i>Vous -êtes très-méchante.... Pas fidèle</i>.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“How can you say? It is not kind. Oh, I am <i>fidèle</i>. -You believe? Yes, yes. You believe?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Of course, child,” he said, repentantly. “I was only -joking.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“And you—are you <i>fidèle</i>? On the nights when I do -not meet with you—what then? Do you see some other -girl?... Men are not <i>fidèle</i>.... You see other girl—lots -of other girl.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Now look here, you mustn’t say that. You’re the -only girl in the world I give a snap of my finger for.... -Just you.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“It is well,” she said, contentedly; and then, “We -dine with thees yo’ng actor thees evening?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Yes.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Oh, I am glad.... It is ver’ important. He must -like me, and then he will speak for me at the <i>Conservatoire</i>. -You must be ver’ good friend to him so that he will speak -for me.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“No, young lady, you keep away from that young -actor. He’s too darned handsome. I don’t want him -stealing you away from me.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“<i>Non.... Non....</i> I do not care for him, only -that he speak for me. You must not be afraid.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Shall we take a taxi?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“No. There is much time. A taxi is much expensive. -I must not make you spend all your money.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“That wouldn’t be such a hard job. I haven’t much -to spend.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“It is no matter.... If you had much—that is different—then -I would spend.... It is not for money -that I know you—oh no. At first—then I do not know -what kind of yo’ng man you are.... I take you to -that expensive café. It is to punish you because you -speak to me as you did.... I did not know you. But -now I know you ver’ well. You have been kind.” She -nodded her head in punctuation. “You have been always -nice and ver’ gentle, and so I see you ver’ often.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Nobody could help being gentle with you, <i>mignonne</i>.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“I do not know,” she said. “The worl’ it is not nice.” -She shook her head disapprovingly. “All men are not -nice.... It is ver’ hard, and sometimes I am most -unhappy. It is so.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“But you are happy now?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>She pointed her finger down at the sidewalk. “Now—thees -minute—yes. In one hour in four hours it may -not be so. Who can say?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>It brought him again to his going away, and a real -dread of making the announcement to her seized upon -him. He was afraid she would cry or do some other -equally distressing thing. But that was selfish. He -dreaded her crying because it would be unpleasant for -himself and was rather ashamed of it. He even fancied -he could understand something of how she would actually -feel, but he was wrong. He was groping in the darkness, -wandering in the darkness of a strange mansion with -many rooms and devious passages, and it was inevitable -that he should miss his way....</p> - -<p class='c006'>They entered Marty’s and Monsieur Robert came forward -to greet them with that delicious, boyish smile of his.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“I am glad you come,” he said, bobbing his head. -“My friends they shall be jealous to see me wit’ such -pretty girl.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>Andree was very prim and quiet with that quaint -attractive quietness that always made Kendall wonder, -because he had never seen anything like it. It was a sort -of waiting quietness, a kind of recess that Andree retired -into to await events, and from which she would emerge -impish or girlish or serious, like a child or like a weary -woman. One felt she was not present bodily, but was -staring at one expectantly to read one’s mood, or, possibly, -to read one into the future and to foretell if good or -ill were to come out of it. Now she watched Monsieur -Robert when he was not looking at her, but the instant -his eyes turned toward her her own eyes would hide behind -their lashes diffidently.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“What shall we eat?” Monsieur Robert asked, in French. -“<i>Potage? Poulet rôti, cresson? Haricots verts? Salade?...</i> -Eh?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Sounds good,” said Kendall, but monsieur was looking -expectantly to Andree.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“That is well,” she said.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Pommard?... The <i>vin ordinaire</i> is not for us -to-night?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>She was not interested in the wine, and Kendall trusted -to the young actor’s judgment. So they gave their order, -and were only commencing on the soup when a commotion -at the door apprised Kendall that Jacques was coming. -Andree had started at the noise.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“It is Jacques,” he said to her. “I told you about him.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Yes,” she said, but did not turn her head.</p> - -<p class='c006'>In a moment Jacques paused at the table and stared, -drew himself to his full height, threw back his hair from -his brow with a flamboyant gesture, and shouted: -“A-ah!... A-ah!...”</p> - -<p class='c006'>Kendall was embarrassed. There was no telling what -Jacques might say or do, for the man had a rather terrible, -if delicious, frankness, and discussed with openness -and noise what Kendall was accustomed to hear -spoken of in whispers by men alone—and by them in -corners.... He had heard Jacques one evening going -from table to table—demanding of friends and strangers -alike their judgment on a certain phase of the art of -making love. Kendall had really been shocked and had -looked for somebody to stand up and smite Jacques -mightily, but everybody had laughed and answered according -to their kind with a frankness equal to Jacques’s.... -So now Kendall was apprehensive.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“A-ah!...” said Jacques again, and pointed at -Andree. “I ask you if I should not find for you a girl, -and you say <i>no</i>. Now I know why.... A-ah!...” -He frowned at Andree and waggled his head. “She is -nice,” he said, approvingly. Then he appeared to notice -Monsieur Robert for the first time and glared at him, -glared and poked a long finger under his nose. “<i>He</i> -dines with you,” he said, tragically. “You—you make -introduce your girl to him.... <i>Oh, là là!</i> What is this? -Do you not know that this man steals little girls?... -He is ver’ bad. Look you out or he will steal her from -you. It is I, Jacques, your friend, who make the warning.” -Then suddenly he turned away and flew across -the room to kiss a young woman who had just entered -with the elderly critic.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Ken was at a loss to know if the fellow had been in -earnest or were merely up to his usual capers....</p> - -<p class='c006'>The three at the table chatted, Andree always maintaining -that queer reserve, not emerging from her hiding-place, -speaking only when directly addressed, and then -briefly. Monsieur Robert looked at her frequently, and -ever more frequently, for she was a charming picture, and -more than once spoke to her in French. She always -replied in English.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“I think mademoiselle look ver’ nice on the stage,” he -said to Ken. “If only she have the talent.” He shrugged -his shoulders. “Pretty eyes and talent for act not always -are together,” he said.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“You can’t tell till you try,” said Kendall, colloquially.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“I should like for hear mademoiselle recite one day. -Mademoiselle studies Racine?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Already I know many parts,” said Andree.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“That is well. Some day you and Capitaine Ware -shall come and you shall recite for me, <i>n’est-ce pas</i>?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“<i>Oui, monsieur</i>,” she said, primly.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“There is but one way to enter into the stage,” he -continued. “It is the <i>Conservatoire</i>. Then, if one make -the success, there is the Comédie Française.... But it -is not easy to enter into the <i>Conservatoire</i>.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“<i>Mais non</i>.... It is ver’ difficult,” she said, despairingly.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Ah.... But if some one speak for you? Then it ees -not the same—it ees differen’.... But we shall see. -Capitaine Ware ees my frien’. I would oblige him. -Also I would oblige mademoiselle.” He looked at her -rather intently. “We shall see.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>The roast chicken arrived, surrounded by cress and -swimming in a delicious sauce. Conversation languished. -From time to time Kendall turned to look at Andree, -for it always delighted him to see her eat, she was so -intent about it. She went about it as if eating were an -intricate problem requiring concentration.... And presently -they fell to chatting in fragmentary fashion, Andree -translating for both Kendall and Monsieur Robert, and it -was very jolly and pleasant.... Kendall did not notice -how often the young actor glanced at Andree....</p> - -<p class='c006'>Presently they were through and monsieur was compelled -to hurry away because he had a part in the piece -that was playing that evening. “I mus’ see you ver’ -soon,” he said to them both, but with his eyes intently -upon Andree’s—which dropped before his gaze. “I mus’ -hear mademoiselle recite.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“We’ll fix it up,” said Ken. “Good night.” They -shook hands and Monsieur Robert bent to kiss Andree’s -hand, bent gracefully, with a charming air that was half -joking, half serious. It set upon him well. “Good -night,” he said, and hastened toward the theater.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“I like him,” said Kendall.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Andree looked at him quickly, her face expressionless. -“Yes?” she said.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Don’t you?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“How can I say? I do not know him.... He is ver’ -handsome.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“It doesn’t matter whether you like him or not—so long -as he gets you into that <i>Conservatoire</i> thing.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>She did not reply.</p> - -<p class='c006'>They walked the best part of a block before she spoke. -“It is ver’ <i>nécessaire</i> for me to enter into the Conservatoire.... -Oh, ver’ <i>nécessaire</i>.... I mus’ earn money. -I have no money. I mus’ earn it for myself, because there -is no one to earn it for me.... You do not onderstan’.... -Sometime, before the war, yo’ng girls say they do -not need to earn money, because they marry. All will be -wives and the husbands they will earn.... Now it ees -not so—<i>non</i>—it ees differen’.... You onderstan’? -Many, many yo’ng girl mus’ learn to earn money, and -because they will always be alone.... There can be no -one....”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“It does mean a lot to you, doesn’t it? I’ll be mighty -happy if I can help.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>She was silent again for a time and then said, suddenly, -as if thinking aloud, “I theenk I can enter into the -<i>Conservatoire</i> if I want to....”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Eh?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“It was not anything.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>He scarcely heard her; his mind was not on what she -said, for he was thinking to himself, “I must tell her.... -I must tell her now,” and was nerving himself up to make -the announcement of his departure.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Andree,” he said, and stopped.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Yes?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Do you love me?” he said, procrastinating. It was -not what he had intended to say.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Yes.” She spoke very sweetly. “And you?” The -question sounded so charming from her lips, the tone and -the manner of it were rare and lovely; they seemed to -say, “I know you love me, but it is sweet—very sweet—to -hear you say so.” The street was dark and he drew -her close to him, and so they walked, his arm about her -waist, she responding to his touch so deliciously.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“I love you—I do love you,” he said.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“It is well.... I am ver’ happy.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“But, Andree—”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Yes?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“I—I’ve got to go away.... Only for a day or two,” -he hastened to say. “It’s just a little trip.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“When?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Now—to-night.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“<i>To-night?</i>” Her tone was so strange, so startled, so -shocked. “<i>To-night?</i>”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Orders,” he said. “Nothing could take me away -from you but orders.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>She had drawn away from him, and was striving to peer -into his face, but the darkness prevented. She was -striving to read from his eyes if he were telling the truth. -She had feared his going—this young man from strange -America. The possibility of his going had become a -nightmare to her—always present in the profound recesses -of her thoughts.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Where?” she asked.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“To the front.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“O-oh!...” It was not an exclamation, it was a -suppressed cry. It was one of the things she had feared, -that this young soldier would be sent from her to the -hell of battle, and that he would not return, as the brothers -and the husbands and the sweethearts of her acquaintances -had gone—to be swallowed up and to be seen no more -on earth.... He was going.... The thing was going -to happen to her.... Her man—the man she loved—was -going to become a sacrifice as those millions of other -men had become sacrifices.</p> - -<p class='c006'>He had feared that she would cry, that she would -cling to him with sobs and beg him not to go, that she -might make some sort of regrettable scene, but she did -not. But she was very still with the stillness of the -stricken.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“<i>C’est la guerre</i>,” she said in a whisper.</p> - -<p class='c006'>It is the war—that phrase so often heard, which excuses -everything, accounts for everything. But now it had a -deeper meaning. <i>This</i> was the war! This parting was -the war—this giving of a loved one to death, and this -remaining behind in an agony of fear and of loneliness—this -was indeed the war!... To men war is one thing—it -is a grim fight, it is suffering and wounds, it is bravery -and glory.... To man war, at its most, can mean -only death. But to a woman who sends her man it -means more, infinitely, terribly more. It means that she -may be deprived of all that makes life desirable. It -means that she must remain behind to fear and to suffer, -and then, when the feared news arrives, to face a life that -is not life, a life without love, without companionship.... A -life with the smile snatched away and with the -heart robbed of laughter! It means that from her the -one, the great, the vital thing is to be forever missing, and -that the future is to be nothing but day following day.... War -means that men must die.... War means -that women must continue to live!</p> - -<p class='c006'>“You mustn’t worry.... I—I sha’n’t be in the fighting. -I’m just going to get certain information.” He -had looked forward to boasting to her about how he -would stand under fire. He would have done it in such -a way that it would not have sounded like boasting, but -in a mock-modest way. He had wanted to show her -that he was actually going into it to take his chance with -the rest.... Now he had no thought but to reassure -her; he had no desire to take unto himself the heroic. -“I promise you to come back,” he said. “I sha’n’t be -hurt.... It is only a day or two, and you mustn’t be -afraid.... Why”—here he lied—“I may not even be -near to danger.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>She shook her head. “I know,” she said. And then: -“I shall not let you be hurt.... I shall prevent it.” -Like a little Spartan, she was herself again, speaking like -her own self, almost gaily. “Do you theenk I should -let you be hurt?... Oh no! Not in the least.” She -was being brave and calm—for him!</p> - -<p class='c006'>“I will be back surely in four days—the fourth day -from to-day.... Then I shall see you. We will make -the engagement now.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Yes.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Where?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“I shall dine with Arlette,” she said, with a little laugh. -“I will come there—it is easier—<i>sept heures</i>.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“And—”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Yes,” she said, quietly.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“I—by gad!—I <i>do</i> love you.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>She touched his cheek gently with her finger. “And -there will be many <i>petites minutes</i>,” she said. “We shall -have much happiness.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“I hope so.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“And you will be <i>fidèle</i>—when you go away from me? -You will not find a yo’ng girl at the front—in the trenches? -Promise me?” She was laughing gaily now.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“If I find a girl in the trenches,” he said, “I will give -her to the <i>boche</i>.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“It is well,” she said, and clapped her hands merrily.</p> - -<p class='c006'>They were close to the Metro station at the Palais -Royal now, and, for their parting, paused in the blackness -of a recess.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“I can’t go home with you—do you mind?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Ver’ much.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Good-by, <i>mignonne</i>....”</p> - -<p class='c006'>For a moment she clung to him, the fear that was -upon her manifest in the trembling of her little body. -“Not good-by,” she said. “We must not say good-by.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Four days from to-day—without fail.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“I shall not fail—I shall come, <i>certainement</i>.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>Again their lips met. “Now you must go,” he said, -and she turned away slowly and walked in that dainty -way of hers toward the entrance to the Metro. He stood -watching her, expecting her to turn back, but she did not -turn back.... In a moment she disappeared down the -stairs. He was miserable....</p> - -<p class='c006'>But he did not understand—or if he did understand he -hid the truth from himself—what this parting on this -evening was to Andree.... Last night she had confessed -that she loved him, and had made him a promise, -a promise that he half understood, but which he pretended -to himself he did not understand at all.... -Perhaps he did not really grasp the extent of her surrender, -for young men, American young men of such -upbringing as his, and such code of ethics as he knew, -are not equipped to understand—and sometimes nature -has made them very dull.... He had drifted along with -Andree until he was beyond his depth. To drift had -been so easy, for his heart had told him Andree was good—was -<i>nice</i>.... Now he hid from himself that he was -apprehensive of what might come, just as he tried to -hide from himself that his own viewpoint was changed, -and that a thing which had seemed very wrong and -squalid and unthinkable was not, perhaps, so evil as his -mother might assert.</p> - -<p class='c006'>At any rate, he had arrived at this point—he would not -draw back. Andree was good, and he loved and respected -Andree. And ... it was very confusing ... he was -young and decent and as clean of mind as a man may be.... -But—he was seeing and learning. Plymouth Rock -could not legislate for the world nor impose its prudery -and falsity—a prudery and falsity that made it a punishable -offense for a husband to kiss his wife on the Sabbath -day—upon an older world well able to legislate for itself. -America was America. Well and good! Let America -live according to the code it had chosen.... France was -France. Who, save only Deity Itself, could assert that -France was less virtuous, less in accord with the wishes -of the Supreme Composer of Ethical Systems, because the -ethics of France were not the ethics of Plymouth, Massachusetts, -or of Detroit, Michigan?</p> - -<p class='c006'>But Kendall did not realize—how could he realize it?—that -to Andree, after her promise of the night before, -this parting had been in all its essentials as if she had been -deserted upon her bridal night....</p> - -<div class='chapter'> - <h2 class='c004'>CHAPTER X</h2> -</div> - -<p class='c005'>It was nearly eleven o’clock when Kendall and his -companions arrived in the old cathedral town of -Meaux and found accommodations in the Hôtel Sirène, -that rather quaint and down-at-heel hostelry which hides -in a courtyard behind huge gates that close at an hour so -early as to astonish Americans. Kendall was to discover -that this was the universal custom in the smaller towns -of the country—that the hotels closed themselves to -guests in the early evening, and that to effect an entrance -thereafter was an achievement.</p> - -<p class='c006'>They contrived, however, to find huddled accommodations, -but Kendall did not find sleep for a long hour. -Events were imminent, events both of the soul and -material, and his imagination insisted upon handling them -and scrutinizing them. Speculations upon the proximity -of war mingled with anticipations and apprehensions of -his relations with Andree.... He fancied she, too, was -suffering a wakeful night....</p> - -<p class='c006'>In the morning he awoke and breakfasted in a dining-room -filled with American newspaper correspondents, for -Meaux was at that date one of their headquarters, with -French and American officers and a few English Red -Cross nurses.... Presently he was in his car again and -moving through the narrow, crowded streets toward -Montreuil. The open country, rolling, beautiful, rich, lay -before him.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Here, indeed, were indications of war. The roads were -crowded with the traffic of warfare, with vehicles of all -sorts and descriptions moving toward the front or returning -from the front. The greater part of them were huge -French camions driven by <i>poilus</i> who looked out upon the -world with eyes that had seen such sights as alter the -fabric of a man’s soul during the four years that were -drawing to a close. They were all in haste. American -camions and camionettes and side-cars were rumbling or -whizzing by. Refugees driving cows, urging on weary -horses that dragged enormous two-wheeled carts heaped -high with household treasures, appeared now and then.... -These seemed to Kendall to savor more of the -thing that was war than even such jolting, bumping -pieces of artillery as he encountered now and then....</p> - -<p class='c006'>Kendall was within hearing of the big guns on the battle-line, -yet all about him, spread in peaceful beauty, was a -country apparently secure, apparently untouched by the -devastation of an invading army. Yet, a few weeks -before, German cavalry patrols had penetrated almost to -this point. The fields were green and beautiful, promising -abundant crops. Children were entering a little school-house -just as children enter school-houses in America. -Farmers were working in their fields.... If it had not -been for the mass of military vehicles upon the roads -and for an occasional distant rumble that might have -been thunder, but was not the thunder of heaven, Kendall -could not have sensed the proximity of war.</p> - -<p class='c006'>French soldiers on bicycles were frequent. Now a -Frenchman on a bicycle is one of the sights of the war. -Somehow he never seems to master the contrivance in -all its intricacies. He can ride furiously in a straight -line, coattails standing out straight behind, eyes fixed and -determined, jaws set. So long as he follows a bee-line -all is well, but you can read on his face that he realizes -the uncertainty of life. Let him be compelled to swerve -from his course, to turn a corner, or even to stop the -machine to alight, and there is none so rash as to prophesy -what will be forthcoming. Kendall saw one stocky poilu -attempt to turn around. It was amazing! The man -ricochetted off a camion against a stone pile, off the -stone pile into a donkey-cart, off the donkey-cart into the -arms of a troop of his marching comrades, scattering them -like chickens, thence through the <i>poilus</i> in zigzag to a -ditch, from which he presently rebounded, facing in the -direction in which he had originally traveled. He did not -turn. He had had enough of turning. Now he would -keep on his way without meddling with Providence, -doubtless intending to reach his destination by circumnavigating -the globe....</p> - -<p class='c006'>Now Ken was passing long mule-teams driven by -American boys whose faces were so incrusted in dust as -to give them the appearance of figures carved out of -ghastly rock. Ken could see the dust in drifts on their -eyebrows, and their eyelashes had a strange albino-look. -Again his car edged over to give space to a truck carrying -to the rear the remnants of a destroyed German avion. -This moved by to disclose a long column of Italian troops, -armed not with rifles, but with picks and shovels—each -man wearing on his cap a vivid red star. Not a hundred -yards beyond was visible the gray rump of an observation -balloon, kneeling on the ground in the midst of a cluster -of trees like some unbelievably monstrous elephant, its -back incrusted with something that might have been -the green moss of great age. This was the camouflage -to make it indistinguishable from the foliage of the trees.... -Presently Kendall was passing groups of hangars, -aeroplanes standing before them in the fields. Now it -was a huge howitzer grunting and straining to be at its -business farther ahead and lumberingly eager to join its -voice with the roars of its companions. Once in a while -by the roadside nestled a little plot of graves above which -waved the tricolor of France....</p> - -<p class='c006'>An hour’s drive brought them to Montreuil and Kendall’s -car descended the steep and crooked road that led -into the valley where the tiny village, teeming with -American soldiers, lay in all its morning charm.... It -was not quiet. There sounded, every minute or so, the -sharp crack of the marvelous little seventy-five sending -its word of defiance to the German army which crouched -behind the hills, making ready for another leap at the -throat of France.</p> - -<p class='c006'>There was no stopping here. On they went along roads -whose wooded sides concealed American artillerymen and -artillery. Here was the edge of the front. Guns were -actually firing over Kendall’s head at the distant and -invisible enemy. He thrilled to this realization.... In -a few moments they passed on their left a beautiful château, -historic because it had been occupied by von Kluck -as headquarters when his armies were rushing onward to -meet their defeat at the Marne. The car passed through -Bezu, where was an American field hospital occupying a -tiny church, its operating-room now in the adjoining -building, which had been, a few weeks before, the school -crowded with urchins.... But there was neither priest -nor school-boy now. All were gone; all had fled before -the Hun and were scattered, God knew where, over the -face of France.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Now Kendall’s driver turned off the main road and -shortly another hamlet lay before them—the remnants of -the place that had been Domptin. Here a military policeman -halted them, demanded credentials and destination.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“You walk from here,” he said. “No cars pass over -this road by day.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“You know the way?” Ken asked his driver.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Yes.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>So they alighted and trudged along the road. Ken -observed many little craters by the roadside and in the -fields, and, without asking, knew they had been caused -by hostile shells.... It was very noisy—or so Kendall -fancied. Artillery was at work on all sides of him, but -it was only the desultory fire of the quiet day. Though -the voices of the guns were audible, neither guns nor the -men who served them were to be seen. Kendall’s pulse -increased; he felt in the pit of his stomach that electric -sensation which always came to him while he stood -waiting for the referee’s whistle at the start of a football -game.</p> - -<p class='c006'>They walked on. Even here, where the affairs of war -were unmistakable, there was that exotic sense of peace. -The woods were still green, the bushes thick and covered -with foliage, the crops, almost ready for the reaper, -waving and undulating as the breezes crossed the fields.... -No human being was visible. Yet here ahead, to -the right and to the left, was the locale of one of the most -savage struggles of the war; here it was that the American -Second Division was thrown into the line to stop the -German as he marched, victory-flushed, upon Paris.... -And here the German had stopped.... Just beyond -were fields of wheat and woodlands tenanted by no living -being, but nevertheless tenanted. In their depths, concealed -from the eye, not reachable by any human hand, -were the unburied bodies of American dead....</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Here we are,” said Kendall’s driver, pointing to a gray -rectangular mass of buildings just ahead. “Paris Farms. -Regimental headquarters of the Ninth Infantry.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>They entered the gates, passed the saluting sentry, and -found themselves in a square courtyard surrounded by -barns and farm buildings, with the old farm-house at the -opposite end. Groups of men in khaki sat close to the -walls. None were in the middle of the courtyard, and -Kendall’s driver, instead of leading him up the path -that ran directly to the door, conducted him in a round-about -way, his shoulder rubbing the wall.... In the -air above was the intermittent throb of a German aeroplane -reconnoitering, and it was the duty as well as the -desire of all men to remain invisible....</p> - -<p class='c006'>Life, for the most part, is made up of small matters, of -small joys and small griefs, of little pleasurable surprises -and minor catastrophes. In the ratio as the little joys -outnumber the little sorrows we are happy. Tremendous -events, crashing climaxes, occur in few lives. But we -like to fancy ourselves participants in astonishing doings, -and as the victims of beneficiaries of amazing coincidences. -We are so constituted that we can be amazed at the -slightest deviation from the normal, and the arrival of a -genuine surprise can set us all by the ears with excitement.... -A benevolent surprise awaited Kendall inside the -door of the ancient farm-house. It was of not the least -importance in the scheme of the universe and would not -modify Kendall’s life by the breadth of a hair, yet it was -potent to overshadow everything else in his mind for -hours and to make him feel that he had been singled out -by the powers for especial grace.</p> - -<p class='c006'>There was a broad hallway, cluttered with bedding rolls -and occupied by a group of lounging soldiers. At the -right was a room occupied as the office of the adjutant, -which Kendall entered a trifle diffidently as a stranger, -wondering what manner of men he would be required to -have dealings with.... And then....</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Ken Ware!” shouted a voice, and a young second -lieutenant with the most pitiable of mustaches—a yellow -and yearning mustache—leaped from a desk at his right -to greet him. “Where did you rain down from, and -where did you get all those bars on your shoulders?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>It was Jimmy Martin, whom Kendall had last known -as a newspaper man in Detroit, with whom he had been -familiar in those affairs of young manhood which make -for friendships to be looked back upon with longing -and regret when the days and the affairs of young manhood -have been engulfed in the past.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“What are you doing? What are you doing <i>here</i>?” -Jimmy demanded.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“I’m in the Intelligence. And you—?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Intelligence officer of this regiment.... And only a -second lieutenant. Ought to be a captain. Doing a -captain’s work. Say”—he was a sudden young man—“wait -till I get my tin lid and cane and we’ll go to see the -sights. How long are you here?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Bring on your sights,” said Kendall. “While you are -exhibiting I can get from you what I came for.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Wish you could stay. We’ve got a darn good mess. -Not as good as we had the first few days, but good.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Why the first few days?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“We went out and gathered up stuff to eat—to save it -from the <i>boche</i>.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Foraging, eh?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Not exactly. We gathered it in and ate it to prevent -its giving aid and comfort to the enemy. One day we -got a pig at eleven-thirty and had chops for lunch at one. -The colonel said that pork was too close to being pig for -him. Next day we had rabbits. Speared them with -pitchforks. There was a bully strawberry-patch up the line -and we had plenty until a regiment of Senegalese moved -in and looted it. There’s a patch of gooseberries in -No Man’s Land, and we have the devil’s own time keeping -the men from going out after them.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>As they passed out and through the barn into the woods -Kendall explained his errand, and the conversation became -technical. Whatever else he might have been, -Jimmy Martin was engrossed in his particular job and, -apparently, was admirably efficient. The greater part -of the data Kendall wanted was at Jimmy’s tongue’s end; -the rest would be readily obtainable from available -records of Martin’s work.</p> - -<p class='c006'>By this time they had traversed a plainly marked road -which led along the end of a field bordering the woods, -and Jimmy complained bitterly of its evidence. “We’ve -made that road since we came here. It’ll show up -plain on their photographs and show a lot of circulation -here.... You can see they’ve been droppin’ shells on -it now.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>They entered the denseness of the woods to find it -teeming with American soldiery who occupied the quiet -of the day in enlarging and making more comfortable -the makeshift dugouts they inhabited.... These were -not such dugouts as Kendall had seen described in books -about the war; they were such affairs as he had made -himself when he was a boy and called “coojees,” where -he had played robber and baked potatoes. They were -hastily dug and as hastily covered with a mat of boughs -and a layer of earth—flimsy sanctuaries, able to shelter -from spraying shrapnel, but of no effect whatever against -explosive shell.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Suddenly an invisible seventy-five was discharged -almost at Kendall’s elbow, and Jimmy laughed to see his -friend’s reaction to the unexpected sound. They parted -the bushes and examined the beautiful little gun—that -weapon which one may almost say has been the salvation -of France!</p> - -<p class='c006'>A captain of artillery issued belligerently from a timbered -dugout and confronted Martin. “Say,” he demanded, -“you’re the ding-donged Intelligence officer that -had me pinched the other night. Ain’t you?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Oh, was it you? Sorry. The boys are sort of stirred -up about spies. They didn’t savvy you. When a -strange officer comes poking around these woods looking -for a place to light and asking oodles of questions about -whether there’s artillery here and such like, somethin’s -goin’ to happen. A couple of boys came rushin’ up to -me to ask what to do, and I told them to pinch you. -This place is full of spy rumors. Everybody’s seein’ them. -The doughboy that hasn’t seen somethin’ darn mysterious -and suspicious in the last twenty-four hours is -hard to find.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Forget it. I was some lost. Should have reported -before I came down.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Where was it they got Lieutenant Small last night?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Down this path about a hundred yards. His horse -is there yet.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>Kendall and Martin walked that way. Under a shelter -of boughs stood the handsome horse of which the dead -lieutenant had been so fond; he stood quietly switching -his tail and nibbling the leaves about him, all unconscious -that his back would never again bear the weight of a -gentle master.... And thirty feet away was the spot -where Small had met his death, met it because he had -scorned the shelter of a dugout, but with his French -orderly had slept on the surface of the earth, with no -shelter except a lean-to of brushwood.... On the surrounding -bushes were gruesome shreds....</p> - -<p class='c006'>So this was war at last! On this spot a man had been -killed by the enemy and the blood of him was not yet -dry!... Somehow it convinced Kendall that he was at -the front, that there was actual danger where he stood. -He was experiencing the thing he had come to France -hoping to experience.... And yet it was difficult to -feel the fact. He had fancied the line of battle to be a -constant tumult, horrible with tremendous showers of -bursting shells and glorious with charges and defenses. -In its stark actuality it was quite different. Affairs were -gone about nonchalantly and methodically. Even the -artillerymen who sent a shell now and then at some target -they could not see served their guns in a bored manner.</p> - -<p class='c006'>It was only by a certain tingling of the nerves that he, -a tenderfoot in this business, sensed the presence of war; -that war was here about him, within reach of his arm. -Those seventy-fives which spoke with such a vicious, -through-the-teeth bark were sending lethal shells across -the sunlit landscape, causing death and wounds. Possibly -that very shell which he could hear as it sped on its -way might kill an enemy.... And these boys killed -with an air of detachment and <i>ennui</i>....</p> - -<p class='c006'>And the infantrymen! Scattered through the woods -about their rabbit-warren of dugouts, they looked and -acted like boys on holiday, on some camping excursion. -They chatted and frolicked, and grumbled about the food, -and because they were not relieved and sent to rest -billets, and because the enemy did not try to advance, -and because they themselves were not sent against the -enemy. Kendall absorbed a feeling that they rather -liked the whole thing, that it was just the life they -were born to and were fitted to live—and that they -knew it.</p> - -<p class='c006'>It was a picture, there in the <i>bois</i>, a picture that touched -the imagination of that young man from the peaceful -Middle West and would not soon be erased from his -memory. The trees grew closely, admitting only patches -of sunlight here and there, with an effect of peaceful, -lazy, restful shade. One saw dimly. The scene was -soothing to the eyes, alive as it was with movement. -The brown of uniforms blended with the yellow-green -of the foliage and with the red-yellow of the upturned soil -where it had been broken by hundreds of shovels in the -fashioning of shelters.... Kendall stood and watched -and knew that he was beholding a sight which, in the -years of his age, he would see again and describe again, -and live again in the telling.... It excited him, yet he -wondered why it should excite him more than it had done -when he had seen other khaki-clad boys in camps in -America.... It was because these boys slept with -death for a blanket-mate. It was because no man of -them knew what minute might call him with awful suddenness -over the threshold of life and into the mysteries -of death....</p> - -<p class='c006'>There had been no fire from the enemy. Since the -dawn their guns had been silent, but now, without warning, -the air was filled with a threat, with a sound which -Kendall had never heard before, but which he recognized -by the instinct of self-preservation which resided in him. -It was the rushing, shrieking, rending, express-train rush -of a big shell—not of a shell going, but of one coming. -It startled Kendall. For an instant he was blind and -deaf to everything in the universe but the approach -of that shell, and it seemed to him to be directing itself -exactly at the small of his back. He wanted to dodge, -to run, to obliterate himself from that portion of the -earth, but there was no place to betake himself. It was -a matter of seconds, of parts of a second. The shell -screeched over their heads and detonated over toward -the farm-house.... And Ken became fully conscious -again, a bit surprised that he was still in the same spot -and that he had not made himself ridiculous.</p> - -<p class='c006'>And now pictures came to him that he had seen in that -interval, pictures seen but registering now for the first -time. He laughed.... The woods had resolved itself -into a prairie-dog village at the first instant of alarm. -The air had been full of diving legs as soldiers plunged -headlong into the earth. Everywhere Ken’s eyes had -looked they had seen an American soldier disappearing -with comical haste into the bowels of the earth.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“It was about time for them to start,” said Martin. -“We’d better get back to headquarters. I may be -wanted.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>They walked back hurriedly while shell after shell -screamed down at them as it rushed over their heads. -Ken was silent. He was thinking: “I’m under fire. -I’m really under fire. The enemy is shooting at <i>me</i>.... -They are trying to kill <i>me</i>.” It was not easy to convince -his mind.</p> - -<p class='c006'>As they entered the farm-house the shells were coming -in rapid succession and exploding in the vicinity with -tremendous detonations. Young Martin cocked his ear -and hazarded an opinion as to their caliber.... A -jagged fragment, hurtled from an explosion a hundred -feet away, crashed through the roof and came to rest on -the second floor. Young Martin was delighted; he -rushed up-stairs after the bit, carrying it down gingerly -wrapped in a cloth, for it was still hot, and then with joy -applied gauges and calipers to it so that he might identify -it exactly.... He was happy. The gauge was as he -had named it.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Say,” he said over his shoulder to several officers who -were gathered in the room, “listen here: now comes this -man with orders for us to report on the crops of the -neighborhood. Kind of crops. Quantity. Quality. How -many kernels of wheat to the head.... My business is -collecting information about the Germans....”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Huh!” grunted the lieutenant-colonel, who evidently -in civilian life had been acquainted with market reports, -“snails weak to medium. Frogs strong. Give it to ’em, -boy. Full particulars.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Say, colonel, you know that woods we were talking -about.” Martin pointed to a map on the wall. “The -boches are using it. My men have reported circulation -there, and they’ve been putting up camouflage. How -many shells will it take to gas ’em out? I’d like to get -’em out of there.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Have to have brigade orders to use gas....”</p> - -<p class='c006'><i>Blammm!</i> came a detonation unpleasantly near, but -still beyond the headquarters. The colonel cocked his -ear. “Boy, don’t you make them no shorter,” he drawled.</p> - -<p class='c006'>The adjutant entered. “General’s here. Come to -mess. He and the colonel are coming down-stairs now. -All in.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>All filed into the mess-room. The younger officers had -been full of boyish spirits and pranks, but decorum settled -on them as they entered the door. They seemed suddenly -to grow up and to acquire the demeanor of maturity, and -stood erect in stately manner while Kendall was presented -to the general and the colonel.... And then -the meal proceeded. Kendall wondered where the food -came from, but asked no embarrassing questions about -the source of supplies. There was chicken, there were -potatoes, there was fresh asparagus, there was custard -pudding, there were cheese and coffee and cherries—and -then cigars.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Don’t get the idea we pass cigars at every mess,” -whispered a daring lieutenant in Kendall’s ear. “Just -throwin’ ourselves in honor of the general....”</p> - -<p class='c006'>The bombardment had increased in violence during the -meal, had increased to such a degree that Kendall thought -rather more of falling shells than of food.... There was -absolutely no protection. A shell might crash down upon -them through the frail structure at will.... But nobody -appeared to mind. Kendall reflected that he, perhaps, -did not appear to mind, and wondered if the others were -experiencing the same sensations as he. He did not see -how it could be otherwise. Or had they found some -magic philosophy which rendered them immune to reflections -upon sudden death?... The general told the -colonel a humorous anecdote, and the colonel replied -to it with another equally pointless to Kendall’s way of -thinking. Why in thunder, he wondered, didn’t they -get through with this meal and go to a place a bit more -sheltered?... But the seniors chatted on, apparently -with placid enjoyment of Philippine and Cuban reminiscences, -all to the accompaniment of bursting high-explosive -shells, one of which could have obliterated that -farm-house and all the men it contained.</p> - -<p class='c006'>But an end arrived. The general and the colonel arose, -and it became etiquette for the juniors to arise as well. -The dignitaries disappeared to the colonel’s quarters up -the stairs, and a few of the younger officers went to the -adjutant’s office across the hall, Kendall and Jimmy with -them. The telephone on Martin’s desk buzzed and -Jimmy lifted the receiver. He looked up with a frown.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“This nut down the road wants to know if the general’s -killed yet.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Did he say <i>general</i> over that ’phone?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Yes.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Then we can sit down and expect to get really shelled -now.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>It was then that Kendall learned that the general -theory was that the enemy had found means to tap all -our telephone wires and to listen in to our conversations—a -theory which has given rise to much quaint telephone -conversation, couched in a language not hitherto known -on this or any other planet.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Darkness was falling without, and with the darkness -came a multiplication of the shells designed by the enemy -for the discomfort of the regiment.... Kendall, to his -surprise, was growing accustomed to the shells. He was -conscious of them, but had lost something of his consciousness -of the danger that was in them.... He was -interested. It was an interesting spot and an interesting -moment, and he sat quiet and wide of eye to miss no -thrill that might be there for him.... Telephones were -busy with messages coming and going, messages camouflaged -by strange words and code numbers and weird -names. When plain English was necessary the longest -and most erudite words in the dictionary were sought, -doubtless on the theory that the German was not educated -to the point of comprehending them.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Everybody had his job, and everybody seemed to believe -his especial piece of work to be the most important -in the army. A lieutenant came in with a scowl of -tremendous ferocity.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Colonel,” he said, “we’ve got a damn bad situation. -It’s that doctor. He refuses to give some of my wounded -men wound chevrons. Says they aren’t wounded enough.... -How bad has a man got to be shot before he’s wounded, -anyhow?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“My understanding,” said the lieutenant-colonel, “is -that any man who is hurt enough to require medical attention -is entitled to a chevron.... It doesn’t make any difference -if he’s hurt by high explosive or hooked by a bull.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>The din was now terrific. French and American -artillery had opened fire all along the line. So quickly -did report follow explosion and explosion report that the -whole mingled into one continuous and mighty sound. -And during it all the young Intelligence officer quarreled -with a sergeant who was his draftsman, as they tried -to reconcile maps drawn from observers’ sketches with -photographs taken from aeroplanes.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Aw, hell!” growled the draftsman, “this guy’s -made a conventionalized design. What we’re lookin’ for -is what’s on the ground, not some guy’s pretty ideas. -You want me to make a map to send up to the general, -and what the devil have I got to make it from? I’m S.O.L.... -There hain’t no damn woods like that.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Here,” declared Jimmy, indicating on maps and -photographs, “this woods is supposed to be that woods, -and this trench is supposed to be that trench.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“<i>Supposed!</i>”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Yes.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Expect me to send a map to the general and label it -‘Supposed?...’ That map’s pretty, all right, but it -hain’t worth a hoot in Hoboken. Call him up and ask -him what the blazes—”</p> - -<p class='c006'>Kendall laughed, and was surprised to discover that he -could laugh, that anything would seem humor in this -place with death showering down on all sides.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Now the attentions of the enemy seemed to take on the -aspect of a serious effort, for the officers of experience -began to gather and to hold consultations and to listen -with marked interest.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Gas!” somebody said. “Listen! Hear it?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>Kendall listened, but could not distinguish the bursting -of the gas-shell, so easily to be identified by the practised -ear.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Gas-masks at <i>alerte</i>,” was the order.</p> - -<p class='c006'>The telephone rang. “Shrapnel and gas here,” said an -observer some place out in the darkness.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Got your mask on?” demanded Jimmy.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“No. It ain’t bad yet.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“You get that mask on and keep it on. Now. While -I’m waiting.... Is it on? ... There. You can telephone -as well through a mask as without it. Try it.... -All right.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>There was a moment of comparative inactivity, then -the telephone again. “Mustard gas to the right,” was -reported, and after a few moments a call from a certain -company of infantry which had become unhappy in its -position: “Say, we want a retaliatory barrage. We’re -getting everything here—big, little, and gas.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“They want a barrage,” reported Jimmy.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Where do they want it?” asked the lieutenant-colonel.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“I don’t know. Wake George up; that’s <i>his</i> business.... -Say, let’s notify the gas officer; we’re beginning to -get it pretty close here.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>Jimmy called the person designated as George. “Hey!” -he said, irreverently. “Get your pants on and come down. -The adjutant wants you.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>It was very chilly. Ken shivered with the cold, and -was rather thankful it was cold, because it gave him -honest reason for shivering. He was keyed to a high -pitch, nerves taut, imagination straining its leash, but -he was enjoying himself after a strange fashion, reveling -in this experience, in the sensations of peril, in the fact -that he was at the very center of things. The artillery -activity continued to increase, and the ear-shattering, -sweeping, rolling gusts of infernal clamor seemed to reach -a very climax of sound.... Again and again he could -feel upon his own body the shock of adjacent explosions. -It required but a few feet difference in the fall of one of -those shells to mean all that stood between life and death -for him.... And yet he was not afraid. He was not -conscious of fear, only of that queer electric sensation, -and of an elevation of spirits due to intense excitement.</p> - -<p class='c006'>The telephone insisted with a new insistence each -moment. “Gas reported to the right.... Gas reported -to the left....”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“What shall we do about it?” Jimmy asked the -lieutenant-colonel.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“How about a little interdiction?” They spoke -casually, as one would say, “The road is dusty,” and the -other reply, “It might be well to sprinkle it.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“It’ll be all right if we can get enough.... I’ll call -up and ask for it.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>Then: “Hello!... Hello! Is this Hoboken?... -They’re giving us more gas than we like ... at right -and left and in front.... Yes.... Been coming twenty -minutes.... Is it worth while to retaliate?... Orders -to use gas have to come from you.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“We’re in for <i>beaucoup</i> casualties,” somebody said out -of a moment’s pause.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Say, you were too mild with Hoboken. I’d ’a’ told -him we was gettin’ gas to beat the devil, and we had to -have some doin’s of our own. Them birds don’t worry -about what <i>we’re</i> gettin’ unless we holler loud.” This -from the draftsman-sergeant.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“There!” The adjutant looked up at the ceiling. -“Listen!... <i>Boche</i> aeroplane. I’ve heard it quite a -spell. Directing their fire by the flash of our batteries.... -Gawd! Why don’t we get more aeroplanes of our -own!”</p> - -<p class='c006'>The telephone again, and Jimmy reported with what -Kendall conceived to be relief, “He says he’ll have the -hundred and fifty-fives and gas going in ten minutes.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Say,” somebody complained, “that <i>boche</i> aeroplane -must be mired in a cloud. It sounds like it was standing -still in one spot.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Stuck or not, she’s up there without any friendly -intentions.... Say, we ought to go over to the States -and shoot them peace-talkin’ pups.” It was the sergeant -speaking again. “Anybody that wants to make peace -with the <i>boche</i>!... They hain’t got no right pollutin’ -the atmosphere....”</p> - -<p class='c006'>There came a pause while all waited hopefully for the -“big stuff” that had been promised them—and presently -it came. Kendall had believed the ultimate in sound -had been achieved before, but this—this was impossible. -Such an extreme from silence could not be. It was -cosmic. It was awful. He seemed to be standing in the -very center of such an upheaval as might have created -worlds.... It upreared to a very ultimate climax of -sound, to a single note made up of a multitude of gigantic -sub-tones. It was amazing, it was terrifying, it was -gratifying....</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Fritz is gettin’ his good,” said the sergeant, with -profound satisfaction.</p> - -<p class='c006'>This continued an hour, and then gradually subsided. -The German fire had become desultory—and then ceased. -They had drawn upon themselves more than they liked -by their evening’s strafing.... The silence that ensued -was startlingly loud. One could hear it....</p> - -<p class='c006'>“I’m for some grub if we can rustle it,” said a raw-boned -lieutenant.</p> - -<p class='c006'>The lieutenant-colonel yawned and stretched his arms -high over his head. “Oh-hum!... Darn these quiet -nights,” he said, with sincerity. “I thought for a while -there was going to be something stirring.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Oh, I’m willing to have a rest once in a while,” said -Jimmy. “I’m going to sleep. Gimme all these quiet -nights you want to....”</p> - -<p class='c006'>Kendall looked at his watch. It was half past two in -the morning.... Quiet nights! He wondered if they -were making game of him, but as he looked back on the -conduct of these young men during that night he was -persuaded of their sincerity.... And he—he had fancied -himself present at the unloosing of Inferno....</p> - -<p class='c006'>Presently he was lying on a bundle of hay on a stone -floor, wrapped in his blankets.... A sentence, a scrap -from the talk of the night, repeated itself to him, “We’re -in for casualties.” He pondered it. Casualties—that -meant wounded and dead; men mangled and men in the -horrible agonies that follow the breathing of mustard gas.... -Some of those boys he had seen a few hours ago down -in the woods—only a few hundred feet away—were -dead ... <i>dead</i>! He had been near to death—had sat for -hours where death might reach out and touch him upon -the shoulder.... So this was war ... this was how the -thing was done!</p> - -<p class='c006'>It seemed so futile. What had been accomplished by -this night’s slaughter? Neither side had advanced a -foot; nothing had been won or lost.... But hundreds of -lives had been wasted, hundreds of thousands of dollars’ -worth of munitions had been expended—and why? For -nothing that he could see, for no purpose except the desire -of each side to make the other side uncomfortable.... -That night could have been erased from the history of the -war, and its absence would never have been noticed. -Its activities had no more effect upon the course of the -war than the barking of a dog would have had—and -yet hundreds of bodies were tenantless, and hundreds of -mothers would mourn their sons.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“War is scientific waste,” he said to himself, and repeated -the phrase. He hated war because it was waste.... -He wondered how many men had given their lives -on just such futile nights as this during the years since -August, 1914. Thousands upon thousands, doubtless.... -How many of those girls he had seen in Paris had -been deprived of husbands—of the men who would some -day have been their husbands—in just such affairs? It -was wrong—<i>wrong</i>.... War was a horrid disease, or -was it the German nation which was a horrid disease? -He could not think clearly.... He had thought little -of mankind in the mass, but now he considered it, and his -sympathy attached to it. It was futile to pity an individual, -any individual, but one’s heart might bleed for -mankind.... And most of all it might bleed for that -portion of mankind whose duty it is to be the mothers -of forthcoming generations—who were deprived by war -of the right to fulfil that duty.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Then he found himself repeating over and over a phrase: -“Little moments of happiness.... Little moments of -happiness....” If men were to be wasted as they -had been wasted this night, and if God could sit quiescent -in His heaven, tolerating such wastage, then could that -God deny to women their little moments of happiness as -a partial, an infinitesimal, balm for the agony He permitted? -Could He frown upon those little moments, or -decree them to be evil?... He wondered how God -stood on this question of morals. In a moment came an -answer, but Kendall could not assert it to be a true -answer. It was this: “<i>God demands another generation of -mankind.</i>”</p> - -<div class='chapter'> - <h2 class='c004'>CHAPTER XI</h2> -</div> - -<p class='c005'>Kendall awoke refreshed, but with those sensations -which a man experiences after an exceedingly circumstantial -and vivid dream. The reality of last night’s -events had vanished, to be remembered only as something -lived through in that subconscious land of dreams. The -morning was bright, cheerful, and he breakfasted with -enthusiasm. Directly afterward Jimmy was summoned -to brigade headquarters, and Kendall, having finished -his work at that point, set out with his chauffeur to walk -back to Domptin.</p> - -<p class='c006'>On the way they paused on the road to watch the -shelling out of a corner of the woods by a German battery. -The high-explosive shells fell with beautiful precision and -at regular intervals of about a minute. The scream of -the shells could be heard during an interval in which one -could count up to six slowly, and then would come the -explosion. By counting so and keeping his eyes on that -wooded angle Kendall could watch the work of the shells -with exact timing of his vision. Somehow the processes -of the explosion reminded him of an enormously powerful -man heaving upward a weight with his shoulders. First -would come a small surge of smoke, as if the giant were -testing his load, and then an uprush of black smoke and -debris in geyser form, regular until it had spent its force, -then breaking into irregular billows at the top and dissipating -through the air.... Shell after shell dropped -precisely, neatly, not varying in their placing by more -than a couple of score of feet.... About the corner was -no sign of life, no hurrying figures stumbling headlong -away from the peril, and Kendall wondered if life were -present there, if life had been there, or if it had wholly -ceased to exist.</p> - -<p class='c006'>They walked on down the road to their car and returned -to Montreuil, where Kendall had business with the -Assistant Provost Marshal, who occupied a house on the -edge of town, midway down the winding hill. As Ken’s -car drew up at the house a gray camion stopped at an adjoining -cottage, and Kendall saw a girl leap briskly down -from the seat and run up the bank. She wore the uniform -of the Y. M. C. A.... He recognized Maude Knox.</p> - -<p class='c006'>His first impulse was to hasten to her, for he was as much -delighted as astonished to see her in such a place, but -something stopped him—call it curiosity. He was conscious -of wanting to see how she acted, what she was -doing, how she did it.... An American girl alone in a -French hamlet deserted by its civil population! A girl -alone with an army! Here was indeed a situation; here -was romance; here was something to excite the imagination! -Kendall leaned forward eagerly and watched.