The youngster nodded, satisfied, glancing at me from time to time with

malicious triumph as the narration ran along classic lines. Her voice

was low, warmed with tenderness, and with the serio-comic pantomime

of the story there came into her face a new light, all gentleness. I

bent forward, listening to the melody of the voice without attention

to the narrative, my eyes fixed on the mobile, fugitive expressions of

her face. Why had she resisted the child at first,--shrinking from his

touch? And, why this sudden melting?

“And the enchanted Prince came out and married Snow-White, and they

lived happily, ever and ever after!”

But only half of the audience heard her. Master Jack was fast asleep.

“I thought I made up a very good story,” I said hurriedly, fearing the

opportunity would pass.

“You see, fairy stories are better each time they are told over--and

that’s why they must always be kept the same.”

We lowered our voices.

“I thought for a moment you--” I caught myself. “I beg your pardon; I

was going to ask you a personal question, and I know you don’t like

that.”

“You thought I disliked children, didn’t you?” she asked.

“Why, yes--”

“It was not that. Memories--” She checked herself, frowning.

“Of course. I understand,” I said hurriedly, as I saw the old

expression of sadness cloud her face. “I am sorry. Don’t you want me to

take the youngster? He is rather heavy.”

“No, no, please.”

I felt opportunity slipping from me.

“Mademoiselle Duvernoy, it must seem strange to you, a French girl,

brought up as you were, to realize this freedom of the sea?”

She turned to me in astonishment.

“What do you know about the way I have been brought up, Monsieur?” The

tone was a return to the old formality. Yet her eyes, in the brief

second they met mine, had a certain fugitive alarm.

“I have lived in France. I know the ways of your people, and I have

been privileged to know many of your old families. I am certain we have

acquaintances in common, of the Faubourg St. Germain; and I know how

rigidly the daughters are brought up.”

She frowned and shook her head decisively.

“You are quite mistaken about me. I have come to America to earn my own

living.”

The tone in which she said it was imperative, set and admitting no

debate.

“If you are a Frenchwoman, coming to my country, in whatever way, I

hope I may be honored by your friendship.”

“But, Monsieur,” she retorted, in a gentler tone, “I don’t see how you

and I can touch at any point; our ways are entirely different; and my

traditions do not permit me to make chance acquaintanceships. Pardon me

for saying this frankly to you, but it is a question of pride.”

I felt the door had been firmly closed in my face. Why such a rebuff,

when every instinct in me had been but of kindness? I was hurt, and

my manner showed it. I turned stiffly, and, sinking back in my chair,

returned to my book. Master Jack woke up and departed in search of a

tray of cookies.

“Mr. Littledale,--please?”

I looked up so hastily that the book slipped from my hands and tumbled

to the deck.

“I did not mean anything to offend you. You won’t be offended, will

you?”

“Why, just for a moment, I wasn’t quite sure--” Such a clear feeling of

joy rose in me, after the blank discouragement of a moment before, that

I cried out:

“Good heavens, no; of course, I won’t!”

She looked at me a little shyly and then away, hesitating, and I

feared I had frightened her away again with my tactless impulsiveness.

However, after a moment, she turned to me.

“You were in the Legion, Monsieur?”

“Yes, Mademoiselle.”

“Long?”

“I went in with the mobilization.”

“May I ask why you, an American, did that?”

“I could not help myself. It was so much bigger than anything else that

had come into my life.”

She thought this over a moment and then nodded as though pleased.

“Ah, yes--the mobilization. It made us very proud of our old French

race.”

“It made me proud of my fellow beings!”

“You--an American--felt that?”

“Particularly because I was an American,” I found myself saying, with

great warmth. “Oh, I do not sentimentalize war. I have lived it.”

“You do not see it as only brutalizing, as that book ‘Gaspard,’ of

which we are so much ashamed?”

“No, if that were the only side, France would not be living to-day.”

“Thank you, Monsieur,” she said, in sudden friendliness.

“The truth is in neither point of view. We cannot say that war ennobles

or brutalizes mankind. I have thought about this much, and this is what

I think: the man who is fundamentally a brute is made more brutal; the

man who has in him a spark of nobility, even unsuspected, is lifted

up. What war does is to search our souls and discover the ultimate

truth. You see, in times of peace, we all more or less wear a mask for

our neighbors. Well, when you’ve once gone into the trenches, that all

disappears: you find out what you believe. When all may be over at any

moment, you do what you want to do. And the strange thing is that each

respects the other’s point of view.”

“I think there is one thing you have left out,” she said, after a

moment’s thought.

“What is that?”

“The question of leadership. When he who leads is simple and high of

heart, the _poilu_ always responds.”

“Yes, that is true, absolutely true.”

“War is a time when the leader is everything, isn’t it?” She thought a

moment, and added, with a little weariness in her voice: “That is why I

think, no matter what the hideous suffering that comes, it does set us

right and turn us from false leaders.”

At this moment Hungerford came up and, much to my chagrin, I was forced

to present him, cutting short our first conversation.

VIII

Her behavior with Hungerford puzzled me. There was not a trace of the

calculated reserve which dominated all our meetings and to which, if

for a moment she forgot herself, she inevitably returned. A little

jealousy sprang up in me, for I was quite blind then to the real

reason. I felt that in me there was some lack of spontaneous appeal

to a woman. Before the irresistible good spirits of the younger man I

felt a heaviness of experience and wondered why in all my attempts at

friendship I should be so constantly saying the things that sent her

into the shell of her reserve, when she would listen with her grave

smile to Joe’s amusing patter. I was blind, indeed, and though I took

pains to hide it, I was weakly hurt at this unconscious camaraderie

with another.

She consented to our accompanying her in her walks when Joe assumed

it as a matter of course, though she did refuse, and I remember it

with a secret delight, to permit him the privilege alone. Here again

her personality dominated us. When Hungerford, with the free and easy

catch-as-catch-can manner of the younger generation, started to assume

possession of her arm, she disengaged herself quietly, and said:

“Messieurs, if you will offer me _your_ arms.”

Any one but Hungerford would have been discountenanced. As it was,

though he was a bit flustered, he gave her an exaggerated sweep of his

hat.

“Style Louis XIV, Marquise!”

And, with her hands resting lightly on our arms, we adapted our

impulsive strides to the leisurely grace of her choosing. Whatever her

reason for assuming the name and position she did (I had never believed

in it from the first), it was by such little things as this that she

betrayed the quality of her breeding. Brinsmade and Peter Magnus were

drawn to her instinctively, and often in the long afternoons we formed

a circle of animated discussion. The opportunities to talk to her alone

were rare and always she avoided them. When I did find a moment’s

intimacy it was always to be made aware of the ever present sadness

back of her eyes and the weight of some oppressing memory.

* * * * *

The afternoon after her first introduction to Hungerford, a curious

incident happened, which, to this day, remains inexplicable to me. For

neither of us ever after referred to it.

We were walking the upper deck, under the open sky, the crisp tingling

air setting our cheeks to glowing. Despite herself, she was smiling

at Hungerford’s whimsical instructions on American society, while I,

feeling a little out of it, walked silently at her side, wondering at

the ease with which Joe had plunged into her acquaintance.

“And remember, in America, a young lady of fashion, who is properly

brought up, never marries until she has had a dozen proposals.”

“Never?”

“Never. It isn’t done. Oh, American girls are brought up to take care

of themselves! When she is bored, do you think she waits for the men to

come round? Not at all: she goes to the ’phone and says: ‘Jack, come up

and take me out to dinner and a show; I want to be amused’.”

“And she pays the bill?” said Mademoiselle Duvernoy innocently.

“The what?”

“The bill.”

