THE LITTLE MOMENT OF HAPPINESS

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?”