</p> - -<p class='c006'>She entered the open door of the little cottage and -looked within; then she turned about in the most matter-of-fact -way and called something to the man who drove -the truck. He dismounted and began unloading cases -and crates—and a cook-stove. These he carried up the -bank and placed in the house. Maude shook hands with -the man; he climbed on his camion again and drove away. -She was alone!... She, an American girl, had been set -down casually in a matter-of-course manner here within -range of hostile guns, and abandoned to her own devices! -She seemed not in the least excited or disturbed. It was -amazing. This sort of thing might have been happening -to her every day or so for years, and yet Kendall knew -she had never, probably, spent a night alone in a house -before in her life.... And here she was more than alone -in a house. There was not another woman within miles.... -He saw her attempting to fasten a sign to the wall -beside the door, and, failing, turn and look about her for -the first time.... Seventy-fives were being discharged -every few minutes from points not a quarter of a mile -away from her. He saw that she was gazing toward the -sound.... He shook his head, for the thing was beyond -his comprehension. Did American girls do this sort of -thing? Was this expected of them? Were they all -capable of such adaptations of themselves, or was Maude -Knox a remarkable exception? He wondered....</p> - -<p class='c006'>There was nothing more to be seen. Maude had gone -inside, and Kendall stepped from his car and walked up -to her door, on whose threshold he paused, not speaking, -and peered inside. She was standing in the middle of a -rubbish-littered room, looking about her, not with bewilderment -or with uncertainty, but calculatingly. She -seemed the embodiment of capability.... She nodded -her head as much as to say, “This will do nicely,” and -reached for a broom that was among the boxes that had -accompanied her.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Good morning,” said Kendall.</p> - -<p class='c006'>She turned and looked at him, smiling even before she -recognized him, and then exclaimed, “Kendall Ware, of -all people!”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Of all people, indeed! How about yourself? I presume -you are a natural and normal part of the scenery.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>She nodded. “Of course. This is what I came to -France to do.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“To—to be set down on a pile of filth like this”—his -arm swept the room—“alone—in the middle of an army—within -a couple of miles of No Man’s Land?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Of course.... Why not?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Aren’t you—afraid?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>She was actually surprised; there was no pretense -about it. “Of what?” she asked.</p> - -<p class='c006'>He shrugged his shoulders. “I’ll bet you never slept -alone in a house before in your life.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Never.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“You wouldn’t do it at home.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“I suppose not.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>He waggled his head. “You’d have been afraid to stay -alone in a house in a civilized town.... Now, wouldn’t -you?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“I—I guess I would. Yes, I would.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“But here—with nothing to protect you, without even -a decent lock—and not a woman within half a dozen -kilometers!... It isn’t right. They hadn’t any business -sending you to such a place.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Rubbish!... I’m safer than I would be in my own -home with a policeman standing in front of the door. -Why, I’ve never even thought of being nervous! Really.... -I suppose it is queer.” She stopped a moment to -speculate on its queerness. “If I were back home and -somebody should describe this to me I couldn’t understand -any girl doing it.... But I’m here—and it’s all -different.... I never felt so—so <i>safe</i>.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“But an army—even our army—is made up of all sorts -of men.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>She laughed with sincerity. “Fiddlesticks!... What -do you suppose would happen to a man who offended me? -Why, Kendall”—it was the first time she had used his -given name, but it appeared perfectly natural—“I’ve -got a whole division to look after me.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>It was true. He knew it was true. These American -boys—lonely for a familiar American face, hungry for the -sound of the voice and laughter of an American woman—would -idolize her. They would be her slaves. Safe?... -There never had been such safety as was hers—and yet -he was troubled. It was so unconventional—so off the -beaten track of the ordinary movement of life. He did -not quite like it.... That was his mother speaking in -him. His mother would have declared such conduct to -be unwomanly, to be not nice, and she would have -condemned Maude Knox unheard.... Because Maude -Knox was doing a thing <i>she</i> had never done and had -never seen done by a respectable member of her sex!... -Kendall realized this to be absurd.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“We’re surely in a different world,” he said, tritely.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“The Epworth Sewing Circle wouldn’t approve,” she -said, with a twinkle, “but the Epworth Sewing Circle -doesn’t count over here, does it?... I wonder if it will -ever count again anywhere—for us who have been here?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>Kendall wondered, too. What was going to become of -the home conventions when these young women, who -had adventured to France to aid as they found opportunity -in the winning of the war, got home? What ideas -would they bring with them and disseminate? What -would happen to America?... America could never -be the same, for, not only would these thousands of girls -return, having seen the world with opened eyes—and -lived undreamable lives—but two millions of young men -would be going home, too.... Each one of them would -take something of France and of the war to his home—and -what would come of it?...</p> - -<p class='c006'>“You’re—you’re <i>bully</i>!” he said, with sudden conviction. -“By Jove! you’re <i>bully</i>!”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Fiddlesticks!”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“What are you here for?... What do you expect -to do?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Talk, mostly,” she said, merrily. “I guess that’s -what I’m wanted for more than anything else—to let -the boys talk to me. Incidentally I’ll make hot chocolate -and sell cigarettes and safety razors and jam and cookies.... -I’ll just be here.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Just be here,” he repeated after her. “Just be -here....” And in a flash as of lightning he saw what -her just being here would mean to those men.... He -saw what a lofty height they would set her upon, and -how they would worship her beauty, and how they would -delight in her every word.... It would be good for -them, good for them as soldiers and good for them as -men!... What a war it was that produced this!...</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Look!” she said, and laughed aloud.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Kendall turned. The doorway was closed by a rapidly -augmenting crowd of boys in khaki, curious, eager, delighted, -grinning.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“How do you do?” Maude said, with perfect calm. -She walked toward them and extended her hand, which -boy after boy seized bashfully. “I’m Miss Knox—and -if you ever expect to get any hot chocolate, somebody’s -got to put up the stove. It isn’t much of a stove.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Say, miss,” blurted out a sergeant, “if you’ll—er—git -out of here a spell we’ll fix things up.... Say, was you -calc’latin’ on stayin’?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“I’m a permanent improvement,” she said.</p> - -<p class='c006'>From that instant Kendall had no doubts, conjured up -no violated proprieties. Maude Knox was <i>right</i> to be -there; there was no other spot in the world where it -was so right for her to be....</p> - -<p class='c006'>“I’ll clear out,” she said, and, pausing as she passed -through the door, “I could use some sort of a counter....”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“You bet, miss.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“There,” said Maude to Kendall, presently.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“I see,” he said, soberly. “I’m seeing lots of things.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“That weren’t visible in Detroit,” she added for him. -Then, after a pause, “And so am I.... There’s something -in the air—here—in Paris—wherever one goes in -this country. It <i>gets</i> you.... I could do things. Yes, -I could.... You have a feeling that nothing you do -as an individual counts—nothing matters. Everything -we’ve ever been used to seems so far away and insignificant. -Don’t you feel that way?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Yes.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“As if you could be very good or very, very bad—and -it wouldn’t make a cent’s worth of difference to anybody?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Yes.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Other girls are feeling it. I think they are all feeling -it. There are plenty of signs.... <i>C’est la guerre.</i> I -suppose that’s it.... No, it can’t be explained by a -phrase of the streets; it’s deeper than that.... With -one half of the world trying to slaughter the other half.... -Every little while I have a feeling that right and -wrong have grown to be too big to apply to individuals—they’re -for <i>nations</i>. Does that express what I mean? -And then I’ve thought more than once that this is the -end of the world—the end of the old world and the -starting-place of a new one.... Temporarily we’re -without a set of rules because the old ones won’t do any -more, and we’ve got to build up an altogether new code.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“I’ve felt something like that, but I didn’t have a -philosopher for a father, so I didn’t know just what I -was feeling or how to say it.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“We’re being a sort of spiritual Bolsheviki, I suppose, -going through a transition period of confusion and lawlessness -and wild thinking.... But, just as something -better than the old Russian Empire with its czars and -grand dukes and Siberias and its—its <i>Rasputins</i>—is -bound to follow Bolsheviki-ism, so something better than -the narrowness of the sewing-circles and the Pilgrims -and the viciousness of blindly accepted conventions and -codes.... This has turned into something bigger than -a World War—it is turning into a Greater Reformation.... -Not the reformation of a religion, but a reformation -in the basic <i>thought</i> of the world—surely of America....”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Whew!” exclaimed Kendall. “I follow you, I guess, -but my feet are off the bottom ... and I can’t swim.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“You can think, can’t you?” she said, a trifle tartly.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“I guess I <i>feel</i> more than I <i>think</i>,” he said.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“We all do.... We have to feel in order to think, -and we have to feel in order to understand. Cold logic -isn’t worth a snap of the fingers—really.... You’ve -been getting something out of Paris, haven’t you? Feeling -something? I think you get it there more than any -place else.... I love Paris.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“My mother wouldn’t love it,” he said, gravely.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“And you’re like her—sometimes—aren’t you?... -But aren’t you growing more tolerant—more able to see -the other person’s point of view?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“I—hang it all!—I can’t get away from the notion -that good is good and bad is bad.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>She shook her head. “But you are beginning to see -that America hasn’t the right to legislate for the world, -and to define what is good and what is evil.... I know -you are.... Now don’t be shocked, please. I’m American, -of course, and the American code is for me—until -it is altered. Whatever I may think about it, still it is -the code and accepted by the majority. That binds me to -a degree.... But I can still believe we are narrow and -prudish.... It doesn’t take much imagination to understand -that eating pork may be a sin to an orthodox Jew. -It is a sin because he believes it is a sin. It is no sin for -you because you think it is nonsense.... When you -get down to essentials, the thing that is a <i>sin</i> is doing a -thing you <i>think</i> to be a sin. It isn’t the <i>thing</i>, but the -thinking....”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“I suppose that’s it.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Of course it is.... And that’s enough of this sort of -talk, isn’t it? I don’t always talk this way, really. I’m -quite pleasant and frivolous most of the time.... -You’re not to be stationed here by any chance?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“No such luck.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>She laughed. “I wouldn’t have time to bother with -you, anyhow, if you were meaning that as a compliment.... -I’ve got at least a regiment of young men, and I -sha’n’t be partial.... Besides, there’s that pretty little -French girl.... I liked her looks.... Tell the truth, -you’d be heartbroken if you were sent away from Paris -and her.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>Andree!... He had scarcely remembered her existence -for twenty-four hours. And only the night before last -he had been telling her that he loved her, and kissing -her good-by! He felt ashamed of himself. He felt -ashamed because he felt that he was not being true -to the love he professed for her—in his thoughts and in the -pleasure which he found in the presence of Maude Knox.... -He <i>was</i> in love with Andree, but—confound it all!—was -it possible he could be falling in love with Maude -Knox, too? He had heard that people and books asserted -a man could be in love with two women at once.... -If this were so, he said to himself, it would create -a devilish unpleasant situation ... and a situation not -without an element to cause laughter. If a man loved -two girls, he would have to choose one of them. In which -case he would be, at the same instant, in a state of bliss -because he had won a sweetheart and in a state of heartbreak -because he had been thwarted in love!...</p> - -<p class='c006'>“I wish you could know Andree,” he said. “She—she’s -educating me, I guess. I don’t understand her, of -course. She is constantly startling me. I never knew -anybody who in the least resembled her.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Of course not.... She’s French. She’s a war-time -Parisienne.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“But she’s good,” said Kendall, as if Maude had -brought some charge against Andree.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Why not?” Maude smiled a trifle.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“You mustn’t think—” he began.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“I’m thinking nothing. It’s none of my business.” -She paused. “Frankly, I don’t care.... Now don’t -misunderstand that. I like you, Kendall. I’m interested -in you. There was a time when, if I suspected of a -man what you seem to think I suspect of you, I would -have cut him in a hurry.... And the girl—I would -have been horrified.... But now—I don’t quite understand -myself—I wouldn’t in the least object to knowing -your Andree.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“But I tell you—”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Of course you do—and I don’t believe you. So -there!”</p> - -<p class='c006'>Kendall was embarrassed and a trifle angry. “I don’t -see why you should suspect anything—just because -Andree is French!”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“And because you are American? And because lots of -things?” She shrugged her shoulders.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Would you marry a man you knew had been having -an—an affair with a girl like Andree?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“It would depend. There are affairs and affairs.... -Somehow I don’t think I should marry a man who had an -affair with an American woman, one of these squalid, -scandalous things we hear about in New York or Detroit.... -But in war conditions—with a girl like Andree, -as you say, why, if I loved the man of course I would -marry him.... I think I would—if I loved him.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Where is the difference?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“I don’t know.... It gets back to a sin being a sin -because you think it is. It’s a feeling. I’ve seen these -women in France, women I knew were having affairs, and -they were sweet and modest—and natural. An American -woman can’t seem to have an affair and still be sweet and -modest—and natural. She feels she is doing something -wicked and degrading, and consequently is degraded. -She is being deliberately bad.... Don’t you see?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“I—I think so.... There’s something. I have the -same notion about it as you, but I couldn’t explain it. -I guess you’re right.... Do you think a man can be in -love with two girls at once?” He asked the question -suddenly.</p> - -<p class='c006'>She laughed joyously. “Now, you aren’t going to tell -me you are in love with me, too?... Please don’t. I -suppose a lot of these boys will fancy they’re in love with -me just because I happen to be moderately neat and -clean and good-looking and because I’m out here alone -like this.... I’ll stand to them for their sweethearts -back home, and all that, but they won’t be in love with -me in the least—and neither are you.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>This frankness was truly American, modern American. -Kendall could not imagine Andree saying or thinking -such things; he could not imagine his mother saying or -thinking such things. And why? To Andree love was -love—the great business of life. Everything else was -subordinate to it. To his mother love was—was just a -little bit off color, because there was sex in it. His -mother could love her son frankly, but she could not love -her husband frankly nor talk with frankness about it.... -Original sin clung to love in her mind. It was the -thing that had cast man out of Paradise, and while one -married and bore children, and marital relations were -necessary, nevertheless there was something squalid and -indecent about them. Andree saw nothing indecent in -sex, as she saw nothing indecent in eating her dinner.... -Maude Knox was more like Andree than like his mother, -but even there there was a vast difference. There was -the difference of race and of racial philosophy.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Maude placed her hand on Kendall’s arm. “Be nice to -that little girl,” she said. “Don’t hurt her.... Be fair.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“What do you mean?... Do you mean I should -marry her?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>She hesitated. “I don’t know.... Marriage!...”</p> - -<p class='c006'>Her own inherited prejudices were lifting their heads -now. Marriage!... Marriage with a French girl with -whom one was having relations! That was different. She -hesitated and did not give him a frank answer.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Well?” he said.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“You mustn’t ask me.... I can’t answer that. It -is a thing you’ll have to decide.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“I guess you have answered,” he said, gloomily.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Perhaps—and perhaps I’m ashamed of myself for -answering so.... But I was born in America and -brought up in a surrounding of sewing-circles.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>There was a pause. Then he said, almost as if to himself, -“You’re the sort of girl I’d like to be in love with.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“That’s a very nice thing to say—but you’re not.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“I don’t know.... I’m not sure. I could be very -easily if I were to see much of you.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“And Andree?...”</p> - -<p class='c006'>He was really depressed, worried, and she perceived it -with genuine sympathy. She saw that this young man -was facing a problem whose correct solution would be -vital to his happiness and to his future peace of mind. -She was able to realize that he was approaching one of -those climaxes of the soul which are infinitely more trying -and infinitely more potent to modify than could any -climax in which the physical predominated. She fancied -she knew Kendall rather well and understood him. She -fancied he was not complex, but rather simple and -straightforward—just a young man—but she was wrong. -There were such elements of complexity in him as made -for the sharpest of suffering, which would have defied -the analysis of the most expert psychologist. She did -not perceive the overwhelming importance of his inheritances -from mother and father, those beliefs and those -sensations and those reactions which were almost a -physical part of him as his arms and legs were a physical -part of him. She could not know that his body was in -constant use as an arena in which Puritanism and dogmas -and blind faiths and intolerances of the unknown were -battling with that mild toleration derived from his father, -that desire to see good in everything, that sweetness -which held fast to its faith in mankind, even when it -could not understand what mankind was about.... Nor -could she know that Kendall himself stood between these -adversaries with a mind better equipped than either to -see and to appraise, striving with a great hunger for the -right, to be modified by the adversaries only as it was -right to be modified by them. Youth and the desires of -youth for life and pleasure and the knowledge that comes -by experiencing was also there with its immature carelessness -of consequences.... There was no simplicity here, -rather such a complexity as seemed destined to defy solution -and to make a decent peace of the soul a thing -possible to attain....</p> - -<p class='c006'>A young captain ran down the bank to meet them. -“You are Miss Knox?” he asked, cordially.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Yes.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“I’m Captain Morris, A.P.M. here—and I’m mighty glad -to see you. You don’t mean you’re really going to stay?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Really.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“<i>No!</i>... By Jove!... Say!...” He was inarticulate, -but there was no doubting of his delight.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Captain Ware—Captain Morris,” said Maude, and -the two young men shook hands.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“I’ve got some business with you,” Kendall said, “as -soon as we can get Miss Ware settled.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“What do you want? What do you need?...” -This to Maude: “I’ll give you details of men till the cows -come home. Just ask for it, and—if it’s in this sector—we’ll -get it for you.... By Jove!... Think of it! -Going to stay!... Oh, say!”</p> - -<p class='c006'>Maude laughed. “You’ll have me thinking I’m doing -something unusual in a minute.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Unusual! Miss Knox, if you knew what it will mean -to these boys to have an American girl here—just to know -she’s around! It’s wonderful, that’s what it is! Do you -realize that some of the men haven’t seen an American -woman in a year—haven’t talked to a woman?... By -Jove!...” Every time he thought about it he became -boyishly inarticulate again.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“They’re fixing up my canteen for me,” she said.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Good! I’ll run up and see they do it right.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“I—I wouldn’t, if I were you,” said Maude, gently. -“They seem to like it—to want to do it themselves. They -shooed me away. Don’t you think it would be better -to let them go ahead by themselves—if it pleases them?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>Kendall was conscious of a pride in her, in her understanding -and her beautiful tact. So was Captain Morris, -who could only stare at her unbelievingly and utter, -“By Jove!...”</p> - -<p class='c006'>In half an hour they three walked back to the canteen.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Here she comes!” yelled a boy in the door, and a -sergeant with a smudge on his nose, his sleeves rolled up, -and a hammer in his hand, poked his nose out of the door.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Shoo her off ag’in,” he said, in a rumble that was distinctly -audible, though not intended for Maude’s ears. -“We hain’t done yet.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>Maude turned away with a laugh. “I guess we’d better -walk some more. If you men are busy I can look after -myself.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Busy!...” exclaimed Captain Morris. “By Jove!” -And they all laughed, even the captain, who had a faint -perception of his own state of mind.</p> - -<p class='c006'>In another half-hour they returned again to the little -cottage. This time a dozen boys were standing about -with a great pretense of carelessness, but with an embarrassed -eagerness which set her eyes to twinkling.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“May I go in now?” she asked.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Yes, ma’am.... You bet!”</p> - -<p class='c006'>They crowded in after her to watch her every movement -and expression and to assure themselves that they had -pleased her. There was a serviceable counter. Behind -it were rough shelves for her wares. The stove was set -up, and such utensils as she possessed hung precisely on -nails. There was a comfortable chair, rather dilapidated, -but foraged at some expense of trouble.... And the -cleanliness of the place was nothing short of amazing. -It had been swept and dusted and scoured until not a -trace of its former filth remained.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Oh, boys,” said Maude, after a moment’s silence, -“isn’t it fine!... Haven’t you made a nice place of it! -I wouldn’t have thought it was possible.... And the -counter and shelving!... I don’t know how to thank -you.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>The soldiers were in a dreadful state of embarrassment, -blushing and giggling and nudging one another like schoolboys -detected in a prank. They seemed to have a feeling -that something ought to be said, for they kept jostling -and pushing the sergeant, who growled back at them, -savagely. “Lemme be, doggone you!” Maude heard him -mutter. But they pushed him out into consciousness. -“Go on, Hank.... Open up. Git it off your chest,” -he was abjured.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Hank scowled terribly at Maude, opened his mouth -and closed it again, hunched his broad shoulders and felt -of his prominent Adam’s apple. “Aw—” he began, and -then, “Aw—hell!...” With which well-chosen remark -he burst through his comrades and fled headlong.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Maude again did the one tactful thing, the one thing -that, in those circumstances, not only saved the face of -the vanished Hank, but raised her to an elevation in the -minds of the soldiers from which she would never descend.... -She simply sat down on that scoured floor and -laughed and laughed until her cheeks were wet with tears -of mirth. So infectious was her laugh that there was not -a man but laughed with her.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“By Jove!...” exclaimed Captain Morris. “She’s -a wonder.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“She is,” said Kendall, soberly.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Maude looked up at them. “You officers go away,” -she said, severely. “I’m going to be very busy.... No, -you boys needn’t go—just the officers....”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“I may come back to say good-by?” Kendall asked. -“I’ll be leaving in an hour.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Of course.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>When Kendall finished his business with the Assistant -Provost Marshal he returned to the canteen.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“I’m going,” he said from the door.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Maude issued from behind her counter and made her -way through a knot of soldiers who had crowded about it.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Good-by,” she said, extending her hand. “It’s been -nice to see you.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“It—it has been wonderful to see you,” he said. “I -don’t think I shall ever forget this.” He waved his hand -around the room. “It isn’t possible.” He smiled -whimsically. “I know I’m dreaming the whole thing. -You’re really back in Ohio somewhere, probably playing -bridge.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Not bridge—I don’t like bridge. Tennis, maybe.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“And I’m going to wake up in a little while and tell -folks what a queer dream I’ve had.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>She pinched herself. “See, I’m awake—and you don’t -know how glad I am that I am awake—that I am here, -seeing this, being a part of this....”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“But it isn’t done, you know. There’s nothing in the -rules to cover it.... No, Miss Knox, I’m dreaming it—and -I’m glad I am dreaming it. If it were real—” His -face grew serious.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Perhaps,” she said, “this is the first time you’ve ever -seen anything real ... since you came to France. That -is it.... France is real, the war is real, Andree is real, -I am real.... The only things that aren’t real are the -habits and thoughts we were busy with sixty days ago.... -Sixty days!...”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Good-by—and don’t forget me.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“I sha’n’t do that. I like you.... Good-by.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>Kendall leaned far back in his car and smoked and -found his thoughts disturbing company. He was not -used to facing questions of big importance, but he saw -now that for weeks he had been drifting toward a day -when he would have to meet and reply to the first soul-modifying -question that had ever been propounded to -him.... The thing was inevitable. He was moving -toward facts that could not be brushed aside.... -Strangely enough, though he was heavy with apprehension, -nevertheless there was a certain exultation.... -This was living—living not in a circumscribed area, but -in the unbounded world. This was <i>life</i>—this was <i>experience</i>—something -big, worthy of the consideration of a -man. There were happiness and misery in it.... He -was beginning to see that he could not win through with -happiness intact; it was his hope to win through with -happiness preponderant.... The day he landed in -France he had been a boy; less than two months had -passed—and he had become a man.... France had -done that for him.</p> - -<div class='chapter'> - <h2 class='c004'>CHAPTER XII</h2> -</div> - -<p class='c005'>On the fourth evening after his departure from Paris -Captain Ware stood at the entrance to the Metro -on the Place de la Concorde, just across the road from -the headquarters of the American Red Cross, waiting for -Andree. At his left the Obelisk arose like a great -needle; he could see the Metz and Strasburg statues -green with wreaths, and beyond other pieces of sculpture -deemed of sufficient artistic value to protect with sandbags -from the menace of German bombs. Somehow this -made him feel that he had not seen Paris, that it would be -necessary for him to come back again when the base -of the Vendôme Column should not be concealed by -sand and concrete, when the carvings on the Arc de -Triomphe should not be hidden under scaffoldings and -stacked sandbags, when the once despised and criticized -statue at the extreme right of the face of the Opéra—now -the single piece of sculpture of all that adorned the -building considered worth careful protection—should be -exposed to view.</p> - -<p class='c006'>There was an analogy between the hooded statues and -the spirit of the city. He wanted to see both when they -were as they had been before August, 1914. He wanted -to see Paris when it was gay, beautiful, carefree, buoyant, -volatile. How much more it would mean to see it so -after having seen it as it was now.... Just across from -him was a wall upon which was a poster exclaiming, -“<i>Abri, 40 places</i>.” He wanted to see Paris without that -fear riding its shoulders. He wanted to see it when -every fourth or fifth shop had not its shutters down in -permanence, explained by a sign which gave notice that -the closing was by reason of the mobilization.... And -yet it was beautiful, compellingly beautiful. Suddenly -the certainty came upon him that a people whose genius -could have created such a city could not be <i>wrong</i>. He -had been told that the genius of the French was rotten -at the core, its morals corrupt. He knew in this moment -that it was a lie.... Such a city could not have been -produced by a people who were decadent, who were not -of the greatest, the worthiest of the earth....</p> - -<p class='c006'>In a moment Andree appeared, in a flimsy dress of light -material this time, a dress that came just to her shoe-tops. -It made her look even slenderer than he had -remembered her to be, and more childish.... He -waited for her to speak. She approached almost to his -side before she seemed to see him, then she raised her eyes -quickly, searchingly, to his face and let them fall again. -But he had read anxiety and relief in that flickering -glance. She shook hands, giving him a trusting little -pressure of her fingers.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“You see,” he said, “I promised to come back safe. -The <i>boches</i> didn’t get me.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“It is ver’ well. If the <i>boches</i> keel you I am ver’ angry—me.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Have you been lonely for me?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Oh!...” she said, and raised her eyes again for an -instant. “And you—do you think of me? But, no. -You have been <i>très-occupé</i>—ver’ busy.... And you have -seen other girls.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>She asked no questions about the front, showed no -desire to hear about the affairs of war. Poor child! -Like the great multitude of her sisters, she was tired of -war, bored with war. In her mind was only one question -about the war—when would it end?</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Bert and Madeleine are going to dine with us,” he -said.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“That is well.... Monsieur Bert—is he well? And -Madeleine? Have you seen her?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“No.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“That high yo’ng man!” she said, and laughed. “Oh, -it is not nice for you to make fon of me. High.... -Tall.... How shall one tell them apart?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Don’t try,” Kendall said. Then he laughed at his -recollections of her blunders in a strange language. “At -what hour do you lift up?” he mimicked her.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“I have study English since you have gone away. I -know that now. It is not <i>lift up</i>; it is raise up. At what -hour do you raise up in the morning. <i>N’est-ce pas?</i>”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“You <i>have</i> studied!” he exclaimed. “I’m proud of -you. But you speak English better than I do now.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Better than you do French,” she said, with a little -grimace.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“What have you been doing while I was away?” he -asked, and asked because he was really curious. He -wanted to know something about her life away from -him, about her regular routine life. To him now she was -a creature that appeared as out of a fog, to disappear -again into a fog, untraceable, strange, mysterious. She -must do something. She must have a family. She must -live in a house and sleep in a bed and take her meals at a -table. It must be that she had her friends and her -little every-day affairs, different, perhaps, from the every-day -affairs of the American girl, but nevertheless taking -up the greater part of her life.... He wished he could -have the history of one of her days from waking to sleeping, -could be present to oversee one of her days.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“I have been lonely,” she said. So she always answered, -and, it seemed to him, not from any conscious effort to hide -her life from him, but rather because when she was with -him it was her belief that nothing was of interest to them -but each other. It was as if she wanted to shut all the -rest of the world out, forget all the world and its business, -and remember only themselves and their little moments -of happiness together. No, it was not concealment, it -was the exclusiveness of love. “I—many times—I -thought you would not come.... And I was sad.” -She pressed his arm gently.</p> - -<p class='c006'>They boarded the red car—first class—of the Metro, -and it started its rather leisurely journey westward under -the Place de la Concorde and the Champs Élysées. -Kendall always insisted on riding first class on the subway, -though Andree urged it was a scandalous waste -of money. One could ride as comfortably second class, -or, if the trip were very short, the saving by taking third -class was worth one’s while. The car was crowded—women, -a few old men in civilian clothes, <i>poilus</i>, officers -(one with four medals on his breast), Belgians with little -gold tassels dangling from the fronts of their caps, two -English soldiers in an advanced state of intoxication who -recognized Kendall as belonging to a kindred race and -shouted joyously to him from afar.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Hey, matey, does this ’ere car git us to the Gare -St.-Nizaire?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>Kendall shook his head.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Needn’t be so dam’ close-mouthed. Speak up like -you was a officer and a gen’lman! ’Urrah for America, -says I. ’Ear me, Jock? Wi’ a will, Jock.... ’Urrah -for America.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>With enthusiasm they cheered for their newest ally, -while Kendall blushed with the embarrassment of finding -himself thus elevated to a place of prominence. The car -laughed joyfully and in sympathy with the Britishers. -Andree looked up into Kendall’s face and, finding it -forbidding, pressed his arm and smiled.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“<i>Beaucoup</i> de zigzag,” she said, philosophically, as if -that explained all and excused all.</p> - -<p class='c006'>It was not until they alighted at the Étoile that Kendall -was rid of the attentions of his friends, and even there -one of them leaned out of the front door as Ken descended -from the rear and shouted: “Give me love to your lidy -friend, ol’ top.... ’Urrah for President Wilson....”</p> - -<p class='c006'>Kendall did not regain his equanimity until they were -nearing the apartment; it was the more difficult to regain -because he had a feeling that Andree was laughing at -him a bit, notwithstanding her grave face. He felt, -somehow, that the necessity for maintaining dignity at -all times—a foible of American youth—was not to be -understood by Andree, and fell under that category of -actions which she described as “<i>C’est drôle</i>.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>Madame the <i>concierge</i> greeted them with affability; -the big glass door slammed behind them as it always did -when Kendall forgot to hold it carefully, and the sound -of its slamming echoed hollowly up the stairs.</p> - -<p class='c006'>At the first floor Andree paused and clung to the -banister. “Oh, you must have—what you call—?” She -made a lifting motion with her hands.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“An elevator?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Yes, yes.... Now. At once. Go. Run quickly -and fetch an elevator. I shall stay here.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>He made pretense of lifting her in his arms.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“No.... No.... I must have an elevator. Oh, -you do not get me an elevator.” There was awful -despair in her voice. “You do not love me.... No.... -Then I shall go away. You are not kind.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“I’ll get you two elevators. I’ll get you half a dozen, -but the elevator-store is closed for the night. You’ll have -to wait till morning.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Oh, I do not onderstan’. You speak <i>trop vite</i>—much -fast. So I shall ron away from you....” And she -danced away from him up the stairs, not at all like a -young woman, but wholly like a child, with the glee of a -child. “Behol’!” she cried, presently. “The <i>clef</i> it is -under the mat. I find it. I know where it is hidden. -Now I shall come by night and rob you.... I shall -carry away everything—everything.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>She handed him the huge key and he opened the door -for her and allowed her to pass into the narrow hall. -She stopped timidly, waiting for him to enter, peering -about as if some danger might lurk behind any of the -doors. She was very sweet, very dainty....</p> - -<p class='c006'>“<i>Mignonne</i>,” he said, and took both her hands—and -then she was in his arms, her lips to his ... and he knew -that he loved her, that she had charmed his heart into -her keeping—and that he was very glad to have it there.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“You love me?” she whispered.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Much.... Much.... And you?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Oh yes.... I am not <i>solitaire</i> now. <i>Je suis très-joyeuse.</i>”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“You must always be glad. You must always be -happy.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“As long as you love me.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“I shall always love you.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“<i>Non!... Non!...</i> It ees not possible. In a day, -in a week—I do not know when—you will go away, and -I will be sad.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“I don’t know when I shall have to go, nor where I -shall have to go.... It is the war.... But whenever -and wherever, I shall love you.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“It is well—but—but I do not believe you.... Oh, -life it is not well! It is our <i>besoin</i>—our need—to find -many little minutes. That is the best of life. I know.... Much -sadness, much loneliness ... but now and -then the little minutes of happiness.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>He was hanging her tam-o’-shanter on the hall tree, -then he led her into the <i>salon</i> with its bronze statues and -its gilded furniture, at which she did not wrinkle her -nose this time, for she was in serious mood.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Are you always happy?” she asked.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“I’m not often unhappy.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“That is ver’ well—yes.... It is not so well as to be -happy, but it is better than to be sad.... Me, I am -often sad.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“I’ll put a stop to that. From now on you must be -happy.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Come—you must sit close to me—ver’ close—<i>so</i>....” -She had seated herself by the table and was looking at a -magazine, a French periodical filled with pictures of young -women in one-piece bathing-suits. “They are ver’ -beautiful,” she said, slipping her arm about his neck -and pressing her cheek to his. “I should like to be -beautiful—yes. That would be well.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“<i>Vous étes très-jolie</i>,” he protested.</p> - -<p class='c006'>She laughed. “No, but I like you to tell me.... You -theenk I am pretty?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“You bet I do.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“It is well. Then for you I am pretty, and I am glad.... Also -I am ver’ nice, and ver’ wise, n’est-ce pas?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“You are the cunningest little person that ever lived.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Hush!... There is some one. Listen.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Bert and Madeleine,” he said, as he heard a key -fumbling in the door.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Then I mus’ be ver’ <i>sérieuse</i>—so.” She sat erect, -very primly, her hands folded in her lap—a very image -of gravity and circumspection. Presently Bert and -Madeleine entered the room. The girls shook hands -gravely and exchanged a few words. Then Madeleine -shook hands with Kendall and Bert with Andree. Everybody -must shake hands before matters could proceed. -Once disposed of, formality relaxed; the girls chattered -in French, Madeleine with laughing vivacity and many -gestures, Andree rather as if she were a bit embarrassed, -always searching Madeleine with her eyes as she studied -every new-comer into her acquaintance. Her eyes were -always studying, studying, but she never disclosed what -they told her.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Arlette opened the door of the dining-room very softly -and allowed her head to project into the room. She did -so very discreetly and silently, as if she were afraid of -being detected in the act of announcing dinner. She -uttered no word, but allowed her head to remain, round -and big-eyed, until it should be seen—like the sign of a -restaurant making its silent announcement. Kendall -caught her eye, and in a twinkling she disappeared with -comical haste—a pudgy jack-in-a-box.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Dinner is served,” Kendall said, “and I’m hungry.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>A fine, thick soup steamed in a huge bowl in the middle -of the table, and Arlette watched with big-eyed anxiety -while Bert served it. Before any one could taste a spoonful -her impatience overcame her; she could contain herself -no longer.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“It is pea soup,” she said, explosively.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Madeleine laughed, showing her fine white teeth. “It -is very good,” she said in French.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Monsieur Kendall does not like,” exclaimed Arlette, -in heartrending accents as she perceived that Ken did not -at once address himself to the <i>potage</i>, but sat regarding -Andree, forgetful of everything else.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Oh yes, he does,” said Bert, “but Monsieur Kendall -is in love. Presently if he does not eat I shall feed him.... Arlette,” -he demanded, severely, “are you in love -with some young man?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Ho!...” she exclaimed, and, overcome with embarrassed -giggles, scurried out of the room.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“<i>C’est drôle</i>,” said Andree, judgmatically.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Is red wine or white wine desired?” Arlette asked from -the door.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Suppose we try a bottle of that Anjou Rose,” said -Ken. “I like the color of it.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Anjou!” exclaimed Madeleine. “Ah, that is my -country. I am born there.... The wine of Anjou it -is ver’ well.... I shall go soon to visit in that country—to, -if possible, sell a house. Yes. Oh, it is mos’ -beautiful.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>Andree regarded her speculatively, gravely.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Before the war my father owns the store of the shoes -there. There is a yo’ng man work in thees store, and I -am ver’ yo’ng. I do not know theengs. <i>Mais non</i>. I -am marry thees yo’ng man, but he ees no good—him. -My father die, my mother die, and I am <i>orpheline</i>. It -ees ver’ bad for me, bicause my <i>oncle</i> and thees yo’ng -man they take away the store of the shoes and I have -not’ing only thees house. It ees so. Thees yo’ng man -he ees ver’ bad; he is not <i>fidèle</i>; also he is mos’ unkind. -Then he go to the war, and I never see him since. I -theenk he is dead.... It ees ver’ well. But my oncle -he lives—but I have not’ing. It is ver’ necessary I mus’ -eat, so I come to Paris and work in the store of the shoes.... Now, -ver’ soon I go to my country for sell thees -house and to have a leetle money.” She shrugged her -shoulders and laughed. “I do not cry—no, I laugh. -Much time I laugh, bicause why not? It is ver’ <i>nécessaire</i> -to laugh and be happy. Is it not so, my Bert?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Laugh all you like, my dear.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>Andree raised her eyes to Madeleine’s face. “Oh, it -ees too bad,” she said. “Thees husban’ and thees -<i>oncle</i> they are ver’ wicked.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>Thus encouraged, Madeleine amplified her autobiography -in an avalanche of headlong French, while -Andree listened unsmilingly and nodded her head now -and then, or waggled it a trifle in sympathy or condemnation -of some related atrocity.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“You see,” she said to Kendall, “no one is happy. It -is so. Life it is not nice—for yo’ng girls.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“One mus’ theenk not about the sad theengs,” said -Madeleine, sententiously. “One mus’ be happy. That -ees best. Me—I take what comes.... See, I am ver’ -ol’. <i>Oui....</i> I am twenty-four. So ol’ am I that no -man ever want to marry me.... <i>Tiens!</i> I am <i>passée</i>. -But still I laugh.... I love Monsieur Bert, and I am -happy. One day Monsieur Bert love me no more....” -She shrugged her shoulders. “Then I am sad for leetle -w’ile.... But another yo’ng man he will love me, -perhaps. It ees so. What would you?... If one does -not love and is not loved, then there is no happiness, -<i>n’est-ce pas</i>?...”</p> - -<p class='c006'>Andree nodded. “When there is no love it is terrible,” -she said.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Bert laughed and looked at Kendall. “Aha!” he said. -“But, mademoiselle, Ken says you and he do not love -each other—that you are just <i>camarades</i>....”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“It was so,” she said, “but now”—she looked at Kendall -gravely—“it is so no longer. No.... We love.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“I said to you,” Madeleine addressed Kendall, “that -French girls are not cold. Did I not?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“But—” Kendall began to expostulate and to explain.</p> - -<p class='c006'>But Madeleine would have none of it. “You are ver’ -<i>sérieux</i>, monsieur. Doubtless you are also <i>un religieux</i>!”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“<i>Religieux?</i> What is that?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“She means in English a monk,” said Andree, her eyes -twinkling. “To wear a brown robe—<i>oui!</i>—and also bare -feet and sandals.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“It must be.” Madeleine laughed delightedly. “For -heem to look at a yo’ng girl ees a sin.... See!... See!... He -makes to blush. Regard his ear!...”</p> - -<p class='c006'>Andree laughed quietly, meantime studying Kendall’s -face with kindly, twinkling eye. She did not deride him, -but one could see that she loved to tease him—this -incomprehensible foreigner who was so <i>drôle</i>!</p> - -<p class='c006'>Kendall laughed, too, a bit ruefully, but while he -laughed he was thinking, fumbling for Madeleine’s point -of view. It was clear to him that the man who was not -eager for love could be no man at all—but a monk. -It was the only possible explanation. Love was for men -and women; continence was for monks. Well, then? -To love might be a sin for a monk, but even on this point -she doubtless was lenient; for a man not to love was a sin. -He was not realizing his duty to achieve happiness. Love -was love. It was good. It carried no burden of evil.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“The good God—He make the yo’ng man and the yo’ng -girl, and He tell them to love.... It is true. Then one -must obey the good God,” she said, seriously.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Here was rather a new religion to Kendall, but, somehow, -it did not seem absurd, nor did her utterance of it -touch upon the sacrilegious. She made the statement -simply, out of her heart, with simple belief.... He -turned to Andree.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Is that what you think?” he asked.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Of a certainty—or why did the good God create men -and women and love?... I theenk God is happy when -He sees a yo’ng man and a yo’ng girl who love each other -much.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Some philosophy!” said Bert. “I’m for it.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“But the love—it ees <i>nécessaire</i>....”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“By Jove!...” Kendall exclaimed. “My dear, you’re -a nice child.... Bert, she’s <i>good</i>! Get that? <i>Good!...</i> -Maybe she’s right, and we’re all wrong.... Morals -are a devil of a mix-up. They’re beyond me.... But -I know this, and nobody can argue me out of it—these -girls are <i>good</i>.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>He spoke in English and rapidly. Neither girl could -follow him.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Bert laughed. “You take it mighty seriously. What’s -the matter with you, anyhow?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Nothing’s the matter.... But a fellow can think. -It’s a big question. We’ve been taught one way—these -girls have been taught, or have learned and seen, another -way.... Who is right and who is wrong?...”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Fiddlesticks!” said Bert. “Why worry about it? -We’re having the time of our young lives.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“They’re good,” Kendall repeated to himself.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Who said they weren’t?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“All of America.... All the world that we know. -And it must be wrong—it must be.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Suits me—it’s wrong, then.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“But—but the way America thinks is right in America. -That’s what I can’t understand. Right is right there, and -what America thinks is wrong seems to be right over -here....”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“What do you speak?... Oh, you speak <i>trop vite</i>. I -cannot onderstan’.” Andree made a little face of distress.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“I was saying that you are a dear child and I love you.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“It is ver’ well.” She stretched out her tiny hand and -patted Kendall’s hand.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Arlette entered with the meat, depositing it on the -table and standing by with her usual apprehension. “It -is beef,” she said. “Perhaps it is tough!...”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“It is ver’ well,” said Andree.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Arlette sighed with relief and waggled her head.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“But the price, mademoiselle—I ask you to regard the -price. One is frightened. It is so. For this so small -piece of meat! But messieurs demand the meat. They -spend much money, and I am alarmed. I shall be -blamed. It is I who make the purchases.... Also the -cheese ... and butter. <i>Mon Dieu!</i> The cost! It is -frightful! It is because these American soldiers arrive -in France with great wealth in their pockets and spend -with the so great freedom that prices rise.... Oh yes. -They do not care. They have no regard for money—and -in consequence the poor must pay. Can nothing be done -to prevent these Americans from making the prices to -rise?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“<i>C’est la guerre</i>,” said Madeleine.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“It is the Americans,” said Arlette, dogmatically. -“But one must admit they are generous and of a kindness. -I regard messieurs highly. <i>Oui. Ils sont très-gentils.</i>”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Arlette likes you much,” said Andree. “I theenk she -fall in love weeth you, and I am jealous—oh, so jealous. -You shall send her away. I will not have her. She is -bad—bad. She take you away from me.” And then -she laughed low, with a charm that found its way to -Kendall’s heart. She was so cunning, so full of little -humors and tricks of manner, of moods and delightful -graces—at one moment grave and wise, at the next playful -and gay. One instant she was a woman made wise -by sorrow, the next moment she was a child, untouched -by anything but joy.... She was wonderful, thought -Kendall, there was no one in the world to compare with -her....</p> - -<p class='c006'>“We’re going to the Casino de Paris to-night. Coming -along?” asked Bert.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Kendall turned to Andree. “Shall we?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“No. We shall stay here.” She pointed downward at -the floor with a gesture that was peculiarly her own. “I -have not seen you for long.... We shall talk of many -theengs.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Keep your dictionary handy, Ken,” jeered Bert. -“There are lots of useful words in it.... Comme ça: -You take the lady’s hand. ‘<i>Mademoiselle, vous êtes—</i>’ -Quick the dictionary! Find the first word that fits.... -Here it is—look! ‘<i>Charmante.</i>’ Fine! Thus we have a -compliment with only a slight interruption. A compliment -doesn’t get cold like a dish of soup. It is still good -even if we have to look in the dictionary twice. In the -course of an evening we can get through a dozen sentences.... -You shall talk of many theengs,” he finished, -mimicking Andree.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Monsieur Bert—he does not need to speak,” laughed -Madeleine. “He is ver’ fonny. <i>Écoutez!</i> He says, -‘<i>Je no’ désirez de la potage.’ Oui.</i> Always. One understands -what he is about, but it is awful. But yes.... I -cannot teach him. No. Past or present, number, person, -it is all one for him. He jus’ make words and expects -one to understand.... But when he does not speak at -all—then he does much better.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>Arlette served the vegetable and the salad, and finally -cheese and confiture. “<i>Abricot</i> for Mademoiselle Andree,” -she explained, remembering Andree’s preference. Presently -they went into the <i>salon</i> where the boys lighted -cigarettes. Kendall tendered his case to Andree, who -selected one and lighted it daintily.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“I thought you didn’t smoke,” he said, with surprise.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Only in the house. Nevaire outside,” she said.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Madeleine did not smoke at all. Madeleine began to -walk about the room and sing “Madelon,” while Andree -looked out of the window and speculated on the characters -and peculiarities of the occupants of the apartments across -the avenue.</p> - -<p class='c006'>The four turned toward the door upon hearing a -shuffling and a subdued giggling in the hall. It was -Arlette and little Arlette. The child hung back bashfully, -while her grandmother shooed her ahead with her -apron.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“I have brought her to see Mademoiselle Madeleine,” -she said. “I have told her, and she desires to see.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>The child had seen Andree, but it was necessary that -she become acquainted with the entire family, it seemed. -It was another shock for Kendall—the idea that fat, -respectable, motherly Arlette should take delight in -bringing this baby to make the acquaintance of Madeleine!... -It was impossible. In America grandmothers -would have shut their grandchildren in locked rooms to -prevent any contact with a girl about whom they had the -knowledge Arlette possessed of Madeleine.... Why, -Arlette had gotten breakfast for Madeleine in that apartment! -Yet she brought the baby to see her, and fairly -wriggled with delight when Madeleine caught little -Arlette up in her arms and kissed her and called her -endearing names. The old woman could scarcely contain -her pride and delight when Madeleine turned to tell -her how pretty the child was!... It was bewildering.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“You must sing,” Madeleine said to Arlette. “I know -you can sing many songs. Oh, I have heard. See. -Stand you so, and sing.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>So little Arlette stood erect and lifted her little chin -without embarrassment and sang, while her grandmother, -in the door, waggled her head and kept time by a ponderous -swaying of her body.... Little Arlette ran to Kendall, -always her favorite, and crawled between him and Andree, -who had seated herself beside him. She insinuated her -arm about his neck and pressed her cheek to his, while she -intrusted a hand to Andree to be held.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“<i>Mignonne!</i>” said Andree, tremulously.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Good efening, sirr,” said little Arlette, suddenly, and -her grandmother giggled in the very great pride of hearing -this English spoken.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Aha!” said Kendall, “you study English.... She is -getting ready to go back to America with me. Yes, -indeed. I have asked for her hand. We are sweethearts, -aren’t we, Arlette?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Yes, monsieur,” she said, very seriously.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“You love me very much?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Yes, monsieur.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“You learn to cook and to sew and all the things a wife -should know?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Yes, monsieur.... When shall we go to this America? -Is it America of the North or of the South?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Of the North, <i>petite</i>....”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Oh, my uncle was once in America of the South.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“It is not quite the same. But it is just as nice. -Really. Shall we take grandma with us when we go?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“If monsieur desires.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>She was very serious and grown-up in her manner; -even then there was something feminine, something of the -woman in her, for she turned her face toward Andree with -eyes that seemed to say: “You see. He is mine. It is -no use for you to try to steal him from me.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>Andree made pretense to draw away from her and to -cry. “You are ver’ naughty,” she said from between her -fingers. “You steal away my sweetheart. Oh, what -shall I do?... What shall I do?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>Little Arlette smiled out of a great satisfaction at this -discomfiture of a rival, and openly kissed Kendall.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Now, come,” called Arlette. “You must not bother -monsieur. Say good night.