“Mademoiselle--I am living in hopes--”

At this moment a gust of wind caught a large woman and bore her down

the deck, screaming for help. Hungerford dashed ahead, while we,

sheltering ourselves in the lee of a lifeboat, stood laughing at the

difficulties of the rescue. A sailor passed us and then a boy, carrying

a pot of grease, slipped, and, to save himself, caught at my arm. When

I had righted him, I saw such an expression of astonishment on his

face as he gazed at Mademoiselle Duvernoy that I said, still laughing:

“I say, this young fellow seems to know you.”

“_Eh, Bonne Dame; que c’est notre Mamzelle!_”

She turned, and her face went blank: then, recovering herself, she said

something rapidly in the Breton dialect which I could not understand.

The effect was instantaneous. The boy drew up straight, snatched off

his cap, and with marks of great respect backed away.

“Take my arm,” I said, going to her instantly.

She made no resistance and once as we started she swayed against

my side. We crossed the deck and I found her a seat where she was

sheltered from sight. There was no mistaking the effect on her.

The lips were twitching, and the lines under her staring eyes were

quivering with a haunting pain.

“Don’t try to speak. Don’t worry. No one saw you--not even I. Do you

understand?”

“Monsieur--” She tried to speak and then put her hand to her throat.

“Don’t try to explain. Believe me, it isn’t necessary.”

She looked up at me, weak and shaken, and for the first time that I

remembered her eyes held mine in a long, searching, mute appeal.

“But you will think--”

“Let me be your friend that far, Mademoiselle,” I said impulsively.

“Trust me. I have forgotten.”

Hungerford swung around the deck and stopped short.

“Hello. What’s wrong?”

“Too much motion, you unfeeling brute, or perhaps the sight of your

gyrations.”

I sent him for a chair and rugs, which gave her time to regain her

self-control. Then I tucked her away in a sheltered corner, without

opposition. She was stunned and did not seem to notice my presence for

the long hour during which I religiously kept my eyes from her face,

turning my back and staring over the driven waves. Later she called

to me in a voice still weak and I helped her to the lower deck. The

incident remained in my memory, obsessing it, deepening the film of

mystery which had been about her from the first.

IX

I think the thing that impelled me irresistibly to Mademoiselle

Duvernoy was the directness and order of her character. I knew that

as she was, she had always been, and that no future temptation could

ever alter for a moment her clear perception of her own high ideals.

In fact, I could not conceive of any such thing as temptation even

entering her life. To me, in my own consciousness of my turbulent,

shifting existence and my distrust of to-morrow, it brought me a

sense of cathedral calm to be privileged to sit at her side and

listen. I had not the slightest thought what was awakening in me,

so simple, so natural and so unpremeditated was my impulse towards

her. Gradually, a sense of well-being and light-heartedness came to

me, for now, while I was still aware of her struggling against me, I

was also aware of her yielding. With each morning’s greeting I felt

the night’s determination to relegate me into the safe distance of

the crowd. Yet I had but to conquer the disappointment of her first

manner and possess my soul in patience, to have her turn to me in a

new friendliness. At first I talked, and she listened, gravely and

attentively. I spoke of impersonal things, of memories of trenches and

hospital, of my intellectual unrest and philosophic speculations. She

answered me shortly, or by a question led me to find my own solution,

but it was not until we were three days from port that she revealed her

own thoughts and Peter Magnus was the occasion. I had been speaking of

my reluctance to return home and my fear of the indifference to war I

should find.

“You are never very tolerant, are you?” she said pensively.

“No, I suppose not,” I said, rather surprised at her reading my

character. “And yet you who are French surely must understand the

longing I have to love my own country.”

“My country has been centuries in the making. Our memories are long.

In every family some one has died that France might remain France. We

are an old race. We have lived together, been proud together, suffered

together, a long while. That does not come in a day.”

“No, of course not.”

I must have shown in my sudden abstraction something of the indecision

in my mind for, to my surprise, a note of friendly sympathy came into

her voice.

“Mr. Littledale, I am afraid you are going to be unhappy, just at

first. You hope for too much. Don’t be impatient. How can your people

know what we know? You will learn, as we learned, to stand together--by

suffering.”

At this moment, the voice of Peter Magnus broke in on our new mood.

“Then, you are glorifying war; you’ve come to that. Admit it.”

Brinsmade rose from his rugs and stood before us with an expression of

utter helplessness.

“Here is a man who has been three months in France and brings back

nothing but war is horrible. What am I to do with him?”

Peter Magnus ensconced himself in Brinsmade’s chair, so that we formed

a group. He took off his hat and ran his hands through his hair, which

was like a mane.

“When you speak of the glory of war,” he said, addressing Mademoiselle

Duvernoy directly, “I see only the women in black, the cripples, the

men who will grope in blindness, the station filled with the agony of

parting, the homes swept by sorrow. Glory! Where is the glory in it, if

you do not wear a crown? No, no, war is horrible, unthinkable!”

“Yet war is as inevitable a condition to a nation as death is to a

human being,” she said quietly. “And is death so horrible?”

We three, of differing degrees of agnosticism, looked at her, struck

with the boldness of the thought. It was Magnus who broke out:

“Yes, horrible! Death is horrible!”

“That, Monsieur, is because you have not seen how men die: you are

frightened by the mystery of the thing you do not know. And--perhaps,

in a man like you, you see only your own death--do you not?”

Magnus stared at her. From the first he had been strongly attracted to

her and never failed in deference.

“What can you know of such a thing?” he asked incredulously.

“Men have died by the hundreds about me.”

“You?”

She nodded.

“You have nursed in the Red Cross?”

“Yes. I do not like to speak of myself. I only mention it because

we are discussing things seriously. Yes, I have seen men die by the

hundreds. Monsieur Magnus, I have listened to many things you have

said, and I wish to tell you where you are wrong, and where all your

doctrines will fall down. All you think of is to avoid suffering.”

“Yes, not only the suffering that comes from needless sacrifice, but

the unending suffering that comes from those who must go on living.

You know one thing. I know the great mass; the suffering of those who

starve and suffocate.”

“You speak of the individual. I speak of the bigger thing,--the race.”

A little color came into her face as she grew animated with her theme.

“If a million men die to-day or to-morrow, what difference does that

make to the nation, any more than the death of a single sparrow?”

“I can hardly believe it is you that says such a thing!” he said,

astounded.

“Perhaps you don’t understand me. It is not how a million men die but

how they live that is important.”

“You are arguing with an individualist,” said Brinsmade.

“The right to live your life as you wish is to me a far more important

thing than whether half the world shall speak English or German,” said

Magnus warmly. “I am looking from the bottom up. I know what they think

who are striving,--not how best to enjoy life, but how to live. I know

what the workers feel about such things.”

“If that is true in America,” she said, seeking to moderate the

antagonism which his views aroused in her, “it is because the peasants

and the workers who have emigrated are--how do you say?--_déracinés_;

they have been uprooted; they have not yet fastened to your land; they

do not love it more than they do themselves. What you say is not true

of our French people. If you had seen our mobilization, you would have

understood what it is,--the love of country.”

“I saw it in the city,” I said, breaking in, “and it is a memory I

shall never forget.”

“But you should have seen it in the country! The quietness and the

stillness of it all--only the tocsin ringing in the church towers,

ringing all the afternoon. I saw it. I saw the women running to join

the men in the fields; to be together, the first thought. And I can see

the men leaving their reaping, sending back the women to make ready

their uniforms while they went, silently--always silently--to register

at the _mairies_. And when they went off, that night, each woman

brought down something from the store of the stockings,--a hundred,

two hundred francs. Not a woman rebelled. They put out flower pots on

the window sills and garlands of flowers on the great locomotives;

and I myself saw a little child writing in chalk on the cars, ‘J’aime

la France!’ There have been other moments--moments of doubt and

weakness--but it is good to have seen that!” She stopped, a little

embarrassed at having been carried away by her own enthusiasm. Then,

she said more quietly: “That is how the people of France, the people

you speak of, felt.”

Magnus was silent a moment.

“It is hard to answer you, Mademoiselle,” he said, gently. “I grant you

that it is beautiful, but I maintain that the tragic thing is that it

is all so unnecessary.”