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>So little Arlette shook hands all around, and backed -out of the door, throwing kisses and waving her tiny -hand, a dainty little fairy, a very breath of sweetness -and purity.... And her grandmother had not thought -it amiss to bring her to see Madeleine—for whom she -had gotten breakfast....</p> - -<p class='c006'>“If we’re going to the Casino—” said Bert to Madeleine, -and got to his feet. “Sure you won’t come?” he said -to Andree.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“<i>Merci</i>,” said Andree, positively.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“See you later, then.... Good night.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>In a moment the door closed behind Bert, and Madeleine -and Kendall were alone with Andree.... Somehow he had -never felt the sensation of being alone with her as he felt -it now. On other occasions he had been alone merely -with a girl he knew, was somewhat interested in; now -he was alone with Andree, whom he loved, who loved -him.... He was alone with her as a man would be alone -with his wife in his home. It was very sweet, wonderful, -and yet he was disquieted. There were things he did not -understand. Chief of all he did not know what Andree -was thinking, what she was intending. Second in importance, -he did not know what he himself was intending.... -He put the thought away from him, even though -he realized that their relations had reached some sort of -climax.... He would allow that climax to approach -unurged. When it arrived he would meet it....</p> - -<p class='c006'>“The sun puts itself to bed,” Andree said, using the -French locution.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“I’ll light the lights,” he replied, and, walking to the -windows, closed the heavy iron shutters and drew the -curtains as the law required him to do before he illuminated -the room. He was glad of something to do to cover -the awkwardness he felt in those first moments.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Sit by me,” she said, softly.</p> - -<p class='c006'>She was not embarrassed, was, indeed, perfectly normal, -unexcited, at ease; her manner was very gentle, very -sweet. Her every look, every gesture, seemed to declare -her love and her joy in his love. There was a quiet assurance -in her manner; the sure trace of present happiness -which would not tolerate a shadow on this night.... -She was her own self, dainty, genuine, wonderfully appealing. -It seemed as if she had lived all her life for this -moment so that she could unfold under the touch of the -marvel of love and become wholly admirable.... She -was beautiful, as was fitting, beautiful with the loveliness -that can come only from a soul not warring with the laws -of God. Untroubled by doubt or question, she reassured -him, gave him renewed confidence in her goodness, her -rightness, her purity.... Her moment of happiness had -come to her, and she looked into the brightness of it with -unwavering eyes that saw nothing to fear, nothing to -conceal—saw only love.</p> - -<p class='c006'>He sat beside her and she nestled close to him, touching -his hand, lifting her deep-shadowed eyes to his—and then -she smiled.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“<i>Mignonne!</i>” he whispered, tenderly.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Tell me,” she said. “Say it—quickly.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“I love you,” he responded, and she sighed softly, -closing her eyes, and was silent. So still was she that -he might have fancied her asleep but for the pressure of -her fingers upon his own. After a time she spoke again:</p> - -<p class='c006'>“It is well—ver’ well—to love.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Yes.... But—you are not afraid. Do you remember -the last time you were here you cried? You were -afraid.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“I have not fear—no. Then I cried because I was not -certain.... I was making up my mind. I have made -up my mind, and so I have no fear.... Oh, I was ver’ -<i>solitaire</i>.... But we mus’ not theenk of that now—only -of ourselves. Is it not?... And be happy. We -must be ver’ happy—every little second we must be -happy ... while it lasts.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“While it lasts? What do you mean?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Nothing. We mus’ speak of that—not at all. We -mus’ speak only of love and happiness—and of how -sweet is the world and to be alive—together.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“It <i>is</i> sweet,” he said, unevenly, moved as he had never -been moved before. “You are sweet ... and <i>good</i>.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>Doubt, self-accusations, uneasiness, inhibitions, were -swept from him by a flood of tenderness. The world was -right; Andree was right; love was right. Nothing -mattered but Andree and himself. It was their universe, -of which they were masters, with none to forbid. Happiness -was their right; it might not be denied them. The -future was the future, but to-night was to-night, and -little moments of happiness were the gift of Heaven....</p> - -<p class='c006'>“You love me?” he demanded.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“I am here,” she said, simply.</p> - -<p class='c006'>His arms were about her, her lips were upon his lips; he -knew his own moment of happiness. “You are here ...” -he whispered. “You are here....”</p> - -<div class='chapter'> - <h2 class='c004'>CHAPTER XIII</h2> -</div> - -<p class='c005'>Kendall Ware had set foot on the French liner -bound for France early in May; he had landed at -Bordeaux, May 19th. It was now the last of June. Less -than two months had passed over his head, but the -Kendall Ware who paced the Avenue du Bois de Boulogne -this evening was years removed from the boy who walked -the decks of the <i>Rochambeau</i> with Maude Knox. He was -altered as only years of experience could have altered -him in the times when men went about their business -after the manner of rational human beings, when death -was not a profession which engaged the world, when the -dollar was the measure of success, when one day was like -another, and meat could be eaten seven days in the week. -The great modification in him was that he had learned -it to be true that man is a thinking animal and that the -brain may be used for something besides adding a column -of figures or as a storage-house for the thoughts of a past -generation. He had perceived that different theories of -life existed in the world. He had been seized by events -and forcibly fed with something which might crystallize -into knowledge, and he had arrived at that unpleasant -junction in the railroad system of life where he must -choose between trains—whether he would board the one -which went ahead swiftly through the Country of Responsible -Individual Thought or the one which lagged -backward through the Land of Swallowed Dogmas.... -He was not happy.</p> - -<p class='c006'>He was making another discovery—namely, that one -can theorize very comfortably, but that when one transmutes -theory into accomplished fact, theory has become -practice, and speculations upon its results may be exceedingly -unpleasant. Within the last twenty-four hours -Kendall had translated one theory into a fact, and another -fact had arrived, needing no transmutation. The theory -was the little-moment-of-happiness theory, and the fact -was a letter from his mother.</p> - -<p class='c006'>That morning after he had left Andree he was rather -disappointed to find that he suffered no remorse, experienced -no sense of having done what he should have left -undone. Andree was Andree, sweet, good, lovable. Because -she was so, and because of his certainty of her cleanness -of soul, he felt no sense of degradation or of having -transgressed. He was even happy, rejoicing, boylike, in -the sweetness of the gift of her love.... He found his -mother’s letter at the office and, having read it, his -romance was smirched with sordidness, its beauty was -dulled by the intrusion of harsh, unsparing, cold convention. -The Middle West had intruded upon Paris, and -he was discovering that there was much Middle West -remaining alive in him.</p> - -<p class='c006'>His mother’s letter had said, and he could visualize her -face as she wrote, severe, unyielding, harsh, forbidding:</p> - -<p class='c007'>I am sorry to hear that you are stationed in Paris. They say -that Paris is a wicked city. Everybody says the French are -loose and immoral, which makes me worry about all our young -men who are thrown with them. Your letter says that Paris -is beautiful. It is not a good beauty, I have heard. Some one -told me there were statues of naked women all over in the -parks. I cannot understand how they allow such things; they -must be bad, passionate men to allow it. I hope you will be -very careful. You are young, and sometimes you are like your -father, who is easily taken in. I am glad you do not speak -that language, because you cannot get acquainted with French -people. Those women have no morals; they are nasty creatures -who just want to get hold of every penny you get. Some -day you will want to marry a nice, clean American girl, and -you have got to think about that. I don’t see why the war -couldn’t have been some place else. Don’t ever look at one -of them. They’re all atheists and that accounts for it....</p> - -<p class='c008'>There was more to the same effect. It reflected his -mother perfectly, and the sentiments of the people among -whom his mother lived; it represented, in extreme terms, -the sentiment of his home community.... And over -against it all stood Andree! That such words should be -used to apply to her was sacrilege!... Yet ... yet ... -she was—no matter what he might argue in her favor—in -the language of his people, Andree was not an honest -woman....</p> - -<p class='c006'>The effect of the letter upon him, however, had been -uncanny. While he read he was again in Detroit. His -sensations were almost exactly those which he always -felt as he entered the Presbyterian church with his father -and mother—not as he sat down in the accustomed pew, -but as he passed through the crowded little vestibule -where bald, smug elders and bearded, smug deacons and -severe-faced chairwomen of missionary boards held their -court before the service, shaking hands with all who -entered with that religious affability, that hushed and -somber and severe welcome, which strove to counterfeit -open-heartedness.... It was that vestibule, and not -the church, not the sermon, not the hymns nor the songs, -which personified Kendall’s religion and what his religion -meant.... He had grown up among those elders and -deacons and chairwomen, and he knew them—in the -church. It was incomprehensible to him that they could -have any interests or activities outside the church. The -practice of religion in that place seemed to him to be the -sole occupations of their lives, and when he met one of -them in the secular world of a week-day in the act of -selling goods, or of handling money in a bank, or of anything -else which savored of business and earning a living, -Ken had the sort of feeling one has when he detects a -person in something unusual and a bit discreditable. -Why, those persons <i>were</i> the church!... And the -thoughts of those persons were the thoughts of Kendall’s -home world, thoughts among which he had been raised -from babyhood.... So, as he read, he was transported -to that vestibule—and that vestibule’s occupants smugly -set the stain of guilt upon him and rolled eyes of horror -at Andree.... He had been seeing Paris with something -that approximated the eyes of Paris—now he was seeing -it with the eyes of the vestibule of the Presbyterian -church.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Before him stretched the magnificent avenue, crowded, -as dusk descended, with pleasure-seeking Parisians: he -regarded it—regarded it as a spectator, an utter outsider. -It was as if he looked at the scene from a window in the -Presbyterian church. The two worlds stood starkly facing -each other, challenging each other—the civilization -that was Paris and the civilization that had its expression -in the occupants of the church vestibule. Kendall saw, -with something very like to fear, that they could not -be reconciled, that neither contained a starting-point -which would lead to understanding of the other.... -And yet he, springing from the one, felt that he understood -both. He was drawn to the one while the other -clung to him tenaciously.</p> - -<p class='c006'>It was not that his mother’s letter made him feel guilt; -it was rather that it made him feel as if he <i>ought</i> to be -conscious of wrong-doing. He ought to feel wicked and -degraded, but he could not, and the fact that he could -not seemed in itself to convict him of sin.... It was -only when he thought of Andree that any semblance of -stability came upon his thinking. There could be no -argument about Andree. He had studied her, known her, -loved her—and she was good. No church vestibule, no -dogmatic elder, not even his mother, should say Andree -was anything but good. He got some happiness out of -that thought; Andree was an oasis of safety for him. -He was capable of distinguishing between evil and virtue, -he thought, and he had studied Andree as he had never -studied any other living being. From the first moment -of their acquaintance he had not perceived in her one -quality, one emotion, one tendency that was not sweet, -womanly, kindly, lovable, springing from a heart of -purity.... How could a girl, proved to his intelligence -to be good, be otherwise than good? How was it that -any act of hers might be brought into question? Why -was he questioning <i>his</i> righteousness because of his relations -with her when her righteousness because of her -relations with him were not open to question? It was -very confusing. Could two individuals share an act and -one of them be good and the other bad because of it? -That sounded like a violation of some natural law as, for -instance, that two solids cannot occupy the same space -at the same instant.... Or was he wholly wrong? -Could his judgment of her and of Paris and of the whole -French nation be mistaken?... It might even be that -Paris was not beautiful, as he had seen it beautiful, or -that the French nation was not really sturdy, glowing -with virility, heroic, as its deeds had seemed to prove it -to be, but squalid, decadent....</p> - -<p class='c006'>He began to walk rapidly, as was his custom when in -mental difficulty, and as he walked he knew the keen -discomfort of a soul in turmoil.... He tried not to -think about it, to put it out of his mind, and to find -pleasure in the evening and in the dusk-softened beauties -of the city, but his mind would not obey. He had a -sensation of being terribly awake, of the blinding glow -as of a tremendously powerful white light inside his head. -His thoughts seemed to function independently of him, -and himself to be an audience present to observe and -listen to their activities. There was something ghastly -about it, something unreal....</p> - -<p class='c006'>He strode around the Arc de Triomphe and thence -down the Champs Élysées until he reached the Palais -des Beaux-Arts, and there he turned to his right, crossing -the Pont Alexandre III, marvelously beautiful in the half-light. -He did not pause to admire the river and the -city’s sky-line as he had so often done, but turned again, -this time to his left, and followed the Quai d’Orsay, -clinging to the bank of the Seine until he was opposite -the Cité and in the familiar open space of the Place -St.-Michel.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Again he turned and followed the broad boulevard up -which he had walked again and again with Andree. -Perhaps that was why he had come to the locality, drawn -subconsciously into a region of such associations. Perhaps -there had been hidden in some recess of his mind -the hope that he might encounter her, and so feel her -presence and sense her goodness and verify his judgment.</p> - -<p class='c006'>At the corner of the Boulevard St.-Michel and the -equally broad rue Soufflot is a café whose tables and -chairs crowded the sidewalk. It was still light enough -to distinguish the crowd of people who patronized the -place, sipping coffee from small goblets or drinking wine -or that strange beverage kept in bottles which Paris -believes to be lemonade.... He glanced carelessly at -the café, then he stopped, peered again intently with -a sudden up-leap of the pulse, for at a table near the end -sat a girl in white, wearing a white tam-o’-shanter. -This alone would not have halted Kendall, rather it -would have urged him forward with eager haste, but the -girl was not alone. A man occupied the chair at her side, -bending over her with that eagerness which is not to be -mistaken in a young man, that eagerness which apprises -all the watching world that he is in the act of making -love....</p> - -<p class='c006'>At the end of the café were a number of small potted -trees reaching almost to the awning above. Kendall, -unconscious that it was jealousy that dictated his movements, -drew near cautiously to peer over the foliage at -that adjacent table, to assure himself if it were Andree -or not.... It was Andree, and her companion was -Monsieur Robert, of the Comédie Française....</p> - -<p class='c006'>Quick suspicion is a natural result of the thing that the -vestibule of the Presbyterian church, as Kendall knew -it, stood for. Intolerance has for its favorite child -Suspicion, Acute Suspicion, which convicts without trial -and, if subsequent trial goes against it, asserts that the -jury was tampered with. It was one of Kendall’s inheritances. -He had been raised under the influence of -constant suspicion. He himself had been suspected; he -was used to seeing the most trivial events suspected. -His mother, for instance, knew instantly that any happening -which came under her eye and about which she was -not fully informed meant something bad. It was never -the way of that body of society in which he had been -brought up to think the best when a trifle of imagination -would enable it to think the worst—and to-night Kendall -was peculiarly under the influence of his inheritances.... -He suspected. A natural jealousy deepened his -suspicion. Monsieur Robert’s profession deepened it -further, and Andree’s often stated ambition to become -an actress carried it to more profound depths. Suspicion -may own a specious logic: Andree declared it was necessary -for her to undertake a stage career. To do so it was -necessary to enter the <i>Académie</i>. To enter the <i>Académie</i> -it was necessary to interest the influence of some actor -of prominence, and she had more than once hoped for -this intervention. Ken himself had introduced her to -this Monsieur Robert with that end in view.... And -Jacques, perhaps in jest, perhaps in earnest, had warned him -to beware of Monsieur Robert, or that handsome young -actor would steal Andree from him. Hence Robert must -have that sort of reputation.... And, therefore, Robert -was with Andree at this moment for that purpose.... -Again, what more natural and logical than that Andree -should be willing to purchase her career, and that, even -at this very moment, the agreement was being made.... -Or, perhaps, had been made before, and he had been -deceived already! Undoubtedly that was it....</p> - -<p class='c006'>The part of him inherited from his mother was in -complete control now; he was narrow, certain in suspicion, -hard, willing to be cruel. All that was worst in Roundhead, -Puritan, Pilgrim Father was apparent in him. He -had seen, and, in the instant of seeing, the pendulum of -his character had swung to the uppermost point of its -arc on the side opposed to tolerance, a reasonable philosophy, -and the wider things toward which he had been -growing since he came to France....</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Mother was right,” he said to himself, “they were all -right. I’ve been fooled and I’ve been a fool.... And -I thought she was <i>good!</i>... This damn, miserable -country—if ever I can get out of it back to where decent -people live....”</p> - -<p class='c006'>Almost exactly twenty-four hours ago he had held -Andree in his arms, loving her and believing in her love. -He remembered it, recalled the sweetness of last evening, -Andree’s tender sweetness, which could have been nothing -but designing and duplicity.... And now <i>this</i>.... -He despised her and he despised himself. A beautiful -dream had become a sordid reality....</p> - -<p class='c006'>How much of all this was due to a sudden perception of -right and how much to boyish jealousy and a sharp hurt -to a boyish heart he did not know. It did not occur to -him to ask.... He had been made a fool of. He was -furious with what he took to be righteous anger; what -he did not know was that as soon as she passed there -would come the most poignant grief he had ever known; -the grief that comes only when a beautiful something -has crept into one’s life to be snatched away brutally, -leaving in its nest something squalid, unsightly, disgusting.</p> - -<p class='c006'>For a moment he was on the point of confronting -Andree and Monsieur Robert, but he restrained himself. -There would be a scene; probably he would thrash -Robert—and to what good?... He glared at them a -moment longer, then turned away and almost ran down -the boulevard.... He was not thinking now, only -suffering.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Presently he found himself repeating over and over to -himself: “Andree, how could you?... Andree, how -could you?...” Rage was departing, grief and disillusionment -were taking its place. Presently he came to -a Metro station and plunged downward. The train -would carry him home faster than he could walk, and -he wanted to be home, to shut himself up, to be alone. -He wanted to feel that doors and walls were between him -and all the world.... It was the sort of feeling which, -long continued, drives men into religious orders, makes -of them Trappists, Cistercians.... Shelter and silence -were what Kendall wanted—to crawl away into some -hiding-place where he might make the most of his suffering.</p> - -<p class='c006'>He ran up the stairs of the apartment, snatched the -key from under the rug, and threw open the door. The -apartment was lighted. He paused. Madeleine and -Bert were in the <i>salon</i>, and both appeared in the door -to greet him. They called to him gaily, but Kendall did -not reply. He scowled at them and flung himself past -them without a word, to disappear in his room and slam -the door.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“<i>Qu’est-ce que c’est?</i>” exclaimed Madeleine, and then -laughed. “<i>Beaucoup zigzag!</i>”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“No,” said Bert, staring after his friend, “he doesn’t -drink. Something’s up. Something’s happened.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“It is Andree,” Madeleine said, with a shake of her head. -“I know. <i>Oui....</i> It is plain to read. <i>Jaloux</i>. Oh -yes. I know the signs. <i>Pauvre enfant!</i> He is ver’ -jealous. There is no other anger like it—none.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“What had I better do?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Not anything. That is best.... He mus’ be lef’ -alone—him.... But I do not theenk—Andree love -heem. I could see. He is not glad.... But what -would you? It is not nice to be jealous. One suffers. -But I theenk he make the mistake—yes.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Anyhow, he’s in an awful stew. Seems like I ought -to do something.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“No—he would behave like one <i>sauvage</i>. It is to -make to leave him alone. To-morrow, perhaps....”</p> - -<div class='chapter'> - <h2 class='c004'>CHAPTER XIV</h2> -</div> - -<p class='c005'>Andree glanced at her watch as she emerged from -the Metro at the St.-Michel station that evening -and noticed that it was almost exactly seven o’clock. -With quaint, almost stiff little steps she proceeded across -the Place, her eyes lowered with that charmingly unconscious -demureness which was a part of her, her thoughts -directed inward, as they always seemed to be. She had -a gift of detachment; it was possible for her to be in the -midst of a crowd, and yet to seem and to be unconscious -of the crowd’s proximity or existence. She always seemed -grave, with a tiny hint of apprehension, and when, as she -rarely did, she raised her eyes to regard some passing -individual, it was with a sort of naïve wonder to discover -that there was another human being in her neighborhood.... -That is how she impressed one. What she was -really thinking, how much she saw of what went on about -her, nobody ever knew. Kendall, who had studied her -every mood, had not the least idea of what her little -head busied itself with. She was a dainty mystery to -him. She was a dainty mystery to everybody who felt -an interest in her.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Good evening, Mademoiselle Andree,” said a voice in -her own language, and she looked up with that childishly -startled air which was hers alone. It was Monsieur -Robert, smiling with handsome boyishness and with a -twinkle of mischief in his eye. She regarded him gravely.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Good evening, monsieur,” she replied, timidly.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“I have good fortune,” he said. “I have thought of -you so often; I have wished to meet you, and, behold! -here you are.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>She made no reply, but stood looking at him questioningly.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Is it permitted to say that mademoiselle is very pretty -this evening—as always?... Ah, we were to be friends, -do you remember? It was agreed, was it not? And -some day we were to talk of many things ... of the -<i>Académie</i> and the Comédie and of yourself. Was it not -so?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Yes, monsieur.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“It is well.” He laughed gaily. “Then shall we talk -this evening? You shall dine with me, then.... It is -impossible that you are much occupied. Fortune could -not be so unkind. You will dine with me and we will -talk of those plans of yours?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>She considered a moment unsmilingly, and Monsieur -Robert wondered what were her thoughts. It was impossible -to guess.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Yes,” she said, presently.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“There is a café at the corner of the rue Soufflot. -Does that please you?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Yes.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>He took his place at her side and they continued up -the boulevard, Andree silent and apparently preoccupied; -Monsieur Robert laughing, gay, exerting all his great -charm and displaying his high abilities in droll humor. -Occasionally Andree looked up at him a moment and -smiled, but for the most part she was serious and gave -what answers were required of her in monosyllables. They -found a table on the sidewalk of the café and gave their -orders.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Mademoiselle desires to enter the <i>Académie</i>?” said he.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Yes.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“It is not easy to gain admission, which is correct. -It is not every one who is fit.... There are the examinations, -which are difficult.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“I have not fear of the examinations, for I have studied -very much. It is that—” She hesitated.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“That you have not an influential friend to make the -recommendation. Is that it?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Yes.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>He laughed easily. “Why do you wish to become an -actress?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Because I must do something—I must find a career, -because it is necessary to eat. The stage is very well. -I think I can do it; I have always felt I was for the stage.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“That is very well. One must feel so.... You have -the beauty that appeals, yes. You have the youth. -You have the intelligence, that is clear. Now, if only -you have the talent, the genius—”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“One does not know.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Until one makes the attempt, it is true.... But I -have a feeling it is there, mademoiselle. Something tells -me so. I am sure of it.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“You are very amiable.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“No.... No.... It is but the truth.... But -there is much hard work. In the <i>Académie</i> one must -work until one is ready to drop with fatigue.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“It is nothing—if one succeeds.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“True.... And the success is very good. Ah, -mademoiselle, I can see the success of you. Behold!... -To-day you are not rich, is it not so? You have no fame. -But the future—what possibilities are there!... You -succeed in entering the <i>Académie</i>. That is possible. -You work, you study, you learn.... The teachers see -that you have beauty, and they search for the talent.... -That is their way, and when they see it to be present -they make you work the harder and bestow upon you -the extra pains. Oh yes.... I can see it. Then, with -good fortune, you take the first prize of all the women, -and that makes a place for you on the stage of the Comédie -Française. You shall be a <i>comédienne</i>—that is for you.... -And then—one day will come the great success....” -He stopped suddenly and regarded her.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Can you not see it? To-day you—you are very -charming, but you are merely you. You have nothing, -you are nothing. You have a room, perhaps, for which -you pay seventy francs a month. Am I not right? You -are not happy. You are hidden.... But then comes a -wonderful night. You make the great success. Paris -is at your feet. Paris adores you.... What does it -mean? Ah, mademoiselle, one can scarcely imagine it. -It means a career, a great success in life. It means to be -adored, to have all that a beautiful woman can desire.... -It means applause and the envy of all the world—everything! -everything!... What a change! What a -wonderful change!”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Yes,” she said, her eyes glowing.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“It means that famous men will compete for your favor. -You will be pointed out everywhere, received everywhere.... -The papers will speak of your every movement.... -You will be happy.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Yes,” she said.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Then his manner changed, his enthusiasm seemed to die, -and he looked steadily into her face.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“But before it all comes one must enter the <i>Académie</i>.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“It is so.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Mademoiselle, do you want very much to do so?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Oh, greatly! greatly!”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Then it shall be. I guarantee it.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Oh, monsieur!”</p> - -<p class='c006'>He leaned over the table, his face serious now, his -handsome eyes eager. “If mademoiselle will be kind,” -he said.</p> - -<p class='c006'>She looked at him an instant and let her eyes fall.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Ah,” she said.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“I love you.... I adore you.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“No,” she replied, with the merest hint of a smile. -“It is not so. You do not love me.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“You are very lovely.... You are poor—you shall be -rich. You are unknown—you shall be famous.... And -I love you.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>She did not lift her eyes now, but sat very still and -looked at her plate. Her face told him nothing; it had -not altered its expression of detached gravity—and it -intrigued him, made her the more desirable because -he could not understand her. Her lips quivered, she -closed her eyes and drew a little breath which was almost -a sigh.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“It cannot be, monsieur.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>He sat erect, astonished, really astonished.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“You—you refuse?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Yes, monsieur.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“You refuse fame and wealth and all that may be -yours?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“It is necessary, monsieur.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“And why? Why?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Because, monsieur, I love, and I am happy.... I -am faithful.... I am very happy.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>He stared, unbelieving. Then, “It is the American -officer—this Capitaine Ware?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Yes, monsieur.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“You—you throw it all away for him—for this foreigner? -You throw away your chance—your career?... -It is absurd, impossible!... But look, mademoiselle. -These Americans they do not remain. There is -the war. To-morrow, the next day, he may be ordered -away—he may be sent back to America.... He will -go away from you and leave you lonely.... For a week, -a month, will you throw away your life? Oh, mademoiselle, -think! It would be terrible.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>She smiled. “It is the first happiness I have known.... -I love him, monsieur, and he loves me. We are very -happy.... Life is not good. It is very bad, but there -may be the little moments of happiness, and they are -most sweet. Does monsieur understand? There may -be grief and loneliness to follow, but those little moments—they -are all of life.... Nothing else is to be considered. -It is as you say.... It may be a week, a month, but I -would not lose it, not for all you promise me.... And -I am constant, I am faithful.... If I must buy my -little moments with this career, then I shall pay—oh, so -happily. Do you not understand? At all events, one -can remember them while life lasts.... They will make -a long life sweet.... And so, monsieur, it cannot be. -I have considered and I have chosen....”</p> - -<p class='c006'>It was at this moment, the moment when Andree was -surrendering her future, passing by the call of Fame -and closing her ears to the knock of Opportunity, that -Kendall Ware glared at her above the bushes that shut -in the front of the café.... It was this moment that he -saw—a wonderful, a glowing, a superb moment. He saw -a miracle, and his eyes were shut so that it was not -apparent to him....</p> - -<p class='c006'>Monsieur Robert was silent for a space, during which -one might have told the numbers to twenty, and then he -arose, very gravely, dignified now, courtly. He lifted -Andree’s hand and bowed over it and his lips touched it -in token of respect and of honor.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Mademoiselle,” he said, quietly, “I have said that -I love you.... It is true.... I have seen a great -thing, a beautiful thing.... I am proud that I have -kissed your hand. From this moment I revere two -women—my mother and yourself....”</p> - -<p class='c006'>She smiled up at him with that quaint smile of hers, -that smile which was half lost child, half banished fairy. -“It is nothing ...” she said.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“May I walk on with you?” he asked.</p> - -<p class='c006'>She shook her head, and then extended her hand. -“Good-by, monsieur,” she said.</p> - -<p class='c006'>He accompanied her to the open walk. “Good-by, -mademoiselle,” he said, softly, and stood looking after -her until she reached the distant Panthéon and turned -the corner. Then he sighed and smiled and shook his -head and walked away. “The women of France!...” he -said aloud, and there was a hushed wonder in his voice.</p> - -<div class='chapter'> - <h2 class='c004'>CHAPTER XV</h2> -</div> - -<p class='c005'>Despite Bert Stanley’s crudities and carelessness and -boisterousness, he had no mean capacity for friendship. -He was fond of Kendall Ware with that sort of -friendship which one so often finds in men of his character -for others of finer fiber. He did not understand Kendall, -nor did he try overly hard to understand him; it was -enough that he liked him and rather admired him. Sometimes -his attitude toward his friend was of humorous -tolerance. He laughed to himself when Ken took some -slight affair with gravity and seriousness. He thought -Ken was a bit queer and moody. As for himself, he took -things as they presented themselves and made the best -of it, not inquiring into causes and not caring about results -unless there was a possibility of their presenting -themselves in too unpleasant fashion.</p> - -<p class='c006'>For instance, he had seen Kendall thrown into somber -mood by a discussion of the unhappy future of hundreds -of thousands of French girls deprived of men with whom -to marry. Of course it did look a bit tough on the women, -Bert thought, but what can you expect? And what -could one do about it? He put this thought into words.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Do about it?” Kendall replied, gloomily. “That’s -the devil of it—there’s nothing that can be done about it. -They’re just up against it.... Poor devils!”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Oh, it’ll come out all right somehow,” Bert said, with -a shrug. “They’ll find men somewhere.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Find men!... There aren’t any men. You can’t -take a stick and whittle out men.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Then what in thunder is the use worrying about it? -It’s so, and that’s all there is to it. No use getting -gloomy.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“But it makes me gloomy. It’s so rotten unfair. It’s -horrible. Just think of what it means to them!...”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Just don’t think about it and you’ll be better off.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>It was this sort of thing that Bert failed to understand. -He could imagine a man worrying because he was out of a -job, or because he had broken his leg, or because his house -was on fire; but why anybody should go out of his way -to fuss over something that seemed to him like a rather -distant abstraction, he failed to comprehend. But Ken -always did it.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Bert could never understand the effect of the sight of -Paris on his friend. Of course it was a regular city, different -from New York and Chicago, but there was no -use to rave about it or to stand on a bridge mooning and -looking at a row of buildings. Paris meant a good time -of an exotic sort to Bert—and that was all. He was -willing to agree that the town was beautiful if anybody -insisted, but what was the use of insisting? A town was -a town. It wasn’t what a town looked like that made it -a good place to be; it was the business opportunities -of the town and the opportunities for pleasure when -business was over for the day. He went with Kendall -to see Notre Dame, and wondered why in the dickens -anybody had ever gone to the trouble to hew all those -ugly carvings out of stone, or why they should run fringes -of them around a church. It was a sort of dingy old -place, anyhow.... Now for a regular building, give him -the Hôtel de Ville. That was something like, because -it might have been the post-office or a railroad station -in New York. He would have traded his chance to see -all the ramshackle cathedrals in France for one sight of -the Woolworth Building. Now there was something! -There was some use in going to see that structure! It -was capable of astonishing him—but only because it was -so lofty. To see it of a spring morning with the hazy -sun tipping its golden peak meant nothing to him except -looking at a tall building early in the day.... There -wasn’t a high building in Paris! But Ken wanted to -poke around to see such things as Notre Dame, and if he -got pleasure out of it, that was his business.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Nevertheless, Bert saw dimly that Kendall had something -admirable which was denied to him. Not that he -wanted it especially! He was very well satisfied, but -somehow he admired Ken for having it and liked him the -better for it.... And Ken was always philosophizing -about things, and advancing theories, and worrying about -morals, and splitting hairs of right and wrong. To Bert -certain things were wrong, and the rest didn’t matter. -It was wrong to murder and to steal or to kick a child -or to cheat at cards or in any other game. As for the -bulk of the rest of the possible acts of man, he saw them -as neuter, and not mattering much.... But Ken could -get up a moral argument over the way he spread his bread! -And these arguments had the power to upset his friend -completely, to make him gloomy, to worry him.... It -was utter nonsense, but it was a part of Ken and Ken -was his friend.</p> - -<p class='c006'>He felt a sort of duty to look after Ken, a responsibility -for him. He was actually troubled sometimes by one of -Ken’s moods and deliberately thought up means to cheer -him.... And now he was really worried. He had -never seen Kendall as he had appeared last night. Something -out of the ordinary had happened. Most likely it -was nothing that the ordinary fellow would think twice -about, but the Lord only knew how it would affect Ken. -Anyhow, Ken thought he was in some sort of trouble, and -Bert was really disturbed. He had wanted to do something -about it last night, but Madeleine had prevented, -and now he felt rather guilty. Putting on his bathrobe -and slippers, he went to Ken’s door and opened it -softly. Ken was sitting up in bed, staring out of the -window.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Morning,” said Bert, affably.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Morning,” replied Kendall, shortly.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Um!... Cheerful, ain’t you? Say, what’s eating -you, anyhow?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Nothing.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Nothing, my aunt’s knee-cap! Come through. -What’s carried off your goat?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>Kendall did not reply.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Get up and have breakfast. I hear Arlette in the -kitchen. You’ll feel better after you’ve had a bowl of -chocolate warming up your tummy.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“I don’t want any breakfast.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Huh?...” Bert was beginning now to be seriously -troubled. “Say, what’s the matter, anyhow? Is it -Andree?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“I’ve just been a damn fool, that’s all.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Ought to be used to it,” said Bert, flippantly, and -then, more seriously, “Say, you don’t mean to say that -you’ve gone and went and fallen in love with her, or -anything like that?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Look here,” Ken said, morosely, “I don’t want to -talk about it.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“I do,” said Bert, with a grin, “so we’re going to talk. -I’m the biggest, and I can doggone well hold you while -we thrash it out. Now tell it to your uncle. Are you -in love with Andree?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“I—I don’t know.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“That means you are.... What about it? Say, -you don’t mean you’re worrying about <i>marrying</i> her, -do you?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>Ken laughed unpleasantly. “I wouldn’t marry her if -she was the last woman on earth. I never want to see -her again. I never want to think about her again.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Huh! Had a row, eh?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“No.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>Bert glowered at his friend a minute. “I don’t know -whether you are interested or not, but you give me an -acute pain. Why in blazes can’t you go along and have -a good time like a fellow ought to without always landing -into the middle of something that fusses you all up? -You think too darn much.... Now there’s Madeleine -and I—you don’t see me doing any worrying or scrapping, -do you? Well!... Nor falling in love. You bet you -don’t! When I fall in love it will be with some American -girl, and then I’ll settle down and raise a family and wear -slippers in the evening. But now I’m out to have what -fun is going before I get my style cramped. I like -Madeleine and she likes me.... That’s all. I’m giving -her a good time, and she’s a good fellow—but that’s all -there is to it. She knows it and I know it, and there you -are. I saw to that right at the start-off. I told her. You -bet I did! I said to her, ‘Now look here, young lady, -we’re just playing, understand. There’s nothing serious -about this. I’m going back to America some day, and -when I do, it’s good-by.’ And she feels the same way -about it.... And that’s the only system.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>Arlette came shuffling into the room after Kendall’s -shoes and responded to Bert’s greeting with a grin and -a bob of her head.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Arlette,” said Bert, “Monsieur Ken’s in love. You’ve -had experience, eh? What’s to be done about it?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Eh?... In love!... <i>Mon Dieu!</i> What does one -do about it? One makes nothing. Either one is in love -or one is not.... I have been in love.” She wagged -her head sagely.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“I knew it. I could tell it just by looking at you. -What did you do?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“I married ... and now I have grandchildren, and -love is no more for me.... But I remember it, messieurs.... -Yes, yes, I often think of it. Is that not droll?” -Again she waggled her head.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“But Monsieur Ken is in love and he doesn’t seem -to like it.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“It happens so,” she said. “There is both joy and -sorrow. But monsieur is loved in return. I have perceived -it. Why, then, is he not joyous?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“You tell the answer. I don’t know.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“He loves Mademoiselle Andree; Mademoiselle Andree -loves him. She is very pretty, very sweet.... Well, -then?” She made a gesture with her arms as if to say -that the thing was beyond human comprehension.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“All the Americans are mad,” said Bert in French, -employing the phrase of the streets.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“It is true,” said Arlette, nodding. “I have seen it.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“And when they are in love they are madder than ever.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“It may well be believed.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Oh, get out and leave me alone, both of you,” Ken -said, morosely.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Nothing of the sort. Explain carefully the difficulty -to Arlette and me. We are the council of experts.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“It’s nothing—except that I was a fool to get mixed up -in this kind of a thing. It’s rotten.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“It’s his conscience, Arlette,” said Bert, with mock -impressiveness.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“When the conscience makes to interfere in a matter -of love,” said Arlette, “it means either that one is not -in love at all or that one is jealous. Love, messieurs, is -its own conscience.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Madeleine said you were jealous last night. Two -experts agree.... Jealous! Um!...”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“I’m not jealous, you gibbering idiot. I—It’s just that -I thought Andree was something and find she’s not.... -It’s the whole idea over here. I thought it was right—and -it’s rotten. I was losing my balance. I thought -wrong could be right.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“It never can be when the other fellow does it,” said -Bert, with more acuteness than usual. “Then you’re -not worrying about marrying Andree? And you have -discovered that you’re being very wicked, and so you’re -in the dumps, and you’re figuring on calling the whole -thing off and living a noble and austere life. Huh!... -What happened last night? You can’t fool your uncle. -You got a letter from home, and then something happened. -What was it?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“I saw Andree with that actor.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“<i>Mon Dieu!</i>” exclaimed Arlette, and she passed off, as -though frightened, to her kitchen.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“You saw them together? Where?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“In a café?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Yes—go on.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“That’s all.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“And you—Oh, say—all this cat-fit is because you -saw Andree in a café with another man! Get out!”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“With that particular man. You know what Jacques -said about him.... You know Andree wants to get -into the <i>Conservatoire</i> and on the stage. I introduced -them—”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“More fool you,” said Bert, succinctly.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“It was plain enough. She could use him. She -needed his influence—so—Oh, what’s the use? I don’t -want to talk about it.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>Bert thought that Ken’s view was altogether likely. -And why not? But he conceived it to be his duty to -argue against it in his friend’s interest. “Just a case of -plain, or garden, jealousy. Nothing to it. You see them -together in a café and jump to conclusions. Didn’t hang -around to see where they went?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Certainly not.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Made up your mind with a snap—and then, because -you were jealous, and it looked as if your nose was out -of joint, you hollered sour grapes. In a second it all -got to be immoral and naughty—and you’re worked up -to a state of mind.... If this actor had never come -along, and if Andree had loved you alone and all that, -would it have been wrong?... Of course not, and you -know it.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>Ken did not reply, but he had an uncomfortable feeling -that Bert was right.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“You’d better give her a chance to explain—or did -you burst in on the party and rear and tear all over the -place?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“They never knew I saw them.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Then, old son, you’d better let Andree tell you about -it. Madeleine says she loves you and Arlette says she -loves you—and, believe me, they’re experts.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“If she loves me, and then would do such a thing, it’s -all the worse.... I’ll never see her again.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Well, if your mind’s made up, there’s the end of the -whole thing. Get up and eat and forget it.... The -river’s full of fish.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“You don’t think I’d try it again. Never!... I’ve -been a fool, and a rotten fool.... I fooled myself into -thinking one could do this kind of thing and not be wrong. -I got it into my head that our ideas of morals in America -were old-fashioned and narrow and absurd, and that the -French were right.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Of course you’d have to philosophize about it.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Well, I’m through now. I’ve got what was coming -to me—and right on top of it there was a letter from -mother.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“I’ll bet I know the kind. I’ve stayed at your house, -you know.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Do you think—” Ken bit his lips and stopped.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“No, and I’m not going to. I’m satisfied. What’s the -use wasting energy thinking when it doesn’t earn you -anything? You got a jolt and a sermon, and between them -they’ve given you a mental twister.... After we’ve -walked down to the office you’ll feel better, son.... Get -up before I haul you out.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>Kendall got heavily out of bed while Bert returned -to his own room to dress. When one is Kendall Ware’s -age the morning should be the pleasantest part of the day, -and usually it is so. One does not arise weary and irritable, -but joyously, looking forward to the day that is coming.... -This morning Ken left his bed like a man of sixty -whose digestion has become the primary consideration of -his life, and who is not fit to enter human society before -noon. He had not slept well, his head was heavy—and -he despised himself. At any rate, he fancied he despised -himself, which makes for the same result. There was the -sharp grief of youth as well, and one does not wisely who -belittles the griefs of youth. It seems to be true that -the energies which make youth wonderful give of their -strength to the pain that youth can feel.... Now he -was certain he had loved Andree and he had never experienced -anything that compared with the distress and -chagrin at his discovery that he had loved an unworthy -object. He had idealized Andree, had made of her something -more than human, something above the laws of -humanity, mystic, of the stuff of which fairies are made, -and she had been proved dross and himself a self-deluded -fool.... He was bitter against himself and her. His -thoughts made him well worthy to accept a high place in -the company of those who gathered in the vestibule of his -church at home....</p> - -<p class='c006'>He approached the table without appetite, and Arlette, -when she brought in the pitcher of chocolate, eyed him -sidewise and askance, and waddled out, shaking her head -uneasily. He could hear her muttering to herself, and it -annoyed him, because he knew she was troubled about -him. Bert had chosen to leave him alone and to let the -thing run its course, so the breakfast was a silent one. -They put on their overseas caps and descended the stairs -without a word.</p> - -<p class='c006'>In the passageway the <i>concierge</i> was waiting for them -with the friendly smile which had always made his returnings -to the apartment seem more like homecomings. -She rested on her broom and wished them good morning.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Your national <i>fête</i> is but a few days away,” she said. -“It is made a national <i>fête</i> for us also—this fourth day of -July. All Paris—all France will make it a day the like -of which has not been seen. I hear this on all sides.... -It is a pleasure to me to have American officers in this -house. I am envied. I speak only the truth. Therefore -I hope messieurs the American officers will procure for -me flags of their country to hang from their windows. -It will be an honor. Will messieurs see to this matter?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Yes, indeed,” said Bert. “I’ll get them for you -to-day.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Many thanks,” she said, and returned to her sweeping.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Nice old lady,” said Bert. “They’re all nice. Cordial -lot—these French people.... I wonder how we would -act in America if we had a couple of millions of foreign -soldiers planted down on us. Mostly we’re disagreeable -to strangers.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>Ken did not answer. He was staring straight before -him and thinking, thinking, thinking. His thoughts were -intolerant thoughts, uncharitable, narrow. It was of -thoughts such as his, persisted in until they become -habitual, that are born the hanging of witches and the -burning of martyrs.... They were not natural to him, -and they filled him with discomfort and restlessness. He -had a vague sense that he was being not altogether fair, -and that he was condemning the whole because of a fault -in a part. All France must not necessarily be evil because -Andree had proved to be faithless, but he was declaring it -to be evil. There was no good in it; there was no good in -anything except the ruthless bigotry which had taken -possession of him. There was no God but Puritanism, and -Narrowness was its prophet....</p> - -<p class='c006'>They reached the Élysées Palace Hotel in which were -their offices. He had not enjoyed his walk; there had -been none of that pleasure which always before he derived -from the great open stretches and wide boulevards of -Paris. Beauty had ceased to exist or to signify.... He -had a sensation of being shriveled up and dried—of lifelessness, -and his thoughts seemed to rub against one -another like sand-paper.... He saw it all as the unpleasant -process of a moral awakening; it was not that; -it was the disgruntlement of a youth over a love-affair -gone awry....</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Hope it wears off during the day,” said Bert.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Ken only grunted, and turned up the stairs.</p> - -<p class='c006'>It was a futile day and he was glad when it came to an -end. It was not until he was hanging his cap on the hall -tree that he remembered Andree was to come—to come -there to dine this evening. He paused with hand in mid-air -as he recalled how they had made the plan. Hereafter -she was not to meet him at the Metro, but would come -directly to the apartment. It would be better, and there -was something exquisitely attractive about it. He had -been very happy. Her lips had been close to his as -she had given her promise to come there to him; the -perfume of her had been in his nostrils, and in that -maddening way of perfumes it returned now unasked and -undesired. It was almost as if she were there, close to -him, but invisible. He remembered that she had lain in -his arms at the moment, smiling, sweet, a marvelous -creature to be treasured with a great tenderness.... And -she had gone from that to a meeting with another man—to -purchase material success at the price of spurious -love!...</p> - -<p class='c006'>What should he do? He did not want to see her, felt -that he could not undergo the ordeal of seeing her.... -He snatched his cap and turned to the door, only to replace -it again on the hall tree and to stand wavering, undecided.... -He did not know it, would not admit it, but his -heart cried out to see her, to feel the delight of her presence.... -He despised her, but he loved her.... As -one does at such moments, he sought refuge in sophistry. -It was necessary for him to see her this last single time. -He must tell her that he had detected her infamy and, with -harsh words, cast her out of his life. He told himself -that this was both appropriate and essential.... Yes, -he would allow her to come and would admit her—and -then—and then she should hear the truth, the bald truth. -She should hear what a decent man thought of such -behavior as hers.... Not that it would benefit her or -change a character that could be guilty of the thing of -which she was guilty.... But he had to accuse her.... -It was the desire, the cruel desire, which comes to -every man at some moment, for some cause, to inflict -agony on the one he most loves....</p> - -<p class='c006'>Kendall glanced at his watch. It wanted fifteen -minutes to seven, the hour at which Andree would arrive, -so he went into the <i>salon</i>, there to pace up and down, -restlessly composing dignified but biting speeches one -after the other and forgetting them as soon as composed.... -Bert entered and spoke to him, but Kendall only -growled, and Bert passed into his own room with a shrug. -From the door to the window Kendall paced, and from -the window to the door, to and fro, with rapid, excited -stride. As the moment of Andree’s arrival neared, his -thoughts became less coherent and himself more apprehensive. -He felt that it was his duty to be very angry, -so he worked himself up to anger.... Then came a soft, -timid rap at the door.</p> - -<p class='c006'>He strode into the hall and flung the door open savagely. -There stood Andree, fragile, lovely, appealing, her face -turned up to his with that wistful question which it -always wore when they first met. She looked so dainty, -so small, so sweet!... Her eyes met his and waited a -moment for his smile of welcome before they smiled. -Always she seemed to be afraid—afraid that she would -not read welcome in his eyes. He remembered it, and -her look accused him. He stood silent, staring. Her -lips parted at the strangeness of his manner and he saw -astonishment grow in her dark-shaded eyes.... He -found the rage up to which he had worked himself slipping -away from him; as he looked down at her it even seemed -impossible to believe that she was not all he had thought -her to be. There was an innocence, a trustfulness about -her.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Come in, mademoiselle,” he said, coldly, stepping -back to permit her to pass.</p> - -<p class='c006'>She entered slowly, diffidently. He could see that she -was surprised, hurt by his manner, and a feeling of guilt -overtook him. She stopped near him and turned expectantly.... -He understood. He was expected to act -the lover; she was awaiting his lover-like greeting.... -He discovered how much bolder and more resolute one -may be in anticipation than at the required moment.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Do not take off your things,” he said, striving to keep -his voice steady and emotionless. “Will you come in -here?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>She obeyed silently, with a silence that came from sudden -apprehension. He followed her and stood before her, -searching for words with which to begin, and she, her -face grave and a little sad, as was its custom, stood very -still, but once or twice her eyes turned upward quickly -to read his face. The speeches he had prepared against -this moment had hidden themselves away, and he was -left with an uncomfortable feeling of inadequacy to the -event. He hesitated; the silence became unsupportable, -and he began with sudden harshness, a harshness that a -little frightened himself when he heard it.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“I never intended to see you again,” he said, “but I -forgot you were coming here to-night.” He spoke in -English, rapidly, but she understood him, for her eyes -lifted now and remained fixed on his own, dark, frightened, -appealing. He looked into them and turned hastily away. -There was a magic in them that he feared; they seemed -so pure, so honest.... Her lips parted a little, but she -did not speak.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“I loved you,” he said, hoarsely, “and I trusted you.... -I thought you were good and honest. I trusted you, -do you understand? Trusted you and believed in you.” -Words were coming more easily now, and with facility in -speech returned what he fancied to be his righteous anger. -“I was a fool.... I thought that you, even brought up -in this city, in this way of life, could be good and faithful.... -You fooled me—I should have known better. It -was my own fault.... But I’ve got my lesson. I’ve -seen. I know now.... I loved you—I was all ready to -love you—but I despise you.... Do you understand? -I despise you. You are bad—bad. You said you loved -me and you gave me your love—and it was all a lie.... -How many other men are you telling the same thing? -Is every day given to somebody?” He was bitter now, -cruelly bitter.</p> - -<p class='c006'>She did not speak, but stared up at him as though -she did not believe, at least as if she did not understand. -Her face was pitiful in its surprise and pain. Motionless, -without movement or gesture, she stood and looked up -into his face as a dog might look into the face of his -master, knowing that master is about to shoot him to -death.