“No, no, it is not unnecessary. I say that France is finer, nobler now

than it was before. Sacrifice is the essence of life. Suffering is the

test of the finest in us. Why won’t you admit that? Is it because you

don’t believe in anything else?”

“No,” he said. “I cannot believe.”

“Yes, that is at the bottom of much of your Socialism and your

internationalism and your individualism. It is the selfish conception

of mankind. There, Mr. Magnus, there, we disagree. We are not afraid of

death.”

“The Socialists and Freethinkers fought bravely, Mademoiselle,” he said

quietly, flushing under the antagonism he felt in her voice.

“True,” she said, checked for a moment, “but one is not truly agnostic

when one’s mother has had faith. It is not a question of bravery,

though. That is not quite fair,” she admitted. “Yet, I am sure I am

right. If there is no religious belief, you cannot have faith also for

your nation, can you, Mr. Brinsmade?”

“I had not thought of it in your way,” he said slowly. “I am inclined

to believe you are right.”

“I am. A Frenchman may have ceased to believe, but he can’t get

away from what has been taught him back through his generations of

ancestors. For we have taught him duty, not as something he rebels

against, but as an ideal, something so beautiful that he is willing to

sacrifice himself to that. Also, that is why we are a great nation;

because our young men are brought up to think of France as something

outside of themselves, that must go on, that must live,--an ideal

that is not selfish. That is what we all feel, Messieurs, from top to

bottom. What difference what happens to us, if France remains? Oh, I

express myself badly,” she broke off. “I wish I could make you feel

what we feel!”

“I understand your point of view, and I do respect it: yet,

Mademoiselle, there is something that I believe is more important, and

that is to see the truth. Don’t condemn too hastily. You have the gift

of faith: it is a wonderful thing. We are unhappier, I grant you; but

we cannot change our independence. Pardon me if I am not convinced.”

“In what way?”

“I still maintain that when the people’s eyes are open, they will see

that they are the ones who are sacrificed. The nationality you speak

of is a beautiful thing,--a dramatically beautiful thing. I can

understand how honor, glory, duty--those Middle Ages words--thrill your

class. But the others,--the peasant, the workman; no, no, he fights

without understanding, blindly, and he is the one who bears the burden.

For is it not true that it is the great mass, the men in the fields and

in the streets, that bears the burden and receives nothing?”

She started to answer and checked herself, but immediately, impelled by

an impulse too strong to be mastered, she said:

“Monsieur Magnus, it is my right to answer that. At New Year’s, 1914,

in my family, we sat down to table, fifteen of us: my mother, my

father, my five brothers, uncles and cousins--fifteen. Five are left

to-day: myself, a brother and two cousins at the front, and a brother

who in another year will go to do his duty as a volunteer; and, if for

any reason he should seek to avoid it, we would disown him though he

were the last of our name.”

She said it quietly without change of voice. We looked at her,

incapable of reply. Tears started to the eyes of Peter Magnus. He took

off his hat and said solemnly:

“If all the world were like you, Mademoiselle Duvernoy, there would be

no rebels like me.”

And, for that, I shall always maintain a respect for Peter Magnus.

X

Later in the afternoon I came out of the smoking room on the upper deck

for a breath of fresh air. To my surprise I had hardly started for a

turn among the rafts and lifeboats when I perceived the slender figure

of Mademoiselle Duvernoy standing by the rail. I went to her. One

glance, and I knew that her mood had been melancholy.

“If you are going to indulge in the mopes--you know what the mopes

are--the blues--I refuse to leave you alone.”

“But, Monsieur Littledale, I don’t see--” she began, drawing herself up.

“What business it is of mine?” I said, smiling. “No, no, you can

intimidate me at other times--you do that, you know--but not now, when

I feel that you are sad, and--please don’t go away,” I said hurriedly,

as she began to draw her cape about her. “I want to talk to you.”

“But in France we don’t talk alone with young men,” she protested, yet

I noticed that she lingered.

“You are not in France, now, and we are not alone,” I said, indicating

a group of children who were playing on the opposite deck.

She glanced in the direction of my gesture.

“Please, I do want to talk to you.”

Her look came to my eyes, the first time that her glance had met mine

openly, and in the look was gravity, friendliness, and a shade of

uncertainty. Then she looked away, hesitating.

“It is a new country and a new life you are going to, Mademoiselle,” I

said quickly, “and if our ways seem freer, you will find at the bottom

that you can always count on one thing,--the friendship and protection

of our men.”

“You have been very kind to me, Mr. Littledale,” she said solemnly.

“I did not mean that.”

She did not turn her glance from the horizon, but her head nodded

twice, and a rare smile touched the corners of her lips.

For the last days the air had been growing clearer, vibrant with the

vitality of younger skies: skies that had not been drenched in the

suffering of many multitudes. In the west, the sun was falling below

the green-blue horizon that wavered in sharp outline; a magnificent

sweep of golden reds was spreading across the cloud-strewn skies;

colors of hope and exaltation, colors of action. I, who had walked in

doubts, felt the boundless youth and opportunity which came streaming

towards me from the world of the future.

“It has been a privilege to meet you,” I said warmly. “I wish I could

talk over--so many things with you.”

“Yes, I feel what is in your mind: you are torn between two ideas--”

“Two? Twenty! I listen to every one; to Magnus, who sometimes convinces

me; to Brinsmade, whom I want to believe; to twenty different points of

view I pick up in the smoking room. I want to see my way clear as an

American, to something that stands out and thrills me as the one word

‘France’ thrills you. I want to have some beautiful ideal of my country

to live for, and I can’t yet see what we stand for. I’ve lost all the

smug, complacent ideas I had, and I don’t see anything else clearly.”

“I have felt that,” she said, in her simple way, unconscious of the

intimacy into which we were drifting. “Yes, I have felt that often

as I watched your face when you were listening to Mr. Magnus and Mr.

Brinsmade.”

“They debate what’s going to happen to America in a hundred years! What

interests me is what’s going to happen now.”

“Do you believe you will get into the war?”

“I hope so, from the bottom of my heart.”

“It will be a great awakening. We in France needed the war, too. You

see only what is glorious in us now. You don’t know what went before.

The heart of the people was pure in the great, beautiful fields of

France, and that saved us. But we had begun to lose faith; we even

said that we were decadent, that our day had passed. We were led by

false leaders who talked to the people of their ‘rights,’ not of their

duties. And these ‘rights,’--what were they? To do as they pleased,

to seek to make life easier. They were breaking down the faith of the

people, the faith in the family, with their right to live each for

himself; the faith in France, with their internationalism; and their

faith in God, which is at the bottom of it all.”

“Yes, so you said.”

“You do not believe?” she said, turning to me.

“I hope,” I said, after a moment’s pause.

“That may be enough for you, for you have traditions, traditions

founded in faith. But is that enough for the people?”

“Magnus says it is just what keeps them from progressing.”

“How does he say that?”

“He says that the Church is a superstition worked in the interests

of property. When the Church tells them that the reward will come in

another life, it blinds them to what they can accomplish in this if

they would organize and act.”

“Mr. Magnus is honest and logical, because he does not believe,” she

said, to my surprise. “Those who are not honest with themselves are

those who try to stand halfway.”

“But how would you answer him?” I said, troubled.

“By his own argument. If there is no future life, and therefore no

faith, why should we not do anything we please--steal, murder; why

should we abide by any law?”

“But he would supplant that by devotion to the Common State,” I said,

rather awkwardly.

“Isn’t that just what the Prussians are doing, with all their

pretensions of calling on God? Isn’t that why we hate the Prussian idea

and resent it, because it has no faith, either in the sacredness of

one’s word or in the feelings of humanity? Isn’t it founded on the idea

of force, and isn’t that what would result from any State formed on

agnosticism? Force, and only force, would prevail.”

“But would it?”

“Hasn’t it? Take our own Revolution: what happened? Didn’t it produce

worse tyrants, men of force,--Marat, Robespierre? And what killed

the Revolution? The attempt to destroy faith, in the abolishing of

religion. You see, you are questioning yourself as though faith

were only a spiritual speculation. It is much more than that, Mr.

Littledale: it is the beginning and end of all political organization.

Don’t you see?”

“When you speak, it is easy to be convinced,” I said, yielding to the

honesty in her eyes and the impassioned ring of her voice.

The discussion had carried her out of herself. The stiff preciseness

had gone. Her words, warm and glowing, thrilled me. It was not that she

convinced me of what she said but that she convinced me of herself.

I felt the woman in her, swept by generous impulses, glowing with

a beautiful ideal,--a great nature, with so much need to give. She

checked herself.

“Pardon. I am perhaps speaking too frankly.”

“No, no, you could never do that.”

I waited her pleasure, wishing to speak but finding no words, afraid of

the interruption which might come.

“I wonder what you were like before? I cannot see you in your home. But

I feel you have changed.”

She said it without looking at me, hardly aware that she had spoken her

thoughts aloud.

“Yes, great changes--so great that it is hard to look back and

understand myself. The first night there on the deck--you remember--I

could not sleep, and I kept going back over what I had been. You, too;

I felt you were awake, feverishly awake. Was I right?” She nodded, but

without looking at me. “I rebelled at going back! Oh, that’s what war

does for you. Whether you hate it or love it, it ends by creating about

you a new life and the other becomes something incredible, something

you wish to forget, something you don’t wish to interfere with your

liberty of action. For, Mademoiselle, the thing that’s hard at first

is to build up for yourself a new life that will satisfy, a new

philosophy; a new code of morals,--something to die with, not to live

by. All that is so different from the other thing that I have seen men

at my side who loved their homes shrink from opening a letter. For when

you have prepared yourself to die it is hard to remember how you have

lived. That was what I was rebelling against,--the thought of going

back, taking up life again, only to have to go through all the mental

pain of readjustment.”

“You are going back?” she said, turning to me in surprise.

“I am on a furlough only.”

“I didn’t know--I did not realize.”

“You ask if there have not been great changes in my life? Many, so

that I wonder what is coming. Up to the present, my life has been

without meaning, and I have only just realized it. It’s the change--the

contrast: the coming back has opened my eyes. It’s been drifting--just

drifting--nothing else. I don’t suppose I had an idea that was really

my own or that I had thought out. Was it my fault, or the education

they gave me? I don’t know. I went through school and college, with a

nice collection of hand-picked acquaintances, wafted gently from one

exclusive club to another. In the course of things I would have married

in my own set a charming, irreproachable girl--a spoiled child, with

entirely too much money--and settled down to the weary task of warding

off boredom. Why I didn’t do it, I don’t know. A curious, rebellious

pride, perhaps. I went abroad, to Paris, two years. Well, I came

through that! I do not see them clearly yet or their relation to my

life. They may have been necessary: time only will tell. I only know

that the mobilization was like an escape into pure air. The rest? Just

an acceptance of a thing that can’t be changed,--a happiness in finding

some purpose.”

“Monsieur, all this has made you what you are,” she said, directly. “I

did feel much of this. I felt this restlessness in you. And I think I

know what you are going to do. You have qualities of the heart that

will make you see clearly in the end; the qualities of the heart are

sounder, truer than the qualities of the mind; make no mistake. Will

you tell me about her? The young girl?”

“May I?” We had drawn a little together and stood looking over the rail

at the tumbling swirl below. “After all, why not?” I added, hesitating.

“Monsieur, sometimes it is easier to speak of the deep things in our

hearts to some one we meet just for a moment and never see again, when

each is true of heart and understands.” She turned and a smile touched

her lips,--a smile of dignity and friendliness. “I should not ask it if

I did not think, if I did not feel very strongly, that I might help you

to see a little clearer. She loves you, does she not?”

I did not realize then how strange the conversation was, nor the sudden

intimacy that drew us together.

“It is easy to tell you anything, Mademoiselle,” I said, smiling back

into her eyes. “But the situation is not just what you think. Do you

believe in marriage without love?”

“I believe--we are taught to believe--that love should follow

marriage,” she said, hesitating. “And if both are loyal--”

“That is your tradition; it is not ours. And you--is it always possible

for you to control your hearts?”

“We are taught that such love can only mean tragedy and unhappiness,”

she answered, staring away from me.

“Mademoiselle, it is Mr. Brinsmade’s daughter.” She looked up at this,

startled. “We have grown up together. She is charming. I admire and

respect her. Once, I thought it was a little more than that. But--but

I do not love her. Let me tell you all. It would mean everything to

me--power, opportunity, a big life--and Mr. Brinsmade would like it.”

Then I told her of our conversation, as best I could remember. “And

now, to be honest, I think--I believe that she cares for me and--yet I

do not love her.”

“Your pride is very strong,” she said solemnly.

“I suppose it is.”

She considered a long moment before she began to speak.

“Monsieur, I feel, no matter what you may think to-day, your happiness

lies there. The question of money is what makes it difficult to you,

but it is a question that should not come into it at all. Mr. Brinsmade

is right. Money is opportunity, to be utilized or to be thrown away.

He is a man with big ideas, a man who goes forward, and you will go

forward with him. I do feel I understand your nature more than you do

yourself, perhaps. You need stability in life, a home, and a woman who

loves you. A woman who is true, loyal and loves you, you will love in

the end, believe me.”

“Mademoiselle, do you believe that you can make yourself love?”

“There are many kinds of love, Monsieur Littledale: loves that destroy

us and wreck our lives; loves that pass; loves that we must fight down

to be true to ourselves; but there is another love which is calm and

security, which comes from mutual respect, the love that comes with

sharing life together loyally; and that love will come later to you,

for you have the qualities of the heart that count.”

“To some, to some brought up in different traditions, perhaps,” I said

rebelliously. “But with myself--no.”

“Wait, the young girl is a woman, a charming woman now, and all the

advantages are in her hands.”

“It is of course what I should do,” I said, shrugging my shoulders.

Then, all at once, the incongruity of it struck me, and I broke into a

laugh. “After all, there is one thing we forget.”

“What is that?”

“That all such things are quite unimportant: in a few months’ time I go

back. It is not a time to be making such decisions.”

“You will come through safely, Monsieur Littledale,” she said, in

a tone of deep conviction. “I know it. I feel it. I have strange

intuitions sometimes. I see storm and trouble ahead but I see the end

in happiness for you.” She could not have realized the gentleness which

came into her voice. I knew that the secret of her change of manner was

the introduction of a third. Was I altogether honest in permitting a

serious discussion, for no thought of such a marriage was then in my

mind. I watched her face eagerly, wondering at the gentle womanliness

that came out of its hidden cell,--all unconsciousness and simplicity.

“And your mother--what is she like?” she said.

“Mother? Why, I don’t know how to describe her,” I said, in some

perplexity. “I don’t know whether you’d understand. Mother goes

in for public things--very strong on woman suffrage, charities,

uplift, and pacifism. She’s a terrific worker. She has terrific

convictions--terrific! The Governor’s a trump; a sort of country

gentleman. He’s written quite a bit; he has convictions, too: other

convictions. There’s six of us; all with convictions--separate

convictions. Oh, we’d amuse you. A typical American family.”

She shook her head.

“That seems so strange; but don’t your families stand together?”

“Well, there’s one thing unites us,” I said, with a laugh. “We agree on

our right to disagree.”

She frowned in some perplexity.

“I don’t think I understand a home like that.”

“It isn’t like your French idea of home. We are all tremendously

devoted to each other but the thing you mean--the family tradition--the

standing for one definite idea--that doesn’t exist.”

“Are you a happy race, I wonder?”

The question surprised me.