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“I never want to see you again. I want to forget you. -I wish I could forget that I ever saw you and all that has -happened. Probably it doesn’t matter to you. Maybe -you don’t see any harm in what you’ve done—but it was -squalid and contemptible.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>His voice rose with his anger and she shrank back from -him. Bert, startled, came hurrying into the room and -stopped with amazement.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Ken,” he exclaimed, “easy ... easy. What’s all this?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Please go away, Bert.... I’m telling her what I -think of her.... Go away.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>Bert looked curiously at Andree, who did not move her -eyes from Kendall’s face, and then he shook his head.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“No need to shout,” he said. “You’re excited, old -man.” He turned to Andree. “You mustn’t mind him. -He’s wrought up about something.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>Andree did not appear to notice that Bert was present.</p> - -<p class='c006'>He laid his hand on Kendall’s arm. “Come along,” he -said. “Don’t say something you’ll be sorry for.... If -you want Andree to go away, I’ll take her.... Come -on into your room.” He was really apprehensive, for -Kendall’s eyes glowed somberly, his face was convulsed -with toxic emotion.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Ken shook off his friend’s hand. “Leave me be.... -This is my affair.” He pointed to the door. “Go!...” -he said to Andree, his voice quivering. “You don’t know -what you’ve done—what miserable thing you’ve done.... -I despise you.... I despise you....”</p> - -<p class='c006'>Bert stepped forward and touched her arm. “You’d -better go, I guess,” he said in a low tone. “Ken’s pretty -excited. Let me take you down.” His voice was -sympathetic.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Andree did not move. “Oh, I do not onderstan’.... -I do not onderstan’ ...” she said, like a frightened -child.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Don’t lie,” said Kendall, furiously. “Go!... And -never come back.... I’ll never see you again.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>She stood an instant more, her eyes seeking his, demanding -of his. Then, very slowly, very quietly, without -sob or even a quiver of her dainty lips, she turned and -walked to the door. There she paused and turned to -look at him again, rather drooping, hopeless, appealing.... -“Oh, it is not well.... I do not onderstan’,” she -said.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Kendall turned his back.... In another instant the -door had opened and closed and Andree was gone. -He stood with hands clenched, experiencing a certain -unholy satisfaction. He had done the thing thoroughly. -He had finished it. He had told her what he thought of -her, and he was rid of her forever.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Presently Bert returned. He walked up to his friend -with a grim look upon his usually nonchalant face. “That -was pretty average brutal,” he said. “Maybe it’s good -Presbyterian to do that sort of thing.... If it is, I -thank God I’m a heathen.... That poor little kid! Did -you see her face?...”</p> - -<div class='chapter'> - <h2 class='c004'>CHAPTER XVI</h2> -</div> - -<p class='c005'>Arlette stood in the dining-room door, making her -silent announcement that dinner was served. Her -round eyes, which usually wore an expression of surprise, -were now frightened, and she stared at Kendall as if he -were some sort of explosive that was likely to go off at -any moment with a tremendous explosion. Then she -withdrew her head and could be heard padding out to the -kitchen.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Come on,” said Bert. “Dinner’s on.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“I don’t want any dinner.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“You don’t deserve any dinner,” said Bert, hotly, -“but you’ve got to eat.” He pushed Ken toward the -dining-room. “In with you.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>Kendall obeyed apathetically, took his chair and began -to eat automatically, without interest in his food. He -had anticipated a sort of barbarous pleasure from his -harshness toward Andree, but found it ashes in his mouth. -He was ashamed of himself, and then ashamed of himself -again for being ashamed. He had done right, exactly -right, he insisted. She had deserved what he had given -her, but nevertheless he was ashamed of himself. There -are two identities in every man, the emotional, the sentimental, -the natural—and the intellectual. Either of -these identities may perform actions satisfactory to itself -but abhorrent to the other. Kendall’s intellectual -and logical self was content; his emotional self accused -him.... If one would be happy, if he would gain and -retain affection, if he would have the best gifts of life for -himself and those with whom he comes in contact, he -should place confidence in his emotional self rather than -his intellectual. The emotions are natural and for the -most part kindly. They do not operate by rule and -precept, but spontaneously; intellect is artificial and logic -is without the warmth of life.... Even the law recognizes -a distinction, for it does not punish a crime of -emotion with the severity that it metes out to the crime -of cold reason. Peter was emotional, he denied his -Master, yet was forgiven and stands chief of the companions -of Christ; Judas took logical thought and betrayed. -He committed the unforgivable sin. The difference -was not so much in kind as in cause....</p> - -<p class='c006'>“What would you have done?” he demanded, suddenly, -of Bert.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“I wouldn’t have been so infernally brutal.... You -and I have been friends a long time, haven’t we?... -Well, right now I’m nearer to wanting to give you a -thrashing than I thought I could ever come. It was -rotten!... Poor kid!... And the way she took it! -Without a word or a whimper!... But did you see her -face?... I came darn near blubbing.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“She deserved it.... She did. She did a rotten thing—and -anybody would think it was I who was to blame. -I won’t be put in the wrong.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“I’m not going to quarrel with you. You asked me -what I thought, and I told you.... I wouldn’t have -the confounded conscience you have to live with for a -million dollars. I’m no angel. I suppose I do a lot of -things the righteous folks back home would think were -pretty bad. I’m not much on religion, either. But, -all the same, if there is a God, I’ll bet He’s a lot more -apt to take a liking to the fellow who is a bit off color, -but tries to be sort of kind and tolerant, and not to hurt -folks, than He is to the man who lives up to every letter -and punctuation mark of the law, and does it like a brute.... -From what I’ve seen of you stiff-necked, righteous -folks, if I were God I’d be pretty average sore to think -I had to have heaven crowded with you. You’d irritate -me till I let in a bunch of sinners just to get some decent -company....”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Right is right and wrong is wrong.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Huh!... Maybe! But who knows what is right -and what is wrong? It’s a guess, and everybody does -his own guessing.... There are your Ten Commandments, -sure enough, but you can’t regulate the whole -world and all it does with ten little rules.... Let’s see! -Wasn’t there an eleventh commandment later on? I -used to go to Sunday-school myself. Something to the -effect that you ought to love your neighbor as yourself? -A God that could make that sort of a commandment -isn’t going to be too stiff-backed about the other ten. -No, sir.... Things are too mixed up for <i>anything</i> to be -all wrong or all right. Everything’s a mixture—and the -more of that love-your-neighbor stuff there is in it, why, -my notion is, the nearer it is to what is really good.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>Ken was surprised. He had never accused Bert of so -much abstract speculation, and perhaps Bert had not been -speculating consciously before. It was rather that these -ideas had been taking root in him and growing spontaneously. -Possibly Bert was himself astonished to find -himself uttering such ideas.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“It’s over now,” Bert said, presently, “so let’s shut up -about it. You’re in a devil of a state of mind, and the -only thing to get rid of <i>that</i> is to walk it off. As soon as -I finish this cheese I’m going to take you out and walk -you till you’re human again—or till you drop.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“I’ll walk.... I’ll do anything. I want to get outdoors -and move.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Come on, then, sonny, but be genial—be genial. It’s -a walk we’re going for, not a march to the grave.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>They walked over to the rue du Faubourg St.-Honoré, -which presented to them a face of little second-class shops, -dairy products, bakeries, locksmiths, antiques, wine-shops, -variety-stores, in front of every second one of which was -its cat—a huge, sleek Thomas or a matronly old Tabby -keeping an eye on two or three adventurous kittens. The -street seemed to have a special leaning toward the feline -in pets. But, then, all Paris is a sanctuary for cats, which -is remarkable when one takes into account the number of -dogs, and even jackals and young foxes, the latter affected -by the ladies. It may be that there is a permanent -truce between the dogs and cats in Paris. Bert remarked -that he had never seen a cat chased by a dog there. -Possibly, he declared, it might be the system. American -dogs chased cats. It was their moral code to do so; -Parisian dogs left cats alone, for a similar reason.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“It’s all a matter of where you live,” he said, in an -effort to arouse Kendall. “Maybe there’s a place in the -world where they put deacons in jail and look up reverently -to burglars. You can’t tell. I suppose folks could agree -among themselves to almost anything.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Except to alter a natural law,” said Ken, harshly.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Natural law, eh? What’s a natural law? To be -sure, I get you. The shortest distance between two points, -and gravitation, and that sort of thing. I guess nobody -could change them, but, so far as I can see, they’re the -only settled things in the world. Natural laws—pretty -good name for them. Means they come right from -nature without people’s tinkering with them at all, -doesn’t it?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Yes.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“That’s the kind of law for me—the sort you can’t -disobey and so get in wrong.... But the other -kind—what’ll we call ’em—that’s something else again, Mawrus. -The kind of law that has to be agreed upon by a majority -before it goes to work isn’t such a serious matter in the -long run. I mean, it is important only to the majority -that agrees on it. Some other majority in the next -county might agree to its exact opposite. Like local -option. It’s a sin to sell liquor on one side of a fence and -a legitimate business on the other.... Huh!... I -never got to thinking how funny it all was before.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>How curious it was, thought Kendall, with quickened -interest, that Bert should rather clumsily be following a -line of reasoning that he himself had followed with deeper -study and more particularity during the past weeks!... -Could there really be something in it, after all? He had -been sure of it yesterday, but yesterday was gone forever, -and that had happened since which made the affairs and -reasonings of yesterday repulsive to him.... But—the -dogmatism, the harsh, uncompromising, puritanical -attitude he had chosen to take quivered a very little on its -foundations....</p> - -<p class='c006'>They proceeded onward past the Ministry of the -Interior on their left, and on their right the building with -its great central court, and its archway through which -could be seen broad, red-carpeted steps, which was the -French White House—the residence of France’s President. -Now small cafés and wine-shops became more numerous, -and the shops to partake of a better quality.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Hey!” said Bert, stopping, “want to introduce you -to a friend.” He stepped into a little wine-shop and -spoke to the young woman behind the bar, who lifted -her voice loudly, calling a name that Kendall could not -catch. In a moment a rather dirty, but very bright-eyed, -bull-terrier appeared from the rear and stood looking at -Bert expectantly. Bert selected a copper from his -pocket and put it in the dog’s mouth. The creature -waggled his tail violently and trotted out into the -street.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Watch him,” Bert urged.</p> - -<p class='c006'>The dog trotted into the adjoining baker’s shop, -barked once sharply with a note of command. A young -woman leaned far over the counter, holding out her hand, -into which the dog dropped his coin and stood expectant -while she selected a roll and handed it to him. Then, in -the most dignified manner, he paced back to Bert, waggled -his tail in thanks, waited to be patted, and withdrew -under a table to eat his dainty.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“There!” said Bert. “Finest dog in Paris. Wish I -could buy him. Say, wasn’t that great?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Huh!...” grunted Kendall, rather astonished that -anybody could be interested in dogs when the world was -coming down in awful ruin as his world was coming down.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Bert was offended. To him that dog was one of the -sights of Paris, and, when he returned to America, it -would be that animal and his little piece of cleverness -that he would describe rather than anything else he had -seen in Paris. The dog was worth coming to see.... -Notre Dame was just a dingy pile of stones.... Yet, -somewhere in him was a strain that was able to speculate -on the attitude of God toward Pharisees and sinners....</p> - -<p class='c006'>They continued in silence until they reached the -Place du Théâtre Français, with the Palais Royal before -them and the Comédie Française, and with the magnificent -breadth of the Avenue de l’Opéra angling sharply to the -left. Across the open space was the University Union, -and Bert suggested dropping in to see if any acquaintances -were lounging about, when suddenly they were hailed -from a distance, and, turning, saw Jacques, wooden leg -grotesquely swinging at an angle from his body, hat -swinging about his head, and cane describing enthusiastic -circles. Jacques was trying to run to catch them. His -method was to take two hops with his sound leg and then -one lurch with the artificial one. There was a devil-may-care -jauntiness about this unusual gait and a good-fellowship -about his eccentric salutations that, somehow, -always gained him a welcome.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Ah,” he shouted, when yet he was thirty feet away, -“I have find you! I have surround you—eh? Where -’ave you been? I have not seen you for <i>longtemps</i>.... -And Monsieur Kendall. It ees well. We are friends and -<i>camarades</i>.... I have speak about you thees evening—you, -Monsieur Kendall. Ho! you have the great good -fortune, <i>n’est-ce pas</i>? I give you my felicitations. I -salute you.... Ah, messieurs, eet was <i>magnifique, -splendide</i>!...”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“What was magnificent, Jacques? Take a breath and -start in fresh,” Bert admonished.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Jacques patted Ken on the back. “Oh, he ees a good -boy, thees Monsieur Kendall. He deserve the good fortune, -<i>mais</i>, messieurs, it ees of a grandeur. Again I make -the congratulations.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Why? Why? Why?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Bicause,” said Jacques, becoming preternaturally -solemn, “bicause monsieur ees loved.” He paused. “<i>Oui</i>, -he ees loved ver’ well by beautiful yo’ng girl who ees ver’ -<i>fidèle</i>. It ees one beautiful theeng. I make to weep -w’en it ees tol’ to me. <i>Vraiment!</i> The tear she stand in -my eyes. <i>Sacré nom d’une pipe!</i> but it ees the theme for a -poem.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“What in thunder are you talking about? Light on a -bough, little bird, light.” Bert grasped Jacques by the -shoulder and pretended to hold him down to earth. -“Now, little man, come clean. Tell the story and don’t -bubble over.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“It ees the leetle sweetheart of Monsieur Kendall—thees -so graceful and beautiful yo’ng girl that has for her -name Andree. She weesh for enter into the <i>Académie</i> and -<i>après</i> to be an actress. It is so.... To do this is ver’ -<i>difficile</i>. It is necessary first to have much influence. -Monsieur Kendall know thees. Yes. <i>Alors</i>, Monsieur -Kendall introduce thees yo’ng girl to Monsieur Robert. -I am present and see. Also I warn monsieur that thees -Robert loves all young girl.... What would you? The -theeng befalls yesterday. As Monsieur Robert emerges -from the Metro near the Place St.-Michel he see bifore -him thees Mademoiselle Andree, walking weeth her eyes -so careful upon the sidewalk—so.” Jacques imitated -Andree’s demure glance. “She do not see Robert until he -address her. She is startle’—ver’ much startle’, but -Monsieur Robert he is polite, <i>oui</i>, he is <i>très-gentil</i>. He -ask mademoiselle will she promenade weeth heem, and -she cannot refuse. Next he ask will she dine weeth heem, -and she ees too sweet and gentle to hurt hees feeling, so -she consent....”</p> - -<p class='c006'>Bert felt Kendall grasp his arm with fingers that -gripped to the bone.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Then they eat, this Mademoiselle Andree and Monsieur -Robert, and he say to her if she will be kind to -heem he make her to enter into the <i>Académie</i>, and give -her hees influence, which is much, that she bicome a -success, weeth all Paris at her feet.... It was wonderful -chance for poor yo’ng girl, <i>n’est-ce pas</i>? One million girl -they jump at it. Truly.... But thees mademoiselle she -shake her head and say no—and why, messieurs?... -Bicause she love thees yo’ng man here ver’ true and is -<i>fidèle</i>. It ees the truth, and it ees ver’ beautiful.... -Monsieur Robert say thees yo’ng man make himself to go -away and leave her <i>solitaire</i>. Mademoiselle makes to him -the reply that it does not matter—for weeth Monsieur -Kendall she have the wonderful little moment of happiness -w’ich is more splendid, more magnificent, more to be -desired than any other theeng in the worl’ ... bicause -it ees the great love.... Yes, she say thees theeng to -Robert, who admire so much he kees her hand, and now he -tells me and others, and as he tell the tear stands in his -eyes. He theenk Mademoiselle Andree she has make the -great success, to which nothing can compare, a success -much times greater than fame or than glory—bicause -it is a success of the soul.... So I make many compliments -to Monsieur Kendall—many compliments....”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Bert ...” said Ken, in a voice that was little more -than a whisper. “Bert....”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Ees monsieur ill?” asked Jacques.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“No, Jacques. Just out of sorts—worried,” said Bert. -“I’m walking it out of him.... Mighty glad to have -met you, old man.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>Kendall turned to Jacques. “What you say about -Andree—is it true? You are sure?...”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“<i>Certainement</i>.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Of course,” Ken answered, slowly. “I didn’t doubt -it.... It sounded like the truth.... I thank you, -Jacques. Some day I’ll thank you better.” He held -out his hand. “Good night, Jacques.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>He turned away, and Bert, after shaking hands with -the exuberant little Frenchman, followed. Jacques stood -for a moment staring after them, then waved his cane in the -air for no purpose whatever, and said, perplexedly, “<i>Tous -les Américains sont fous....</i>”</p> - -<p class='c006'>Ken walked rapidly, as one in haste to reach a definite -destination; he did not speak. Bert, keeping pace with -him, watched his friend’s face covertly; it was a gray -mask without expression, a mask that seemed to tell a -tale of years double that which made the total of Kendall’s -life.</p> - -<p class='c006'>They diagonaled across the Place Marengo and at a -more acute angle through the Place du Louvre to the -Quai du Louvre and crossed the Pont Neuf, which -carried them over the broader arm of the Seine, the -upper point of the Cité, where to their left arose the -dark mass of the Palais de Justice, and across the narrower -branch of the river to the Quai des Augustins. -Presently the Place St.-Michel opened before them, -and, as Kendall turned into it Bert stopped to demand -where they were going.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“To find her,” said Kendall.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Bert nodded. “I thought so.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>It was like Kendall—to start upon a search for her -immediately. Just as jealousy, made more vicious by -an attack of Puritan conscience, had caused him to drive -Andree out of his life, so now that same conscience demanded -that immediate reparation be made. If Bert -knew his friend, then Kendall would be unable to rest -until he had seen Andree, until he had debased himself -before her and begged her forgiveness....</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Does she live here?” he asked.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Near the Panthéon some place.... I don’t know. -I haven’t her address.... Bert, I don’t even know her -last name!”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Eh? What’s that?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“I don’t know her name.... Somehow that was a -part of it—the mystery—not knowing. It—I can’t -explain it to you—but she seemed like something dainty -and lovely that appeared out of nothingness. I never -asked, because I didn’t want to know. She appeared and -disappeared—like a fairy.... It was as if she were immaterial -and only materialized herself for me—do you -understand?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“I’m darned if I do.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“I always left her a little ways beyond—on the rue -Soufflot. She went on alone toward the Panthéon. -That’s all I know. Just that her name was Andree—and -that she could appear and disappear. It was that unreality -that made the whole thing possible.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“A few practical details would make the whole thing -a lot more possible now.... What do you aim to do?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Wait for her.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Huh!... Where?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“At the corner of the rue Soufflot.... She may pass -to-night.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“And she may not pass for a month.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Then I’ll wait a month,” said Kendall, and Bert -knew that his friend meant what he said.</p> - -<p class='c006'>They walked on up the boulevard and took seats at a -table in that very café where Kendall had seen Andree -and Monsieur Robert the night before. He could see that -table, occupied now by a <i>poilu</i> and his sweetheart.... -Bert ordered coffee for them, which came in thick glasses -accompanied by a bottle of <i>saccharin</i> for the sweetening. -Kendall left his glass untouched while his eyes fixed -themselves on the street, now becoming ever more rapidly -hidden by the dusk. Many people were passing, <i>habitués</i> -of the Quartier Latin; young men in uniform with girls -on their arms, skylarking, humming the chorus of “Madelon”; -old women making a last effort of the day to sell -bright-colored Rintintins and Ninettes fabricated out of -worsteds, those quaint little charms which were all the -rage in Paris, and which were supposed to make one safe -from Big Bertha and the bomb of the air raid. One -young girl passed clinging to the arm of a youth in a -broad hat, baggy corduroy trousers, paint-daubed coat, -and flowing tie—a figure who might have stepped out of -the pages of Henri Mürger. He seemed the very genius -of the Latin Quarter, a hungry <i>peintre</i> with canvas under -his arm, and his gay-hearted little mistress who cooked his -meals and shared his hunger and poverty brightly.... -Kendall watched them go and envied them the thing that -was theirs. Now and then a gendarme, wearing his short -sword, passed stiffly.... It became darker and darker, -and the crowd in the café thinned itself away until nobody -remained but himself and Bert. Impatient waiters began -piling up chairs and moving tables against the wall. -Dim, hooded, blue street-lights glowed in the distance, -making the boulevard ghastly and somber.... The -darkness became impenetrable, but still Kendall lingered, -hoping, demanding that Andree’s dainty little figure -appear.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“No use, Ken,” Bert said. “She won’t come now, and -if she did you wouldn’t be able to see her.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“I can’t go till I’m sure,” Ken answered.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Let’s walk, then. More chance of seeing her out on -the sidewalk.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>They arose and sauntered slowly toward the Panthéon, -crossing the very spot where Andree had given Kendall -that first kiss.... They retraced their steps. The -streets were now all but deserted; only here and there -was a hurrying figure, or upon some bench along the curb -a pair of lovers sitting close and whispering in each -other’s ears.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“It’s eleven o’clock,” said Bert. “Come on home.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Yes,” said Ken. “It is too late now. She won’t -come to-night....”</p> - -<p class='c006'>Suddenly the air was rent by the wail of the siren; -the avions were coming! One heard cries of anger or -fright, saw dark blots resolve into hurried action as -loiterers sought places of refuge.... A fire-engine swept -by with gnome-like black figures clinging to it, and that -voice like some horrid wail from the pit rising from it as -a fireman turned the handle of the siren.... It was a -voice that matched Kendall’s humor—a voice of despair, -a voice that made audible a thing which described to his -ear all that was evil and squalid and treacherous and -unforgivable that lurked in the black and stealthy warrens -of the world....</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Let’s get out of this,” said Bert.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Kendall did not want to go, and the less so now that -there was danger.... Andree was in danger and, somehow, -he felt that his place, if it could not be with her, -was as near to her as he could station himself. He was -alarmed. People were killed in these air raids. There -were always casualties.... What if a bomb—what if -he should never be able to see Andree again to make -matters right with her? How if he should be prevented -from entreating her pardon for the ugly wrong he had -done her and for his brutality—he could recognize it as -brutality now.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Yet, mixed with all his self-accusation, his bitter heartache -and wretchedness, there ran a vein of relief—actual -relief, and of something like comfort. The pendulum of -his subconscious self was swaying downward, preparatory -to the upward sweep in the opposite direction.... The -world was good, there was good in the world. All was -not suspicion and sin; one might have faith in humanity.... -The vestibule of the home church with its crowd -of bigots seemed cold and untrue now, though they had -appeared the one safe and living thing in the world so -short a time ago.... Andree was good. He had not been -mistaken in her; and if Andree was good, then other -things and people must be good likewise.... Even -Paris....</p> - -<p class='c006'>They descended into the Metro whose underground -platforms were crowded with refuge-seekers of all classes -and ages, who clustered together and railed against the -<i>boche</i>. It was impossible to find a seat.... In half an -hour many were sitting on the concrete floor: mothers -with children sleeping in their laps; youths supporting -the heads of sweethearts on willing shoulders; sleepy -and frowsy old men and slatternly old women with hair -that hung gray and unpleasant before their eyes. A -gendarme prevented any from ascending the stairs to the -open air.</p> - -<p class='c006'>It seemed hours, though it was only a trifle more than -an hour before the “all clear” was sounded. The mighty -clamor of the barrage and of falling bombs had penetrated -only as a dim rumble to that depth. There had been no -excitement, no exhilaration, only damp, cold discomfort. -The refugees made their way stiffly to the out-of-doors, -Kendall and Bert in their midst.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“If I should never find her—” Ken said, uneasily.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“You will.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“But if she should refuse to listen.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Um.... I shouldn’t blame her. But you know her, -son, better than I. I saw her eyes to-night—and I -shouldn’t worry. They were the sort of eyes that forgive -much.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Yes,” said Kendall, slowly. “But she will remember. -She is that sort, too. She will never forget—and this -thing will always be there, never to be gotten rid of.... -She will look at me, and I will see it in her eyes, that she -is wondering and that she is afraid—that I might do such -a thing again....”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“The trouble with you is too darn much imagination,” -Bert said, disgustedly. “Let’s get to bed. Work goes -on to-morrow, whatever happens.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>Work would go on and life would go on; death would -continue to claim its own and births would replenish the -races of the earth; there would be sorrow and joy, sin -and repentance, squalor and luxury, in spite of anything -that happened to him.... Kendall seized upon this -thought. He was infinitely small, of less than negligible -importance in the world’s scheme.... Events would -transpire as usual, and the story of mankind would continue -adding to itself chapter by chapter. It was inevitable.... -Just as it was inevitable that the <i>motif</i> -of the story should be love, and that so long as it should -continue to be love the good should predominate the evil, -and the ending, though it might threaten to be tragic, -must be happy for the majority. He saw, for the first -time, that a world in which love is the first essential cannot -be a lost world nor an unhappy world. He wondered if -love, in whatever form it showed itself, was not merely -the essence of <i>good</i> masquerading under another style. -In that case to love was to be virtuous.... He inclined -to believe it. The reflection made him easier of mind.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“I think I can sleep,” he said to Bert, and they turned -their faces homeward.</p> - -<div class='chapter'> - <h2 class='c004'>CHAPTER XVII</h2> -</div> - -<p class='c005'>Kendall Ware woke up to a world which was -not all straight lines and angles, which was not an -uncompromising and rule-of-thumb world as it had -seemed yesterday. To-day it was a world in which -curves and even curlicues were permissible. Yesterday -he was in sympathy with the Blue Laws and could have -understood a God who frowned if a man were to kiss his -wife of a Sabbath. To-day he could not comprehend the -attitude of yesterday, hardly remembered it, in fact. -He was young, and rapid changes of attitude were possible -to him as the heart was heavy or light, as events were kind -or harsh. It would not have been true to say that he -was light of heart this morning, but his heart was in a -condition to become light, needing only to find Andree -and to receive Andree’s forgiveness to make it so.</p> - -<p class='c006'>As was characteristic, the pendulum of his convictions -had swung to the opposite and most remote point of its -arc; where yesterday any deviation from orthodox rule -and rigid form had been a sin, to-day he was inclined to -err on the side of liberality. It seemed, rather, as if -nothing could be wholly evil, and this simply because it -had been shown to him that Andree was not evil and that -his relations with her need not of necessity be degrading. -Yesterday he had been possessed by his inheritances from -his mother; to-day his father was in control. Just as the -one had been exaggerated, so now the other was in extreme.... -And therefore he could conceive happiness -and stand upon the brink of happiness.... To be able -to perceive virtue is to be happy. It is a perception which -is its own reward....</p> - -<p class='c006'>Last night he had been afraid he would never find -Andree; now he was certain she would be easy to find. -It was the matter of forgiveness that caused his uneasiness. -He had been brutal, harsh, presenting an unlovely spectacle. -It was such a spectacle of a man’s self as might -prove fatal to love, for who can love the unlovely? And -yet when he thought of Andree’s gentleness, her sweetness, -of all the many indications he had seen of a gracious -and tender character, he even dared to hope that he had -not offended past condoning.</p> - -<p class='c006'>He arose impatiently, eager for the day to commence -so that it might end and enable him to take up his search.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Bert!” he called. “Up yet?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Getting up,” Bert answered, drowsily.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Is Arlette here yet?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Haven’t heard her.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“What in thunder’s getting into her! Doesn’t she know -a fellow’s got to have breakfast in the morning?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Huh—she isn’t due for quarter of an hour. What’s -the sudden rush?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>Before he was fully clothed Arlette rapped on his closed -door to demand his shoes, which he passed out to her, -together with his puttees, and walked into Bert’s room, -wearing bedroom slippers.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Some uniform,” said Bert, eying the spectacle. “Ought -to recommend it to the General Staff. Swagger, I call it. -Now if you only wore red socks.... H’m! How you -feeling this morning?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Hungry.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Surprising, seeing you didn’t eat anything all day -yesterday.” Bert studied his friend’s face covertly and -found reason for satisfaction. With more tact than his -character warranted one to expect, he let the subject -of yesterday rest there and did not again refer to it. He -finished shaving in his usual leisurely manner, put on his -blouse and belt, and was just in time to receive his shoes -and leggings from Arlette.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Mind having dinner late to-night?” Ken asked.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“No. Why?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“I—I hope Andree will be here.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“H’m!... Want me to look up Madeleine?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Rather you didn’t. We’ll—Well, you can see yourself -that we’ll have a lot of talking to do.... I’ve got to -square myself.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“I’ll clear out altogether and let you have the place -to yourselves.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“No need. I might not—it’s possible I won’t find -her.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>Bert thought that was highly probable, but he did not -say so. “Just as you say,” he said. “What time?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Eight o’clock. If I’m not here by that time, go -ahead and eat.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“What about you?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“I’m going to camp in that café on the corner there -until I find her.” Ken’s jaws became prominent. “I’ll -stay there till I’m a permanent improvement.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>Arlette came in, casting apprehensive glances at -Kendall; she was unsmiling and had nothing to say -beyond the greetings of the morning. Ken realized that -he was in her disfavor.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Arlette,” he said.</p> - -<p class='c006'>She paused in the door and, glancing up to his face -quickly, let her eyes shift to the carpet. “Yes, monsieur,” -she said.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“You’re angry with me.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“<i>Non, monsieur.</i>”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Yes you are. You should be. I’ve been a fool.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>She looked up again, this time scrutinizing his face -more carefully. “Monsieur did not conduct himself with -wisdom,” she said.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“What should I have done, Arlette?” He was really -curious to know what she would answer.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“It is never wise to hurt where one is loved,” she said. -“Also one should be sure that no mistake is made—”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“But it was a mistake, Arlette.... If you loved as -you told me you did once, and the man you loved behaved -as I did, what would you do? Would you forgive -him?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Me?” said Arlette. “Ah, who can say! It is many -years, and love is only a thing to remember sometimes.... -But I, monsieur, was not as Mademoiselle Andree is. -Oh, no. There was weight to me, and a temper of the -highest. Oh yes, and I spoke many words with great -readiness. It is so.... What would you? Mademoiselle -Andree is not at any point the same. She is gentle and -sweet, monsieur, and it may be she is forgiving. As for me, -I think if any man had so behaved to me he would have -taken himself away with words in his ear that, I’ll warrant, -would have leaped through to his clumsy brain, <i>oui</i>, and -with other reminders that I was not to be dealt with after -such a manner.... But, as I have said, I was of a weight, -and my temper was high.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“But you would have forgiven?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>Arlette waggled her head and wiped her chin on the -back of her hand. “At least,” she said, “I should have -made him earn my forgiveness.... Oh, Monsieur Ken, -it was not well for you to treat her so; it was of a cruelty.... -But I believe she will forgive; her eyes were of the -kind that forgive with too great readiness.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>She turned and was about to disappear when she leaned -far back to allow her face to present itself at a droll angle -in the doorway. “Jealousy,” she said, “is a disease that -makes heavy hearts. In very truth, I have seen it.... -It is much better if one is not jealous. One cannot at the -same time be jealous and wise.... And always there -are regrets.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Will you have dinner at eight to-night? A nice dinner. -I hope to find Mademoiselle Andree and bring her home -again.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Find her? But monsieur has but to go to her address. -She has not gone away?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“I do not know her address.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>Arlette sighed and waggled her head ponderously.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Then monsieur must apply to the police. All addresses -are known to the police.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“But I don’t know her name—only Andree.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Name of God!... Can such things be? Oh, these -Americans! Who has seen their like? Not know her -name, not know her address. It is of an impossibility!... -Does he speak truly, monsieur?” she demanded of -Bert, who nodded in the affirmative.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“<i>Mon Dieu!... Mon Dieu!...</i>” she exclaimed, and -waddled off to the kitchen as if she dared no longer trust -her body in the presence of such a madman.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“There,” said Bert, “now you know what a respectable -body thinks of you. Apparently she thinks all Americans -are in the habit of cutting up such capers. Most likely -she believes addresses don’t count with us because we -live under trees like savages, and never go back to the -same tree twice....”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Anybody who doesn’t do things exactly as you yourself -do them is a savage. We think the French are -barbarians, the French think we are barbarians, and the -English consider both of us savages.... Come on, it’s -time we were starting.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>When they reached the street Ken began to walk -swiftly, as if by hurrying now he could make the day pass -more quickly. At the office he plunged into his work, -taking only the briefest period for lunch. At five o’clock -he was on his way toward the Place St.-Michel to take -up his sentry-go there. Somehow he was confident he -would see Andree. What she did with her days he did -not know, but he imagined she went into the city. Certainly -she went somewhere, and to return she must -traverse the square from the Metro station over at the -left. He, therefore, took his station by the rim of the -fountain and watched each passer-by. It was tiresome -to watch and wait; the people did not interest him as they -had always interested him before. Quaint couples passed -unnoticed; children stopped to stare at him as he sat -on the flat rim of the basin; venders of Rintintin and -Ninette dangled their worsted dolls before him in vain. -Once or twice he thought he saw her coming, and stood -up eagerly, only to sink down again, disappointed.... -And then he saw her coming; it was she unmistakably; -there was no mistaking that tam, that flimsy little dress, -that slender figure and her quaint, abstracted walk.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Long before she saw him he was groping for words, -searching for the one thing to say, because he knew -that there must be some single thought that should be -put into words.... There must be some eloquent -sentence which would explain all, gain forgiveness for all. -But he could not find it. His French was gone; his -English would not take form.</p> - -<p class='c006'>She crossed the square with little steps that seemed -almost stiff, her body very erect, as always, and her eyes -seeming to see nothing that went on about her. He -fancied a shade of sadness was added to the gravity of her -face.... She did not see him until he stood before her -and spoke, and it was no eloquent sentence that he -uttered, no wonderful thought that he put into words.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“<i>Mignonne!...</i>” he said.</p> - -<p class='c006'>She did not start, but merely stopped and raised her -eyes to his face slowly. There was no surprise, no emotion -of any sort to be seen, only that quaint gravity with -which he was so familiar. She stopped and waited, as she -always stopped and waited, ready, it seemed, to take her -cue from what was about to happen. She might never -have seen him before, but then, he thought, she always -met him so—as if she had never seen him before.... -She did not speak; only waited.</p> - -<p class='c006'>He was inarticulate, abashed, nonplussed. Suddenly -it seemed to him that there was nothing to say, nothing -that could be said. He had been guilty of conduct which -removed him forever from her life, which was unforgivable. -There was an impulse to turn and to hurry away from her, -but he repressed it.... He must do something, say -something.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“I’m ashamed,” he said, clumsily. “I’ve been miserable.... -I had to find you and tell you.... I—What -can I say? It was wicked—wicked....”</p> - -<p class='c006'>He could go no farther, could only search her face with -his eyes for some reflection of her thoughts, for some -sign that he might hope for pardon. She did not -reply; there was no change in her expression, only -that unfathomable gravity and that air of suspended -judgment.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Last night I tried to find you.... I sat and waited, -but you did not come. I couldn’t go to sleep until I -had begged you to forgive me.... I don’t deserve to -be forgiven. What I did—what I said, was unforgivable.... -Oh, Andree!...”</p> - -<p class='c006'>There was a little pause, then she said, “You have been -sad?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Yes.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“And I also,” she said, not reproachfully.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“I—Never before have I known what it was to -suffer—and I have suffered. It was right that I should. -I deserved punishment.” Even here the Puritan in him -obtruded itself. “And you were so good, so sweet, so -wonderful.... I know all about it now—and I was -suspicious and brutal.... I was jealous, too. But I -didn’t know I was jealous.... When I thought you -were not good, it seemed to me that nothing in the world -could be good. Do you understand?... But there’s no -excuse for me. I should have known, and I should have -trusted you.... I didn’t even give you a chance to -explain....”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Oh, you speak ver’ fast. I cannot onderstan’ all.... -But you have not been happy—no.... It is to -be seen.... At first I do not onderstan’, and I am ver’ -sad and hurt—oh, ver’ sad. When I make to cross the -<i>pont</i> I look down at the water—yes.... And then I -say it is some mistake.... I say something have happen -I do not know of and it makes you to be not like Monsieur -Ken, but ver’ hurt and miserable and—how you say?—upset? -Yes. I say, also, that I love Monsieur Ken and -always that I am <i>fidèle</i>.... So what could it be?... -If, then, it is nothing, only some mistake, then I am -much sorry.... Not sorry for me, monsieur, who have -done no wrong, but for you, who are mos’ unhappy.... -It is so. My heart it makes to weep for you because you -suffer....”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Andree!...”</p> - -<p class='c006'>She nodded her head gravely. “I do not onderstan’ -<i>les Américains.... Non!... Non!</i> They are of a -difference. But I onderstan’ love which mus’ be the -same in America as in France, so I say Monsieur Ken -he is ver’ jealous and ver’ mistaken, and I mus’ be patient -and not sad more than is <i>nécessaire</i>.... So I wait till -thees mistake is not a mistake any more. And many -times I mus’ say to myself that you are jealous, and -therefore you love me. Because if there is not love, then -there is not to be jealous, <i>n’est-ce pas</i>? So I am almos’ -happy, but not quite ... because you love me.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“And you don’t hate me? You can forgive me?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Oh, <i>mon bien cher ami</i>, there is nothing to forgive! -It is so.... It is only that I cried sometimes for you, -because you are mos’ miserable.... I say to theenk -how sad you are, and then I cry.... I would not have -you to be sad.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“It isn’t possible,” Ken said, more than half to himself. -“There’s nobody like this in the world.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Possible?... <i>Pourquoi?</i>”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Mademoiselle Pourquoi—dear little Mademoiselle -Pourquoi!” he said, softly.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“You are not angry with me any more—not jealous?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“No.... No.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“It is well.” She smiled for the first time and touched -his arm with her little hand. “Then I am joyous.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“You ought to be joyous always.... You are wonderful. -When I think what you were giving up for me—and -that I could suspect you—I hate myself.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“But you are not sad now? There is not any mistake -any more, and we are together. You are not sad?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Sad, <i>mignonne</i>!... Only when I think of what I said -to you—things you can never forget—”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Never forget?” She laughed a little. “Behol’, -already I have forgotten. It is as if nothing ever happen’. -I do not remember. Now”—she made that old -familiar gesture of pointing repeatedly to the sidewalk -with her finger to indicate the identical present second—“now -I remember nothing. I do not know what you -talk about.... You are ver’ droll, Monsieur Ken, to be -speak so much about something I do not know ... about -a something that have never happen’.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>Kendall felt something that was almost reverence for -her; it was more than wonder and little less than awe. -Never until that moment had he conceived of the possibility -that such greatness of heart, such forgetfulness of -self, such <i>rightness</i> could exist in the world.... He felt -himself incapable of appreciating, of appraising the gold -of her heart. It was very sweet, very radiant, that -moment. There must be a goodness in the world more -marvelous, purer, worthier than he had been able to -imagine, and Andree possessed it.... And, possessing -that goodness, she could not in any particular be evil. -She would see rightly, and evil that was truly evil would -be abhorrent in her eyes. His last doubt, his last fear, -his last self-accusation departed from him; in his elation -he was unable to perceive that a thing virtuous in Andree -and for Andree might be quite other for himself....</p> - -<p class='c006'>“You gave up everything for me—your chance to enter -the <i>Académie</i>, to go on the stage ... to be famous, -perhaps.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Oh, that!...” She smiled up at him. “Nothing -in the worl’ is so good to have as love. It is so. It is a -ver’ great theeng. One leetle hour, one day of love—that -is more great and more necessary to have than the -mos’ fame that can be.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“You do love me, Andree? Say it.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“I love you,” she said, gently.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“I can never let you out of my sight again. You must -be with me always—where I can see you and touch you.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>She smiled up at him, but there was a shade of sadness, -perhaps of apprehension, in her deep-shadowed black -eyes. “It is not possible,” she said.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Arlette has dinner waiting for us.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“To-night? Now.... Oh, it is not possible....” -She made a pretty gesture of dismay.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“It is necessary. To prove that you have forgiven me. -I couldn’t let you go now ... now that I’ve found you -again. Come.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>She looked down at the walk a moment with detached -gravity, then put her fingers on his arm. “Ver’ well,” -she said. “You mus’ take me off like <i>prisonnier de guerre, -n’est-ce pas</i>?... You have capture me, so what am I -to do? I am ver’ helpless.... You mus’ say many -sweet theengs to me so that I am not sad.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>They crossed the street to the Metro station and -descended to the crowded train in which they were compelled -to stand until they reached the Châtelet station, -where they changed to the line that runs under the -rue de Rivoli and the Champs Élysées. It was impossible -to talk except in occasional monosyllables, but every -now and then Kendall would look down into Andree’s -face, always to find her looking up at him gravely, but -happily. Then he would press her arm gently, and she -would respond by nestling his fingers between her arm -and her body. He was happy, boyishly happy. It was a -new sort of happiness for him—a great, surging happiness -which made the world lovely, which made even standing -in a swaying subway car, jostled and elbowed by a tired -crowd, a delectable thing.</p> - -<p class='c006'>He yearned toward Andree as he had never yearned -toward her before. He wanted to hold her in his arms, -not passionately, but gently. He was filled with a -desire to show a great gentleness and consideration for -her, to prove to her that he was kind. He wanted to protect -her, to shield her, to deal with her as he would have -dealt with a tired, trusting child, for she seemed very -childlike to him, with all the purity and heart honesty -of a child.... He magnified the thing she had done, -and the beauty of her forgiveness, repeating over and -over in his thoughts that she was good, wonderfully, -miraculously good.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“<i>Mignonne!...</i>” he whispered in her ear, and she -smiled up at him and pressed his hand.</p> - -<p class='c006'>At last they alighted and mounted to the street, and -there he attempted to keep step with her tiny, severe -strides until both of them laughed gaily at his efforts. -She was all child now, laughing, roguish, teasing. She -rattled French at him, well knowing he could not understand, -and laughed at him for not understanding, and he -pretended to believe she was telling him that he was -ugly and cross-eyed and that she was ashamed to walk -with him. Then they were at the apartment, and Ken -greeted the <i>concierge</i> with a cordiality that left the old -lady a little amazed and wondering if her American officer -had not been dealing too liberally with the wines of the -country.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Oh, I shall not walk up these so many stairs,” Andree -said, with her pretty mock despair. “It is not possible. -You have not made an <i>ascenseur</i>. It was a promise.... -Oui. And until you fetch one I shall remain here, on this -spot.” She indicated the spot severely.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“I’ll be the <i>ascenseur</i>,” he volunteered, and made as if -to lift her in his arms, but she slipped away and danced -up the stairs before him, making believe, as she approached -each floor, to be on the point of dropping from exhaustion, -and counting each floor with dismay.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“So much have we climb’ and it only is the <i>premier -étage.... Oo là là....</i> For hours we mount, and -arrive but at the secon’—what do you say?—secon’ -floor. It is ver’ fonny. Secon’ floor. <i>Mais, mon bien -cher ami</i>, it sound’ like nothing at all, on’y jus’ sound.... -Secon’ floor!... Such a language is thees Engleesh!”</p> - -<p class='c006'>They arrived at the fourth floor honestly panting, and -she sank into a chair while Kendall searched under the -mat for the key.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“I will go no more,” she said, firmly. “I am <i>blessée</i>. -I am one <i>poilu</i> with the bad wound. It is not possible to -proceed. Behol’, I am one <i>poilu</i>.” She puffed out her -cheeks and frowned. “<i>Sacré nom d’une pipe!...</i> It is -so the <i>poilu</i> swears....”</p> - -<p class='c006'>He thrust open the door and, picking her slight form up -as he might have lifted little Arlette, he carried her inside -and set her down before the hall tree.... His hands -rested on her shoulders and they both became grave, -looking into each other’s eyes.... And then he drew -her close to him and pressed his lips to hers....</p> - -<p class='c006'>Arlette padded into the hall, attracted by the sound, -observed what she observed, folded her pudgy hands on -her stomach, and stared with amazement. “<i>Mon Dieu!... -Mon Dieu!...</i>” she exclaimed, and padded away -again in confusion.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Then they went into the <i>salon</i>, where Bert was reading -the paper.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“I’ve found her,” Ken said, gaily.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“So I observe.” Bert’s voice was dry.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Your voice must not be so w’en you speak to Monsieur -Ken,” Andree said, severely. “<i>Non....</i> I will not -have it so. Bicause he is ver’ good, and nobody mus’ be—w’at -you say?—cross with him—so.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Well,” Bert said, “I’ll be gentle with the child, -mademoiselle, though it’s contrary to my duty.” He -turned to Ken. “You seem to have put it over,” he said.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Bert, she’s wonderful—she’s—”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“I’ve heard just two hundred and seven men say that -at one time and another. Seems to be a stock phrase in -the language of young gentlemen in your state of mind.... -Anyhow, I’m glad the rumpus is settled. I can -get some sleep now.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Does he scold you?” Andree asked.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“It doesn’t matter what he does,” Ken said, laughingly. -“Nothing matters.... There’s Arlette’s head through -the door. Let’s eat.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>Arlette served silently, but as she moved about the -table she kept her eyes furtively upon Andree, and her -lips moved constantly without uttering a sound. This -continued until it was time to remove the meat, and then -Arlette could contain herself no longer. She reached the -door on her way to the kitchen with the platter, when, -with startling suddenness, she turned, replaced the platter -on the edge of the table, folded her hands across her stomach, -rolled her eyes to heaven, and launched upon a -harangue in such rapid French that it seemed one continuous -word of mingled syllables.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Andree listened gravely, nodding her head the merest -trifle every moment or so. Then Arlette paused expectantly -and Andree replied with all the gravity of a -Cabinet Minister facing a crisis. At the end of a sentence -she got out of her chair and walked to Ken and put her -arm about his neck and her cheek to his, continuing -the reply thence. Arlette rolled her eyes and waggled -her head and heaved great sighs.... Presently her set -face relaxed and she smiled and wiped her chin on the -back of her hand.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“<i>Mon Dieu!...</i>” she said. “<i>Mon Dieu!...</i>” and -with a tremulous smile which, somehow, was not at all -absurd on her heavy face—was almost tender—she retreated -with suddenness to her kitchen.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Well,” said Ken, “what now, <i>mignonne</i>? What’s it all -about?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>Andree shook her head gaily. “No!... No!... -It is not for you. I shall not speak it.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Was it so terrible as that?... I’m afraid I have -made an enemy of Arlette.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“But no. Well, dear friend, it is that she have much -worry for you. Yes. She have much worry. She theenk -you—oh, it is ver’ fonny!—she theenk you are leetle child -that is lost and also is mad! She theenk something -happen to you if you have no one to take care of you. -She tell me I mus’ not be angry with you, but ver’ nice -and kind always, bicause it is not your fault you are -a baby and mad.... Oh yes. She say she love you -like she is your <i>marraine</i>, but she is powerless to make -you to be protected.... And she theenk I mus’ take -you by the hand same theeng as you are blind.... So -I have promise’, and now she will not worry, but gives -you to me to care for. She have been mos’ unhappy. -She say that only God can onderstan’ a mad American -who is in love!...”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Arlette,” said Bert, “is a woman of sound judgment.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Where is Mademoiselle Madeleine?” Andree asked, -with one of those sudden changes of subject which were -characteristic of her.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“I haven’t the least idea.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Why is she not here? I want her to be here. I -would speak of many things to her.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Blame Ken there. I suggested having Madeleine, -but he said he wanted you all by yourself with nobody -else around.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>She turned to look at Ken as if to satisfy herself if this -were truth or jesting, and then she smiled the merest -trifle. “It is well,” she said, softly.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“I’m on my way,” said Bert, arising. “Got a bridge -game on at the Union.... <i>Bon soir, mademoiselle....</i> -And you, Ken, keep your feet on the ground.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“‘Keep your feet on the groun’,’” repeated Andree, -when Bert was gone. “Oh, it mean nothing whatever. -Thees English language, it is <i>très-drôle</i>. What is thees keep -your feet on the groun’?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“It means that Bert agrees with Arlette that I need -somebody to look after me,” he said, a bit ruefully.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“It is well. Here am I—here—here.” She laughed -that fairy laugh, and poked her finger toward the floor -many times. “I am here, so he mus’ not be afraid. I -shall look after you. Oh yes, I shall be mos’ firm and -ver’ stern. You shall see.” And she made a tremendous -face to show him what severity she was capable of.</p> - -<p class='c006'>They went into the <i>salon</i>, with its absurd bronze statues, -its tasteless gilt furniture, and its absurd little throne -between the windows. Andree must observe herself closely -before the huge glass above the fireplace and do little -unnecessary things to her hair and touch her nose with a -powder-puff. Ken watched her delightedly, and then carried -her to her throne, where she sat dangling her tiny -feet while he closed the heavy iron shutters to make it -lawful for him to turn on the lights.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Andree moved over to the sofa, looking up at him with -that gravely curious expression which he saw so often -on her face; she seemed to be wondering, always wondering, -about something. Was it possible he was as strange, -as unusual, as interesting to her as she was to him? He -would have given much to know just what she was thinking, -but, somehow, even then it was borne in upon him -that he should never know—that she would always remain -a sweet, bewildering, exotic mystery to him.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Sit by me—ver’ close,” she said; and he sat by her -and took her in his arms, while she snuggled against him -with the contented sigh of a child.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Do you love me?” he whispered.</p> - -<p class='c006'>She nodded emphatically, and then with an upward -glance said, as she always said, “And you?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“More than I can say.... <i>Toujours</i>—always. I -shall always love you.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“It is well.... We shall make the pretense it is so—that -you love me always. But the little moments, they -are so sweet—well, dear friend, that they could not be -always. Is it not so? If it could be always then I -theenk God He would be jealous.... No.... But -we mus’ pretend. We mus’ pretend there is no war, and -that you shall never go to <i>Amérique</i> again ... and leave -me <i>solitaire</i>.