“I had never thought of that. I should say we are--yes--and yet--I

don’t know: perhaps we are not. We are a nation of individualists,

full of driving energy and ambition. We all want something we haven’t

got. I’m afraid it’s rather a material ambition, usually. I’d like to

believe it makes for the greatness of the country,--this restlessness,

this discontent, this wanting to push up: but perhaps we do sacrifice a

good deal to it. I haven’t thought over that much.”

“I think that what makes my nation truly great is that we are the

happiest people in the world.”

“I don’t think I quite understand you.”

“Everything is so well ordered with us,” she said, and her voice

softened as she spoke of loved things. “Just as our beautiful land

is so well ordered: the fields so well laid out, the trees so

well disciplined, the little, red-topped villages so clean and so

prosperous, so in harmony. Just so in our family life: it is so well

ordered. We have real grandmothers and real grandchildren, and our

fathers are real heads of the family. I don’t think a Frenchwoman

would want to have a husband who didn’t have authority, to whom she

didn’t look up. And our mothers--you can never know the affection, the

deference, the respect that surrounds them.”

“Yes, I know that: it’s a rare and beautiful thing.”

“We have such pride in what the family has stood for. We live as one,

we surround the family life with so many quaint little customs. There

is much beauty and simplicity in it, for we are willing to be happy as

our grandfathers have been happy; and that happiness is not selfish;

it means many, many sacrifices often, but that makes it true happiness

because we cannot be happy unless we keep our pride in our ideals.” She

stopped. “I don’t know if you understand me, but I think we study how

to live more than you do. And, because we French are so happy together,

we can give everything to keep that happiness undefiled and pass it

down to our children.”

“Tell me of yourself--of your life,” I said, strangely moved.

She drew back, as though she had been unaware of a listener. The change

was so instantaneous that it startled me.

“But--Monsieur--certain things I cannot discuss--”

“Yet you asked me the same questions, didn’t you?”

“I? But I--”

She was thrown into confusion--at loss for an answer--and, all at once,

her face went red.

“I only want you to understand, Mademoiselle,” I said, with kindness,

“that it seemed a natural thing. It was not an impertinence. I could

never be impertinent to you.”

“You make me feel--” She hesitated again. “I am sorry--I didn’t

realize. But you made me talk. It were better I should not; I knew I

should not.”

“For heaven’s sake, why not?”

“I do not want to hurt you, Monsieur Littledale. You have been so kind,

so generous; but you make me do things I don’t want to do,--things that

are against my traditions, for I am traveling alone, unprotected--”

“Mademoiselle Duvernoy, I shall consider it a great privilege to be

your friend now and hereafter.”

“That cannot be; it is not possible; it is not right. We go different

ways in the world.”

“I don’t believe that--”

“We go different ways,” she repeated firmly. “If you will be generous,

you will not ask any more--please.”

She ended so low that it came to me in a whisper.

“I can be generous, but not to that point,” I said obstinately. “I want

another answer.”

“Monsieur Littledale, we are just chance acquaintances,” she said,

bringing her hands together in impulsive entreaty. “There is no

reason--”

“I do not believe we are what you say. It was something more than that

which brought me to your side that first night here.”

“What do you mean?”

She turned to me, with startled eyes.

“The feeling that made me know you were in--in danger.”

“In danger!”

“In danger, Mademoiselle. I felt it so strongly that it sent me to you,

and I did not dare leave you alone.”

I had no sooner said it than I realized how profoundly and fatally I

had erred. The woman who faced me I had never seen before.

“Monsieur, you do not know me. I am not of a race of cowards. I do not

take a coward’s way out of life.”

I looked at her, without power to answer,--amazed and baffled by the

swift succession of emotions which had culminated in this erect and

scornful pride. My eyes dropped before the look.

“Mademoiselle,” I said, at last. “I have offended you, I have offended

you, when my only thought, from the moment I met you, has been to offer

you all my friendship and deference. I am profoundly and miserably

sorry.”

I left her and went down the deck to the farther rail. There was no

resentment towards her,--only a weak, sinking misery that I should have

wounded her. My ears were filled with the sound of her gentleness. I

remembered only the hurt pride in her eyes. I saw her face in the mists

of the twilight, her deep eyes looking gravely out at me.

“Good God! How could she think I would say or do word or deed to hurt

her!” I said to myself, again and again.

“Monsieur Littledale?”

Unperceived, she had come to me. She was there, waiting at my side.

“Monsieur Littledale, I am sorry, too.”

Her hands were clasped before her, and the eyes that looked to me in

compassion and forgiveness were blurred. I put out my hands blindly,

but she had fled. I stood there, hearing nothing, seeing nothing, my

heart pounding within me.

It was then I knew that I loved her.

XI

She was not down to dinner when I came eagerly into the crowded

_salon_. She was not on the deck when I hurried up, nor did she appear

again that night. I slept badly and was out with the dawn, making

endless rounds through the sailors, who were swabbing down the decks.

I knew that I was beginning to love her, nor was I so dull as not to

feel that to her, too, I was more than just a chance acquaintance. I

did not attempt to analyze my feelings or to penetrate the future.

The present hour was too imperious. My mood was not of exultation but

of fear of her shy and persistent avoidance of me. If only a week

were before us! But the day was the last, and the morrow would bring

America, and--separation. I think I did not realize the full force

of the emotion that had swept over me; nor all the complexities, the

hazards, and the tragic destiny that it had, in the twinkling of an

eye, laid upon my life. My only thought was to see her again to know

from her first look that I still retained what had come to us in the

dusk before. I knew that everything was horribly against me. I was

certain, for some reason I could not fathom, that she would resist me,

had resisted me from the first. I was sure of nothing. But though it

meant finally but emptiness and the struggle to forget, I was powerless

to draw back now.

Breakfast passed, and the morning drew out, and she did not come. I

went to my chair and threw myself down, bodily and mentally tired. A

vast feeling of depression possessed me. Magnus came and talked to me.

I was conscious of seeming to listen; I caught phrases, heard myself

making responses. I knew nothing. My heart sank within me and such a

feeling of physical weakness possessed me, in this new, utter sense of

loneliness, that I could do no more than lie there, stretched inertly,

saying again and again to myself:

“She will not come. I have frightened her away.”

Yet she had not passed the door before I was instantly aware of it. A

wave of happiness and well-being went through me, as though my lungs

had filled with the first life-giving breath of air. She was coming,

head down and walking fast. I sprang up and hurried to relieve her of

the rug she was carrying. I knew she saw me, for she wavered and turned

aside to speak to a little French-woman who was traveling with her baby.

“Good morning, Mademoiselle.”

“Good morning, Monsieur.”

“May I take your rug?”

She glanced at her arm as though she had just perceived its burden.

“Thank you, Monsieur.”

I went to her chair and prepared it for her coming. All the depression

had left me at the first glance into her gray eyes. She, too, had felt

the tumult and the turmoil; it was written there in weariness and

strain. A violent joy, a sense of living and of hope, surged up in me,

as I awaited her first words. When I turned she had taken the arm of

her companion and was silently pacing off the deck.

An intuition, the instinct born of the struggle which is inseparable

from love, came to me. I, too, would avoid her and, in my absence, in

the longing denied, she would suffer, too, and by that suffering come

closer to me. Cruel? Yes, as in such moments the impulse is to beat

down all obstacles, to contend without quarter for the happiness that

lies beyond the agony of doubt and disbelief! I rose and went into the

smoking room, steeling myself to patience, resolved not to leave it

until luncheon. I sat there ten, fifteen, twenty minutes. At the end of

a half-hour I could bear it no longer. I went out hurriedly and, all my

resolutions forgot, straight to where she waited in her chair.

“Mademoiselle, you have not forgiven me,” I said, without preliminaries.

“Why?”

She turned, startled, and the new conflict I saw in the haunted

weariness of her glance brought me a sense of coming victory.

“Because you avoid me.”

“I?”

She could not meet the direct challenge of my look and turned away.