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>He was silent. This was a thought that had been -growing in his mind from day to day, a thought he had -refused to face or to consider. What was to be the end -of it all? Suppose he should be ordered home in a week -or a month. What then?... He did not know, and he -was unwilling to ask himself. Rather he would be contented -with the little minutes and let each day care for -each day’s problems. When the day of his return arrived, -then the thing must be faced and the question -answered.... But to-night he loved her; wanted to -think of nothing but love and the happiness that such a -sweetheart could bestow.... She seemed to wait for -some answer, for some assurance, but he had none to -make, and presently she said, but not with the same -happy note in her voice:</p> - -<p class='c006'>“It may be that love is so great a thing that it cannot -live forever—as it is for us. Behol’—one has a mos’ -beautiful jewel, and it is ver’ nice and there is much joy -to have it. But consider—if everything one had is jewels, -jewels, jewels, then the firs’ jewel it is not so nice, so -wonderful. <i>N’est-ce pas?</i> It may be it is the same theeng -with love. Do you onderstan’? It is great and ver’ -beautiful bicause it is only for the leetle moments w’en -one is yo’ng—and w’en the heart it is ready for love.... I -theenk this is so. Then, what can matter, <i>bien cher ami</i>? -Thees love of now is the mos’ bes’ theeng of all life ... bicause, -maybe, it cannot live much long.... Yes, yes, -I have seen many ol’ man and ol’ woman who say they -remember thees love—but not one who say he has thees -love still. You see I theenk of it much....”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Yes, honey.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“And so I have not fear that you go.... I have only -fear that something happen bifore our little moment of -happiness is done—never to come back again. Do you -onderstan’? One day, for all, thees love it begins to -fade and be less lovely. It becomes less strong and not -weeth such wonderfulness.... I have seen. At las’ it -is but a friendship and a memory. But it is a great and -a fine friendship bicause of the memory. Is it not so?... -And that is marriage, my friend ... that friendship. -It is but a good regard of each for the other which comes -like the bread after the beautiful growing wheat.... -Am I ver’ foolish?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“No.... No....”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Bicause of thees that I believe, then I am not sad, -but ver’ happy, and I do not fear. I have what is worth -all other theengs—thees leetle moment of happiness which -is love.... I would pay for it weeth ever’thing. It is -worth to pay for weeth much sorrow and weeth much -loneliness.... If you mus’ go—well, dear friend, let it -be bifore thees leetle moment fades.... But we mus’ -pretend it shall never fade and that we are together -always as thees.... It is more better so.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>She drew his lips down to hers, and he knew that blind, -throbbing, winged happiness which has no language, no -symbols, no words of description, which can never be -remembered except as a mysterious, haunting ecstasy -which once was living and real, which leaves behind but -the dim outline of its spirit and an elusive something as -of a sweet scent that once tingled the nostrils for an -instant, to be wafted away forever....</p> - -<div class='chapter'> - <h2 class='c004'>CHAPTER XVIII</h2> -</div> - -<p class='c005'>Now commenced a brief period which was, perhaps, -to be the happiest of Kendall Ware’s whole life. -It was happy because it was free from doubts and questionings. -From the depths he had mounted to the -heights from which he looked upon a world bathed in -sunshine, rich in harvest, beautiful as a world could be -beautiful only when it was freed from all evil. He saw -everything as good, and it contented him. He ate of -the lotus of inexperienced youth, flavored with the pungent -spice of sophistry, and the taste of it was sweet in his -mouth. Plymouth Rock had sunk beneath its sands, the -vestibule of the Presbyterian church had vanished behind -the mists of an intervening ocean. He did not think; -he only felt and acted—and was happy.</p> - -<p class='c006'>His work was interesting, and he could recognize its -value, so he became less dissatisfied with the necessity -that held him far behind the battle-line. Not that he was -content, rather that he was resigned.... And at the -end of the day there was Andree....</p> - -<p class='c006'>There were few evenings which they did not spend together, -either by themselves or with Bert and Madeleine, -dining at home, at Poccardi’s, at Marty’s, or in interesting, -homelike little cafés across the river where excellent -food could be had very cheaply. Sometimes they went -to the theater or to the music-halls. Sometimes they -strolled up and down the Avenue du Bois de Boulogne -until they were tired and then sat and talked contentedly -on springy iron chairs along the promenade. Once they -walked out that street, so crowded of evenings—that -street of the ever-changing names—Montmartre, Poissonnière, -Nouvelle, St.-Denis, St.-Martin—as far as the -Place de la République. It was interesting, if tiresome. -More than once Kendall was impressed with the fact that -Parisians of a certain class take their pleasures simply -and childishly. More than one glaring palace, open at the -front, showed rows upon rows of those devices, long extinct -in America, before which one could sit or stand with -the ends of a rubber tube in one’s ears and listen to such -tunes as found favor with him played by phonograph. -The popularity of these places surprised him. They were -always crowded.... It seemed to him that this was the -most crowded thoroughfare in Paris, as well as one of the -most questionable. The crowds impressed him as being -questionable and bent on questionable errands.... And -yet he did not know; he only guessed. So far as his -knowledge went, these folk might be the most respectable -in all France—all save the numerous soft-voice girls who -threaded their way in and out.... And for a mere -child, a girl who seemed hardly in her teens, who bit and -struggled in the hands of two gendarmes, shrieking in a -voice that remained long in Kendall’s ears, “I have the -age!... I have the age!... I have the age!...” over -and over again....</p> - -<p class='c006'>Madeleine had laughed and shrugged her shoulders with -some flippant word of comment, but Kendall looked down -at Andree to see her eyes moist and big with pity.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“<i>Pauvre p’tite!... Pauvre p’tite!...</i> It is not she -who should be punish’. She have made no wrong.... I -theenk it is the crime of poverty. <i>N’est-ce pas?</i> Oh, to be -<i>pauvre</i>—it is not well....”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Yet <i>le bon Dieu</i> permits it,” said Madeleine.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“<i>Non!... Non!...</i> It is not of God, ma’m’selle; it -is of man—thees poverty and thees awful theengs.... -It mus’ be that tears come often to the eyes of the good -God....”</p> - -<p class='c006'>Kendall was affected deeply. She spoke of the good -God with such simplicity, with the sort of intimacy which -children use. He felt almost a reverence for her.... -There was a <i>rightness</i> about her, a simple, unaffected, -unconscious <i>goodness</i>, that set her apart and made her -different, to him, from all mankind.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“<i>Mignonne!</i>” he whispered, and pressed her arm, and -she, looking up shyly into his face, gave answering pressure, -and, perhaps, wondered a little.</p> - -<p class='c006'>She was always so, never changing, yet always possessed -of that infinite variety of which Shakespeare speaks. But -it was a variety which was always Andree. In no mood, -in no manifestation, could she be anything but Andree. -If she were sad, it was with a sadness peculiar to her, and -very lovable; if she were gay, it was with her own gaiety; -if she were mischievous, it was with a charming impishness -which no other being could have managed. And always -she was natural—as natural as the rain that falls or the -sun that shines or the breezes that blow.... She was -Andree.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“To-morrow is the great fête,” said Andree. “There -will be much to see.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“And I can’t show it to you. I must work in the morning, -and in the afternoon I am ordered to go to the front.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“How long?” she said, quickly.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“But one day. I shall be here again Sunday—and we -shall play, eh? We shall have <i>déjeuner</i> together and do -something in the afternoon, and find a place to dine....”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“It is well—but you mus’ be ver’ careful. You mus’ -not let the <i>boche</i> keel you.... Oh, I should be sad, sad.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>Already Paris was dressing for the American fête-day, -the Fourth of July, which, by methods of law, had been -made her own national holiday this year. Everywhere -were American flags. There was no house in Paris too -poor to show some small copy of the Stars and Stripes, -for just now Paris was mad about America and Americans ... as -it had had its day of madness over the Belgians -and then the English. Paris is given to such enthusiasms, -and at the moment there were men in the service of the -great god Propaganda who labored to bring it about that -this latest passion should not die and become sudden -ashes as the others had done, but rather to persuade it -to subside slowly, unnoticeably, leaving a pleasant memory -behind....</p> - -<p class='c006'>“The <i>boches</i> will pull something off to-morrow,” said -Bert. “You see. They’ll do something to bust up the -celebration.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>This was the opinion of the Paris streets—that the Hun -would, by some ingenious and disagreeable means, make -the fête memorable in the history of the city.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Maybe it’s just as well I’m going away,” laughed -Ken. “So you, Ma’m’selle Pourquoi—you look out for -yourself. Don’t you let anything hurt you.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Me—<i>pouf</i>!... It could not be. While there is -you nothing can happen to me—nothing. I am ver’ -safe.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>They tried in vain to persuade a <i>voiture</i> or a taxicab to -take them home, but, with that perversity which belongs -to the Paris cabby alone, none of them would go. One -reason or another was given—the horse was tired, the -gasolene supply was depleted, it was the wrong quarter of -the city. A large volume, serious or comic, might be -written on the habits and moods of these public conveyances -of the most charming city in the world. Paris -would not be the same without them. While they are -one of the irritations, none the less they are of the quaint -and pleasant memories of the city, and Kendall could -often see himself, as he sat at some future day, retailing -to audiences of less traveled Americans than he his -adventures with the war-time taxi.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Finally they were obliged to descend to the Metro, -which carried them to the Place de l’Opéra, to change -there for the short ride to the Palais Royal, where another -change was necessary to carry them to the Étoile. It -was late and they were tired.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Oh, we have make the <i>beaucoup travail</i>—the so great -labor thees day,” said Andree, shaking her head. “I have -the <i>fatigue</i>.... But it is well to be weary. Are you -weary, Monsieur Ken?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“I am happy,” he said.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Yes.... Yes.... That is bes’ of all—to be happy. -Tell me, when you have gone to the front—will you -theenk of me?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“In the morning, at noon, in the afternoon—”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Oh, oh!... It is not possible. But sometimes. -Once, twice? For I shall be theenking of you always.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Do you love me?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Yes,” she nodded emphatically, and then—he would -have missed it had she omitted it—“and you?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“More than anybody in the world.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“More than thees yo’ng American girl?... I have -seen her thees day. She is in Paris. Do you know?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“You must be mistaken, <i>mignonne</i>. Miss Knox is out -at the front.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“It is so.... It is so. I have seen her—thees day. -Oh, do you theenk I do not know her? I am ver’ <i>jalouse</i>—mos’ -<i>jalouse</i>. She come for take you away from me.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Don’t you let her do it,” said Ken happily. “Don’t -you dare let her do it.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“I do not know,” she said, becoming suddenly grave. -“You are American—she is American.... Some day...” -Then she laughed gaily, impishly. “<i>Mais</i> these American -girl, they do not know how to dress. Oh, it is terrible!”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“You mustn’t judge all American women by these -uniforms you see in France,” said Bert. “Just now it is -the style in America for women to get into something -they think are uniforms. I wonder who designed these -Y. M. C. A. uniforms, anyhow?... But really, Mademoiselle -Andree, our women do know how to dress.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“I have never seen,” she said, stubbornly. “Also they -do not always wear uniforms, but always they wear their -feet. Their feet they cannot take off. <i>Mais non.</i> It -is too bad. If only they could leave at home their feet.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>Kendall suspected that American women were suffering -for the sins of Maude Knox, so he did not rush to their -defense. He did not want to think about Maude Knox -to-night—he wanted to think of no woman but Andree.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“<i>Méchante!</i>” he whispered.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“It is so—what I say,” she said, severely. “I do not -like American women.... I do not like thees girl. She -ees ver’ wicked, for she wish to steal you from me.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>The street was very dark. Kendall made youth’s -answer to youth’s jealousy. He lifted her slight form in -his arms and kissed her until she returned his kisses.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“There,” he said, “you are punished.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“It ees ver’ nice to be wicked,” she said. “Thees -punishment is ver’ well.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>Maude Knox was banished. They two found themselves -the sole inhabitants of a brightly glowing world....</p> - -<p class='c006'>Next morning Kendall made his way through early -assembling crowds to his office, where he was much occupied -until noon, making preparations for his trip to the -front. Then he was driven through the holiday-making -streets crowded with a populace in holiday humor to the -<i>barrière</i>, and thence into the country. On every building -waved an American flag, in every buttonhole was a tiny -American flag, and the appearance of an American -military automobile was the signal for applause and lifting -of hats. Small boys shouted as small boys of all countries -shout; friendly old gentlemen waved their canes; young -women smiled broadly or demurely, invitingly or shyly. -Kendall felt as if he were enjoying some sort of a triumph, -as if this celebration were for him. The frankness and -open-heartedness and courtesy of it were delightful.</p> - -<p class='c006'>They drove rapidly through little villages, between -rolling fields cultivated as only the French agriculturist -seems to be able to cultivate. The villages, too, were in -gala dress and the people in holiday attire. In one place -a brief stop was made. Immediately the car was surrounded -by children who shouted eagerly for “penny,” -for “gu-um,” for “cigarette.” So it was all over France. -Let but an American soldier appear and the children of -the neighborhood formed a group about him demanding -tribute.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Soon the civil inhabitants disappeared. Whole villages -were occupied by billeted troops, <i>poilus</i> and colonials, -black-skinned men wearing red fezzes and speaking -strange tongues who gave to the picture an exotic tint. -The countryside swarmed with soldiers <i>en repos</i>, a zone -miles deep crowded with the guardians of Paris and of the -Channel ports.... Now came forests in whose depths -could be caught fleeting glimpses of huge ammunition-dumps, -skilfully camouflaged, then a wonderful woods, -clean as the floor of a kitchen, a forest of magnificent -trees, but as well kept as a Michigan peach-orchard.... -Dusk descended, then darkness. The car seemed to be -running into a black curtain upon a thread of white -cloud. Kendall could not see the length of his nose to one -side or the other, but ahead could be discerned that pale -cloud avenue, a sort of milky way that disappeared itself -into blackness a hundred feet away. He was now upon -one of those roads of white chalk, deep with dust which -arose in clouds and nestled in the hair and eyebrows and -penetrated the very pores of the skin, giving to men the -singular appearance of having been carved out of bronze.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Presently the horizon glowed for an instant, as with -heat lightning, and glowed again and again. There was -a mutter and a grumble ahead which was the distant -voice of the guns.... Something burst into flower in -the sky far ahead, a vivid rose-blossom, then another and -another. It was shrapnel, either our own demanding toll -of a prowling German aeroplane or the enemy searching -the air for an Allied machine.... The heat lightning -became continuous, the roar of the guns a rumble without -break, almost a single, sustained note.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Ken was riding in the depths of a sea of blackness. -To right and left the eyes encountered an <i>impasse</i>; ahead -was only that dim milky way of road and those upsurging -lights as the guns answered one another across -the desert of No Man’s Land. The car was traveling at -breakneck speed. Suddenly came a tremendous snap -almost in Ken’s ears, a snap as of a mountain being -cracked in twain by giant hands. There was a blinding -flash across the road ahead and the air was usurped by -the scream of a departing shell. A battery by the roadside -had taken up its work of the night. Kendall was in -the midst of it now. Guns on both sides cracked and -roared; projectiles screamed over his head, and now and -then would come that easily distinguishable sound, the -bursting of a German shell....</p> - -<p class='c006'>Presently the road sank below the level of the fields. -The car was running between irregular rows of barely -discernible lights which appeared to issue from the -ground—as indeed they did—glowing from the dugouts -of French artillerymen who had burrowed into the banks -at the side of the road. The moon began to climb so that -objects became dimly visible. The scene was like that of -some village of prehistoric cave-dwellers, save for those -breaks in the line of dugouts, cunningly covered with -nets of camouflage, under which lurked the cannon, -muzzles directed toward the foe.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Now they stopped in a battered, deserted village which -was headquarters of our Twenty-eighth Infantry, a component -of that First Division made up of our old regulars—a -body of troops whose name will be famous as long as -the history of America shall endure. And there, in an -enormous dugout entered through a narrow tunnel some -fifty feet in length, Ken found shelter for the night. He -traversed the tunnel, descended steps carved out of the -stone to a level twenty feet below, and found himself -in a warren. Here, notwithstanding the hour of the -night, were bustle and activity. Here were offices where -sounded the click of typewriters and the staccato of the -telephone; here were passages, bedrooms, a dining-room—a -veritable maze hewn out of the chalk formation. -It was as if Ali Baba’s forty thieves had turned systematic -and were carrying on their trade according to modern -business methods. Yet men worked here as casually -and nonchalantly, accustomed by long habit, as they -would have worked in their New York offices....</p> - -<p class='c006'>Kendall was provided with a cot, and, despite the -sounds that penetrated here, the sounds of the Fourth -of July celebration of the First Division, he slept....</p> - -<p class='c006'>Early in the morning he awoke, then, after some hours -spent with the regimental intelligence officer, he walked -abroad to see this historic countryside. Far off to the -left the glasses showed him that spot which had been -Montdidier; almost straight ahead was the grisly, silent -crumble known now to the world by the name of Cantigny.</p> - -<p class='c006'>The day was beautiful. It seemed strange, unnatural -that the country should be so beautiful as well. Even -the gun-pits among which Kendall quickly found himself -did not detract from the beauty, for they were almost -invisible even at a distance of a few yards, only appearing -as low mounds, scarcely differing in color from the surrounding -fields. Yet the guns were there under their -tents of chicken-wire covered with stained burlap and -grasses. Everywhere he looked were these mounds which -during the night that had just passed had been uncovered -to the sky while shells filled with deadly gas had screamed -through intervening miles of air to fall with deadly effect -in the German lines.... It had been mustard gas, six -thousand rounds of it, he had been told. He was also -told it was the first time American gunners had been supplied -with that devilishness of war—to celebrate the -Fourth.... Now the gun-pits were neat as a New -England parlor, guns were brightly polished. Nothing -seemed to have happened there.</p> - -<p class='c006'>He stood above and looked down the slope of the valley, -a valley of golden fields, a valley which was a miracle -of color. Never had Kendall seen such color, acres -upon acres of it, nor such a profusion of flowers. Gold -and red and white and blue ... and <i>peace</i>! That valley -had been spread there for some painter—not for a battle-field. -It impressed the inherited mysticism in him—he -saw a symbolism in it all. The fields blazed with gorgeous -tints; rectangles acres in extent were red with poppies, -not with a sprinkling of poppies here and there, but as -with a snowfall of vivid red. Segregated in an adjoining -field were cornflowers, a carpet of blue; and then another -field glaring white with some flower that Kendall did not -know.... Other fields there were in which the three -flowers mingled. The panorama spoke of peace and beauty.... -It was as if the war irritated God until He spread -this, His own camouflage of peace, to hide the horrors -from His down-gazing eyes.... Or perhaps, as of olden -times He had set His rainbow in the sky as a promise to -the sons of Noah, so now He planted this living rainbow -in the fields as a new and more wonderful promise to all -the sons of men ... a promise that His purposes should -nevermore demand another war to devastate the earth....</p> - -<p class='c006'>Before him, knee-deep in poppies, moved half a dozen -figures in khaki.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“The boys are gathering flowers for the funeral,” he -was told.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“The funeral?...”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Of the men killed last night....”</p> - -<p class='c006'>Presently, his business completed, he was driving toward -Paris, reached Paris in the darkness with a feeling of -home-coming and pleasure.... But he was thoughtful, -troubled. His sternly believing mother was awake in him, -asserting that he had seen with his own eyes a movement -of the finger of God—that he had read a sign from Omnipotence. -It weighed him down, filled him not with -joyous faith, but with Calvinistic gloom to have this -assurance that God was actually taking an active interest -in His world.... The weight of the knowledge of the -existence of a Deity was upon him as it had been upon -his stern forebears—the knowledge of the existence of a -Deity, stern, forbidding, cruel in his revenges and implacable -in his demands ... not of such a God as -Andree knew—whose eyes might be wet with tears caused -by the sufferings of His puppets to whom He had vouchsaved -the dubious boon of freedom of action....</p> - -<p class='c006'>He awoke in the morning as one awakes from an impressive -dream, with a feeling of heaviness upon him, a -consciousness of his personal existence that made him -dull company at breakfast. This humor did not pass -away, it was rather laid aside for further reference and -obscured by the events and anticipations of the day.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Good trip?” asked Bert.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Fine! Saw a lot.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Wish I could get a crack at it sometime. I haven’t -heard a gun go off yet—except in an air raid.... Was -anything stirring up there?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>Ken described his experiences of the day and night, -and, strangely, from a different viewpoint than that from -which he had beheld them. Yesterday the thing had been -subjective, symbolical; to-day it was objective. He described -the war he had seen as a tourist might describe -some interesting scene in a foreign country—and he rather -wondered at himself that he could think of it in that -manner.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“When do you meet Andree?” Bert asked.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Eleven o’clock—at the Place de la Concorde. You -and Madeleine are coming along?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Sure! We’ll pick you up there at eleven.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Anything happen here yesterday?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Not a thing. The <i>boches</i> disappointed everybody. I -went to one of those dinners the crowd at the Union -are always piloting a fellow to—this Society of French -Homes, or whatever they call it.... Four of us dined -with a Madame Lefebvre.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Good time?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Interesting. Played bridge with three French people, -a deputy and two women. None of them spoke a word -of English, but we made out pretty well. I won thirty -francs.... They were rather upper crust in this town, -I guess. Fine house and that sort of thing.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“I must go to one of those some day,” said Ken, reflectively. -“I’ve wondered if we were really seeing Paris—the -way the French live.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Not if that dinner last night was a sample. I had to -lug out all my manners. And the women—they sort of -made me feel uncomfortable. Dignified, you know, but -very friendly. It was all the family. Old grandmother -and her sons and daughters and a few grandchildren. -Patriarchal affair.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“I want to see that sort of thing. People have told me -that French family life is beautiful.... One wouldn’t -think it to judge from what we’ve seen.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“I don’t know about the beautiful,” said Bert, and -Ken registered a thought that Bert would not be likely -to notice domestic beauties, “but there was something -fine about it. I liked it.... That old grandmother was -bully. They were all so doggone respectful.... And -there was a young lieutenant, a grandson—had his face -shot away. Nothing left but his mouth and one eye. -Wore a big triangular patch over his face. He must have -been quite a fellow, though. Had the Croix de Guerre -and the Legion of Honor and the Médaille Militaire. -Just been married, too—to a mighty nice little girl—one -of these home bodies, looked as though. And, by -Jove! she acted like she was a heap in love with him. -It sort of got me—especially when everybody in the room -took the opportunity at some time during the evening to -tell me that she never met him until after he was mutilated.... -I don’t believe that sort of girl would pick -up with a fellow, somehow. And I know mighty well -her mother and grandmother never would have. I guess -there are all kinds of French people, just the same as -there are Americans....”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Of course,” said Ken, out of his abysmal ignorance. -Then, defensively, “Maybe these aristocrats are different -from the girls we know, but, I don’t care how they -live or how straitlaced they are, they’re no better than -Andree.... Andree’s <i>good</i>.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Sure,” said Bert, “and you’re dotty.... Meet you -at eleven.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>Ken wrote a few letters home, one to his mother in -which he went rather to descriptions and very little to -personal matters. He spoke little of France and the -French, but rather made it appear that he was living in -a Paris inhabited exclusively by American soldiers who -were all so busy with the war that they had no time to -do anything else but work and sleep. He did mention -seeing Notre Dame ... which was a church, and of undoubted -historic interest. It was a very circumspect -letter, and not at all confidential.... But it is an undoubted -fact that mothers and fathers have to earn by -their conduct toward their children those confidences -which they seem to fancy are theirs by right. Ken could -have told his father anything—everything. But his -mother—somehow it was difficult for him to compel -himself to make the most trivial disclosure to her. Her -attitude toward him and toward the world had created -that difficulty. The young are naturally confidential....</p> - -<p class='c006'>Then he went to meet Andree.</p> - -<p class='c006'>One of the delights of Ken’s acquaintance with Andree -was that each meeting with her seemed a fresh adventure; -there was a sameness about these meetings. Andree -always appeared just so, and conducted herself just so. -He could foretell with exactitude what her every movement -and gesture and word would be when she did -appear. But somehow, probably unconsciously, she was -able to impart to every rendezvous a freshness, an -air of mystery, something elusive and elfin that made -them, no matter how often repeated, always alluring, -exciting, delightful. Her sudden appearances out of a -life of which he knew nothing and her disappearances -back into that life lifted this affair above the level of -all other affairs, imparting to it something of the occult, -giving play to the imagination.... Ken cherished this -illusion and, therefore, though often tempted, he asked -no questions. Even now he did not know her name—only -Andree.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Presently she appeared, just as he knew she would -appear, walking very erect, with little steps that seemed -almost stiff, her eyes cast downward or staring straight -before her and seeming to see nothing whatever. He -knew that she would approach within reach of his hand -before she gave sign of recognition, and then she would -regard him with grave query as if to ascertain if it were -really he, and if, as she feared, she was not welcome. -And then she would smile timidly, without taking her -eyes from his, and shake hands with quaint formality, -and ask how he carried himself. If she had changed any -particular of it he would have been alarmed, would have -felt a sense of loss.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Bert and Madeleine will meet us here,” he said.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“It is well.” She smiled and nodded. “You have been -at the front?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Yes.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“You are ver’ <i>fatigué</i> perhaps?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“No. I had a bully night’s sleep, and I’m ready for -anything. We must have a regular party to-day. We’ll -paint the town and all the suburbs.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Oh, so ver’ fast. I do not onderstan’.... I do not -onderstan’. You mus’ speak more slow.... Give me -the <i>dictionnaire</i>.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“It was nothing.... Are you happy?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Are you not here?” she said, gravely.</p> - -<p class='c006'>There was something so timid, yet so confident about -her, so gentle, so child-womanly, that the realization of it -struck Kendall almost with the force of an accusation.... -It was the forerunner of self-accusation which might -have come then and there, had not Bert and Madeleine -turned the corner and waved to them. Immediately -the girls were chattering French, after their inevitable -formal handshake.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Where to, children?” asked Bert.</p> - -<p class='c006'>They turned to the girls. “Where are we going?” Ken -asked.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Oh, out of the city. Let us go to the Bois—for the -long day.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“<i>Oui</i>,” agreed Madeleine. “The Bois—every one—<i>tout -le monde</i>—make themselves to go to the Bois.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>So, after some difficulty, they persuaded the driver of a -<i>voiture</i> to drive them up the Champs Élysées and the -length of the Avenue du Bois de Boulogne to the gates of -the park. There the <i>cocher</i> drew up to the curb inexorably -and stopped without paying the least attention to the -protests of the Americans.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“We must get down,” said Andree. “He cannot go -inside.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“But there are <i>voitures</i> inside—lots of them. Why -can’t he go in?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>She shrugged her shoulders, but arose, and Madeleine -followed her. They knew the way of the Paris coachmen—or -it may have been a rule, or an agreement for the -division of patronage. At any rate, they got down and -paid the absurdly low fare. Then, walking two by two, -they entered the famous park.</p> - -<p class='c006'>The walks near the entrance were crowded, but as they -penetrated the city’s playground the congestion became -less dense. But it did seem as if Madeleine were right, -that all the world had come to the Bois that day. Every -seat, and they were scattered about generously, was occupied. -Back among the trees family parties had preempted -shady glades and were spreading lunches. Buxom -young women played battledore with <i>poilus</i> on permission, -or engaged in what they seriously believed to be -tennis with the most profound earnestness. This tennis -delighted Bert, who insisted upon stopping to watch -more than one game. The players had no nets—only -rackets and a ball. With these they placed themselves -sometimes as much as twenty feet apart and then lobbed -the ball back and forth with such a seriousness and intensity -that it seemed they were playing for life itself.... -Children were everywhere, and stout old ladies who -drowsed and lean old men who had taken off their coats -and were tormented by insects.... Out on the pavements -men and women and children rode furiously by on -bicycles, all crouching apprehensively over their handlebars -and pedaling for dear life.... Youths in French -uniforms made vigorous and unashamed love to their -sweethearts.... It was very hot.</p> - -<p class='c006'>A few minutes’ walk brought them to the lake, steaming -with the heat of the day, its surface churned by the -unskilled oars of pleasure-seekers. On the opposite shore -was a dense crowd packed about a booth, awaiting their -turns to go upon the water and suffer. Two or three huge -<i>bateaux</i> capable of seating a score of people made little -voyages up and down, each propelled by one sweating, -coatless individual who pulled the enormous weight at such -terrific speed that a circuit of the pond might have been -made in an hour. The passengers sat packed together in -blissful enjoyment.... Those who took rowboats -seemed to have a positive genius for loading them in -such a way as to make them unmanageable. In the middle -was an elderly man, very stout, with two young girls. -One girl rowed while her companions sat as far into the -bow as possible, lifting the stern high in the air, and -making any progress except a sort of whirligig motion -impossible. There were collisions, shouts, laughter, -screams—and an intolerable heat. But the crowd was -happy as only a Parisian crowd can be happy. They had -not the least fear of making themselves appear absurd; -they went about their pleasure in a determined, do-or-die -spirit, and everybody was so satisfied, so happy, so -charming that Ken was delighted and tried to tell Andree -how pleased he was by aid of French, English, and the -dictionary, but only succeeding in bewildering the young -lady utterly.... He had a suspicion that both Andree -and Madeleine looked at those boats longingly, but -with characteristic American terror of making himself -look ridiculous he would not have gone upon that -water if they had fallen on their knees to plead with -him....</p> - -<p class='c006'>After a time they managed by bribery and cajolery to -persuade a <i>cocher</i> to drive them about the park and an -hour or two later got down near to a toy railroad with a -tiny engine which pulled crowded trains along a child’s -track. Bert, whose inhibitions were less pronounced than -Ken’s, insisted upon riding. The girls boarded the train -as a matter of course, with no trace of self-consciousness, -but as they bowled along past crowds that waved and -pointed and laughed, Ken felt like the father of all idiots.... -Finally they arrived at the zoo, which Andree insisted -upon inspecting.</p> - -<p class='c006'>The cages in the zoo which attracted the crowds contained -dogs! Indeed, dogs were the backbone and almost -the sum total of the animals to be seen. They were caged -like bears and ran around and around behind their iron -bars with the ceaseless gait of wolves. It rather revolted -Kendall, especially to see a beautiful English setter in -such an environment. There were setters, Danes, bulls, -fox-terriers—and the crowds stood and stared and gasped -and exclaimed as if they gazed at the behemoth of Holy -Writ....</p> - -<p class='c006'>But it was all fascinating to Ken, all different and -strange. Here was France again! He was seeing something -foreign, not of the Middle West, and it was droll -and incomprehensible to him. He did not speculate on -what your Frenchman might have thought of a Sunday -crowd at Coney Island or the Bronx Zoo or in Belle Isle -Park in his own Detroit.... He reveled in it, drinking -in eagerly the sensation that he was in another world -peopled by incomprehensible beings who functioned in an -incomprehensible manner.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Here at least was none of the depression and woe of -war.... Had it not been for the presence of uniforms, -one would have forgotten war. Ken wondered if these -people had been able to forget it—and then reflected that -some of these that he saw might be killed before another -dawn by bombs dropped upon their sleeping homes from -ruthless German aeroplanes.... All was lightness and -joyousness now; in a few hours every individual here might -be cowering in a cellar, damp with the sweat of fear of -imminent slaughter....</p> - -<p class='c006'>They dined expensively at a table under the trees and -near to a fountain, and Andree exclaimed at the extravagance -of it and declared that for days to come they -must satisfy their hunger on bread and water.... They -were very gay and very young. For that one day all -cares and apprehensions had taken flight; they simply did -what occurred to them, and the word <i>responsibility</i> was -scratched from their vocabularies.</p> - -<p class='c006'>After a time they found a pleasant spot among the -trees and sat down to rest, for such a day is very tiring.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Thees day has been ver’ well,” said Andree, nodding -her head three times by way of punctuation.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“I wish all days were like it,” Madeleine said in French.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Andree regarded her gravely a moment, then shook her -head emphatically. “No. It would not be well. The -days like thees day are ver’ nice bicause they are seldom. -To-day is for nothing but only happiness—yes. But it is -not possible to be so happy to-day if we are not ver’ -unhappy some other day.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Do you think that unhappiness makes happiness?” -said Bert, with a laugh.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“But yes, monsieur. If there is not sadness there is no -joy. It is of a truthfulness. <i>Certainement.</i> How do you -know you are happy? It is bicause you theenk of days -when you are ver’ miserable, and thees day is so different -from that day. If all days shall be like to-day, then we -shall be—how do you say?—we shall be bored.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“But if one is very miserable after he has been happy?” -said Ken.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Andree looked at him quickly as if trying to penetrate -to the thought that prompted the question.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“It is well,” she said, softly. “On the unhappy day -you theenk often of the happy day—it makes the unhappiness -to be less. After many, many days one may -forget the unhappiness. The good God has made it a -law. The sorrow it becomes not so sharp. Even the ver’ -greatest grief becomes jus’ a theeng to be remembered. -But a happiness! Oh, my friend, that live forever. A -happiness cannot be made to fade. Always it live and -always it is ver’ beautiful and makes itself to give other -happiness.... That is why,” she said, softly, to Ken, -“that I have not great fear to love you. Do you see?... -W’en it is ended, thees love of ours, it will be ver’ -sad, but the sadness it will become soft and make itself -to fade after many year. The happiness, such happiness -as thees ver’ day, it will be always....”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“But,” said Ken, suddenly depressed and thoughtful, -“isn’t there a sorrow so great that it cannot be endured?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Oh yes, yes! But that is terrible. I have thought -many times of such a sorrow. There is only one like that. -It is to love ver’ much and trust ver’ much and be ver’ -much happy, and then, one day, to know that one has -been deceive’ entirely. To know that the friend one -love’ was on’y making to pretend and did not himself -love.... That one could not bear.... Then all the -little moments of happiness with him would make themselves -to be black and wicked ... and one must die....”</p> - -<p class='c006'>Kendall lifted her hand and touched it with his lips -and looked into her eyes. “I do not know what will -come, <i>mignonne</i> ... but whatever does come, it must -not be that.... See, I am speaking the truth so that -you may remember it always.... I love you.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>For a moment she returned his gaze gravely, then into -her dark-shadowed eyes came a glow that was real happiness, -her lips smiled and she leaned a little toward him.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“I believe,” she said, softly, “and it is ver’ well....”</p> - -<div class='chapter'> - <h2 class='c004'>CHAPTER XIX</h2> -</div> - -<p class='c005'>Kendall had paid little attention to Andree’s -assertion that she had seen Maude Knox in Paris, -yet on Monday he received a <i>petit bleu</i> from her informing -him that she was again at the Hôtel Wagram and would -be delighted to have him call that evening if he were free. -At his first reading of the note Maude Knox seemed to -him an intrusion. Somehow be rather resented her -existence because, subconsciously, he knew that association -with her was going to be disquieting. It would give -rise to argument within himself and to speculations upon -the future which he would have liked to avoid. He was -satisfied and as happy as he had ever been in his life—and -Maude was a complication. If Maude Knox had -been less important in his life he would have welcomed -her more heartily.</p> - -<p class='c006'>However, as he thought more and more of her presence, -he found himself desiring greatly to see her. There was -something sympathetic and dependable about her, something -that he could understand and approve. She was -American, thoroughly American. Yes, by all means, he -wished to see her, but he would hold himself in restraint. -They should not become at all personal, and he would -watch the conversation carefully to see that it did not turn -any unexpected corners or wander down lanes ending in -disagreeable obstacles to be cleared.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“There’s no reason why I shouldn’t be decent to her,” -he told himself, speciously. “She’s probably lonesome, -and we are both Americans....” He remembered the -hour or so he had spent with her in Montreuil, and how -he had come away from her in a state of perplexity, wondering -if it were possible for a man to love two women -at the same time.... “It isn’t that,” he told himself. -“I love Andree and nobody but Andree ... but that’s -no reason I shouldn’t see Maude. Anyhow, she’ll be -here only a day or so....”</p> - -<p class='c006'>The truth of the matter was that, without realizing it, -Kendall did not trust himself. He was afraid that a -thing might happen which he was in a queer sort of way -half willing should happen—that he might fall in love -with Maude Knox or that he might realize in her presence -that he actually was in love with her. It was a singular -position. Undoubtedly he loved Andree—but how? -That he did not ask himself. He loved her, he had a sort -of reverence for her, and he had besides a real friendship -for her, but—He would inevitably have reached that <i>but</i> -if he had allowed himself to analyze his love for her.... -A man may have one child and love it with a love which -he fancies is boundless and exclusive. He may believe -that every fraction of the love he has to give belongs to -that child, and he may resent the coming of a second -child and look upon it as an interloper. But very shortly -he finds himself loving the new-comer not one whit -less than the first-born.... If love can become miraculous -in this manner—inexhaustible like the loaves and fishes—with -respect to children, cannot it be the same with -respect to women? Kendall had seen the first develop -in the case of a friend, had heard the friend speak in confidence -before the coming of his second child, and had -observed him after the passage of a few weeks. He took -it as the basis of an argument and, using it as a stepping-stone, -reached a conclusion which was disturbing ... -but not lacking in a certain allurement.... And what -of countries where there are plural marriages? How in -the case of a man lawfully possessed of more than one -wife? Does such a man love all, or only one, or none?...</p> - -<p class='c006'>It was in this uncertain frame of mind that he went to -the Wagram and called Maude Knox’s room on the -rather difficult house telephone.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Captain Ware!...” said her voice. “I hardly expected -you, but it’s good of you to have come. I’ll be -right down.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>She appeared presently, not in her uniform, but in such -a dress as she might have worn at home in America when -going out for the evening with a young gentleman.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“What are you doing in Paris?” he demanded. “I -thought you were busy being the queen of the doughboys.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“The division’s being moved, I don’t know where, and -I was sent in to wait for orders. Some of our men marched -on the Fourth.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“I suppose it seems good to get back into the world -again.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Anybody can be in Paris,” she said. “I’ve been -having the time of my life—and, really, I think I was some -good. I believe I was. The men liked to have me there.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Naturally.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>She shrugged her shoulders. “Do I understand that -you are taking me to dinner?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“You do. Where shall it be?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Anywhere, so long as there is food I don’t have to -cook myself.... I’ve been living on things out of cans—except -when the officers’ mess had something particularly -good and sent some over.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“It hasn’t hurt you a bit.... You look mighty well.” -He was thinking that she did look very well, indeed. Not -exactly beautiful, but satisfyingly good-looking—the way -he liked to see a girl look. A fellow might be proud to -be seen with her. She showed class....</p> - -<p class='c006'>“How about the Continental?” he asked.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“I’d like it. I’ve never eaten there.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>They passed out of the hotel and strolled up the rue de -Rivoli to the rue Royale, and then dodged careless taxi-cabs -to cross the broad avenue which stretched with an -air of pride to the face of the Madeleine. Two or three -American officers were loitering about the entrance to the -Continental, and Ken experienced a sense of satisfaction -as he became conscious of their surreptitious stares of -admiration at his companion.... They traversed the -court and entered the big dining-room which stretched -along the rue de Rivoli and through whose windows one -may look out upon the Place de la Concorde and across -the river to the Palais Legislatif. The occupants of the -room were mostly Americans—officers, officials of the Red -Cross, and women of that organization and the Y. M. C. A.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“What have you been doing? Tell me all the news,” -Maude said, as they seated themselves at a table close -to the windows.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“I?... Working as usual, and there isn’t any news. -Never come to the war if you want news of the war. -I knew a lot more about it when I was back in Detroit -than I do in Paris.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Our division was full of rumors of a big American -offensive.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“And Paris is full of rumors of a big German offensive. -It was to have started on the fourth of July, but now it -has been postponed to the fourteenth—Bastille Day.... -You can hear anything.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“I think something is going to happen. The Blue -Devils are up the other side of Meaux. I’ve seen them. -Everybody tells me their presence is a sign that something -is going to happen.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Frankly, I don’t believe it. If anything comes I -think it will be a German attack. I don’t look for the -Allies to do much before spring—”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“When our aeroplanes get here?” she interjected. -“My! but our boys have grumbled about aeroplanes. -It makes them irritable to see German planes buzzing -around.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Don’t blame them. There are rumors about aeroplanes, -too. A <i>poilu</i> asked me the other day if it was -true that we had twenty thousand of them over here.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>The conversation was following a matter-of-fact, commonplace, -impersonal lane—just such a way as Ken had -determined it should follow. Yet he was dissatisfied with -it. He felt that it lacked something, and that, consequently, -Maude and himself were not getting the most out -of each other’s company. He had resolved not to talk -about himself nor about Maude nor about the sentiments -they inspired in each other, but he found himself wanting -to do so. The staple, as well as the most absorbing, -topic for any young person is himself. It becomes -doubly absorbing if two young persons can join and discuss -<i>themselves</i> and their reactions to each other.... -Maude seemed a trifle bored, he thought. Then, suddenly -and with a touch of impatience, she said:</p> - -<p class='c006'>“What has been happening to <i>you</i>?... And that -pretty little girl? What was her name?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>She, too, seemed to desire to alter the character of the -conversation.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Nothing had been happening to him—at least that he -could tell her about. He insisted that life had been a -dull affair of work and sleep for him.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Nonsense! I’m interested.... Oh, I remember her -name—it was Andree. Tell me about Andree.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“She’s a mighty nice little girl. I see her every now -and then.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Every now and then,” she mocked. “When did you -see her last?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Yesterday.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“And before that?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“I was away for a few days.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“But you saw her the night before you went away?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Yes.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“And if I hadn’t interfered you’d have seen her to-night.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“No—we had no engagement for to-night.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>She laughed. “You’re not especially subtle. Are you -really in love with this girl?... Do tell me all about -her. I know I’m prying and curious—but—Oh, I’m just -curious about her.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“I—there’s nothing to tell.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“There must be. How is she different from us American -girls? She seemed very attractive—and sweet.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“She says the difference between French and American -girls is that you don’t know how to dress your feet,” he -said, with an uneasy laugh. It rather pleased him that -Maude looked blank an instant and then made an evident -effort to look at her footgear. “Do you want to go to -the Casino or some other place to-night?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Not until I’ve found out more about your friend. -You know I liked her looks very much.... Why can’t -I meet her? She wouldn’t be jealous, would she? You -did introduce her, you know. Can’t we have a little -party—the three of us?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“No,” he said, with flat finality in his voice.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Why?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>He did not want to reply, did not know what to reply. -The reason that he did not even want to put into definite -thought was that Maude ought not to meet Andree—because -Andree was to him what she was.... Maude -was an American girl, a compatriot living under the laws -of the Medes and the Persians, and it would not be proper -for her to associate with Andree.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Why?” she repeated. “You said she was <i>nice</i>.” She -accented the <i>nice</i>. “If you don’t let me meet her I shall -think she isn’t nice at all—and a great many other things.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“She is nice,” he said, sullenly. “She’s good.... -You wouldn’t understand her. I don’t think I’ve ever -known anybody who was as good as Andree—really good.... -But ...”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“I think I understand,” she said, slowly. “It was -really what I wanted to know.” She frowned a trifle and -became thoughtful. Then: “You know I said before -that—that I didn’t blame these girls.... It’s the war—and -their men being killed—and—Well, there’s something -in the air.... I don’t suppose I shall ever understand -them, or be able to see as they see—but I’m—well, -I have a lot of sympathy.... A great many of us are -going to look at things more broadly when we get home to -America. We had never come into contact with other -standards and other ways of trying for happiness.... -I know I’m talking in a muddle, but I hope you understand. -What I mean is that I wouldn’t object to meeting -Andree....”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“In Paris,” said Ken.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“In Paris? What do you mean?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Would you be willing to meet her in New York or -Cleveland or Chicago?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>She wrinkled her brows. “Honestly, I don’t know.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Here she would be just one of the sights of France—an -experience. Well, I’m not going to have her on -exhibition, like Notre Dame.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“It isn’t that. It isn’t curiosity.... Really, I don’t -know just what it is, but I want to be acquainted with -her. I think it is so I can find out if it is really true -that she—that she can live as she does and still be—<i>nice</i>.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“I tell you she is nice.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“But you are in love with her? Aren’t you in love -with her? Somehow that makes a difference. It would -seem sordid and inexcusable if you weren’t.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“I am very fond of her.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Do you <i>love her</i>?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Yes,” he said, desperately.</p> - -<p class='c006'>She was just picking up her fork. At his words it -dropped and her lips compressed, but he did not notice. -Perhaps he would have attached no significance to these -signals if he had noticed, because he was fully occupied -in thinking about himself. He had never taken time to -consider Maude Knox’s possible feelings toward himself, -although he had more than once tried in an inconclusive -way to assay his own sentiments toward Maude. Not -that he was exceptionally selfish or self-centered. He -was only at that stage in his relations with Maude when -he was trying to make out what those relations might -develop into. Until a young man is fairly sure he wants -a young woman very much he does not start to worry -about whether she will want him.</p> - -<p class='c006'>And Maude ... she had advanced a trifle farther -than Ken, perhaps. Ken had attracted her from the first, -and, peculiarly enough, the rather open mystery of his -affair with Andree had made him a more striking figure, -if not more desirable. It had accented him.... She -had never confessed to herself that she wanted to establish -proprietary rights in Ken, but she did realize that he was -of some importance to her. He was the one individual -in Paris that she had been anxious to see. When she -had been ordered to Paris her first thought had been -that she would see Ken. These things were only indicative. -They proved nothing to her.... But when she -heard Ken baldly admit that he loved Andree she was -close to proof. Undoubtedly it had been a shock and -an unpleasant shock. Ken was more important to her -than she had supposed. She was glad that the waiter -appeared at that moment with the <i>viande</i>, for it gave her -an excuse for silence and attention to her plate.</p> - -<p class='c006'>She wondered if this feeling were jealousy.... Then -she repeated to herself, “He loves this girl,” and refused -to believe it, and then was doubtful, and then was afraid.... -Other aspects of the affair did not present themselves -to her then—only the fact that this man, who might -have been, whom she wanted to be, something to her, was -in love with another woman, an alien, a Frenchwoman. -Then she asserted to herself, “It’s only an affair....” -There was some comfort and promise in this.</p> - -<p class='c006'>She looked up suddenly. “What are you going to do, -Ken?” she asked. “Are you going to marry her?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>He stammered, hesitated. This was very disquieting. -She had no right to ask such a question. “I—I’ve never -thought about marriage—in connection with Andree,” -he said. He was almost honest in his statement. They -two had been living in the present, had eaten of the lotus, -and the future was only a vague time that might have to -be faced when it arrived. He had been living in a world -which was not a world of reality. It had been a species -of imaginary world into which practical matters like -marriage do not obtrude.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“You don’t think of—of settling in France? I hear -some of the men say they want to.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“No.” He was certain of that. America was his -home, and the homing instinct was strong in him. He -was a citizen of the United States, and it seemed unnatural -and impossible for him to give up that citizenship. -To do so appeared to him to be in the same category as -divorcing a wife, a thing which seemed incredible to him. -But to leave America permanently, to become a citizen -of some other country, seemed more impossible than -divorce. It was simply an act so absurd as to be beyond -consideration. This was not patriotism, but a habit of -mind. He was an American, and it was a natural impossibility -to become anything else—that was it.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Then, if you married her, you would take her home?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Let’s not talk about it,” he said, uncomfortably, for -this opened up a field of disagreeable apprehensions that -he did not want to undertake. “We’re talking too much -about me. Let’s talk about something else.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“But I want to talk about you.... I’m afraid—afraid -you’re getting into an entanglement that will be—a -bad thing for you.... If you do marry this girl and -take her home, what will your people say? How will your -friends receive her?... Because the story would leak -out. It would be sure to leak out. People know about -you. Your chum knows, and others know....”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Andree is good,” he said, “and it doesn’t make any -difference what people think.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Not in Paris. But in America it would make a lot of -difference.... She would be whispered about and talked -about—and people might—might refuse to receive her.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>He was angry now. “People are rotten and narrow. -Andree is better than all of them put together. What -do I care for what they say or think?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“You would care a great deal—and so would she. -She would soon find out what people were thinking. Here -she may be able to go along and believe that she is not -doing anything wrong. Mind, I don’t say she is bad. -I’m almost able to sympathize with her. If I weren’t -your friend, if I didn’t know you, and this were all happening -to a stranger, I’m sure I should be able to understand -and not to blame her.... As it is, I’m truly sorry -for her.... But I do know you, and that makes it seem -different. Things are always different when they strike -close to home....”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“I suppose so.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Well, she would find herself in a different world, a -world that lives in a different way, and that world would -make her feel as if she had done wrong, and she would -be very unhappy....”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“I don’t believe it. Not if I were with her.