Still I pursued, without compassion.

“Yes. You avoid me. Would you rather that I did not remain here?” I

asked suddenly, sure of her answer. “For nothing in the world would I

do anything that would be distasteful to you. Tell me only what you

wish. Shall I go?”

She hesitated and, before the trouble I felt in her, my resolve almost

gave way. Yet, because I was fighting for both of us, I held firm.

“Only tell me what you wish.”

Once or twice she seemed to make up her mind to speak, but each time

she checked herself.

“Do you realize that by this time to-morrow we shall be steaming up New

York harbor?”

“This time to-morrow!”

“This time to-morrow.”

She put down the book she held in her hands with a show of purpose, and

looked out gravely.

“A strange world to both of us,” I said.

To my annoyance, the sound of the gong began to rumble through the

ship.

“What--already?” she said, to my delight, looking incredulously at her

watch.

“Take your luncheon up here; it’s a perfect day.”

“What a good idea! Yes, I think I shall.”

I hesitated, all my assurance melting away.

“I suppose the terrible gods of French etiquette would rock on their

thrones if I stayed, too--”

“I should feel very conspicuous.”

“Yes, yes, of course. I knew you would feel that way.”

My tone fell, in such unconcealed chagrin that she could not help

noticing it. She sat up and glanced down the deck. Other groups,

yielding to the sunlight which poured over the dancing ocean and flung

rainbows in the spray, were preparing to picnic above.

“It is the last day,” I repeated.

“Please--I should like if you will stay,” she said, all at once, and

then blushed and looked away.

I affected not to notice her confusion and busied myself with a serious

contemplation of the menu.

“There, it’ll be just like a meal at the front! Not quite so good

cooking as at one of your little country inns. Do you know, what you

said the other day’s been in my mind?”

“What was that?”

“About seeing death at first hand. I didn’t feel the way you did. I was

all broken up the first time; couldn’t sleep for a week. And yet, you

Frenchwomen go through all that and can still smile. Why is it? Have we

weaker nerves?”

“Don’t you think there is something changed in our smiles?” she said,

looking up.

“Yes, yes, I feel that. But you have so much faith in the good of the

world, you seem so uplifted by your experience, there is something so

serene in your eyes--”

I stopped, realizing how personal my analysis was growing.

“Ah, but when you are not just a spectator, when you are helping, it is

different. What is uplifting in service is that your own self becomes

of such little importance.”

“Yes, but I should think your memories--” I broke off. “When you told

that fairy tale to Master Jack, the first day, you could even laugh.”

“It’s because what I remember is not pain and ugliness but only the

beauty of sacrifice and the nobility of men who at other times may have

been very sordid,” she said warmly. “Do you know what our memories

are?” She half closed her eyes, and a tender look touched her lips.

“I think of one Christmas Eve--a great barn where I was nursing--a

barn that had been improvised into a hospital, with beds in the straw,

just like the birthplace of the little Saviour. I don’t like to speak

of myself, but I will tell you this. We stayed--my mother and I--in

a little village on the frontier--our village--when the Germans came

through; and that village, our little village, changed hands six times.”

“And you stayed--you and your mother?”

“We stayed, not to abandon our people and to take care of our poor

wounded.”

“And they let you do that?”

“They needed some one to take care of their own,” she said, with a

frown, “and we agreed--my mother and I--to do that if we could be

permitted to nurse our own men. Six times the village changed hands,

but on that night--Christmas Night--it was ours. So we made ready to

celebrate. We organized a concert. Oh, it was a strange concert! There

were over a hundred wounded in that great barn, and only a dozen could

stand on their legs, but they were all so gay, for that is something

our brave little _poilus_ never lose,--their gaiety. And there was to

be a tree, and all sorts of funny presents. And the concert! There was

a quartet, and there was a waiter from the Café de Paris who was lying

in a stall--with his feet carried off--who was to sing comic songs,

and a real tenor from the _Conservatoire_, who would sing magnificent

arias from the opera, and then there was to be a comic recitation, and

a classic recitation. Every one quite forgot their troubles in the

excitement. But Christmas morning a dozen wounded were brought in, and

one, a sergeant of chasseurs, in such a dreadful state that we did not

think he would live through the day. So of course, we prepared to give

up the celebration: and what do you think? He heard the men talking,

and he sent for me.

“‘Mademoiselle, is it true you are giving up the concert on my account?’

“‘You are in a bad way, _mon petit_!’ I told him.

“‘Bad way! _Allons!_ I am going to die,’ he broke out. ‘_Eh, bien!_ I

choose to die gaily, instead of in a corner, like a dog. It is my wish

that the concert go on. And tell the comrades to sing out good and

strong!’

“It was done, as he wished.”

“And he died?”

“Not that day, but the next,” she said, “without a complaint. Do you

think that when I can remember there are men like that in France, I

have a right to be sad?”

The deck steward came and went, and we began our luncheon. A hundred

questions were on my tongue, but I gave voice to none.

“They were so patient and so simple in their courage,” she continued

gravely, “always trying to help me. Many times, I’ve had a soldier who

was suffering say to me:

“‘_Allons_, Mam’zelle, get your sleep to-night. If this arm of mine

won’t keep quiet, I can be of some use. I’ll make the rounds.’”

“And the brave fellows who fretted because they couldn’t return soon

enough to the lines! They were so gay. I remember a little Breton who

had both legs gone, posing for his photograph, with stockings pinned to

his trousers, and saying:

“‘When I get up to Paris, I’ll get a pair of legs that’ll make me two

inches taller than this old Auvergnat over here!’”

“Those are the things that are good to remember. Poor boys! There were

so many that died unnecessarily! We were so few, and we could do so

little!”

“But you had doctors?”

She shook her head.

“I am speaking of the first months. Only from time to time a doctor,

and, when the Germans had the village, never. But I think that was

better.”

“I could not have done that,” I said, shaking my head. “I think I could

meet what I had to meet but--day in and day out--to have seen others

suffer, others die like that--”

“I only remember the look of gratitude in their eyes,” she said,

simply. “And then, I had my part. I had to keep up their morale, you

know, and send them back to the front with courage. It would never

have done for me to weaken.” She turned with a smile and saw the

profound gravity on my face. “Believe me, what I say is true,” she said

solemnly. “It had its hardships, but they were days of beauty, and I

never think on them without a thrill of pride in the France I have been

privileged to know. Please don’t look so grave. I’m afraid I’ve been

too serious.”

I was staring at her, looking into the past which she had conjured up,

divining things she had passed lightly over.

“Why are you staring so?” she said, a little embarrassed.

“I was trying to imagine you in your white and blue costume,--the most

beautiful robe that has ever been given to woman,” I said solemnly.

“You have no photograph?”

She shook her head.

“I only meant I should have liked to see it.”

“I love the uniform, too,” she said, and a note of sadness was in her

voice.

“But you will go back?” I said, before I could catch myself.

“I shall never go back. Will you take the tray?”

I hastened to obey. When I returned, I saw at once a stiffening of her

whole nature against me.

“Confess that you are thinking of the sacred gods of French etiquette,”

I said, hoping to make her smile.

She acknowledged the hit, with a little confusion.

“Then please blame me, and not your conscience, for I made you talk.”

“That is so. You make me talk against my will.”

“And now you are wondering how you can run away.”

“How do you know me so well?” she said, forced at last into a smile.

“Oh, I do. There is a very stern, uncompromising Mademoiselle Duvernoy,

and there is a very gay, happy Mademoiselle Duvernoy.”

“Once, there was a very frivolous one,” she said, nodding.

“I didn’t say that--”

“But it is so; oh, very frivolous--very _mondaine_, before the war--who

loved good things, as a child loves sugar plums!”

“What terrible sins you must have had on your conscience!” I said,

laughing.

“Oh, but I loved pleasure, very much, and the things of this world. I

did, very much.”

I smiled.