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“But you—when you get home <i>you</i> will think differently -about this.... You wouldn’t marry an American -girl who had—done as Andree has done.... Would -you?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>He thought briefly. “No,” he said, honestly.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“So, if you married her, you would begin to think -about that some day.... You would.... And you -would wonder what she had done before she met you—if—if -you had been the only man she ever loved. Don’t -you see?...”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“I don’t see. I know her. You don’t know her -at all. You don’t know how sweet and gentle and -decent she is. You don’t know how she thinks.... -She is wonderful....” He was loyal, at least, and -she could not help being glad of it. Loyalty was a -quality she especially admired.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“She may be all of that, Ken, but it wouldn’t matter. -Other people wouldn’t know it and wouldn’t believe it.... -Your mother ...”</p> - -<p class='c006'>His mother!... He knew what his mother would -think and what his mother would do. If he took Andree -home his mother would be suspicious of her because she -was French. Then, if the story should leak out, or a -hint of it should be sent to do its slinking work, his mother -would hate Andree—no less. She would make it her -business to eliminate Andree and to render her life -unendurable.</p> - -<p class='c006'>With unconscious strategy he made a counterattack. -“And you,” he said, “would you marry a man who had—had -that sort of an experience?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>She looked up at him suddenly to determine if there were -anything personal in this question, but could not make -up her mind.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“I—I don’t know.... I—I’ve never imagined—”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Of course not.... But you might have to imagine -it. Suppose you were in love with a man—suppose you -were in love with me”—she concealed a gasp at his -clumsiness—“would you marry me?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>She tried to protect herself, and said, with a forced -laugh, “Am I to consider this as a proposal?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>He disregarded her flippancy. “I suppose I shall -marry some day, and if it isn’t Andree—if it is some -American girl like you—what will she think? I want to -know. You have asked me a lot of questions, and that -sort of gives me the right to ask you this one: Would -you marry me?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“I can’t answer—now. I don’t know.... I don’t -think so.... I should have to think....”</p> - -<p class='c006'>He regarded her. Mentally he paid her the compliment -of thinking that she was a splendid type. He -could not help thinking that she was just such a girl as -he would like to marry and to live with always. She -exerted an attraction that drew him toward her strongly.... -A wife! She would be a splendid wife, a wife that -his mother would receive joyfully, about whom there -could not be the slightest question.... He wondered if -she liked him at all—and that was a sign and a portent. -Suddenly the answer to her question became of large -importance to him. He leaned over the table and looked -into her eyes—and saw her cheeks color under his gaze.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“I wish you would think,” he said, slowly, “and tell me -what you think—” Then he added something he had -not at all intended to say: “And tell me if it is possible -for a man to love two girls at the same time....”</p> - -<div class='chapter'> - <h2 class='c004'>CHAPTER XX</h2> -</div> - -<p class='c005'>Kendall Ware leaned out of a window of the -apartment, looking down at the avenue beneath. -He had an unobstructed view of the sidewalk as far as the -corner. It was time for Andree to arrive, and he was -watching for her. Taxicabs rattled past, a huge <i>camion</i> -manufactured in America and driven by an American -rumbled along; a French officer, resplendent with gold -braid and medals and red trousers, walked by gaily, a -beautiful woman on each side; the <i>concierge</i> was sweeping -the sidewalk in front of the entrance; a child or two in -the inevitable black outer garment or smock played near -a bench ... and then came Andree. She was all in -white, as he loved to see her best. Perhaps it was because -she had been all in white when he saw her for the -first time. She looked very tiny from his place four -stories above the street, and he watched her with something -of the tender amusement with which one watches -a child when it is unconscious of one’s presence.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Andree approached in a determined, business-like -manner. One could tell at once that she had a destination -in view. The quaint stiffness of her gait was accentuated -by the angle from which he looked at her, as was her -slenderness. He watched to see if she would turn her -head or allow her eyes to vary from that intent, straight-ahead -gaze which seemed to see nothing. They did not -vary. She was prim. Prim was the word, he thought.... -The white tam was jaunty, but it did not give her -an air of jauntiness; instead of doing so it gave quite -another impression—that of inexperienced youth, youth -untouched by the events of life, youth that had yet to -come to a knowledge that there was evil in the world. -That was a great deal for a tam-o’-shanter to tell, but -somehow it managed to tell it. Ken leaned farther out -to watch her as she came directly underneath, wondering -if she would glance up at the windows.</p> - -<p class='c006'>She did glance upward, suddenly, as if something had -fallen at her feet and startled her. She saw Ken, but she -neither smiled nor waved, and dropped her eyes again as -quickly as she had raised them. But there was about -her then an air of relief, as if she had sighed audibly.... -He was there waiting for her eagerly; she had seen it, and -her apprehensions, if she had any, were quieted.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Ken listened for her step upon the stairs, but heard no -sound until the door-bell rang with a sort of tentative, -hesitating ring. It seemed as if she could touch nothing -without imparting some character, something of her mood -of the moment.... He opened the door and she raised -her eyes to his and looked into his face a moment, her -face perfectly immobile. She stood very straight and still, -her arms stiffly at her sides.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“My dear,” he said, and held out his arms to her.</p> - -<p class='c006'>She smiled shyly, diffidently, as she allowed him to take -her in his arms and kiss her. She was not responsive, -but seemed rather speculative.... As if she were allowing -this thing to happen to see if it were really going to -happen.... And then she returned his kiss gravely, -as much as to say: “Yes, this can really happen. It is -so. I am much relieved.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“You are <i>triste</i>,” he said, anxiously.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“<i>Mais non.... Mais non....</i>”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Then smile.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“When I have climb’ many stairs I cannot smile.... -But I am glad.... Who is here?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Nobody.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Not Arlette?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Oh yes, of course. But Bert won’t be home to -dinner.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“It is well.... <i>Non, non</i>, you mus’ not take my <i>sac</i>. -It is ver’ valuable—yes. I mus’ watch it ver’ careful. -It has my tickets of the bread.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“I’ll hang it right here, and your jacket, or whatever -you call it.... What have you been doing?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“I have work <i>beaucoup</i>. Oh, it is ver’ tiresome to work! -It is much better jus’ to play all the days.... And you? -Have you theenk of me?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Yes.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“I do not believe—no, no, not once have you theenk -of me. You are ver’ wicked—<i>très-méchante</i>. I shall to -weep.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“I think of you when I wake up, all the morning, at -noon, all the afternoon—”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“<i>Non, non, non!...</i>” She was laughing now. -“Maybe one leetle theenk—only. But I—oh, I have -theenk of you ver’ much. I have theenk you are <i>pas -fidèle</i>.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“I!... Not faithful!”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Yes.” She nodded her head decidedly.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Why do you say that? You know I am <i>fidèle</i>.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“I have see’ you.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Seen me—where?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Oh, you are ver’ wicked.... You deceive me mos’ -cruel.” He could not tell if she were serious or if she -were teasing him. “Also I am mos’ <i>jalouse</i>. It is thees -yo’ng girl—thees yo’ng American girl. I have see’ you -with her las’ night.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Oh yes. We had dinner together. She has just come -back to Paris for a day or two.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Oh yes,” she mimicked. “I know thees leetle dinner. -She tries to steal you away from me.... You like her -more than me. It is so. I see it.... I shall take me -a dagger and make her to die—so.” She laughed gaily.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“You don’t really believe I’m unfaithful at all. You’re -just making fun of me.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Did you bring her <i>here</i>?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Eh?... What’s that? Here? Maude Knox here?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“And why not? Since you are not <i>fidèle</i>.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“But you don’t understand. Maude Knox is an -American girl. She wouldn’t—I couldn’t—”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Oh, it is so?... Then these American girls, they do -not love. They are stone or wood, is it so?... I do not -onderstan’ these American girls.” She was delightfully -disgusted. “Sometime I shall cross the ocean to observe -these girls. It will be ver’ droll. America mus’ be a -ver’ droll, ver’ serious country—where the girls do not -love.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“They do love. Of course they love.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Well, then, Why do you make such astonishment when -I speak that she comes here?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>He waggled his hand helplessly, and she, perceiving -that she was teasing him, put on greater pretense of -seriousness.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Ah, I see,” she said. “The American girl she say, -‘I love,’ and then she enter into the convent.... She -goes in the <i>jardin</i> and see the bud about to blossom, and -she cover it weeth a veil. Is it not? Oh, such love as -thees! It is the love of the ice for the snow.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“It’s different, Andree. I can’t explain it to you -because I can’t explain it to myself.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“<i>Pouf!</i> Different! Do you theenk I cannot perceive -it is different? Oh yes, monsieur. I perceive ver’ clearly -... the difference between alive and dead.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“You’re wrong. American girls can love—”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“How do you know?” she interrupted, impishly.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“—can love,” he persisted, “but all nice American girls -marry—”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“To be sure. Ah, marriage—that is ver’ well. There -is nothing against marriage. Not in the least. Many -people marry, and it is ver’ well. Why not?...”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“I never can make you understand.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Nevair.... I cannot to onderstan’ what is not -natural. Do you onderstan’ if you see the river ron up -the hill? <i>Mais non.</i> To love is to love; to marry is to -marry. It is not the same theeng altogether....”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“America is different.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“You have say that bifore.... It mus’ be the fault of -the girls. <i>Oui....</i> So far as I observe the men they -are willing enough.... Perhaps they are so willing -bicause at America they are always denied. It is mos’ -fortunate for them they come to Paris. Otherwise they -would die and not ever have been alive at all.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“You’re a dear child and I love you and I almost -understand what you’re talking about. But you could -never understand America—and sometimes I’m glad of -it.... And America never will be able to understand -you.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“What would Americans theenk of me if I come to -New York?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“They would think you were very lovely.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“I do not mean <i>that</i>. I am not lovely. I am ver’ -hideous. See, I cover my face bicause you are afraid.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Let’s not bother about America—just about us.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“But I am <i>jalouse</i>. I hate thees American yo’ng girl.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Fiddlesticks!”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“For all you say, I theenk she come here las’ night.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Now, look here—”</p> - -<p class='c006'>She laughed gaily and ran to the window. “See, I -shall jump down and die.... <i>Bon soir</i>, Arlette....”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“<i>Bon soir, mademoiselle. Dîner est servi.</i>”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“It is well.... How does your little granddaughter -carry herself?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Very well, mademoiselle. Even now she is in the -kitchen and very impatient to visit you and Monsieur -Ken.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“She must dine weeth us, mus’ she not, <i>cher ami</i>?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Of course. Set a place for her, Arlette. And tell her -we shall have some American cakes that I got at the -commissary store.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>Arlette beamed with pride and satisfaction and padded -about, setting a third place at the table, waggling her -head and whispering to herself as she went. Ken and -Andree seated themselves, and then Arlette appeared in -the door with little Arlette concealed among her skirts. -The tiny head, with its birdlike features, peeped out at -them timorously.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Enter, mademoiselle,” said Andree. “See, she has -eyes only for Monsieur Ken, is it not? She is my rival.... -I shall not dine weeth her. She is ver’ bad and -wicked.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>Arlette pushed her granddaughter ahead of her, muttering -to her in French.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“<i>Bon soir, monsieur. Bon soir, mademoiselle</i>,” she said -in a tiny voice.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Arlette!” prompted her grandmother, and set her head -on one side and made her eyes very large and round -while she awaited the result of her prompting. Little -Arlette looked at her grandmother, then at Ken and -Andree in turn, and said, with the most comical manner of -pride in achievement, “Goo’-by, gent’men.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Oh,” exclaimed Andree, “she has learned English to -make me sad! With these accomplishments she will make -short work of me.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>Ken lifted the child into her place and tilted her delicate, -fragile, fairy face upward. “You shall give me a kiss and -make her very jealous,” he said, whereupon she kissed -him, keeping one eye on Andree to observe results, and -was much gratified to see her rival cover her face with -her hands to hide her grief.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“I go to America with him,” she said to Andree. “I do -not know if it is America of the North or America of the -South. It does not matter. I am to be his wife.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Ah, already you are American,” said Andree, slyly. -“You theenk only of marry.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“And we shall live in a toy-shop and eat nothing but -candy,” said Ken.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Americans are very rich,” observed little Arlette. -“My grandmother has told it to me—and that I must -teach my husband that it is wicked to be careless with -one’s money.... We shall not dine upon pullet.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“You see what it is to marry,” said Andree. “Already -you are denied what you desire.... I theenk mademoiselle -makes a marriage of money.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“It is not a marriage of money, is it, <i>mignonne</i>? No. It -is for true love you marry me, is it not?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Oh yes, yes! I love monsieur very much.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“But what is to become of me? I, too, love monsieur -ver’ much,” said Andree.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Arlette observed her gravely and pondered. “You, -too, shall be his wife, mademoiselle,” she said.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Ah ... it seems I was wrong. After all, little -Arlette is not wholly American.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>The dinner was finished and Ken carried little Arlette -into the <i>salon</i> on his shoulder. She cuddled between him -and Andree on the sofa, insisted upon holding his hand, -and looked at Andree with calculating eye.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Have you no new <i>chansons, petite</i>?” asked Ken.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“<i>Oui, monsieur.</i>” And she stood up with a most -serious air, taking her position just so and smoothing -down her skirts. Then she tilted up her little chin and, -with her eyes fixed gravely on Ken’s face, she sang a song -of many verses while her grandmother stood in the door -and bobbed and grinned and made signs of a great satisfaction.... -It was not like a child singing, Ken thought, -but like some playfellow of elves and fairies. There were -about her a daintiness, an ethereal quality, a purity which -was something more than merely human and of the -flesh.... He wondered what life held for her; wondered -if Andree might not have been just such a child with -just such characteristics as she. He thought it possible -... for Andree retained some of those characteristics -even now.</p> - -<p class='c006'>He lifted the child in his arms and kissed her, and -Arlette took her away.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“You must come often,” Ken said, “because we are to -be married.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Yes, monsieur. That is understood.... It was -America of the North, was it not?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“It was.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“I shall remember.... <i>Bon soir, monsieur. Bon soir, -mademoiselle.</i>” And she was gone.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“I have many rivals,” said Andree. “It is not well.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“There is only one <i>you, mignonne</i>.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“But yes, there is only one <i>me</i>, but there are many -others. Little Arlette, thees yo’ng American girl.... I -wish to know thees yo’ng American girl. I will meet her.” -She nodded her head several times. “You will have her -come here or we shall dine together.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Nothing doing!”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Oh, what is thees you say? I do not onderstan’. -Give me the <i>dictionnaire</i>.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“The dictionary won’t help. I mean I won’t do it.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“<i>Pourquoi?</i>”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“There you are again. <i>Pourquoi.... Toujours pourquoi.</i>”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“It is well to ask why many times. If one does not -ask why, then many unpleasant theengs may happen. If -one asks why—then one knows and can weigh the results. -<i>N’est-ce pas?</i> I like to know where I am marching.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“I don’t want you to meet Miss Knox, because you -would not understand each other at all.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“I theenk we would. But I shall meet her jus’ the same. -... She is the kind of girl Americans marry. I wish to -study why.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“She would be studying you, too.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>She shrugged her shoulders. “Of course. One woman -always studies another. It is natural.... I do not -know why, unless it is to determine if the woman can -take one’s lover away, or if one can take the woman’s -lover away from her.... I theenk that is it.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“But suppose you didn’t want the woman’s lover?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“That is of no importance. It is still ver’ well to be -able to say to oneself that it would be possible to take that -woman’s lover if it was desired.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“1 don’t like to hear you talk like that!”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“<i>Pourquoi?</i>” Andree’s eyes were big with surprise.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“It doesn’t sound nice.... It sounds—oh, it doesn’t -sound like <i>you</i>.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>She put her cheek against his. “Then I will not say it if -you do not like.... I do not want any other man. I -want only you.... Do you love me?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Yes.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“No, I do not believe. You love this yo’ng American -girl because she theenks only of marry.... You will -marry thees yo’ng girl.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“I’m not going to marry anybody.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Americans always do. It is the law of the country. -You have said it.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“You know I love you.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“I am afraid bicause of thees yo’ng girl.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Nonsense. I can’t marry anybody, Andree. All I -have in the world is my captain’s pay. Nobody can tell -how long the war will last, nor how long I will be held in -the service after it is over—and when I am discharged ... -well, what then? I don’t know. There’s nothing to look -forward to but war ... just this and nothing else.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>She stroked his hand reflectively. “It is well,” she said, -after a moment. “While there is war you shall be here. -We shall theenk of nothing else.... <i>Après la guerre</i>”—she -made a little gesture with both hands—“then we shall -see.... I theenk you will be <i>fidèle</i> w’ile it is that you -remain in France. I am satisfy—for now.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“You don’t believe I love you.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>She mused, and then with that characteristic gesture of -poking downward with her index finger she said: “I -theenk many things. I theenk that I know jus’ one -kind of love, and it ees <i>love</i>, it ees for all time and for all -thing’. It ees for marry or for not marry. But I theenk -you have two kinds of love—<i>oui</i>. Perhaps it ees <i>américain</i>—the -custom of the country. One love for pleasure -and—how do you say?—one love for business.... -Listen, my friend. Do the pleasure love and the business -love never come at the same time and for the same yo’ng -girl? Eh?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“I have never loved anybody but you.” He paused. -“You know all about such things, <i>mignonne</i>. Is it possible -for a woman to love two men at the same time—or for a -man to love two women at the same time?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>She laughed. “It ees the las’ half of the question you -wish for to have answer.... I theenk it ees different -weeth man and woman. The woman she love only one. -She give all.... The man—maybe. It ees ver’ difficult. -But I theenk if there ees one large love that it ees -all.... And I theenk, Monsieur Ken, that one day -you go away and leave me <i>solitaire</i>. Oh, I shall to weep.” -She clenched her fists and dug them into her eyes, and -then laughed up at him. “See, I am ver’ <i>triste</i>.... You -mus’ make me to be joyous.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>She was right, he thought. There could be but one -love, one great love. How could he think otherwise, for -was she not there, close beside him, her breath upon his -cheek, her wonderful eyes turning up to his face every -now and then with that inquiring, wondering, speculating -glance that spoke to his heart? ... One love, marvelous, -sweet, <i>good</i>. He could even pause to assert its -virtue.... Maude Knox became very dim, intangible. -Andree was here, present, living—in all the mystery of her -and all the foreign allurement.... This was love. This -was an amazing sweetness without which his life would -be immeasurably the poorer. It was a permanent thing—could -not be uprooted at a moment’s notice. He knew -that it had altered, was altering, his whole life, and he was -glad. Whatever might come of it, he was glad.... -Something had been given to him which would remain a -miraculous possession so long as light entered his eyes or -reason blossomed in his soul....</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Andree,” he said, tremulously. “Andree....”</p> - -<p class='c006'>She sighed with content. “I am ver’ happy,” she -replied. “Ever’thing is ver’ well....”</p> - -<div class='chapter'> - <h2 class='c004'>CHAPTER XXI</h2> -</div> - -<p class='c005'>Paris awoke to the 14th of July—Bastille Day—without -knowing that, as it had marked the beginning -of the end of the <i>ancien régime</i>, it was now to mark -the last hour of the peril of France. It was fitting that -this great national fête should bring to an end the days -when the <i>boche</i> was to be feared, and that to-morrow was -to see the beginning of the end. But Paris did not know. -The air was heavy with portent; events impended.... -There was present in every heart the apprehension that -the unthinkable might happen, and that their beloved -city might, within a period of days, fall into the hands -of the enemy.... Bastille Day was the last day of the -reign of fear.... The event was still on the knees of -the gods; Paris could not read the future, but it could -make holiday with destruction at its door. The heart of -Paris was steadfast.... Its fortitude was on the eve -of its reward.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Paris did not know that to-morrow the boche would -lunge at its throat, throwing a weight into the thrust that -it had never been able to throw before; nor did Paris -know that its armies and its allies would receive that -thrust without faltering, and would hurl upon it such -rain of fire and steel as would crush it to the ground futile -and staggering.... Paris did not know, nor did the -brain of any human being know, that but three days must -pass before that man of infinite patience and courage who -was generalissimo of the forces which barred the path -of the Hun would make his first mighty stride toward -victory, a stride which should become a steady march, -never flagging, never stopping, until his armies should -have won the precious right to march with heads erect -under that great pile which dominates their city—the -Arc de Triomphe.</p> - -<p class='c006'>It was such events which impended on this 14th of -July....</p> - -<p class='c006'>Kendall Ware and Andree had chosen the Place des -Ternes as the most advantageous point from which to see -the parade, and though it was raining a trifle when they -started out, with skies which promised a drizzly day, -they were not to be deterred. The little concrete oval -which is the meeting-place of the Boulevard de Courcelles, -the Avenue de Wagram, the Avenue des Ternes, and the -rue du Faubourg St.-Honoré was already crowded. -People splashed about in its shallow puddles and jostled -one another between its flower-booths, which were doing a -thriving business. The parade was already passing with -martial music and amid much clapping of hands, but -less shouting than would have obtained in an American -city.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Ken edged Andree as near to the street as he could. -For him it was easy to look over the heads of the people -and to see the marching soldiers, but little Andree might -as well have been at home across the river. She could -see nothing, and there was no box nor chair to be had.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Shall I lift you up?” he asked.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“<i>Mais non.</i> You cannot. I am of such a largeness!... -But I shall see.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“I’ll sit you on my shoulder and tell folks you are my -granddaughter,” he said.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“<i>Regardez!</i>” She took a small rectangular mirror from -her <i>sac</i> and held it before his eyes. Then she turned her -back on the parade and, holding the mirror at an angle -above her head, looked into it with quaint intentness.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Oh, I see!” she exclaimed. “Behol’, the parade it -marches in the glass.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>Ken laughed, but he was a trifle annoyed and embarrassed. -Andree herself, he thought, was so natural, so -herself, that she would have not the least thought in the -world of making herself ridiculous or conspicuous, but -this absurd makeshift of hers would certainly attract -the attention of the crowd—and nobody knew what a -Parisian crowd might do. He hesitated, looked about him -uncomfortably, and decided to hold his peace. It was -well, for within a radius of thirty feet a dozen men and -women were doing exactly as Andree did. They had -come prepared. Each of them stood facing away from -the procession, a mirror held above the heads of the -crowd, and it was with difficulty Kendall restrained his -laughter. Their expressions were all so eager, so interested. -It was absurd. With all that was going on behind -them, they peered as if bewitched into rectangles of glass, -and shouted, or lowered their mirrors to clap their hands -just as if they were seeing living soldiers instead of tiny -reflections....</p> - -<p class='c006'>The crowd interested him more than the marching men. -There was a good-natured simplicity, a lack of reserve, a -childishness about them, yet there were a bigness, a pathos, -and a grandeur in their bearing.... Boys and young -men mounted into trees; couples carrying bouquets scurried -up and down the line, seeking a point where they -might penetrate to the street; here was a woman weeping -and smiling at once. She was in black.... And everywhere -flowers! Now and then a girl would run out from -the curb to hand a blossom to some <i>poilu</i> or Italian or -Englishman or Portuguese.... Every French soldier -marched with a smile and with a posy nodding from the -muzzle of his gun. The street was thick with flowers -and the air rained flowers.</p> - -<p class='c006'>The Americans passed. In their guns were no blossoms, -on their tunics were no bouquets. They marched very -stiffly, erect, business-like, with eyes to the front. The -French had shuffled by jovially with nods and smiles. -One could tell they had seen the war and were marching -men, but there was no stiffness, no rigidity. They were -like the defense of their great general—elastic. The Italians -grinned cheerfully; so did the Portuguese; even the -English were somewhat relaxed—but all these had known -four years of war.... The Americans, marching like -one man, like a splendid machine, seemed, somehow, -sterner, of more warlike stuff. They struck the eye and -won the applause of the multitude.... But they were -of no sterner stuff, nor would they have asserted themselves -to be better fighting-men than the sturdy <i>poilus</i> or -the wiry Tommies.... They were younger—that was -what impressed one. Their youth cried aloud.... -Amid those soldiers of France and England and Italy -and Belgium they looked like boys—and yet their age -might not have been greater than these others—for the -others had seen four years of war.... But they were -splendid, these young men from another world, and the -heart of Paris went out to them....</p> - -<p class='c006'>A hand touched Kendall’s arm and he turned.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Why, Maude!” he exclaimed, and shot a startled -glance toward Andree.</p> - -<p class='c006'>She had not seen, but was peering into her mirror.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“How glad you are to see me!” She laughed. “Really, -I’ve nothing catching. What’s the matter?...” She -glanced about and saw Andree. “Oh!” she said. “I’m -glad. I wanted to know her.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“I told you—” he began; but it was Andree who -interrupted.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“<i>Bon jour</i>, Mademoiselle Knox,” she said, gravely. -“We have met one little time.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Yes, indeed, and I have wanted so much to meet you -again. I have told Mr. Ware....”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“And I, too, have wanted to know you. I have said it -to him, yes, many times. I have said that I shall to -know thees Miss Maude Knox—but”—she shrugged her -shoulders—“<i>les Américains</i> are droll.... He would -not.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“He can’t help himself now, can he? Now that we -know we want to be acquainted with each other, there’s -nothing he can do about it.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Oh, I do not onderstan’. You speak <i>trop vite, mademoiselle</i>. -My English it is of the worst.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“And my French is non-existent. But that doesn’t -matter in the least, does it? We shall get on.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>For those girls there was now something of much -greater importance than the parade, and they promptly -forgot it. Maude moved over to Andree’s side and they -began the sort of conversation that women use when they -are appraising each other with serious intention. Ken -listened uneasily. There was nothing he could do. This -thing that he had desired not to happen <i>had</i> happened, -and that was all there was to it. He pretended to watch -the parade, but his mind was concentrated on what the -girls were saying. The girls appeared to have forgotten -him as well as the marching men.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Ken was acutely apprehensive, but of what he was -apprehensive he did not know. The thought that Andree -and Maude were together, chatting, becoming acquainted, -seemed to him very threatening. He had been in a holiday -humor, but that humor was gone. He frowned and was -conscious of both irritation and depression. It was not -right for them to meet. Something was sure to come of it.</p> - -<p class='c006'>It was not at all that he felt that Andree was not a fit -companion for Maude Knox. That was not it. He was -not ashamed of Andree, and, strangely enough, when one -considers his temperament and the hereditary impulses -which stirred within him, he was not ashamed of his relations -with her. It was an intangible apprehension, a -feeling that one woman whom he knew he loved and -another woman with whom he might be in love could not -meet without unpleasant results to him.</p> - -<p class='c006'>There was curiosity, too, which grew stronger. More -than once he had compared Andree with Maude Knox -when neither was present, but now they were together, -at his side, under his eyes.... He edged away a trifle -with elaborate unconsciousness, and presently reached a -point from which he could study the girls with covert -glances.</p> - -<p class='c006'>It was not so much their appearances that he compared -as it was their <i>selves</i> as he knew them, and as they were -indicated by what met the eye. He was trying to arrive -at a knowledge of what each girl meant in his life, what -she could contribute to his life. Perhaps this was wholly -selfish, but choice must ever be selfish. It is after choice -is made that one may be generous and self-denying.</p> - -<p class='c006'>The contrast between Andree and Maude was so -extreme that they seemed to have nothing in common but -their sex, and as Ken considered he saw they had not -even this in common. At least their conception of it and -of its duties and possibilities and obligations and uses -were as different as the color of their eyes or the expressions -of their faces. One could not see Andree without -being conscious that she was a woman, of the femininity -of her, and that the chief business of her life was to be the -complement of some man. The first emotion that Andree -excited was tenderness.... As one looked at Maude -Knox his first thought was comradeship, followed by a -mental note that she would be reliable, capable of taking -care of herself. Maude was not beautiful, but she was -pretty, with a clean-cut, boyish prettiness that spoke of -health of mind and of body. She was not the sort a man -would fall in love with at first sight, but rather one who -would first be admired and then loved.... Andree -would be loved first, then admired as the sweetness of herself -unfolded under the urging of love. Andree was -fragile. Ken looked at her lips, perfectly drawn, delicate, -sensitive—her most eloquent feature. They were lips to -kiss, lips to give kisses. There, perhaps, stood the chief -difference between these girls and their attitude toward -life: that Andree would give, give, give—asked no other -happiness but to give of herself and her sweetness and -her tenderness and her love—while Maude would demand -an exchange. She, too, could love, but always there would -be inhibitions and reservations. She would take thought -of practical matters, be efficient in love and marriage. -Not that she would be selfish, Ken felt sure, but that she -would see to it her relations with the man she loved would -be well organized and stabilized. She would be a wife -and a comrade to the man she married, and perhaps a -dominant force; Andree would be wife and sweetheart, -with no thought of dominating, but only of giving, of -adding to the happiness of the man she loved.</p> - -<p class='c006'>If love were cruel to Andree, and the man she worshiped -unkind, she would fade silently, withdraw into herself, and -suffer; Maude would have suffered, but she would have -faced the matter and held her own. It would be possible -for Maude to go through life alone; that Andree should -do so was utterly unthinkable. This was, perhaps, because -Andree thought of herself only as a woman, and as -a woman whose life must be bound up with the life of -some man. Maude Knox thought of herself as an -individual, a distinct entity with rights and purposes which -must not be invaded or interfered with.</p> - -<p class='c006'>A man might expect help, encouragement, even dynamic -career from Maude Knox. He might expect a wonderful -fidelity from her. She would take an interest in his life -and would want to have a finger in the shaping of his -destiny. Andree would play her part in his life less -obtrusively, but perhaps as powerfully by keeping alive -his love and by lavishing her love upon him. She would -ask nothing, demand nothing except a continuance of -love and a lavishment of tenderness. So long as love -endured she would follow him to the highest success -without taking any great thought of that success, or she -would have descended with him to the depths of failure -without bewailing that failure—for success to her meant -but one thing, and that thing was love.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Maude was the ideal wife in a partnership of man and -wife as Americans have come to look upon that relation. -The vestibule of the Presbyterian church would receive -Maude with fulsome compliments and would congratulate -Ken upon making a wise selection. Everybody would -say that he had won a splendid wife ... and it would -be true. She was a typical American wife—that is to say, -she embodied those things which Americans have set -as their ideals of wifehood.... He wondered what the -vestibule would say of Andree, even granting that Andree’s -conception of virtue were the American conception. He -could not imagine, though he could well imagine the stir -she would create. She would be too beautiful—so beautiful -as to excite righteous suspicion. She would be -beautiful in a foreign sort of way, and therefore a sinful -sort of way. The vestibule would never forgive her because -she had lived in Paris and because she did not -pronounce English as well as it did—through its nose. -They would never be able to see into her heart nor to -understand the marvel of her goodness.... She was as -far outside their experience as she was actually outside -Ken’s experience, who studied her hourly, but never -understood her and never would understand her.... She -would always be a mystery and an anomaly to him. -She would always be to him a creature who was guilty -according to his inherited conscience and yet escaped the -accusation or the stain of guilt. She was bad, yet she was -wholly good.</p> - -<p class='c006'>He said this to himself, and then hotly denied it. -She was not bad. In his heart he knew she was not bad, -and he knew as well that he had never approached a soul -which was as clean, as unselfish, as purely tender as hers.... -Maude Knox was good, too, capable of unselfishness -and fine tenderness. But she could never accomplish what -Andree had accomplished. She could never do as Andree -did and retain her purity.... He did not realize that -this was because Maude herself would have believed -herself to have lost her purity.</p> - -<p class='c006'>For Kendall the matter marched back to the attitude -he had absorbed from his mother—that relations between -the sexes were wicked in themselves and could never be -anything else, but that by some miraculous quality belonging -to a formula pronounced by a parson it became -permissible for designated couples to practise wickedness -without fear of punishment. The wickedness remained, -but the formula remitted the punishment. That was his -mother’s belief.... She had been bitterly ashamed when -Kendall became evident, because he was testimony to -the world that she had been guilty....</p> - -<p class='c006'>Ken realized that he was getting himself into a state of -mind, that he was reviving those disturbing thoughts -which had such power to make him miserable ... and he -had been very happy with Andree. He had loved his -happiness, and now he wanted it to persist. It had -been something new in his life, very precious, very -wonderful ... and he was not willing that it should -be dimmed.</p> - -<p class='c006'>He stepped behind the girls and spoke.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Andree turned and smiled. “You shall go away,” she -said. “We do not need you. You shall watch the -parade while Miss Knox and myself make thees ver’ -interesting talk. Yes?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“What are you and Miss Knox talking about?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“What should we be talking about?” asked Maude. -“About ourselves, of course.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“It is ver’ nice subjec’,” said Andree, with an impish -twinkle.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Let me come in. Talk about me, and I’ll listen.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“<i>Pouf!...</i> You! If we talk about you, then you are -ver’ angry.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Why?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Bicause we shall say the truth, and men want only -to be praised. <i>N’est-ce pas?...</i> Oh, all men are greedy -for praise. <i>Oh, là là là là.</i>”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“There, Captain Ware. Will you behave now?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>Ken laughed. “Andree is always very disagreeable. -I don’t see how I endure her.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>She nodded. “Yes. I am mos’ disagree-able.” She -accented the last syllable quaintly. “It is bicause I do -not like you.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Mademoiselle is very much interested in America,” -said Maude.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“And <i>Monsieur le capitaine</i> he tell me so ver’ leetle.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“America is a large country. It has a hundred million -of population. The Woolworth Building is sixty stories -high. Everybody owns an automobile and goes to the -movies. Baseball is the national game....”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“And ever’ man ees marry and ees faithful to his wife,” -interrupted Andree, “and all are ver’ <i>sérieux</i> and mos’ -religious, and they are asham’ when they love. I know! -I have study monsieur.” She laughed with childish -gaiety. “Oh, mademoiselle, it mus’ be ver’ droll.... -Regard them—they are born, these Americans, they become -ver’ rich, they marry, they die—but they never live. -It is that I believe they are afraid to live....”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Yes, mademoiselle,” said Maude, “you have hit on -something there. We are afraid to live, all of us. We -want to live. We want a great happiness, but we are -afraid of it. You can’t understand us better than we -can understand you.... You have learned to live and be -unafraid. We have not learned to get the best out of -life, and our greatest terror is of our neighbors’ tongues.... -It has been wonderful for me to come to your -country and to see....”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“And has mademoiselle really seen?” asked Andree, -her eyes on Maude’s face.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Maude hesitated. “I have tried to see, and I think -I have understood a little. I have changed. I am not -the same.... No, I am not the same girl at all who -landed in France a few months ago.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“May one ask what mademoiselle have see’?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>Maude answered, speaking slowly and feeling her way: -“When I left America I thought I was broad-minded -and tolerant. My father had brought me up to be less -narrow-minded than most girls.... He is a professor of -philosophy. But I have found out that I was very narrow-minded -indeed. I could see only one side, and that was -the viewpoint of those among whom I was brought up. -The thing I have come to see is that my home town was -right in setting up its own standards and in maintaining -them—because those standards were best for my home -town.... But I have found out that other towns and -countries have an equal right to set up their own standards -and arrange their own modes of living. I think I can -believe now that a thing which is very wrong in Terre -Haute, Indiana, may be right in Paris or London or -Rome, and that a thing which may be right in Terre -Haute may be wrong in Venice.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“I onderstan’,” said Andree, gravely. “The theeng you -mean to say is thees, is it not? That an act it become’ -wrong when we theenk it is wrong? But if one city theenk -it is right, then it is right for that city? <i>N’est-ce pas?</i>”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Yes, something very like that.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Is that an answer to the question I asked you at -dinner a few days ago?” Ken asked.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Andree looked at him quickly.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Maude paused a moment before she replied; then she -shook her head. “No,” she said, “that is more complex.... -If you were a Parisian I think I could answer, yes, -without hesitation. But you are an American, who, -possibly, should cling to American standards, no matter -where you find yourself.... It is different.... No, -I don’t know what the answer is—yet.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“And thees question?” asked Andree, directly.</p> - -<p class='c006'>It was something like this that Kendall had feared -from a meeting between Andree and Maude, that some -subject such as this would spring up, that he would be -subjected to embarrassment and discomfort. He was -embarrassed now because he fancied Maude would be -embarrassed and because he feared Andree, in her child-like -frankness, might say something which would shock -Maude’s American prudery. He did not make use of the -word <i>prudery</i>, but the state of mind for which it stood -was in his thoughts. He flushed and was about to attempt -some stammered diversion, but Maude answered, perfectly -calm and without hesitation.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Captain Ware asked me if I would ever marry a man -who had had an affair with another girl.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Ah....” said Andree. Then: “And why not, -mademoiselle? What has that to do weeth the marriage? -It was a silly question, was it not?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>Ken regarded her anxiously, but she gave no sign that -she had attached any significance to his question other -than a faint note in the long-drawn “Ah....” with which -she had heard it stated.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Yes, it was a ver’ silly question,” Andree repeated, -“for if it ees not then there shall nevair be any marriages -at all.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“I don’t know....” said Maude.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Perhaps it ees bicause mademoiselle ees ver’ yo’ng -and does not know the worl’,” said Andree, with an air -of age and wisdom.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“No. It is something in myself. I resent the idea.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Then there is but one hope for mademoiselle.... -She mus’ marry the monk.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Now, listen here,” said Ken, bruskly. “This—this—Oh, -darn it all, let’s talk about something else.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>Andree laughed gaily and pointed a finger of ridicule -at him. “Oh, see! We have frighten’ him.... He is -ver’ droll. Sometime’ he is same theeng as yo’ng girl -jus’ from the convent.... But he is ver’ good, mademoiselle,” -she said, suddenly and seriously. “He is mos’ -good and gentle and kind, and I love him ver’ much.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>Maude touched Andree’s hand, and her eyes were not -guiltless of moisture. “I am sure you do, dear,” she said, -“and he must love you very dearly, too.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>Ken felt that the situation demanded something of him; -that if he did not prove himself adequate to the demand -he would sink in his own estimation and take a lower -place in the regard of both the girls. It was awkward. -No situation could be more awkward, but a thing was -required of him if he desired to be true to himself and -worthy of the love that Andree had given him.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“By God! I do!” he said, desperately, and had his reward -in the depths of the smile which came into Andree’s -eyes....</p> - -<p class='c006'>There threatened to come an uncomfortable pause, but -Andree averted it.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Monsieur Ken and I go soon for the <i>déjeuner</i>. Mademoiselle, -of course, comes also.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“I wish I might,” said Maude, her voice a trifle dulled -and her eyes not altogether happy. “But I promised to -help out in the club on the Avenue Montaigne.... And -I must be going.” She looked at her wrist watch. “Indeed -I must. I can cross the street now.... Good-by, -Captain Ware. Good-by, mademoiselle.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“<i>Au revoir</i>,” said Andree, holding out her hand. “We -mus’ meet again. There are many theengs we mus’ speak -of.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>Maude looked down into Andree’s dark-shadowed black -eyes and smiled. “Yes,” she said, “we must speak of -many things....”</p> - -<div class='chapter'> - <h2 class='c004'>CHAPTER XXII</h2> -</div> - -<p class='c005'>In the morning Paris stopped in groups to whisper and -to point off to the northeastward. Paris was apprehensive. -It had been awakened before dawn by the -distant rumble of cannon, such a rumble as had never -before come to its ears, and it wanted to know the reason -for it. The guns had never sounded so loudly. Was it -that the <i>boches</i> had made a fresh advance and were by that -much nearer to the defenses of the city? Or had it been -some huge air raid turned abortive before it reached its -objective?... It was the 15th of July.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Slowly, by devious channels, the news spread. The -enemy had struck again, had launched such a blow as -warfare had not seen up to this period.... And Paris -waited for the outcome. Then dull explosions were -heard in various parts of the city at regular intervals.... -Big Bertha was at her work again; the long-range cannon -was once more bombarding Paris. As in the days past, -one might see wagons loaded high with trunks and -personal belongings moving toward a gate of the city or -toward a railway station as the more apprehensive -abandoned their homes for places of greater security. -These were days when it was impossible to find tenants -for the top floors of apartment-houses. There was a feeling -that one was safer from Bertha and the bomb with at -least one <i>étage</i> between him and the roof....</p> - -<p class='c006'>Papers were eagerly snatched from kiosks and from -news-venders, who ran through the crowds with such -speed that it was almost impossible to buy their wares—but -the news was scanty. At least the guns were not -heard again. After that first tremendous artillery preparation -there was no sound from the direction of Château-Thierry -and Reims. The silence, the pall which the -censorship threw over events, was portentous, threatening. -People recalled the inexorability of the last two -German attacks. If this one proceeded as its predecessors -had done, Paris would be made untenable. There would -be a siege.... There was talk of complete evacuation.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Then tidings of a more encouraging nature filtered in. -The <i>boches</i> had advanced a little here and there, had been -checked at this and that point. There had been no -breaking through, no headlong rush upon Paris, no -marching down roads in columns of four with guns over -shoulders.</p> - -<p class='c006'>On the 16th the apprehension was less, but the tension -was still present. The 17th saw Paris again almost at the -normal of war-times. It was reassured. It was rumored -that Foch had given his word that Paris was safe. The -magic of one man’s name was potent to reassure the -millions of citizens of the metropolis. If Foch said Paris -was safe, then Paris was safe.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Then came the 18th, which dawned as other days dawn, -with the same sun rising in the east, with the same blue -skies above, and the same breezes moving over the surface -of the same earth. But it was a day not like other -days. History may well set it down as the Day of Days, -for it marked the beginning of the end, the first note of the -finale of the crashing, discordant Germanic opera.... The -Allies had counterattacked, and fear was dead. -That was the significant thing. The 18th of July, A.D., -1918, marked the death of fear in the heart of Paris. -From that date onward there would be no news but good -news. Terror of the Hun had become a thing which -one remembered but would no more experience.</p> - -<p class='c006'>The Élysées Palace Hôtel knew by night that our First -and Second divisions had struck at the base of the German -salient about Reims and that our Twenty-sixth Division -had battered the apex before Château-Thierry—and at -last the American Expeditionary Force was in the war. -The Americans had come! The Americans were ready! -The Americans had started! Number 10 rue Ste.-Anne -knew these things, as did the American censorship high -up in the Bourse. It was a day of exultation for Americans -in Paris....</p> - -<p class='c006'>In spite of censorships, in spite of military secrecy, in -spite of minute precautions, rumors circulate through -armies which have an undeniable basis of fact. On the -4th of July Kendall heard the soldiers of the First Division -stating confidently that they would march through -Paris streets on Bastille Day. No one had told them. -Nobody knew how the rumor earned its life, but it was -there, and the event proved its reliability. So an army -rumor receives a degree of belief which does not seem to be -warranted. Rumors were a plentiful harvest now; big -rumors and little rumors ... and among them, circulating -through the officers of the Intelligence Department -in Paris, was the whisper that some officer or officers -were to be sent back to America either on a mission or -to undertake permanent work.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Ken heard this prophecy early in the morning, and it -troubled him. He had no cause for imagining that he -would be selected, yet he might be selected. The chances -were, perhaps, minute, but, nevertheless, they were present, -and it was far from his desire to be returned to America -to run down German sympathizers in Hoboken or to -take a desk in some crowded bureau in Washington. -While he was in France there always was the hope that he -might be transferred to active duty with some regiment -at the front. Like all men in the American Expeditionary -Force, he wanted to serve at the front, and he did not -want to return to America—at least until the work was -done. Man after man Kendall had heard to speak longingly -of America, but to couple with his homesickness the -quick statement that he did not want to return until the -job was done. It was a sort of religion—the cleaning up -of that job. Somehow each man seemed to feel that the -success of the army depended on his presence, and that -to be sent home before victory arrived would be to -deprive him of something precious which he had earned.... It -was so with Ken.</p> - -<p class='c006'>But he had a stronger motive than most for wishing to -stay in France. It was Andree....</p> - -<p class='c006'>Suddenly and very poignantly he realized what it would -mean if he were compelled to part from Andree. It -seemed to him that she had become a part of him, an -essential part without which he could not continue. She -had brought an essence into his life which was sweet -and desirable and wonderful. He knew that no other -woman could bring to him what Andree had brought so -unconsciously, yet so generously.... She was Andree!... Andree! -The world could show but one.</p> - -<p class='c006'>What was to be the outcome? It was a question he -had evaded time and again, well knowing that it must -some day be faced. He did not face it now, though it -urged itself upon his attention. He did not believe the -world had seen a more precious thing than their love—and -yet, because of his training and the imprint of heredity, -that love was questionable, tainted with irregularity. -It was good, sweet, pure, but it was irregular as the Middle -West and Plymouth Rock perceived irregularity.</p> - -<p class='c006'>He had never known Andree to utter an immodest -word or to think a thought that was not clean and good. -He had wondered at a certain diffident loftiness in her -thoughts. She was a woman whose soul was to be regarded -with awe, as any virtuous soul is to be regarded -with awe. He did not believe he saw her falsely, nor that -love blinded him to defects which should be apparent. -He knew he saw her truly, and that she was worthy of all -his love.... And yet his friends, his neighbors—above -all, his mother—would despise her as a woman of light -virtue, as a thing of evil.... He could see the seething -among the gossips if Andree were to be set down in their -midst, and he despised them.... But—</p> - -<p class='c006'>Again he evaded. He had not the courage to ask -himself what he would do when the moment for doing -arrived.... He could not give her up. That was the -thought that came now—that she was indispensable.... But -would he have the courage to face the vestibule of the -Presbyterian church with her? He did not ask.</p> - -<p class='c006'>One of those moods of depression to which he was -liable when his reflections were troubled settled upon him. -He was acutely unhappy. Those moods possessed a -physical sensation, not a pain so much as a consciousness -of the existence of his body, which was very disturbing. -It was as if his arms and legs had suddenly become vivid. -At such times he did not want companionship, could not -have answered conversational advances. The life within -him seemed to become as putty—a dead mass. The only -relief was to walk and walk and walk.</p> - -<p class='c006'>He left the office to trudge to the apartment, meaning -to eat lightly and to wander about Paris until the obsession -was ejected.... At the entrance to the building the -concierge was standing, waiting for him.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Oh, monsieur ... monsieur,” she said, and broke -forth into weeping.</p> - -<p class='c006'>He was not surprised. Such scenes were to be expected -in those days when every mail brought word that some -loved one had been demanded of his country. He patted -her shoulder awkwardly.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“You have had evil news, madame,” he said. “I am so -sorry.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>Through her tears rage flared. “The <i>boches</i>,” she exclaimed. -“Why is it that the good God allows such -creatures to be!... What good can it do them? But -they would laugh and be joyous. It is so. I have read.... -These killers of babies!”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“What is it, madame? Your son? Have you had the -news?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“My son, monsieur, is gone these two years,” she said, -not without a lift of the shoulders. “It would not be -that. When one is a soldier one must march.... -To kill the men—that is war. But the babies—the helpless -little babies!... They are not men, monsieur, but -monsters....”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Yes.... Yes,” he answered, not knowing what to -say.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“And monsieur loved her, did he not? It was Arlette -who declared it to be so. Always she spoke of the fondness -of monsieur for the <i>petite fille</i>—the tiny Arlette.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Little Arlette! What do you mean, madame? What -has happened to little Arlette?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“<i>La longue portée, monsieur.</i> Again it began to fire this -day. It is that you have heard its explosions.... -This Big Bertha of the boche that murders babies!... -<i>La pauvre enfant!</i> She is playing in the street before her -home. Out of the sky comes the shell of this so wicked -cannon. There is a noise of great frightfulness.” She -covered her eyes. “When the smoke makes to lift itself -and one can see—there lies little Arlette....”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Killed!” Kendall felt something that was rage and -grief clutch his throat. “Have they killed that child?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“She still lives, monsieur, and asks for you. It is so.... -But she will die. It is dreadful. Yes.... Both -legs, monsieur, at the knee. They were swept from -beneath her as with a scythe ... and she still lives—asking -for monsieur.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Where?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>She told him the hospital, and without a word he -turned, running, to search for a taxicab. The thing was -incredible. Little Arlette, that mite from fairyland, -maimed and bleeding and dying. Such things could not -be. This was not war.... He raged, though tears were -wet upon his cheeks.... As he rode, the dainty figure -of the child stood before him, chin upraised, mouth opened -birdwise to sing. He saw her as if she were real.... And -then he saw that scene in the street: children playing, -the sun daring to shine.... A sudden rushing in the air -above, a tremendous detonation. He saw it all, even -to the most minute happening. He saw little Arlette -standing erect, stricken with sudden fear, saw the burst -of the explosion, saw the child diminish suddenly in -stature as her little legs were flicked from under her and -she dropped upon bleeding stumps before toppling to the -pavement.... He uttered a hoarse groan of protest.... He -cowered back into a corner of the taxicab and -shut his eyes, as if that could shut out the pictures of -his imagination.</p> - -<p class='c006'>And she had called for him!</p> - -<p class='c006'>It seemed he was expected at the hospital, for he was -escorted immediately to the little bed upon which Arlette -lay. He had dreaded to see her, flinching from a sight -which he apprehended might be horrible. He forced -himself to look ... and the horror passed. The little -face upon the pillow was bloodless, her eyes closed. She -seemed not alive, but a thing of fragile loveliness carved -from some material brought into being by the fairies for -this very purpose.... There was no trace of pain—only -motionlessness, a mysterious gravity ... and -peace. Old Arlette sat with eyes fixed unwaveringly on -the little face; the child’s mother cowered with her face -against Arlette’s ample shoulder.... Ken stood in -silence.</p> - -<p class='c006'>The nurse touched his arm. “Speak to her,” she -whispered. “It will make no difference. She has asked -many times for you.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“She is—alive?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“And conscious.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“It will not—harm her to arouse her?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Nothing can harm her.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>Kendall understood. Little Arlette was past hurt now, -and he had been brought there to give to the child her -last little moment of happiness.... He knelt by the cot.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“<i>Mignonne</i>,” he said, softly.</p> - -<p class='c006'>She opened her eyes and stared at him, and then -smiled.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“He is come. Regard him. I said he would come.” -Her voice was so faint as to be almost no voice at all.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Of a certainty I have come,” he said. “What could -keep me away from my little sweetheart?... Does—does -it hurt?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Hurt?” She seemed vaguely surprised. “What -should hurt, monsieur?” She did not know what had -happened to her.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“May I kiss you?” he asked.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“But yes. Is it not that I am to be your wife? I -wish you to kiss me.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Do you love me very much, <i>mignonne</i>?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Oh, very much.... We shall be very happy, -monsieur, in this America of the North. I am too little -to be married now, is it not? But it will not be long.... -My grandmother says I grow very fast.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“I have seen it myself.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>She sighed. “I am glad. I had fear that you might -grow tired of waiting....”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“I would wait for you forever, <i>mignonne</i>.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>Again she smiled. “I shall sing for monsieur. One -should stand up to sing ... but grandmother says I -must not stand up to-day.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Will it harm her?” Kendall asked, quickly, of the -nurse.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Nothing will harm her,” she repeated.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Then sing, dear ... sing ‘Madelon.’”</p> - -<p class='c006'>The birdlike lips opened and the song came forth, -faint as a morning breeze, that song of the little barmaid -who stands to the <i>poilu</i> for the wife or sweetheart -at home, the little barmaid whom he kisses in his loneliness, -and in kissing her feels that he is touching the lips -of one far away.... It was a song which, to Middle-Western -ears, sounded strangely on the lips of a dying -child, but it did not offend Kendall.... It sprang from -the soul of France.</p> - -<p class='c006'>There ceased to be any semblance of an air to the song; -it became a faint whisper, halting, coming now a word -at a time. Arlette’s eyes were closed.... Now her -lips moved, but there was no sound.... Presently the -lips ceased to move....</p> - -<p class='c006'>Kendall turned to the nurse, who nodded. He arose -suddenly, looked down upon the child and then rushed -from the room ... and as he traversed the corridor he -found himself repeating again and again: “With a song -on her lips.... With a song on her lips....”</p> - -<p class='c006'>For two months experiences had been jostling one -another to enter Kendall Ware’s life. It seemed as if there -was a conspiracy among events to modify him, to change -the fiber of him, and to break down the structure that had -been himself when he landed in France. As compared -with these past sixty days the previous ten thousand days -of his life had been colorless and without life.... It had -required twenty-seven years of personal existence and -more than one generation of predecessors to make him -what he was—and now a mere fraction of time, a handful -of minutes, were striving to undo all that had been -accomplished and to create a new being. The question -to be answered was: Can the present overcome the past? -Can events master the fiber growth of heredity? It -seemed an experiment to determine if individuality is a -fixed quantity or if it is subject to revolution.... So -far it might be asserted that Kendall had been modified—but -no more.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Little Arlette had been a bit of humor in his life—no -more. He had been unconscious that she was anything -more. But now in her catastrophe she loomed larger and -assumed significance. His was a world of symbolisms, a -religion of symbolisms. As his mother saw the hand of -God in every event—the hand of God interposed with -direct reference to herself—so Kendall, in a minor degree, -and perhaps with something of unconsciousness, was subject -to the same obsession. He looked for the lessons of -events. He was apprehensive of the warnings of events. -An implacable God regarded him under lowering brows -and now and then caused an event to occur for his guidance.... -So he looked for the significance of Arlette’s -murder.</p> - -<p class='c006'>He had an uncomfortable feeling that innocence had -been caused to perish for his benefit—as a lesson to him. -It made him a sort of accessory after the fact. He -rebelled in a vague way, feeling dimly that God had no -right to implicate him in such a crime. Old catch phrases -came back to him as he walked toward his home, phrases -such as that one must search for the divine purpose behind -the event; that the ways of God pass human understanding; -that it is all for the best!... There was no -comfort in these. He could descry no divine purpose. -For that matter, he could find no divine purpose back of -the war.... Yet God permitted it, furthered it, as it -were.... And because it was, because Divinity permitted -it to occur, it followed indisputably that it must be right -for it to occur.... He would not have dared to define -his creed as stating that his God was one who committed -wholesale crime that a remote benefit might accrue. Yet -that was his creed and the creed of hundreds of thousands -of his fellow-countrymen.... It was strange that he -should remember Andree’s attitude toward God at that -moment—her saying that the eyes of the good God must -be wet with tears to see a wickedness. But he did remember, -and was grateful to her.</p> - -<p class='c006'>He wandered in a maze of gloomy theorizings, a maze -which was nothing but a maze, which led to no desired -center. It was the struggle between present and past, -and it was a drawn battle. It only left him bewildered -and gloomy, treading a bog and miring at every step.... -Then he became aware that he wanted Andree, -that she was necessary to him, because there was something -simple and sure about her. She gave him a handhold -to cling to. He felt that she knew, and he wanted -the security and uplift of her knowledge. The universe -was toppling, and Andree could stabilize it again—but -Andree was not coming.... He felt he would never -need her more than at this moment, but she was residing -in her land of mystery, and he had neither her name nor -address....</p> - -<p class='c006'>The stark fact was that little Arlette was dead—and -with a song on her tiny lips. He would never again think -of France without thinking of Arlette ... without seeing -Arlette as a symbol of something at once pure and -ruthless....</p> - -<div class='chapter'> - <h2 class='c004'>CHAPTER XXIII</h2> -</div> - -<p class='c005'>Now began a phase of Kendall Ware’s life which was to -continue for a matter of six weeks, a period full -of conflict between anomalies, of indecisions, of procrastinations. -There stood out high moments of happiness, -and there were dark descents into unlighted realms -of self-distrust. He questioned everything, doubted -everything, and most especially did he doubt his own -ability to weigh events and to choose between the better -and the worse. He almost doubted if he had the power -of choice and felt a dour leaning toward predestination. -Much of this was self-deception, and conscious self-deception. -He was becoming increasingly aware of a -day when he would have to make a choice and reach a -decision, but he was afraid of that day. He knew the -choice was his, and could belong to no other individual -or force. <i>He</i> must choose. The event was in his keeping.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Three major questions presented themselves: First, -what was he going to do about Andree? Second, what -was he going to do about Maude Knox? And, third, -which was interwoven with the first, what about the -vestibule of the Presbyterian church?</p> - -<p class='c006'>Ken had not the least doubt that he loved Andree. -That was the one sure fact in the whole confused mass. -He loved Andree and Andree loved him. To many -young men, perhaps to most, this alone would have -answered all his questions. Perhaps the ordinary young -man would have thought of nothing else, but, perceiving -that Andree was essential to him, he would have taken her -and made her his own in permanence with due forms of -marriage. This would have been the natural step for -youth to take—disregarding consequences and challenging -the future. But Ken was not an ordinary young man. -He was a young man who was afraid of the future, who -had been brought up to know a lively fear of the opinion -of the community among which he lived. “What will -folks say?” was a question he had heard propounded from -his earliest childhood, until the thing that “they” would -say had assumed a place of importance in his affairs -second to nothing. It had almost confused his perceptions -of right and wrong, for, even as a small boy, it had -been made to appear to him that his mother was not so -much concerned with the righteousness of any given act -as she was by the effect of that act upon her circle of -neighbors. Undoubtedly this was a mistaken notion, but -it had at least the color of truth.</p> - -<p class='c006'>He recalled vividly how a certain prominent member -of his church had become an absconder and the coming -of the news of it into his household. He remembered how -his father had said: “Mother, we don’t know all the ins -and outs of it. Maybe he’s more sinned against than -sinning. We don’t know....” His mother had rejected -that view harshly. “Whatever will people say -about him? It’ll be terrible on his wife, and him so -prominent in the church.” She had not said, “What will -God say about him?” but, “What will people say?” His -sin, so it had seemed to Ken’s young mind, had not been -so much in absconding with money as it had been in -creating adverse talk.... This attitude of mind had -altered somewhat with years, but never had his fear of -clacking tongues diminished. It stood for the supreme -punishment of evil ... not hell, but gossip.</p> - -<p class='c006'>So his first and third questions stood together, and he -dared not force himself to answer them. The second -question could not be answered until he had satisfied the -other two.... There came a fourth question, upon -which, ultimately, must hang the answers to all, and -that was, “Can a man marry a woman with whom he has -had such a relation as I have had with Andree?” In -other words, could he, by his own act, unfit Andree to -become his own wife? This question did not present -itself poignantly for some time, but it was beginning to -formulate in the back of his mind. As yet he was considering -only the expediency of matters; later he would -find trouble with their moral and sociological aspects.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Matters further complicated themselves when Maude -Knox informed him that she had been assigned permanently -to an administrative position in Paris. He -would be compelled to see her frequently. He would -want to see her frequently. Somehow this seemed unfair -to Andree, but he knew that Maude could not remain in -the city without his seeing a great deal of her. Andree -would discover this, and what would Andree do about it? -With Maude Knox absent her importance receded, was -held in abeyance; if she were here she would grow increasingly -important—and what would come of it?</p> - -<p class='c006'>“You don’t seem overjoyed,” she said.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“I’m glad you’re going to be here,” he said, “but just -the same, I wish you weren’t.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Why? You aren’t compelled to have anything to do -with me if you don’t want to.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“That’s it. I am compelled, and I don’t know whether -I want to or not.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Well!...” She drew the word out to its full value. -“I must say you’re frank.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Please don’t be offended. I don’t mean to be offensive, -but things have gotten so rottenly complicated with -me that I’m afraid of another complication.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“And I’m a complication?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>He nodded. “You know it,” he said. “I think you -know more about what a complication you are than I do.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“You are thinking Andree will be jealous.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“I’m thinking she may have cause to be jealous.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“And you don’t want her to have?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“That’s just it. I don’t know.... I don’t want -anything ever to happen to make her unhappy. You and -I have talked pretty frankly, haven’t we? Somehow you -seem to understand things over here, though you are as -American as I am—and you—well, you don’t make a fuss. -But even at that, you don’t know how I feel about her.... -Maybe I’m going to be in love with you, and maybe -I’m in love with you already. I don’t know.... But -I do know that I love her.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“If you are by way of making love to me you’ve invented -a new method.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“I’m not making love to you. I guess I’m trying to -reason things out aloud.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Using me as a wall to bounce your ball against.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>He smiled without mirth. “Something like that. I -know I love Andree, but yet I can see myself in love -with you.... I’ve asked you before if a man can be in -love with two girls at the same time.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“I don’t know. Not in the same way, anyhow.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“It would be different. If I did love you I would be -thinking about marriage all the time. It would mean -marriage. I would want you for my wife.... But -Andree—she doesn’t mean that. At least marriage -doesn’t figure in it. I can’t explain exactly, but it’s as if -there never had been such a thing in the world as marriage—only -love.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“I’m not sure but that is better. Even if I am American -I don’t know but I’d rather have that kind.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Andree isn’t just an adventure, an incident. She’s -more important than that—the most important thing that -ever happened to me.... I can’t explain. I can feel -it, but I can’t express what it is. It isn’t that I couldn’t -marry her, nor that I wouldn’t be mighty lucky to have -her for a wife.... It seems, somehow, that marriage -doesn’t signify—isn’t necessary.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“I’m sure I don’t know what you’re trying to get at.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“I don’t, either. I’m trying to find out.... But I -do know that I don’t want to hurt her or make her sorry -she has loved me.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“How about me?” she asked, suddenly.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“You?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“How about hurting me?” she asked. “You’ve made -a weird sort of love to me. You’ve balanced on the fence -and told me you might fall in love with me. You’ve -carried on a sort of rubber-elastic courtship—ready to -snap back out of reach if I seemed likely to catch you.... -Have you thought about me at all? Really, I’ve -some right to be considered.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>She was right. Undoubtedly he had not been fair to -her. He had thought only of himself and of his sentiments -toward her, but scarcely at all of her sentiments -toward him.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Why,” he said, “I don’t believe I’ve thought of that -side of it. It never occurred to me that you—that you -might be in love with me.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Well, I’m not.” She spoke sharply.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Do you mean you never could be?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“There! Of all things!... You want me to tell you -that if you make up your mind to condescend to love -me I’ll be ready to drop into your hands. You want to -have your cake and eat it. I’d say you were the most -completely selfish person I’ve ever encountered.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Really I’m not. It isn’t selfishness.... It’s just -that I am so confused by the whole situation that I don’t -know what to do.... You don’t know how relieved and -happy I would be if there was nobody but you, and we -were going to be married. You are just the kind of wife—”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“That your neighbors would approve of,” she interrupted. -“I know. What I don’t know is why I -keep on talking to you like this. I ought to send you -about your business and tell you never to come near me -again ... but I’m not going to. You’ve told me in -effect that you would be in love with me if it weren’t -for somebody else, and that the only reason you are -pleased to consider me as a candidate at all is because -you are afraid your family and your neighbors would -make a fuss if you took the other woman home. That’s -the truth, and you know it is.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Well,” he said, ruefully, and not wisely, “so long as -you don’t love me, what does it matter?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“So long as I don’t love you it doesn’t matter in the -least.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“But—”</p> - -<p class='c006'>She shook her head. “We sha’n’t talk about my -loving you. I’m not going to love you.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Do you mean that?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Decidedly.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“You wouldn’t marry me?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Of course not.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Why?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Really, I think you’re out of your mind. Even if I -loved you—which I don’t—do you think I’d sit and wait -for you to reason out that you had better fall in love -with me, and then grab you with wild eagerness—after -you make up your mind to chuck another woman whom -you have assured me that you do love?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“But suppose I do love you? Would the fact of my—my -affair with Andree prevent you from marrying me?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“If you loved me and I loved you nothing in the world -would stop me from marrying you.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Anyhow, I’ve got that question answered.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“And much good may it do you.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Why?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Because the condition doesn’t exist. If it did exist -I might answer differently. I might think then that I -could never marry a man who had done such a thing.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>This conversation took place at noon in a little café -on the rue St.-Honoré not distant from the Y. M. C. A. -headquarters. Kendall had met Maude Knox as he was -seeking a place to lunch, and they had gone together. -Now he wished he might sit and argue the question until -his status with her was definitely settled, if it could be -definitely settled, but she refused to pursue the subject.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“No, that’s all we talk about that. You can pick -out any subject you want to, but we are through talking -about you and me.... And, besides, I’ve got to get -back to work.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“When shall we have dinner together?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“I don’t know.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“You’re angry with me.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“No, but I’m disgusted with myself because I’m not. -If I had a spark of pride I’d never speak to you again.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Why?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Ken Ware, you are a miracle of denseness. Don’t you -know that this whole conversation has been impossible—that -it couldn’t have happened? I never imagined such -cool effrontery! But I’m not offended, and I don’t know -why.... I’ll dine with you some evening soon—but -not to touch this subject again. Don’t ever mention it—never! -I’ve got some rights to be thought about, and -I’m going to think about them. There are just two -things you may do: either propose to me out and out, so -I can refuse you, or else treat me as a friend, and no -trimmings. I mean it!”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“But I don’t want to do either.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“You’ll have to.” She laughed, and slid deftly from -behind the table. “Are you going to walk up the street -with me?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Let me pay the check.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>He called a waiter and asked for <i>l’addition</i> and then -walked to the corner of the rue d’Aguesseau with Maude. -She did not permit him to linger.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Good-by,” she said, turning abruptly away. “Drop -me a note when you feel in a condescending mood.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>That evening when he got home he found Bert and -Madeleine there ahead of him.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Andree’s coming, too,” said Bert. “I met her this -afternoon and told her there was going to be a party.... -This is a farewell. See Madeleine’s tears?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Farewell?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Yes. I’m going away for a couple of weeks—some -buildings to look after. I don’t mind, but Madeleine’s -darn near heartbroken.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Oh yes,” said Madeleine, gaily. “My heart it break. -I am so lonely.... You see, Monsieur Bert he is the -on’y American <i>officier</i> in France. When he is gone, there -is no other.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“You don’t mean that,” said Ken.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Of course she does,” Bert said, with a grin.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Ken shrugged his shoulders and went to his room to -tidy up a bit for dinner. He heard them laugh, and -Bert’s voice said, “He thinks we are very naughty.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>He did think so, but in spite of himself he liked Madeleine, -indeed, felt a real friendship for her. She was not -like Andree, but she possessed qualities which could not -pass unnoticed. She was generous, kind, always concerned -for Bert’s comfort and financial welfare. There -was not a mercenary hair in her head, if there was not a -serious hair. Even though there was nothing deep and -enduring and lofty in her relations with Bert, there was -nothing sordid. She was seeking her little moments of -happiness, seeking them lightly, gaily, carelessly.... -Ken excused his own conduct because it was concerned -with a great love and a beautiful fidelity. There were no -such matters between Bert and Madeleine, yet Ken could -not find it in his heart to denounce her as bad. According -to all his standards she was bad—a light creature. -But, somehow, he did not see her as a light woman -nor as wicked.</p> - -<p class='c006'>It would have been difficult to find any one more -different from Andree.... Ken had become used to -accepting Andree’s judgments in large measure, and -Andree did not declare Madeleine <i>méchante</i>. She, too, -liked the girl, accepted her as a friend and equal.... It -was all a part of this strange world with its upsetting -standards....</p> - -<p class='c006'>The bell interrupted his moral reflections and he hurried -to the door with that thrill of anticipation which -Andree’s arrival always caused.... There she stood, -very straight and still and grave, just as he knew she -would be. She raised her eyes to his exactly as he knew -she would raise them, and smiled appealingly. He drew -her inside, into his arms.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“I’ve been needing you, <i>mignonne</i>,” he said. “Everything -goes wrong when you’re not with me.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“I am here,” she said, brightly. “Behol’! all is now -well. I shall let nothing trouble you.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Do you love me?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Yes.... And you?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“You are very beautiful.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“That is well.... No, I am not beautiful, but it is -well you theenk it is so. I am happy.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>She regarded him solicitously. “You are ver’ tired. -Have you work’ <i>beaucoup</i>? It is not that you have an -illness?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“No.... No. Everything is all right now that you -are here. You are the only person who is <i>right</i> in the -whole world.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Oh!... Oh!... I am ver’ wonderful! I do not -know thees till I meet you. I theenk I am only a yo’ng -girl, but behol’! I have ver’ suddenly become—how do -you say?—The <i>dictionnaire</i>—queek. The <i>dictionnaire</i>!” -Laughing gaily, she searched with ludicrous haste for the -word and could not find it. “Oh, it is terrible! W’at I -am I cannot say. I am something that ees not in the -<i>dictionnaire</i>. To be a thing that is not in the <i>dictionnaire</i> -is mos’ grand and étonnant—astonishing. I shall to be -ver’ vain.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>Her eyes were dancing with an impish light. She -seemed very young, a child, endowed with some magical -quality which reassured him, dispelled the heaviness -which rested on him.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Have Monsieur Bert and Mademoiselle Madeleine yet -arrive’?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“They’re in the <i>salon</i>.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Come. We shall see them—now.” Again that -quaint gesture of poking downward at the floor with a -slender finger. “Thees minute.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>The girls shook hands formally and lapsed into an -amazing splutter of French. Ken looked from one to the -other, from Andree, tiny, fragile, dark, elfin, to Madeleine, -tall, slender, fair of hair, always laughing. Madeleine -seemed nothing but embodied laughter; Andree seemed -to him now as she always seemed to him, a mystery, -incomprehensible—a being come to him out of a land -of wonders.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Bert is going away,” he said.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“For how long?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Three weeks.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Oh, it ees a lifetime. Mademoiselle will be ver’ sad.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“She says not,” Ken said.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“It is not possible. She will be mos’ sad.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Not Madeleine,” said Bert. “She’s going to find -another American officer to keep her happy while I’m -gone.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“But she could not—<i>non, non!</i> You do not theenk!”</p> - -<p class='c006'>Madeleine laughed gaily.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“What would you do if I went away for three weeks?” -Ken asked.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“You do not go!... It ees not true.” Her eyes grew -big and her lips parted as she waited for his answer.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“No, I’m not going any place.... But if I should go, -what would you do?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“I should be ver’ <i>solitaire</i>. Ver’ often I should weep. -And I should work ver’ hard at all times—to make the -days go more fast.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Would you find another American officer to help you -pass the time?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“You know,” she said, simply.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“<i>Oh, là là!</i>” exclaimed Madeleine. “Regard these -children. It ees the great love. <i>Toujours fidèle.</i> It ees -mos’ beautiful.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“It is ever’thing,” said Andree. “You, mademoiselle, -love a ver’ little. So you are happy a ver’ little. <i>N’est-ce -pas?</i> I love ver’ much, so I am happy ver’ much. It is -clear. You theenk you are mos’ happy, but you do not -know. It is not until you love, mademoiselle, until you -love weeth all the love there is that you have the great -happiness.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“It may be so.... But also the great sadness. Is it -not so? Regard me. I love thees Monsieur Bert a -leetle. He makes to go away, so I am sad a leetle. Yes? -But, then, I love him so ver’, ver’ much and he makes to -go away. And then?...” She shrugged her shoulders. -“Behol’—then I am in despair. I theenk my way is -more better. Not the great joy, but also not the great -sadness.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“<i>Non!... Non!...</i> It ees not so. There is the -great sadness, it is true. <i>Certainement!</i> But even that, -mademoiselle, is sweet. Bicause one remembers the -great love and the great joy. The so great happiness has -been. It will nevair die. No. For so long as one lives -the happiness will remain.... The grief—one must -expect grief.... It is a part of the worl’.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“<i>Vous êtes un poète, mademoiselle....</i> You write the -poetry. Therefore you are different. The poet makes of -sadness a great thing, a wonderful thing.... But I—I, -mademoiselle, am cashier in a shop. I do not have the so -beautiful thoughts. No, I am jus’ a girl that loves to be -happy always. I cannot think the wonderful thoughts -like the poet—<i>non</i>. To me it seems that ver’ many -leetle happinesses without a sorrow are more better than -one great, wonderful happiness of the poet—but also -with the terrible grief that makes to kill.... So I love -a little and laugh all the days and am ver’ content.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Would you not wish to love—to have forever one -man and to love him weeth the great love?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Ah, that is another matter. Always to have one -lover, one husband! It is different. Then I would love—yes. -I would love as much as any one.... But it is -not possible. Do I not know? Where do I get the -husband? <i>Pouf!</i> There is no husband for me, and as -for lovers—thees American lovers—they come, and it is a -little while when they go. So I do not love. I make -believe to love, and so I am happy.... But why, -mademoiselle, give to one of them the great love when -one knows well it is but for a day? It is to throw away -the love, is it not?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>Andree was silent; all were silent. Madeleine had thrust -the situation before Kendall and Andree baldly. Ken -drew Andree to him, but she did not respond; she was -cold, frightened.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“But for a day ...” she said.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Monsieur Bert and I we do not deceive ourselves. -We tell each other that thees is not for always.... It -is play—so there is no cloud between us.... But you—oh, -you are ver’ wrong, mademoiselle. In your heart you -know.... You love Monsieur Ken and he loves you—it -is true. But—ask him the question, mademoiselle—does -he stay forever? Or, when the day comes on which -he mus’ depart, will he take you weeth him to thees -America?... Ask him, mademoiselle, and if he tell you -you shall be weeth him always, then I am wrong.” She -looked at Ken. He was conscious that Andree was looking -at him appealingly, and that even Bert was demanding -something of him with his eyes.</p> - -<p class='c006'>He might have lied. He might have assured Andree -that she should never leave him, but with her eyes upon -him he could not lie.... He did not know. This was -the thing that was making him miserable—the question of -whether he should take Andree to America with him.... -He did not know. Therefore he answered, lamely:</p> - -<p class='c006'>“I love you, <i>mignonne</i>.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“It ees not an answer,” said Madeleine, inexorably.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“I can’t answer.... I can’t see the future.... I -don’t know. All I know, Andree, is that I do love you. -Why can’t we be satisfied with that until we have to -decide?... The war will be long. I shall be here for -years, perhaps.... Oh, my dear, I cannot think of a -life without you—but I do not know....”</p> - -<p class='c006'>He was conscious that he was proving inadequate to the -situation, that he was not measuring up to what Andree -had a right to expect of him, and he was afraid of what -she might do or say. Madeleine shrugged her shoulders -expressively. He looked at Andree apprehensively, saw -her eyes flash with anger, her little figure grow tense, -her lips compress. It was the first time he had ever seen -her angry.... He had offended her. She was in a -rage with him, and rightly in a rage.... She stepped -close to him and clasped his arm with both hands, turning -her face toward Madeleine and Bert.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“See!” she exclaimed, and her black eyes flashed, -“you have make him unhappy weeth your questions.... -I shall not have questions asked of him.... <i>Non!</i> -He shall not be troubled. It is not the affair of any one -but himself and me.... I will not permit it.... -What is it to you? It is for us alone. If it is <i>nécessaire</i> -that he leave me one day—that is for him to say. Is it -that I have ask or demand anything? <i>Non, non, non!...</i> -He is ver’ good, and I love him—jus’ like he love’ -me.... I know that and I am satisfy.... You shall -not make him to be unhappy weeth questions....”</p> - -<p class='c006'>She faced them, tense, breathing rapidly. Her hands -clutched his arm and pressed it to her breast....</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Andree ...” he said, hoarsely. “Andree ...”</p> - -<p class='c006'>She smiled up at him, her face softening, her eyes -becoming big and tender. “Ever’thing is well,” she said.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Bert drew a long breath. “By Jupiter!” he said, and -there was admiration in his eyes. “I’ll tell you what, -Andree, if you’ll have me, if you can put up with a roughneck -like me, I’ll take you for keeps ... and to hell -with the consequences.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>Madeleine laughed and shook her head. “You see how -<i>fidèle</i> thees Monsieur Bert is.... <i>Là là!</i> But you shall -not have heem, mademoiselle, until I am through weeth -him.... See, there is the head of Arlette.... Let us -have the dinner and be gay!”</p> - -<div class='chapter'> - <h2 class='c004'>CHAPTER XXIV</h2> -</div> - -<p class='c005'>There are persons who seem to have their emotions -under the control of push-buttons, as it were. They -are capable of friendship and anger and love and jealousy, -but they have been given the faculty of suppressing these -emotions until it is their desire to allow them freedom. -Maude Knox was one of these. It would be unfair to -say that she was coldly calculating, but she was careful. -Many of the minor inhibitions which rule American girls -did not signify to her; she was broader of mind, capable -of perceptions of which her sisters were incapable. But -she did not fly into passions, nor was she given to headlong -tumbles into love.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Her condition with respect to Kendall Ware was noncommittal. -As a matter of fact, she was not in love with -him, because he had not committed himself. If Ken had -come frankly to her, declaring his love, and had asked -her to be his wife she would by this time have been as -much in love with him as he could have desired. Nobody -could deny that they were suited to each other, and -nature has seen to it that young people who are suited -to each other, and enjoy propinquity with each other, do -fall in love. It seems to be the law that everybody must -love somebody; it also seems to be the law that propinquity -is nine-tenths of the matter.... So Maude was -in a receptive mood. She was ready to let go and be -very much in love with Ken when a suitable moment -arrived—if it ever did arrive.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Once she had released her controls she would be tender, -faithful, a wife such as any man might boast of. His life -would be her life. His concerns would be her concerns. -Her career would be to make him happy and to make a -success of the family of which he would be the head.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Just how much she realized of this condition it would be -difficult to say. Just how much she desired Kendall to -fall in love with her she herself did not know; but she did -like him, liked him a great deal. He was on her mind, and -perhaps she even schemed a little to have him near her -frequently and so to give him the opportunity to love -her if such a thing were to happen. But at the same time -she held a serious doubt if she would marry him in any -event—because of Andree.</p> - -<p class='c006'>True, she was of broad mind, and her life abroad had -enabled her to perceive and to understand many matters -which are obscure in America. These she could understand -and condone or pronounce to be good and even -virtuous—when they did not touch her directly. They -were all right for others, but—but when they entered her -own life that made of it another matter.</p> - -<p class='c006'>If she had been told that in a time past Kendall Ware -had carried on an affair with a French girl—an affair that -was wholly of the past—she might have dismissed it after -small bitterness and have accepted him without more -than a slight question. But this was present, going on -under her eyes. She saw the workings of it, and saw that -he actually loved this girl. That it was the sort of love -he would one day give to his wife she did not believe. -That did not seem possible to her.... On the other -hand, there were many periods when she knew a fear -that Kendall would marry Andree. She asked herself -why he should not marry Andree. She had seen the -girl, talked with her, found her beautiful and sweet—even -good. Maude even felt a sympathy for Andree to -the extent of warning Kendall against tampering with the -girl’s happiness. Her sympathies were with Andree -rather than with Kendall. She had never experienced -the slightest aversion for Andree, none of that aversion -which a woman safe in the possession of what she terms -her virtue is entitled by ruthless custom to feel for the -girl who is no longer a maid. She was able to conceive -of a union such as Andree’s with Ken as possessing a sort -of regularity, as being made more or less regular by the -standards and conceptions of the society in which they -were living.... But, nevertheless, when it came to -marrying Ken her American prejudices and conceptions -took on life and set themselves up as a barrier.</p> - -<p class='c006'>It was natural that she should be very curious about -Andree and should wish the opportunity of meeting and -studying the girl. She was rather frank and outspoken -herself and could imagine herself discussing the situation -with this girl and, perhaps, arriving at some determination. -But the opportunity failed to present itself for days -and weeks. Her brief chat with Andree on Bastille Day -had proved nothing, and it was not until early August -when a chance meeting in the Galeries Lafayette, where -both girls happened to be shopping, gave her the opportunity -she desired.</p> - -<p class='c006'>They met on one of the broad winding stairways of that -enormous store, Andree descending, Maude ascending. -Of the two Andree was the more self-possessed. She -looked at Maude with that quaintly inquiring expression -with which she seemed to greet all the world, but gave -no other sign of recognition until Maude smiled and -extended her hand.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“<i>Bon jour, mademoiselle</i>,” she said.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“<i>Bon jour</i>,” responded Andree.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“I’ve been hoping to see you for a long time. We -hardly got acquainted in that little chat we had a month -ago.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“You are sure you wish to be acquainted?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Oh, very.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“<i>Pourquoi?</i>”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Why? That’s difficult to put into words, isn’t it? -But I know about you—and you must know about me. -We just ought to be acquainted better.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Eet is possible. You will know me. Ver’ well. I -also would know you.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Suppose we have <i>déjeuner</i> together, then. Have you -finished your shopping?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Ever’thing—all is completed.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>Maude turned and walked down the stairs with Andree. -They did not speak until they had traversed the crowded -aisles and reached the street. Each was thinking about -the other, but with this difference: Maude was wondering -what Andree thought about her, while Andree was not -concerned in the least with Maude’s opinion of herself. -She thought of Maude only as some one in whom Ken -was more interested than she liked, and wondered what -this American girl would say to her.... Maude was -impressed, not exactly in spite of herself, with Andree’s -appearance and manner. The girl was so slender, so -dainty, so appealing, so childlike and fragile! One could -not help wanting to defend her and befriend her.... -But it was not befriending her to wish to take away the -man she loved and who loved her, which was the thing -that could not but rest in the back of Maude’s mind. -She had a feeling that Andree knew that desire was in -her mind....</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Let us go to the Petrograd—it is only a few steps. I -am living there now. A great many of us American girls -live there.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Ver’ well,” said Andree, who, it seemed, had placed -herself on the knees of the gods and was prepared to let -events wait upon her at their will.</p> - -<p class='c006'>They made their way to the rue Caumartin and turned -to the right. Presently they entered the courtyard of the -Hôtel Petrograd and made their way to a dining-room -well filled with American girls in the uniforms of the -various war-service organizations. Selecting a table in a -sheltered corner, they ordered luncheon, nor did they -speak except of casual matters until they had finished. -Andree addressed herself to her plate with that quaint -absorption which always delighted Kendall. It touched -Maude now, as everything about this appealing little girl -touched her. She found herself actually growing fond -of Andree as one might grow fond of a lovable child.... -And yet she had a certainty that she would not find -Andree altogether childlike; that in all matters appertaining -to her love she would be all woman and amply -potent to defend herself and her rights.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Now we shall speak,” said Andree, looking into -Maude’s face with directness, almost with challenge. -Her own face, if it showed any expression at all, spoke of -hesitation, diffidence.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“What shall we talk of?” Maude asked, experimentally.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“It is for you to say, mademoiselle. It is you who -make the suggestion that we speak together....” Then, -with disconcerting directness, “You wish to speak about -Monsieur Ware, is it not?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Yes,” said Maude, “I should like to talk about him—and -you.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“It is ver’ well.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>Now that it reached the point of discussing Kendall, -Maude was nonplussed for a moment. How should she -open the discussion, if discussion there were to be? What -could she say that would not be an impertinence to this -girl, whom, somehow, she did not want to offend? Maude -even respected her, perceived that about Andree which -demanded respect and consideration. She hesitated. -Andree smiled and leaned a bit forward.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Mademoiselle,” she said, “perhaps it is that you are -in love with thees yo’ng man also. Is it of that you wish -to speak?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“I am not in love with him, mademoiselle.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Ah ... but that is not the ver’ truth—no. I have -seen. I do not know—maybe you theenk you do not -love him, but you do love him. That is why I am willing -to speak weeth you.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“I don’t understand.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“I am willing to speak weeth you about Monsieur -Ware bicause I love him ver’ much and bicause you -also love him. I theenk it mus’ be bicause I know -we both wish ver’ much to have him always be happy. -Is it not?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“But I do not love him.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Then, mademoiselle, it is not of a necessity for us -to speak at all. If you are merely his frien’, his acquaintance, -you have no right to speak weeth me about -him. It is so. <i>Mais</i>, if you love him”—she lifted her -shoulders—“that is ver’ different.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“He has not asked me to love him.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“That is well. I theenk he loves me very <i>fidèle</i>. Yes. -But also he theenk of you ver’ much. I have seen. -You are of his country and are ver’ pretty. He theenk -of you and compare you weeth me. I am French.... -That is not American. He theenk about w’en he goes -back to America, and then bicause I am ver’ French and -not American he is troubled. He theenk I do not onderstan’, -but I onderstan’ ver’ well. He say that he love -Andree in Paris, and in Paris Andree is ver’ nice, but in -America, where all is so different, then he does not know -what to theenk.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“And then?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“And then he theenk of you, mademoiselle, of you who -would not be foreign and strange and at whom his friends -would not make to shrug their shoulder’ and lift the eyebrow’—bicause -I do not know the manner and the -custom.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Is that all that troubles you—not knowing the manners -and the customs?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“What else could there be, mademoiselle? I am not -<i>très-jolie</i>—ver’ beautiful—but also I am not so hideous. -I do not know.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>Maude shifted the subject because she was not ready -to speak about the thing which would be troublesome -more than manners and customs.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Has he asked you to go to America with him?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“No, mademoiselle. We have not speak of that.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“But you would go? You would leave your France -and your people and go to a strange land?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“I theenk, mademoiselle, that I would leave the worl’ -for Monsieur Ware.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“As his wife?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“As to that, I do not care. If he wish, then ver’ -well. If he do not wish, then ver’ well, also. The -marriage—makes nothing to us. It is only the love.... -But you, mademoiselle, you make of marriage the -necessity.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“I would not marry him—I do not think I would -marry him.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“You would love him—as I do?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“No.... No.... You misunderstand. Even if I -loved him I do not think I would marry him.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“And why? It is ver’ strange. Perhaps it is some -American custom.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Of course I am American.... But the reason is -yourself.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Myself!... Oh, I do not onderstan’.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“I do not believe I could bring myself to marry him -when he has loved you—as he has. When he has—been -your lover.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>Andree’s eyes were wide with surprise. “It is ver’ -strange,” she said. “What have I to make weeth it? -Suppose one day he do not love me any more, but loves -you ver’ much. Then you will not marry him bicause of -me? Oh, that ees ver’—how do you say?—ver’ silly.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“It is hard to explain. Something inside me rebels -against it. I would always think about it.... It would -seem to me that he was tainted ... not clean as a husband -should be.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“<i>Mademoiselle!</i>” Andree sat very erect, her lips compressed.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Don’t misunderstand me.... Please! I do not -mean to offend. I expressed myself clumsily—and yet -that was what I meant. It is nothing against you.... -I have seen you, and I believe I can almost understand -you. You are sweet and good—but you are -different....”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Much different, mademoiselle, for that if I love then -nothing matters. I give, and I do not ask questions. I -theenk not of myself, but of him. It is the truth. I -say, can I make him ver’ happy.... But I do not ask -if I am so ver’ good that he is not so good as I am?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“I wish I could explain. I can never understand you -wholly, and you—I’m afraid you will never be able to -understand me at all. We have grown up in different -worlds. You here, I in America.... Do you know -that what you are doing is very bad in America? that a -girl who does as you have done is an outcast? that no one -will receive her in their homes nor have anything to do -with her? ... People would say you were bad....”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Oh, thees America! It is ver’ <i>sérieux</i>. Is there not -love in America, then?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Love is proper only when people marry.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“And in America I would be a bad girl?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Yes.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Bicause I love ver’ much and am <i>fidèle</i>?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Because you love without marriage.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“And that makes Monsieur Ware bad also—bicause he -love’ me?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“It makes him—yes, people would say he was bad.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“It is a lie. He is not bad, but ver’ good and kind. -Do I make him bad? Oh, mademoiselle, that is a ver’ -silly thing. I would only make him good and happy. -It is the ver’ truth.... And bicause of me he is made -bad and you must not marry him!... Regard me, -mademoiselle, what harm do you theenk he has from -me?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“No harm from you. Oh, I mean it.... I—I don’t -blame him. If I were a man I think—yes, I’m sure—I -should love you as he does.... But—”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“But he is bad, and I have made him bad?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“It isn’t you who make him bad....”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Then he is not bad, for there is no other. I am ver’ -sure. He is <i>fidèle</i>.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“You don’t understand. It is not <i>you</i> who make him -bad, but the thing he is doing ... his relations with you. -They are bad.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“It is mos’ difficult—like some philosophy in a big -book. I make him bad, but I do not make him bad, yet -he is bad bicause of me....” Her eyes began to flash -as she arose in Kendall’s defense. “It is not true. What -you say is ver’ bad and wicked. For he is nevair bad.... -As for me, I do not theenk I am bad. No. I do not -theenk <i>le bon Dieu</i> believes I am bad. You yourself, -mademoiselle, have seen me and speak weeth me. Do -you theenk I am bad?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“No, dear. I believe you are good.... I mean -it. From the bottom of my heart, I believe you are -good.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“It is well. Then, can one take something bad from -one who is good? See! To be bad is to offend the good -God. Have I offended the good God who smiles when -there is a great love? I do not theenk. Have I made -Monsieur Ken to offend the good God?... I should -not be happy as I am if it were so.... Have I made -him to do a wickedness? Am I a woman of that sort? -It is not true. All I have desire is for him to be good -and to be ver’ happy.... That is not a sin, and it does -not make a sin for him.... And you would not marry -him even though you love him.... Mademoiselle, that -is not a good love, not such a love as make the good God -to smile.... It is a wickedness to love so....”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“My dear—”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“No.... Let me speak. Suppose thees Monsieur -Ware have love me and marry me—and I am no more. -I am dead. Then you would not marry him?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“That is different altogether. There would be no -reason why I shouldn’t marry him then.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“But I tell you, it is the same. Behol’! he loves me -so ver’ much, and one day he does not love me bicause -the war is done and he mus’ go home, and it is not possible -for him to carry me weeth him.... The theeng is ended. -It is as if I were dead—as I should desire it to be. The -love was the same as if I have marry him.... He would -then nevair be weeth me any more. I would be as if I -were not.... And he would have taken no harm.... -To say that he would be harmed is to say that to love a -man more than any other theeng in the worl’ is to harm -him, and to say that, mademoiselle, is <i>impie—blasphématoire</i>—to -say a theeng which is an insult to God.... -No!... No!... You make a wrong.... Because -he have love’ then he is better—not more wicked.... -I say to you, mademoiselle, that the love like I -have for Monsieur Ware makes to keep him from a sin. -I know.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>Maude’s eyes were not dry. She was listening to a -thing that rang with truth and with goodness. She saw -what she had never been able to perceive before, and it -showed her that Kendall Ware could take no harm from -Andree, let their relations be what they might, for Andree -was good, with a simplicity and a faith and a purity -greater and better than any she had ever known. American -as she was, reared upon the traditions of Plymouth -Rock, which are as unbending as the laws of the Medes -and Persians, she perceived the truth, saw that to judge -is a power withheld from mortals and jealously guarded -by God....</p> - -<p class='c006'>“My dear!... My dear!...” she said, tremulously. -“I—Can you forgive me?... You are right—<i>right</i>. -Nobody could be harmed by you.... You are sweet and—and -wonderfully good....”</p> - -<p class='c006'>Andree smiled wanly. “So we need speak no more. -We have done. There remains but one little thing, -mademoiselle. You love thees yo’ng man, and I love -thees yo’ng man.... He loves me now, and until I -am dead I shall keep him—keep him.... I shall make -to fight for him as I can.... But I am sorry that it mus’ -make you sad—if I can keep him. I am ver’, ver’ sorry.... -Good-by, mademoiselle, we shall not be friend’—no, -that ees not possible—and one of us mus’ be ver’ -sad.... I mus’ pray that it shall not be myself....”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Good-by,” said Maude, extending her hand.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Andree turned and walked with quaintly stiff tread -and daintily erect body out of the dining-room. Maude -ascended to her room to think, to readjust herself.... -Her state of confusion was almost as great as Kendall -Ware’s. She was conscious of her own inadequacy and -of her inability to pierce to the true heart of events and -see them as they would be seen by a mind at once perfect -in logic and perfect in purity.... But, in spite of -prejudices bred into her being from youth, she could not -see Andree as otherwise than <i>right</i>, Andree as untainted -by evil ... and it seemed a thing impossible that -Kendall Ware could have been made one whit unworthier -by any contact with her....</p> - -<div class='chapter'> - <h2 class='c004'>CHAPTER XXV</h2> -</div> - -<p class='c005'>Kendall Ware went to his office on September 1st -just as he went to it on any other day, anticipating -a day like a hundred of its predecessors had been. He -enjoyed the walk through the clear sunny air of Paris and -felt not the slightest foreboding of heavy events to come. -Fifteen minutes after his arrival the day had taken upon -itself the importance of marking the close of an epoch -in his life.... He was ordered to report himself in -Brest on the morning of September 4th to board the first -returning transport for America.</p> - -<p class='c006'>The order partook of the essentials of a calamity. It -came so unexpectedly, with such sudden shock, that he -did not sense immediately the full meaning of it nor -what it involved. In the beginning he saw only the misfortune -of being sent home, of being removed from -proximity to the war. That alone was enough to give -him keenest distress, but as he returned to his desk and -sat staring gloomily at the wall before him this first -effect was swallowed up and lost forever by the inrush of -cold dread of the major consequences of his enforced -departure.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“<i>Andree!...</i>”</p> - -<p class='c006'>He was face to face with the inexorability of the postponed -decision. There was no time to work matters out -gradually now, to hope for some miraculous solution. He -must decide; he must answer yes or no.... What should -he do about Andree?... Within twenty-four hours he -must determine if she was to remain in his life, or if they -had reached a point in the journey where one must turn -to the right and one to the left to follow roads that never -joined again on earth. He must determine whether or -not he should marry Andree and take her home. It -would be possible. There was time. He felt sure he -could obtain the necessary permission to have her accompany -him on the transport because he knew women were -constantly returning on transports. Even failing that, -she could demand her passport as his wife as a newly -made citizen of the United States and go to America by -way of Bordeaux and the French line.... But only -as his wife could she cross the ocean; in no other way -could she obtain the essential passport....</p> - -<p class='c006'>So that became the one question—to marry or not to -marry!</p> - -<p class='c006'>If he did not take her with him, then what? How -could he tell her?... What would she do if she discovered -that she had lost him? There came to him a -vision of the bridges crossing the Seine ... and it was -harrowing!</p> - -<p class='c006'>The breaking of evil news is, perhaps, the most feared -task that can fall to man. He fears it as he fears no -other demand that can be made upon him.... It was -inevitable that Ken should consider eluding such a black -responsibility. Why not? It would be perfectly simple.... -He was to see Andree to-morrow night. Well, there -was no need to see her, and the night after that he would -be on the train for Brest. He could step out of her life -without a word, abandon her without farewell.... It -would remove all complications—except the complication -of conscience. It was a temptation which did not persist. -Kendall Ware was no hero, but he was immeasurably -above such an act of black cowardice. Besides, he could -not bear to go without seeing her again ... if the decision -were to leave her.</p> - -<p class='c006'>He must decide....</p> - -<p class='c006'>It was a sentence from which there could be no reprieve, -implacable, inevitable. He had arrived at the -most critical, the most momentous crisis in his life ... -and nowhere could he turn for help. He stood alone, -sole judge and executioner. There was no jury to pronounce -verdict, no expert who could advise. He—Kendall -Ware—must speak the word.... Never had -he been so conscious of himself as an individual, of his -existence as a distinct entity, of <i>himself</i>. It frightened -him—that idea of himself as a responsible thing, of which -life could require decisions. For the first time he realized -the meaning of the words “free will” and he resented them. -God had endowed him with the perilous gift of freedom -to mold his own life, and he felt a cowardly resentment -toward God.... But the stark fact was there. There -was no avoiding it. There <i>must</i> be a choice, <i>some</i> choice -... and the combined populations of the earth could -not take it out of his hands....