“I smile, as the Father who heard your confession must have smiled.”

She shook her head.

“I was a very superficial little person; not at all tolerant, very

satisfied with myself, and very dissatisfied with others.”

“Good heavens; I don’t think you have ever been anything but the spirit

of gentleness!” I broke out.

She drew back instantly, and I hastened to repair the blunder my

impulsiveness had made.

“You women of France all have that quality of gentleness,” I said

hastily, in a more guarded tone. “That is what I notice about all of

you.”

She relaxed, though not quite convinced.

“You idealize me, Monsieur. We have done our duty, that is all, and we

have found in it a great happiness.”

“I wish my sister--I used to think of her as my little sister; good

heavens, she must be twenty now!--I wish my sister Molly could know

you. Of all the family, she is closest to me. I hate to think of her

going through four or five years of useless life, dancing herself to

death, learning to get bored with every pleasure: she’s such a little

trump, now.” I took out my pocketbook and brought out a photograph of

a youngster in pigtail, tanned and straight, looking out with innocent

laughter at the most beautiful of worlds.

She took it, and glanced from the photograph to me.

“Yes, I understand. There is something very noble, very pure, very

brave. She is your favorite?”

I began to laugh.

“What is it?”

“Do you know, that’s only the second time I think you’ve really looked

me in the eyes.”

She blushed--as she did easily--and tried to laugh.

“We are told never to look a man in the eyes. It is very old-fashioned

to you?”

“But why?”

“Because,” she hesitated a little and then went on, looking away

from me, “because, when you look in a man’s eyes, they say, you are

seeking a different meaning to his words.” She blushed furiously.

“It’s not that exactly but--how shall I say?--we are taught that it is

too forward--too provocative. But you are laughing at me,” she said,

covered with confusion.

“I am not laughing, Mademoiselle,” I said seriously, “and I like that

in you.”

The conversation became difficult and a certain diffidence overcame us.

A moment before, she had been talking to me freely and impulsively,

though a little shy and hesitant, as a young girl. I saw her mood

change and a certain womanly dignity come to her.

“Monsieur, I have been thinking much of the confidence you entrusted to

me. Have you--have you no photograph of Miss Brinsmade?”

My pocketbook was still in my hand. I drew out a little snapshot and

handed it to her. She held it a long time, studying it intently.

“She is very beautiful,” she said at last.

“Yes.”

“This is how long ago?”

“Three--four years; when she was just out of school.”

She nodded, still studying it.

“Monsieur, there is a great deal that is waiting there--a great deal of

love--a great deal of nobility. A woman like that will be what you want

her to be; only, don’t make her wait too long.”

I took the photograph, looked at it wondering if she had said all her

thought, and slowly replaced it in my pocket.

“Mademoiselle, I, too, have been thinking over our conversation and I

feel I may have given you a wrong impression--”

“How so?”

“I was only discussing something that was a remote possibility, nothing

that I have really considered. I reproach myself a little; I had not

the right--on her account.”

“Why?”

“Because I know now that it is quite impossible.”

Heavens, how much I wished to say to her, and how little I dared. I

waited, wondering if she would understand. She did not answer, but I

saw her hands clasp and unclasp in her lap.

“What you have said of marriage is natural to your traditions. Some

other man might do as you suggest and find happiness. I know--I know I

could not, and keep my self-respect. I shall never marry, Mademoiselle,

unless my whole heart goes with it.” I hesitated and, despite myself,

knowing the danger of it, I added, very low, “I know that now.”

She did not hesitate but answered me, instantly and lightly.

“Perhaps, Monsieur, the future will settle that. Will you permit me to

hope that it may be so?”

She rose, with a formal nod and made a pretext to descend to her cabin.

I saw her to the door and returned, my brain in a whirl. At one moment

she had seemed to come to me with such impulsiveness; at the next,

to be a thousand miles away. I dropped back into my chair, uneasy

and tortured by regrets. A flash of gold on the gray scarf she had

left behind her caught my eye and, leaning over, I picked up a little

brooch I had always seen at her throat. It was in the form of a locket,

heart-shaped, such as children wear. I turned it over in my hands and

saw an inscription on the back, a date and a name written in a free

hand:

_BERNOLINE_

The next moment I realized that unwittingly I had trespassed on the

mystery of her identity. I put the pin hastily in my pocket and rose,

with an idea to restore it to her immediately. I went into the Ladies’

Cabin, hoping to find her there, and then into the writing room. I

could not take it, myself, to her stateroom and I did not wish to

entrust it to a steward. In the end, I kept it and waited for her

reappearance.

XII

It was well into the heart of the afternoon when I discovered her, at

her old post on the upper deck.

“Mademoiselle, please do not think that I mean to intrude,” I said

diffidently, when I had come to her side.

“You are not intruding, and I had hoped that you would come,” she said,

without evasion. “For, Monsieur, I feel that I ought to say something

to you very seriously.”

Her manner, in its decision and thoughtfulness, alarmed me.

“I have things, too, which I wish to talk over with you, in the

uttermost seriousness. I am a little afraid of that conversation,” I

said, looking down, “because we are going to disagree. My mind is made

up to certain things, Mademoiselle, and I do not think you can change

it.” I added, looking up into the sadness of her eyes, “Will you grant

me a favor--a last favor. There is so little time that is left us. Wait

until to-morrow.”

She shook her head.

“My conscience reproaches me for putting it off as I have done. Do not

make it any harder.”

“If it is to be only a memory,” I said, “let the memory be complete. It

is something even to have had a memory of you. Please grant my request.”

I doubt whether she would have yielded even then, though I saw her

breast rise and her eyes close at my voice, had I not brought forward

the locket, saying:

“Mademoiselle, I came to bring you this. I found it on your chair.”

Her hand went to her dress spasmodically, and the color left her face

with the violence of her emotion.

“I must tell you. I did not realize what I was doing, but I saw the

name on the back.”

“You did not open the locket?” she said, in terror.

“Mademoiselle, I am sorry that you asked that question.”

“Forgive me--I--forgive me.” She put her hand to her eyes, and stood

trembling from head to foot. God knows it was hard not to take her in

my arms. But I stood there, gritting my teeth, waiting until she grew

quiet once more.

“Bernoline--so that is your name?” I said softly.

“Yes, that is my name.”

“I have known, from the first. Bernoline--I am glad I saw it, for the

other name I could not associate with you.”

“Monsieur.” She turned, and this time her eyes looked me through and

through. “You are a man of honor? Give me your word of honor never to

mention that name to a human being. Oh, I do not mean to hurt you--I do

trust you. But--I must have your word!”

“You have hurt me,” I said. “It was not necessary, but--you have my

word.”

Her agitation was so extreme that she hardly noticed my reply.

“Mademoiselle--no one who has had the privilege of knowing you--of

listening to you--can ever believe that you were brought up to be a

governess. And if you had been,” I added hastily, “that would not make

the slightest difference. You are you, and that is sufficient. I think,

Mademoiselle, I never wanted anything more in the world than to be your

friend.”

She shook her head again at this, but the agitation passed and her

voice was soft with pleading as she answered me:

“Monsieur Littledale, you will forgive me? From the heart? I

did not know what I was saying. I should always trust you--in

everything--without a doubt.”

“Thank you,” I said, all choked up.

“Your friendship? Yes. But, friends? No. To-morrow, it is to be

good-by,” she said, more gently than I had heard her. “Is it not better

to say now what we must say to each other?”

“No, no--to-morrow.”

“To-morrow, then. Since you asked it and because I did hurt you,”

she answered. “Only, make no mistake. You have seen me, Monsieur, in

moments of weakness. Why I have been so I do not know: I am not like

that. I can do what has to be done.” The locket was in her hands;

she held it before her. “It is the last thing that remains of all my

past life. I had no right to keep it; I have been wrong. Monsieur

Littledale, I think you will understand now how immovable my resolution

is, when I know what must be done!”