</p> - -<p class='c006'>He was thankful for some minor matters of routine -which would demand his attention until noon. After -that he would be relieved from duty, with no occupation -but to make ready for his departure.... It was a -trifling postponement and he welcomed it eagerly. At -eleven-thirty he left the office and walked down the -Champs Élysées, almost for the last time. He pretended -that he was walking aimlessly, but it was not true. He -had a destination, and that destination was 12 rue d’Aguesseau -and Maude Knox.</p> - -<p class='c006'>It was not that he felt the necessity of seeing Maude -Knox, but that he wanted to talk to somebody, to talk -to somebody who might have some understanding of his -plight. It was not advice he sought so much as sympathy. -Maude was the sort of person he could talk to, and talk -was necessary.... He waited in the archway of the -building until she came down.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Well?” she said, in some surprise.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“I’m waiting for you. Can you lunch with me?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“What has happened?” she countered. “I can tell by -your face that something has happened.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“I’ve been ordered home.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>She did not reply for a moment, for his announcement -brought her also face to face with a climax in her life. -<i>He was going home!</i> The <i>status quo</i> which had been endurable, -if difficult, was to be altered. While he was -there and she was there their relations might go on as they -were, somewhat anomalous, but requiring no immediate -decisions or arrangements. They could drift and allow -events to take care of themselves.... But now he was -going, and she realized that she did not want him to go. -She realized what she had repressed and concealed was -now insisting upon recognition—that Kendall Ware was -very important to her, that his presence was very important -to her, and that for a time to which she was -unable to set an exact limit she had been hoping that -their relations would be determined in a manner satisfactory -to herself.... She was bolder in facing the -fact than Kendall had been. She faced it promptly and -adjusted herself to it ... and the fact was that she -loved him....</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Where shall we lunch?” she asked, and it would have -been impossible to tell from her tone that in the brief -pause that came before her question she had withstood -a shock and mastered a crisis.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“The Oasis is quiet and we can talk.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“But they’re so slow!”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“That doesn’t matter to-day. There’s—there’s so much -to say.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“To me?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>He nodded. “I’ve got to talk it out with you ... -because you are the only person who can do any good. -The same things are behind both of us. We know the -same sort of people back home.... Don’t you see?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“I think so. But, remember, I’ve been here as long -as you have. I’m not the same. I’ve seen things, too.... -I can’t judge anything the way I would have judged -it back home. I’ll never be able to again.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>They walked to the rue St.-Honoré and presently turned -up the rue Boissy-d’Anglas to the quaint, quiet little -English tea-room with its soft lights and absurdly carved -fireplace and decorations. That fireplace, Bert had once -said, looked like the life-work of a lazy man who loved to -whittle. There they found a table—there were but three -or four—and gave their orders to the thin, very serious -Englishwoman who was the only member of the staff -of the place who ever became visible. Nobody knew if -she were the proprietress or merely a waitress—and -nobody cared especially.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“It’s rotten luck,” said Ken.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Yes.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“I’ll be stuck at some desk job in Washington. It -wouldn’t have been so bad if they had given me a few -months at the front—”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Or if they never had sent you to France at all.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>He looked at her a moment, then shook his head. -“No. I wouldn’t have missed these months over here. -I’ve really lived; really appreciated being alive. No.... -Whatever happens now, nobody can take this away from -me....”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“It has been wonderful,” she agreed.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Just to see it—Paris, the people, the war going on—would -be wonderful.... But I believe I’ve done more -than merely <i>see</i>. I’ve <i>felt</i>.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“You’ve seen and felt, Ken, but how much has it -changed you?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“What do you mean?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“I mean, what has seeing and feeling done to you? -Has it made any permanent changes in you? Your -experiences here have impressed you a great deal—but -how long will the effect last when you get home?... -When Paris is just a memory—and a subject for conversation? -In ten years will you be any different as a -result of all this than you would have been if you had -never come?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>He hesitated. “I don’t know,” he said, slowly. “What -do <i>you</i> think?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“I think,” she said, “that we will get back into the old -environments and the old habits and will become just -what we would have been. If we were to stay here, -then we might change, broaden, really profit by our -experiences. But we go home. We see the same -faces, hear the same sort of talk, and are tied by the -same sort of prejudices and theories and narrownesses -that we used to accept without question. We will -know better for a while, and then we will revert.... -It takes something pretty big and startling to change -a person forever.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Big and startling.... You mean something in his -own life and experience—something personal to him—that -is big and startling?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Yes.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Like—”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Oh, like committing a crime, or making some supreme -decision or sacrifice.... Anything that strains the very -soul of a person so that it can never get back into its -former shape.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Love?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Not love itself, but something wonderful or terrible -that comes as the result of a love.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Then you don’t think experiences change people, that -it is—well, just making decisions that grow out of the -experiences. It is reaching a crisis and then making a -choice of which way you will go.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“I think that is it. I don’t see how any event can -change a person if he remains merely a spectator. I don’t -think any sort of happening will really alter a person for -good and all unless it has compelled him to use every bit -of his will and courage and intelligence to make up his -mind what he will do about it. If he chooses the right -way, then he becomes stronger; if he chooses the wrong -way or dodges the decision, he becomes weaker.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“There’s no dodging the choice,” he said.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“And that is what’s the matter with you, isn’t it?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Yes.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“And the choice?” She knew very well what problem -he was laboring over.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Is Andree,” he said.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“She was bound to be the problem. Couldn’t you see -that from the beginning?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“That doesn’t matter now—what I saw at the beginning. -All that has happened has happened”—he paused -and stared down at the table-cloth—“and I’m glad it did -happen.... But now I’ve got to settle the bill.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“And you want my advice?” She looked at him -queerly. “You have come to <i>me</i> for advice about this?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Not for advice. I just want to know what you think.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“About what—definitely?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Whether I should marry Andree?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Why shouldn’t you?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“So many reasons.... There’s my mother. There’s -the vestibule of the Presbyterian church, if you know -what I mean.” She nodded her understanding. “There -are all the things that have come down from Plymouth -Rock.... There is something in me, something I can’t -get rid of, that is a result of all these things, which -makes me hold back from marrying a girl who—with -whom I have—who has been to me what Andree has -been.... And there is <i>you</i>.” He uttered the last sentence -defiantly.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“That isn’t fair—it isn’t <i>fair</i>! You have no business -to say such a thing to me.... You’re the most tremendously -selfish man I have ever met.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Selfish!”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“In this whole thing you are thinking of nobody but -yourself. You haven’t thought of Andree—and then you—you -say such things without—considering me.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“I do think of Andree,” he said, quickly. “I’m afraid—for -her. I can’t bear to think of making her unhappy.... -And you—It’s a confused mess, Maude!...” -He leaned across the table. “Maude, if there was no -other woman in my life—if Andree were a thing of the -past—would you marry me?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>She stared at him, biting her lips. “Ken Ware,” she -said, “that is the most impertinent—and selfish—question -a man ever asked.... Don’t ever do it again! Don’t -ever mention such a thing again! The idea! You want -to have your cake and eat it, too. You’re always at it—carrying -on a sort of left-handed courtship with me.... -Always hinting—and—and playing safe. If you decide -you don’t want this other girl, then you want to have -me all prepared to fall into your arms.... I won’t stand -it. Never dare speak of it again—until you can come to -me honestly and say that you <i>love</i> me—and that there is -no other woman in your life—and that you want me to -marry you. Then I’ll tell you whether I will or not.... -Do you understand?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“I’m sorry. I’ve been clumsy ... and selfish.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“You have.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“But you’ll tell me what you think—how this whole -thing over here affects you? Don’t think about my case -in particular if that is offensive, but about the whole -system, the whole idea of the relations between men and -women as we see them here.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“I will, because I would like to find out just how I <i>have</i> -been affected....” Suddenly she laughed. “I used -to have an uncle who spent his life arguing abstractions. -I remember he took the stand once that there was no -reason why women should not smoke as well as men, that -there was nothing inherently masculine about smoking -and nothing immoral. He declared that women had as -much right to smoke as men. My aunt listened to it -until she got tired, so one evening she waited until uncle -lighted a cigar and then took out a cigarette and put it -between her lips.... Uncle stared at her and <i>roared</i>. -He fairly snatched that cigarette, and it looked as if -he was going to put my aunt out of the house.... -Smoking for women was all right as an abstract question, -but when it touched him personally it was quite another -matter.... I think I am a little like him. I can sit -down and say that these girls are within their rights. I -can even see that they are good.... I believe your -Andree is wonderfully good.... I can even say that -if so many Americans were killed in this war that I -would never be able to find a husband I might do the -same thing—and I believe it would be <i>right</i> and moral -for me to do it ... in the <i>abstract</i>. I can feel these -things in Paris. But as soon as I come to a concrete -instance and one which touches me personally—why, I’m -Middle West and Plymouth Rock again.... One can -never tell. Things can happen here—even to an American -girl like me—that never could happen in America in -normal conditions. With this war going on, with this -horrible state of affairs, nothing else seems to matter -much. Personal moral considerations seem to be so -minute and unimportant as not to count at all.... -There is something in the very air.... You see we -don’t know France—only a small section of it that we see -about the streets. We don’t know how the classes of -France who stay in their homes and are never seen on the -boulevards look at this matter. They may be as straitlaced -as we are ... and we’ve been judging all of Paris -by the Champs Élysées....”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“That doesn’t decide the thing that’s worrying me.... -It doesn’t even help.... I wonder if this war and everything -connected with it won’t change people back home.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“So that they would tolerate—Andree?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>He nodded.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Never—if they found out that Andree had violated -their laws.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“But you—what do you think about her?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Is that fair?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“I don’t see why it isn’t. You’ve met her and talked -with her. What do you think of her?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Ken, she is one individual, and I can tell you what I -think about her ... but that doesn’t make her stand for -the whole code of ethics. The other thousands of girls may -not be like Andree at all—they may be bad. Don’t you -see? It comes down to a matter of personal, concrete -experience again.... But Andree....” She looked at -him gravely. “I should hate to feel that I had broken -faith with Andree or been unfair to her or caused her grief. -She is very sweet and childlike—and <i>good</i>. She has -no consciousness of having been other than virtuous because -she has loved you.... I had lunch with her the -other day. It was the first time I had ever lunched with -a woman whom I knew to be violating our standard ... -and it didn’t hurt me in the least. I felt no repulsion or -disgust ... but that was because I couldn’t help feeling -that she was good....”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Then you think—”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“I think this: that all of us come to fit into our environment -very readily. We come over here, and soon -we are being absorbed by the things around us.... -Presently we will go home, more or less in the frame of -mind created by Paris ... and then the environment -of home will begin to work. In no time at all we will -have adjusted ourselves again and Paris will be almost as -if it never had been.... I believe that is exactly what -will happen. If we stayed here we should become as nearly -Parisian as we could be made, but, going home, Paris will -very rapidly be eradicated.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“And all that has happened here?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Will be part of a memory—something in a dream.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>He shook his head. “I can’t believe that. I know I -shall never be just the same as I was before. I see your -point of view, but it doesn’t help me ... and I don’t -believe you are right.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“You don’t want to believe it.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“I know—Andree makes all the difference. If you were -a man and there had been an Andree you would have -felt as I have. Somehow France means Andree to me. -I never dreamed of any one like her. You don’t know -her—what a quaint, childlike, womanly, fairy kind of a -girl she is. When I think of her she doesn’t seem real, -but like some mysterious being out of a magical country -who has come to visit for a little while—to make me -happy.... She does come from a mysterious country. -Do you know that I don’t know her name—just Andree? -I have never asked. I don’t know where she lives or -how she lives. I don’t know anything about her except -that she appears and is with me a little while—and then -disappears again.... That has made a difference—that -quality.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“I would hardly have suspected you of being so romantic.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“It isn’t sentimentality, at any rate.... And nobody -can ever convince me that I’ve done wrong or that I’ve -taken any harm from her.... Even if this should prove -to be only an episode, it has been a beautiful episode with -nothing but good in it.... But this mystery, this fairy -element, has somehow kept the realities at a distance. I -have simply gone along and <i>lived</i>.... Why, I have -hardly thought of such a thing as marriage in connection -with her. Possibly you won’t understand that, but I -understand it perfectly.... To marry Andree would -be to make her real, material. The mystery would be -gone.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“I think I understand.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“But to marry her and take her to Detroit!... Suppose -I should take her home and then this story should -come out—and it <i>would</i> come out somehow. What then?... -When I think of that smug, gossiping crowd in the -church vestibule, and of their looking at her and pointing -at her and whispering about her—it seems like a profanation. -I couldn’t bear it.... And then—well, I’ve -inherited some of it myself. I belong to that crowd. -I’ve their ideas of marriage ... and the vestibule doesn’t -marry a girl who—has lived with a man....”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“You’re afraid of them.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“I am,” he said, and flushed.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“But if you loved her—really loved her—”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“I do,” he said, quickly, “but can’t one love without -wanting to marry? That is a thing that puzzles me.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“I don’t believe anybody can love and be willing under -any circumstances to part with the person one loves.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“I don’t know.... Isn’t it, possibly, better to love -and to be a part of a beautiful, rather mysterious, glowing -episode and to have it end while it is beautiful and mysterious?... -Then something always remains—something -dreamlike and lovely. To come down to actualities, -to marry, to take this mystery into the land of grocers’ -bills and house-cleaning and the every-day problems of -marriage—why, it wouldn’t be the same thing at all.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“I don’t think you believe that. You’re arguing with -yourself and trying to salve your conscience.... You’re -afraid to marry Andree and take her home—”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“That is part of it. I admit it. But—and I am -sincere when I say it—I don’t know whether I want to -marry her. I love her and she loves me.... She -would be a wonderful wife—and yet, love and all, I -don’t know whether I want to marry her.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“You are just trying to deceive yourself. Either you -don’t love her at all....”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Would you marry a woman who had done what -Andree has done?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“It would depend on the woman—and upon how much -I loved her.... You can’t generalize about that. It -is a matter that nobody can decide except for himself -in a particular instance. I do think, if I were a man, -that I could marry your Andree without a thought....”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“But to take her out of her world—away from Paris -where she is as natural and unconscious as the birds in -the trees—and set her down for life in Detroit ... to -be stared at and lied about and suspected ... it would -make her miserable.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Would it make her as miserable as to lose you altogether? -If she had you and your love, no matter what -unpleasant things were about, wouldn’t that be better -than to be left behind here alone?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Yes,” he said, honestly. “Yes.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>She looked at him a moment, studying his face, which -was set and anxious and overcast, his eyes, which were -dull and brooding, and a wave of compassion surged up -within her.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“It has made you miserable,” she said. “I’m so sorry.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“I deserve to be miserable.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Possibly not. Nobody can judge, but—this affair has -been almost inevitable. It wasn’t your fault and it -wasn’t Andree’s fault.... The circumstances were here, -and you two got tangled up in them....” She glanced -at her watch. “I must go now. I’m sorry I haven’t -helped you—for—I wish I might help you.... Shall -I see you again before you go?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“I’m afraid not.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Then this is good-by.” She held out her hand -steadily. “I hope matters turn out for—for your happiness.... Good-by.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“I shall write you.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>She looked at him and smiled queerly, but made no -rejoinder. “No, don’t come with me,” she said, as he -walked to the door. “I’d rather go alone.... Good-by -and a safe voyage.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>And so the first of the two women with whom his life -had become involved stepped out of his life....</p> - -<div class='chapter'> - <h2 class='c004'>CHAPTER XXVI</h2> -</div> - -<p class='c005'>When Kendall went to the apartment for dinner -Arlette came bustling into the hall as she heard -him open the door, and, poking again and again with a -pudgy finger toward the rear of the place, she exclaimed, -excitedly: “Monsieur Bert!... Monsieur Bert!...”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Here?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“<i>Oui, monsieur.</i>” She grinned with delight.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Hey, Bert!” shouted Ken, delighted, for he had -feared he would not see his friend again before he sailed. -Bert came out of the door, half shaved, with a towel -about his neck, and shook hands after the manner of -healthy young men.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Howdy, old-timer! Gosh! it seems good to get back -to you and Arlette. How have things been going without -me? Seen Madeleine?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Haven’t seen her. Things have been going all right -till to-day. This morning the blow fell.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“What blow?... You look as if somebody had stolen -your pet goat.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“I’m ordered to America. Leave Wednesday.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“The devil!... Oh, say, that’s rotten luck! What’s -the idea?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Don’t know. Just my confounded luck, I expect.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Wait a minute till I finish this shave and I’ll help you -weep.... How’s Andree?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>They were walking back to Bert’s room, and Ken did -not answer until his friend stood before the glass, razor in -hand.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“She’s all right.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“How did she take the news?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“She doesn’t know.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Doesn’t know!”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“I just got my orders this morning. Won’t see her -until to-morrow night.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Coming to dinner?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Yes.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“We’ll pull a party—farewell party with all the trimmings, -eh? I’ll get Madeleine and we’ll dig up a bottle -of champagne and wring a <i>poulet</i> out of Arlette if we -have to call in the police to help us. I’ll bet they would, -at that.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“It won’t be a very merry party,” said Ken, lugubriously.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Bert turned and looked at Ken. “Huh!... Something -eating you again?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“It’s a rotten mess. I don’t know what to do.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“About Andree? It isn’t any mess at all. You’ve -had a good time and she’s had a good time. That’s all -there is to it. Now you’ve got to go home. She didn’t -expect anything else.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>Ken was silent.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Unless you’ve made her expect something else.... -Now Madeleine and I had an understanding right at the -start,” said Bert.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“I wish I could get it off my mind for a couple of -hours.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Get it off, then. We’ll go to the Folies or the Olympia -or some place to-night. To-morrow I’ll look up -Madeleine.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>Ken was willing to go anywhere, to do anything, so -long as he was helped to keep Andree off his mind, and -to think about something besides the inevitability of the -decision. So, after, they went to the Folies, arriving -after the performance had begun. They did not take -seats, but made their way through the big table-filled -room to the theater proper, and stood up with the crowd -behind the railing. The house was full, but even when -the house was not filled many of the spectators remained -in the promenade to walk about and smoke and, possibly, -to put themselves in the way of being accosted by -some of the numerous and sometimes pretty <i>habituées</i> -of the place.</p> - -<p class='c006'>The entertainment was directed to the American soldier, -and much of it was in English. But it could not hold -Kendall’s attention. It was, in fact, a mediocre performance, -with an act or so that was deserving of -attention. After seeing the perfection of the performances -at the Comédie Française Ken wondered at the -halting stage management of this popular music-hall. It -hitched along. Choruses seemed to improvise rather than -to have been drilled. Nobody seemed to know just how -to get on and off the stage, and when a scene or an act -or a chorus number ended, it simply ended.... Every -now and then animated conversations broke out in the -back of the theater, and ushers walked about through the -crowd, saying: “Hush!... Husss-sh!” The whole -thing depressed Ken instead of lifting his spirits, and he -actually experienced a feeling of disgust at the grand -closing number in which the <i>première danseuse</i> appeared -as an American cowboy, in white tights and waving an -American flag.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Let’s get out of here,” he said, impatiently.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Suits me,” said Bert, and they jostled their way to -the street, ignoring more than one tentative “<i>Bon soir, -monsieur</i>,” from young women whose cheeks were not -guiltless of what the phrase of the streets termed -camouflage.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Want to walk home?” suggested Bert.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Yes.” Ken did want to walk. He wanted to tire -himself so that he could sleep, for he was afraid of a sleepless -night. So they started off briskly, cutting through -dark and narrow streets to the Boulevard Haussmann -and thence into the Avenue Friedland, which they followed -to the rue Beaujon and into the Avenue Hoche. -They climbed the stairs of the apartment, and Bert, as -was his custom, searched the cupboards to see if Arlette -had left anything unconcealed that might be eaten. But -Arlette had been careful, as usual, and nothing was -to be found except a box of dry cookies. It was not -Arlette’s intention that her young officers should waste -their substance by eating up her supplies at unexpected -hours.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Ken dreaded to go into his room alone and turn off the -lights, so it was Bert who made the first movement to go -to bed. Ken carried in with him a sleep-provoking book -on militarism which an earnest friend had forced upon -him, undressed, and stretched himself on the bed with the -small light on his table to read by. He forced himself to -read ... and presently fell asleep.</p> - -<p class='c006'>The next day was filled with errands and shopping. He -wandered about the stores, selecting inexpensive souvenirs -for his friends and presents for his mother and father. -It was hot, and it irritated him to push and shove in the -milling crowds that jammed the Printemps and the -Galeries Lafayette, but it kept him busy and gave him an -excuse for pushing his decision another hour and still -another hour into the future.... His last errand was the -selection of a present for Andree, a farewell gift, or a gift -of some other sort. There had to be a gift, so he spent -more money than he could afford in a little bracelet of -gold set with tiny pearls.... Then he went home, for -it was near the dinner hour.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Bert was there before him, wearing such an expression of -sheepishness and chagrin as Kendall had never seen -before on his friend’s face.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Where’s Madeleine?” he asked.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Bert grinned mirthlessly. “Don’t know,” he said.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Isn’t she coming?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“I left a note at her hotel inviting her.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Didn’t see her?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“No. I went around to the hotel and there was a -small boy in the <i>concierge’s</i> room. He said Madeleine -was out with an American officer.... Then I went up -the street, and pretty soon I thought I saw her with a -lieutenant. They were a block away and I hustled up to -make sure, but they turned off and disappeared. Looked -like she caught sight of me and ducked.... Anyhow, -I went back and left a note. Maybe I was mistaken.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Serves you right,” said Ken. “You were so darn -sure—you with your understandings.... Three weeks -were too much for her, and she’s passed you up for -somebody who isn’t always telling her she’s just a temporary -arrangement.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Go chase yourself,” said Bert. “It makes no difference -in my young life.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>But Ken noticed that every minute or so Bert strolled -with elaborate nonchalance to the window and looked -down the street. Ken smiled. Bert’s manner was not -that of a man whose heart suffers, but who has taken -an injury to his pride....</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Here comes Andree,” said Bert.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Ken did not go to look, as he usually did. It was not -that he did not want to see Andree, but her arrival -brought his affairs to the acute stage. He had put off -and put off the struggle to reach a decision; had occupied -his mind with other matters, crowding out as much as -was possible any thoughts of Andree and of what he -was going to do about her. True, the thing had been -with him always, lurking in the background and ready -to step out at the least encouragement. But he had not -approached it directly. It had been a sort of dull ache -that he was always conscious of, but which he had been -able to stifle. Now she was coming, was almost at the -door. It would be a matter of minutes only before he -would have to tell her that he was going away.... -Even now he did not admit to himself that he had reached -a partial decision, indeed that he had not required to -make a decision upon one point. That was taking her -with him. He had told himself that it would be possible -to marry her and to take her on the transport that carried -him, but it was self-deception, and he knew it was -self-deception. In his heart he knew now, as he had -known, that to-night he would say good-by to Andree -and go to America without her.... He might come back -for her, might even marry her before he went away, to -have her follow him on another vessel. But there would -be a parting, temporary or permanent....</p> - -<p class='c006'>He had never asked himself if Andree would marry him. -The idea that she would not do so had never entered his -head, which was significant. It was that which made his -decision doubly difficult, for she was wholly in his hands, -had given herself to him to do with as he pleased, and -her life was his to break if he wished to do so.... He -persuaded himself that his hesitation was more on her -account than his own, that it would be impossible for her -to be happy in the conditions which would be found in -America, or that perhaps it would be impossible. He -believed that he was trying to decide what would be -best for her—or almost believed it. It may be that he -was not wholly selfish, not thinking solely of himself and -of the effects of his marriage with Andree upon himself. -At any rate, his anxiety for her was very real and very -disturbing.</p> - -<p class='c006'>She was coming up the stairs utterly unconscious of -what awaited her, confident in a future with him which -would not be disturbed for so long a time that it need not -now be considered. An event that is a year distant is -very far away to a young girl. If Andree had known she -would lose Kendall in a year she would not have thought -about it now ... nor until the year was drawing to a -close. It is the ability to hope that makes this possible. -Something might turn up within the year.... But now -she was stepping into the event! In a few minutes she -would hear his voice telling her that he was going away -to-morrow—not in a year, not in a month, but <i>to-morrow!</i>... -When he told her that he must tell her more. A -mere announcement of his departure would not suffice; -he must supplement it by telling her if their good-bys -were forever, or for a few days or months....</p> - -<p class='c006'>The bell rang and he went to the door and opened it. -She stood there very demure and self-contained and -grave—dressed in white as he had seen her first. She -lifted her eyes to his and smiled and then became -grave and wistful again, for she saw that he was not -happy.... He held out his arms to her and drew her -in, realizing that it was the last time he should ever -draw her slender daintiness through that door, the last -time she would ever enter that apartment. It was the -beginning of the end of that phase in their lives, of -the untrammeled romance, the quaint mystery, the -adventurous sweetness.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“You are <i>triste</i>,” she said, anxiously. “Is it that you -have worked too hard?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>He shook his head.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“You are not <i>joyeux</i> to see me.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>He took her face between his hands and looked down -into her deep-shaded eyes. “You must not say that.... -You must never say that. It is not true.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Then I am ver’ glad.” She smiled. “Monsieur Bert -and Mademoiselle Madeleine they are here?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Bert is here, but Madeleine hasn’t come.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“I desire her to be here.” She stepped into the <i>salon</i> -and spoke to Bert. “You shall go to fetch her. Now.... -Now. You shall run ver’ fast.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“I asked her to come,” said Bert.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“And she would not?” Andree’s voice showed profound -astonishment.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“I’m afraid she got tired of waiting for me to come back -to Paris.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“But no, that ees not possible. She would not be -tired to wait. She would be ver’ glad when you return.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“We’ll see. If she isn’t here in five minutes she won’t -be coming.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Why do you theenk?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Because I guess she has another American officer. I -think I saw her with one to-day.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Oh, <i>non, non, non!</i> That would be ver’ bad. I do -not believe. Mademoiselle Madeleine is <i>fidèle</i>. You shall -see.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Why are you so sure, mademoiselle?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“<i>Pourquoi?...</i>” She shrugged her shoulders. “Bicause -it would be so. If Monsieur Ken should go for -three week, for three mont’, for three year, I should wait -and be <i>très-fidèle</i>. I should find no other <i>officier américain</i>. -<i>Non, non</i>, it would not be well.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“There’s Arlette’s head,” said Ken.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“No need to wait,” Bert said, irritably. “She won’t -come.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“We should wait,” said Andree.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Until a quarter past seven, then.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>But a quarter past seven arrived and Madeleine did not -arrive.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Let’s eat,” said Bert. “She’s given me the sack.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“<i>Pauvre Monsieur Bert.</i> It ees ver’ sad. Oh, she is -<i>très-méchante</i>, ver’ naughty. I do not onderstan’.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>They went out to the table and sat down. Kendall sat -in gloomy silence, Bert was suffering from wounded vanity, -and Andree looked from one to the other uncomfortably.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“It is <i>nécessaire</i> to smile,” she said, and touched Ken’s -hand with her finger-tips.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“I don’t feel much like smiling, <i>mignonne</i>.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“<i>Pourquoi?</i>”</p> - -<p class='c006'>Arlette entered with the <i>potage</i> to save him from replying -to her question, and, placing the huge bowl in the middle -of the table, stood regarding Andree dolefully, with two -big tears standing on her fat cheeks.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Even Arlette makes to weep,” said Andree. “It is -ver’ strange. What is happen?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“<i>Pauvre mademoiselle! ... pauvre mademoiselle!...</i>” -said Arlette, and, turning very abruptly, she scuttled out -of the room.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“<i>Qu’est-ce que c’est?...</i> Why does she speak this -theeng?” She turned startled eyes upon Ken.</p> - -<p class='c006'>He hesitated, bit his lip, then he reached out and took -her hand and pressed it to his lips. “I have been ordered -to America,” he said, baldly.</p> - -<p class='c006'>She did not speak, did not stir. It seemed to him that -her expression did not alter by so much as a shade. She -was <i>still</i>. It was almost as if animation were suspended. -Andree did not turn her eyes from his face, nor did she -move or speak. She did not gaze at him questioningly -nor accusingly nor imploringly—she merely gazed with -that accompaniment of <i>stillness</i>!... He felt that he -must speak and break that quietness which he could feel -as with a physical pain.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“I got my orders yesterday.... I—it didn’t seem -possible. I couldn’t believe it.... I only knew yesterday.” -He felt that he must clear himself of any guilt of -concealment, of having known of this thing and kept it -from her.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“<i>Quand?</i>” she said.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“I go to-morrow night—to Brest, and then to America.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>She turned to her plate and began to eat. She had -uttered no complaint, shed no tear, done none of the things -he had dreaded she might do. There had been no painful -scene, but he was not relieved. She was so <i>still</i>!</p> - -<p class='c006'>He fumbled in his pocket and took out the little jeweler’s -package and removed the bracelet. She watched him -gravely, with no outward sign of emotion, and when he -reached for her hand she gave it to him unprotestingly. -He snapped the bracelet about her wrist. She looked -down at it, and then up into his face.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“It is ver’ pretty,” she said, “and you are mos’ good to -me....” That was all, but every now and then he -saw her staring at the bracelet and staring at it as if it -were something strange and inexplicable. Once she -reached across with her other hand and touched it, felt -of it, as if to assure herself that it was really there, an -actual thing and not imagined.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Ken tried to talk, Bert tried to talk, but the effort was -futile. Dead, cold silences fell.... The sensations of -that meal would remain with Kendall as long as he should -live, a recurrent nightmare. Presently Bert arose. He -did a thing which he had never done before—lifted -Andree’s hand and touched it with his lips.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“I must go, mademoiselle,” he said. “Good-by.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Good-by, Monsieur Bert,” she said.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Then they were alone!</p> - -<p class='c006'>In the <i>salon</i> he drew her down beside him on the sofa -and held her close.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“I am very sad, <i>mignonne</i>,” he said. “I love -you....”</p> - -<p class='c006'>She studied his face a moment and smiled at very trifle -of a smile. “That is well,” she answered.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“I am not going away because I want to. It is orders. -I have to obey.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“<i>C’est la guerre</i>,” she said, gravely.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Yes, it is the war, but it’s cruel—it’s rotten. I want -to stay here, to stay with you.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“I wish that also,” she said.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Something was demanded of him. He must say something, -must not keep this child in agony, not knowing -what he intended to do with respect to her. It was her -right to know.... He must decide, and he must tell -her.... But again he put it off. There was time enough, -and before he told her there was still the chance of one -last happy evening.... He wanted that, wanted the -memory of it, if nothing more.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“<i>Mignonne</i>, do you love me?” he asked.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“It is certain.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Very much?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“I cannot say how much.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“America is not far,” he said, with some idiotic intention -to comfort her. “The ocean can be crossed in a -week.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“That is true,” she said.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Her head was against his breast, her eyes staring into -her lap. Ken looked straight before him, thinking, thinking. -His mind was very clear, as if lighted by that painful -white light which seemed to pour in upon his consciousness -in moments of mental stress. It seemed to -him as if his eyes could pierce the walls if he willed it, -as if his memory could show him every minute incident -in his whole life, as if he could see and understand everything—everything. -He drew her to him fiercely, but even -as he was sensing the softness of her slender body against -his side he was seeing the vestibule of the Presbyterian -church, he was watching it function. The individuals -stood before him as if alive, every well-known feature distinct. -It was photographic. He could see changes of -expression, hear whispers, see cautious hands placed -before gossiping lips ... and he could see himself -passing through that little group with Andree on his -arm!...</p> - -<p class='c006'>He could see his own home—his return to it. He -could see his mother and feel the hostility that sprang to -life the instant her eyes rested on Andree. He could read -his mother’s thoughts ... and his father’s. There was -the one bright spot. He could see his father kissing -Andree diffidently and patting her hand and telling her -how glad he was to see her and asking how his son had -ever managed to capture such a pretty girl.... There -would be no doubt of her welcome at his father’s hands.... -But his mother—that cold hostility, that hard-eyed -suspicion!... And then, when she had him alone, the -catechism he would undergo, and the resentment and -jealousy she would exhibit....</p> - -<p class='c006'>He could see his friends and the neighbors of his childhood -with their crass curiosity and their hints and whispers.... -He knew their every thought ... could see -their eyes fixed on Andree speculatively ... some of them -hopefully!</p> - -<p class='c006'>It was that he would have to take her, too.... And -then, if the story should come out!... But that would -be little worse.... Perhaps he exaggerated, perhaps he -saw his old friends and acquaintances in characters which -were not truly theirs. There might have been more -charity among them than he perceived, more kindness -and less narrowness and insularity.... But he did not -see them except as he feared they might be.</p> - -<p class='c006'>What of himself? How would he feel to find himself -married to a girl who had violated the standards of -Plymouth Rock, even though he had been the one to -profit by that violation?... Even if none ever found -it out but himself? He would know it.... It would -constantly be recurring to him—or would it not? He did -not know. The thing did not affect him now. It did -not make Andree the less desirable and lovable and <i>good</i>. -Perhaps that would persist—but his prejudices were deep-seated, -had their roots in an older generation and were -not lightly to be cast out....</p> - -<p class='c006'>But he loved her.... In spite of all that he saw and -felt and feared, he knew that he loved her, and that to -know she was removed forever from his life would be to -lose a wonderful thing that he could not bear to lose.... -The decision lay between love and expediency.... If -only he could live in Paris and never return to America! -How easy it would be then!</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Will you miss me?” he asked, clumsily.</p> - -<p class='c006'>She stirred in his arms and held her face up to his. “I -shall be ver’ sad,” she said.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Suppose—suppose something should happen to me -and I could never come back?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>She held his hand very tightly. “I do not know,” she -said. “I cannot to theenk of that.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>He must decide.... He must decide.... But he -was afraid; he <i>could not</i> decide—not now, not yet.... -There were hours ahead of them.</p> - -<p class='c006'>She asked nothing of him, made no demands, but -waited, waited. He could feel her waiting, hoping for -some word, some assurance that he was not going to -desert her forever, that he would come back to her—and -he could not give that assurance ... not yet.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“It might be six months; it might be a year before I -could come back.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>She smiled. “I would be here,” she said.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“And <i>fidèle</i>?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“You know,” she answered. “There would be no -thought only jus’ for you....”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“But America is strange. It would not be Paris. You -might be unhappy there.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“That ees ver’ silly.... Where you are I shall always -be happy.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>He leaped to his feet and paced up and down the room, -then stopped suddenly before her. “What shall I do?... -What shall I do?” he said, hoarsely.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“I cannot say. I do not know.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“You know I love you.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“I believe.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“I can’t decide. I can’t tell what to do.... I don’t -know what I can do, what will be possible.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>She made no answer.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Can’t we pretend just for a while, just for a few hours, -that I am not going and that everything is going along -just as it is? Can’t we have just one more little moment -of happiness?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“It ees not <i>facile</i>—not easy—to pretend so.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“But we will try ... I want to see you smile. I want -to see you happy once more. I’ve got to see you happy.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>She sat erect and smiled, then the smile faded and she -clenched her little fists in her lap. “Oh, I shall be so -<i>solitaire</i>, so lonely—so lonely....” It was her only -departure from that still calmness, her only approach to -emotion, to giving away to grief, and it passed swiftly.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“See, I make to laugh now. For thees night I shall -laugh, bicause you wish it, and I do not wish you to be -sad and to make thees <i>grimace</i>.... You mus’ sit here -beside me now thees minute. You mus’ to sit here and -love me so ver’ much, and we shall be mos’ happy.... -Oh, I shall theenk of thees Monsieur Bert and how ver’ -fonny his face made itself to look. He is ver’ droll—thees -high yo’ng man.... It ees ver’ bad that you do -not have a piano, for then I can dance for you.... You -must to get a piano ver’ quickly—now, now.... You -shall send out to fetch one or I shall go away....”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“<i>Mignonne ... mignonne....</i>” he said, and buried -his face in her lap....</p> - -<p class='c006'>She sat looking down at him very gravely, stroking his -hair with her soft, slender fingers....</p> - -<hr class='c009' /> - -<p class='c006'>The taxicab hurried them down the Champs Élysées -through the cool morning air—on their last ride together -in Paris.... He was conscious of the city about them, -of the essence of the marvelous city from which he was -so soon to depart.... There is something in the air of -Paris, something that one cannot escape, something intangible, -enticing, exciting.... He would miss it, miss -it very much.... Andree, too, was looking out of the -window. She sat very still and did not speak. Her face -was grave and expressionless with that look of abstraction -which she wore as some wild bird of the forest wears its -protective coloring.... He reached out and took her -hand, holding it silently....</p> - -<p class='c006'>His decision had not been made. He had given her -neither assurance of his return nor had he told her that -they were about to part forever.... He did not know, -and he could not decide ... there were now only minutes—seconds. -He could see the Élysées Palace Hôtel ahead, -his destination, where he would say good-by to her.... -And again, with a weakness which made him despise -himself, he evaded the issue.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“You will write to me—often?” he asked.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Yes.... And you?” It was her first question since -he had told her he was to go; the first time she had -demanded anything of him.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“I shall write. I shall tell you everything.... Everything -will come right somehow. It must come right.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“I have not your address.” She spoke very calmly.</p> - -<p class='c006'>He wrote it on a slip of paper and handed it to her.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“But you have not my address—nor my name.” She -smiled with that quaint lightening of the face which always -stirred him to tenderness.</p> - -<p class='c006'>He had not wanted to know her name nor her address. -He had loved the mystery of it and of her. But the -mystery must end. He gave her his memorandum—book -and she wrote, but he did not look at the page, closing -the book and placing it in his pocket.... She was still -a mystery—he would look when it became necessary to -look, and not before.</p> - -<p class='c006'>The taxicab was stopping. They looked at each other, -but even now she gave no sign of distress, shed no tear.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“<i>Mignonne....</i>” he whispered, and drew her into his -arms. “Good-by.... Good-by.... I love you....”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Good-by,” she said, gravely. “I also love you ... -and I shall be always <i>fidèle</i>.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>He opened the door and alighted; then he turned and -lifted her hand to his lips. She did not smile; her face -was immobile, her eyes were fixed on his face with a -strange expression of detachment, of abstraction. He -kissed her hand again and turned abruptly away. But -he could not leave her so.... He turned; the taxi was -starting. He called and ran toward the curb, but the -chauffeur did not hear.... He was too late; the machine -gained headway and swept around the corner—and -she was gone....</p> - -<div class='chapter'> - <h2 class='c004'>CHAPTER XXVII</h2> -</div> - -<p class='c005'>After a sleepless, uncomfortable night, spent sitting -bolt upright in a compartment of the Paris-Brest -train, Kendall arrived at the dirty, unkempt, unattractive -seaport which was his destination. His baggage was -taken from him by the branch of the army which looked -after such matters, and he found his way to the provost’s -office, where he showed his orders and was told to report -daily to see if his name was posted in the list of those to -sail. No further information was given him as to the -date of his departure nor the vessel upon which he should -sail.</p> - -<p class='c006'>He secured a room at the Continental Hôtel, the best the -city afforded, and found it unspeakable—and then for six -interminable days he wandered about the town, waiting, -waiting for the convoy which seemed destined never to -arrive. He played innumerable games of bridge, walked -a dozen times a day to a vantage-point on the old fortifications -from which he could gain a panoramic view of the -harbor and its jostling craft.... Far out at the entrance -swayed and tossed an observation balloon, keeping ceaseless -watch of the sea for lurking submarines....</p> - -<p class='c006'>No vessels came save one, the torpedoed <i>Mt. Vernon</i>, -which had sailed early on the morning of his arrival. It -staggered into port with a great hole in its side, and -presently disappeared into dry dock farther into the bay.... -Then the report spread that cholera had broken -out in the town and was magnified to appalling proportions.... -There was nothing to do but play bridge and -walk to the harbor to look for an incoming convoy, and to -eat and sleep. It was maddening....</p> - -<p class='c006'>The harbor ceased to be interesting. German prisoners -compelled to labor on the docks became commonplace; -scurrying destroyers failed to stir the imagination.... -And then one morning Ken walked to his usual vantage-point -and saw at anchor the gigantic <i>Leviathan</i>....</p> - -<p class='c006'>Presently orders were posted and his name appeared -upon the list. He was to report himself with his hand-baggage -at a certain point early next morning.... The -morning was overcast and cold, with a chilling, slanting -drizzle of rain, and everybody was out of spirits and uncomfortable -as they waited for the lighter to carry them -out to the transport. There was no shelter, and they -stood about the deck of the little boat, backs to the -slashing rain, for no sooner had they left the wharf than -the rain descended in earnest.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Finally they were on board and were assigned to rooms, -but this was not the end of the waiting. Forty-eight -hours remained while the vessel was being coaled, but -at last she started, a consort on either side and a flock of -destroyers for convoy.</p> - -<p class='c006'>The voyage was not unpleasant, and it was interesting, -at least, to watch the little destroyers plunging and rolling -through the great waves until one night they disappeared -and left the three transports alone.... There were six -days and a half of plowing westward through the Atlantic, -days when one wore constantly his life-jacket and rather -expected to hear at any moment the detonation of the -defensive guns or the explosion of a torpedo against the -vessel’s sides.... But at last land came into view—only -to be obscured by fog that compelled the <i>Leviathan</i> to -crawl along, feeling her way with the lead.... And then, -as suddenly as it had come, the fog vanished and they -were in the harbor, with the Goddess visible ahead and the -sky-line of the metropolis over to the right.... Nobody -left the deck. It was an experience and every man -wanted to feel every second of it, witness every manifestation -of it.... Vessels cheered them and they cheered -in return.... It was America—home. They had been -to the war and had returned, some of them battered, -broken, but nevertheless returned. It was exhilarating, -wonderful.</p> - -<p class='c006'>An early morning ferry-boat, crowded with civilians, -ran under their bows, and some competent individual -led the cheering. <i>Crash, crash, crash</i>, sounded the enthusiastic -welcome of those who had remained behind, -and every man on the transport knew that those cheers -were for <i>him</i>....</p> - -<p class='c006'>The great vessel swung about and docked by the aid of -snorting, grunting tugs, and after more delays and formalities -they set foot on shore.... Kendall went directly -to the Pennsylvania station to book a lower berth for -Washington.</p> - -<p class='c006'>A week later he was in Detroit on furlough—in his old -home, amid familiar surroundings ... under his own -roof with his father and mother. It was very much the -same. The war touched the life of the city but lightly. -It was all as he remembered it, all as he had expected it -to be ... and Paris and the distant war seemed to be -matters that had occurred in a dream.... On Sunday -he went to church with his mother and father and received -the homage and congratulations of the vestibule....</p> - -<p class='c006'>That afternoon he went to his room to write—to write -the promised letter to Andree. It was not easy ... for -the decision had not yet been made. He wrote and -destroyed and wrote again. He promised to return; he -assured her of his love ... but when he read he was not -satisfied.... He was in Detroit, in another world, and -Andree did not belong to that world. He was surprised -to find how well this world satisfied him and how unreal -that other world he had known and loved had become.... -This was <i>his</i> world, these were the things <i>he</i> was meant -to do and the thoughts <i>he</i> was meant to think. This was -America, and he was an American!...</p> - -<p class='c006'>He tried to think of Paris, to get back again into the -spirit of Paris, but could not do so.... It had become -unreal, distant, not appealing....</p> - -<p class='c006'>But Andree ... she was not unreal, not distant. She -was very real, present in his heart—and yet she was of -that other world, a stranger, an alien.... He loved -her—but—There was always that <i>but</i>.</p> - -<p class='c006'>He wrote still another letter and read it. Yes, he had -decided. He could not give her up. He would bring -her here and let the consequences be what they might.... -The letter was placed in its envelop and he drew -out his note-book to look for her address.... It was -there, those written words which should forever remove -Andree from the land of lovely mystery.... But he -did not open the book. It lay in his hand, but he dared -not open it.... He went to the window and looked -out upon the street, that typically American, typically -Middle-Western street.... He stood so for many minutes, -then walked toward the fireplace and tossed the -note-book into the blaze.... The thing was done, the -decision was made and was irrevocable ... and Andree -would always remain a glowing mystery....</p> - -<p class='c006'>He went again to his desk and wrote another letter. -It was brief:</p> - -<p class='c007'><span class='sc'>Dear Maude</span>—There is no woman in my life but you. -When you come home I shall come to you for my answer.</p> - -<p class='c008'>He inclosed it, addressed it, stamped it, and went out -to the post-box on the corner. Even now he hesitated a -moment, but it was only a moment.... The letter -dropped inside. It could not be recalled.</p> - -<p class='c006'>But he did not move from the spot. For a long time -he stood staring before him with eyes that did not see -the typically American street, with a consciousness that -did not feel his typically Middle-Western surroundings.... -What he felt was that something true and faithful -and beautiful had found a place in his life never to be -removed. What he saw was a vision of Andree, waiting ... waiting....</p> - -<div class='nf-center-c0'> - <div class='nf-center'> - <div>THE END</div> - </div> -</div> - - - - - - - - -<pre> - - - - - -End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Little Moment of Happiness, by -Clarence Budington Kelland - -*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LITTLE MOMENT OF HAPPINESS *** - -***** This file should be named 57884-h.htm or 57884-h.zip ***** -This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: - http://www.gutenberg.org/5/7/8/8/57884/ - -Produced by Roger Frank and the Online Distributed -Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was -produced from images generously made available by The -Internet Archive) - -Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will -be renamed. - -Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright -law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, -so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United -States without permission and without paying copyright -royalties. 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