She opened her hand, and the locket, a tiny streak of gold, vanished

into the sea.

“It was my baby pin, and the name was in the handwriting of my father.”

It was done without a tremor and the chill of the waters, into which

the locket had passed, possessed me.

* * * * *

Instinctively we avoided the danger of personal references. For

the rest of the afternoon we sat there together, talking eagerly,

unconscious as two children of the shortening day. I do not remember

ever to have known such an exquisite and eager pleasure as in this

impulsive searching of our minds. It was the delight in meeting

in intimate conversation some one who woke in me all my dormant

imagination and led me along suddenly opening galleries, into

unsuspected worlds. As we rambled on, touching lightly or profoundly

twenty changing ideas, a deep tranquillity came to my restless spirit,

not simply from the contemplation of the serenity that lay on her

open forehead and deep in her clear, untroubled eyes, nor the charm

of listening to the melody of her voice, but in the calm certitude

of coming happiness. I was happy; yes, for that one all too brief

afternoon. I was happy as I never realized happiness could come to me.

For I saw such happiness in her face that at times she seemed no more

than a girl of sixteen, artlessly spreading before me her imagination

and her treasured thoughts. She was happy. I knew what that meant. I

was content to go no further, sure that on the morrow, when we came

to serious discussion, I could turn all her objections, based, as I

believed them to be, on a sentiment of too scrupulous pride.

We were in the midst of a gay debate on the upbringing of the young

girl in France, when the sound of the dinner gong broke in on our

illusions.

“What, so soon!”

“It is not possible!”

The two cries came simultaneously. We stood up, suddenly sobered. I saw

her face change.

“And, to-morrow afternoon--here,” I said confidently.

“It were better to say good-by now,” she said wearily.

“It will not be good-by, Mademoiselle.”

She shook her head and gave me her hand, and I remember now how heavily

it lay for that short second in mine.

“Monsieur, I repeat, you make me do things I do not mean to do, that I

have no right to do.”

“Wait until to-morrow,” I said, so completely happy that I tried to

laugh her out of her mood and refused to perceive the solemnity and

sadness that settled over her face.

* * * * *

I am glad now, as I look back, for that one hour of absolute faith in

the future. Life was a certainty; I was filled with an eagerness to

begin and in the knowledge of the rare and beautiful realization of

happiness, I had not the slightest fear of the test of the morrow.

XIII

I spent the hours after supper in the smoking room, puffing at my pipe,

with a new tolerant understanding of the young America before me; of

these young spirits, with their exaggerated bursts of humor, their

overflowing belief in themselves, their boyish eagerness to return to

“God’s Country.”

“I wonder if they would ever agree on anything,” I thought, as I

watched the nervous, combustible American need of reaction breaking out

in sudden fits of gaiety. “So many minds; so many ideas!”

Some had served from curiosity, more from the love of adventure, and

a few, thrilled by the comprehension of noble ideals. I saw them

returning, scattering north, south, and west; into village, farm and

city; mechanics, students, idlers; taking up again the easy, careless

run of American lives; moving on obedient to the accidents which

determined their paths; good-natured, generous, emotional, keen,

ambitious, seeking that success that is counted in terms of dollars.

And then I wondered. I wondered if the sudden, transforming call on the

air would ever come to them.

“What does it matter whether a million men die to-day or next year?”

Bernoline’s words, words that had startled me at first, came back to me

then. “All that matters is how they live!”

“For, if the test come,” I thought, “it is our generation that’ll have

to make good. Make good! Yes, that’s one thing we can do: I have no

fear of that--and yet, how unprepared we are for the test!”

* * * * *

The next morning I was up and out on deck with the sun. Already there

was the note of change. The dream life of the last days, suspended

between sea and sky, between one civilization and another in a happy

incredulity, was come to an end. Ahead was reality; life to be taken up

again, the fixed path to be followed!

Forward, the hatches were off and the donkey engines were diving

into the holds. The passengers who came out were unrecognizable in

their shore clothes, stiff and formal, retreating into the shells of

themselves. The smoke of an ugly freighter smirched the sky. A swarm

of sea gulls, noisy as the approaching multitudes of the city, vexed

the air. Across the lapping of shallower waters a dozen sails stood out

to sea. At noon Fire Island rose out of the waves, passed and sank.

A group on the deck below set up a cheer. The thin, white sand of

Long Island slipped over the horizon and grew towards us. America--my

America--was there! I felt like snatching off my hat and waving it

madly, hysterically, as Frangipani and the others were doing.

I had not thought to be so stirred. I had thought to return with

foreboding in my eyes and questions on my lips, and instead there came

this involuntary gripping of the heart. Out of the whole world, this,

this bit of land was mine!

“Good to see your own again, after all, isn’t it?” said Brinsmade, who

had come to my side.

I acknowledged it, with a laugh.

“Had no idea it would affect me so.”

“It’s an instinct that’s down pretty deep, David.”

We watched the derricks swinging up their cargo. A crowd of young

fellows, led by Frangipani’s ear-splitting tenor, were singing:

Give my regards to Broadway,

Remember me to Herald Square!

“We’re all like that,” said Brinsmade. “Must blow off steam

occasionally. Would you believe it--I feel like jumping down there and

doing the same thing!”

“I believe you.”

I glanced at my watch for the twentieth time, and went up to the upper

deck and waited, scanning the horizon that was perplexed with the drift

of the great city; scows, tugboats, coast liners and pilot boats,--a

busy officious rabble. Then Bernoline came.

She was gloved and bonneted, an umbrella in her hand, veiled, as she

had been on the day of departure. My heart sank. I was quite unprepared

for this. In my rapt imagination I had expected the Bernoline of

yesterday, impulsive and generous, a woman turning back into the eager

unconsciousness of girlhood. This was more than a mask. She had

retreated behind a barrier of impersonality,--an impersonality as stiff

and starched and forbidding as the outward form.

“Monsieur Littledale, will you walk with me a moment?”

The voice was calm, self-possessed and resolved. I was so overcome, I

had already such a sensation of futility and defeat, that I do not know

that I even acknowledged her greeting as I turned and followed at her

side.

“A little farther--there--here we can be alone.”

We crossed and found a sheltered nook. I stood, staring down. All below

me was ugliness, and I remember now how suddenly depressed it made me

to be brought face to face with this sordid realism,--this muddy water,

streaked with oil, the waste, refuse and litter of the city. The siren

blew, once, twice, in shattering blasts. We moved onward, towards the

river head.

“Monsieur, I have to thank you, and I do thank you deeply for your

perfect courtesy towards me.” Her voice sank lower. “You have been

loyal and considerate. It is a memory I shall always retain of an

American gentleman. Now, I am going to appeal to that chivalry and to

that loyalty.”

“You are going to ask me never to see you again.”

She hesitated before the shock of pronouncing the decision which must

have been in her thoughts for days. Then, recovering herself, she said,

calmly:

“That is exactly what I must ask of you.”

“I do not understand--_must_?”

“Must.”

All that I had thought out, every argument which I had built up

victoriously to combat her resolution, all power of reasoning, left me.

Intuition, which never fails at such times, told me that before this

Bernoline nothing that I could say or do would avail. The woman who

spoke was a soul in retreat, and the veil which barred the meeting of

our eyes was the veil of renunciation. I blurted out:

“Why? Why do you ask such a thing, such an unnatural thing of me? What

reason can there be?”

“Monsieur, I must remind you,” she said instantly, “that there is no

reason why I should give explanations.”

“Wait. I can’t talk to you like this,” I broke in. “Yesterday--good

heavens, where is yesterday?--yesterday I knew you. Only yesterday,

we were happy as two children, exploring the world, hand in hand:

to-day you come to me and face me as though I were an enemy! You

speak to me behind this mask of a veil! You ask me something utterly

incomprehensible and, at my first dazed question, you--but what have I

done--why, why should you take this way with me?”

She raised her arms instantly and drew back her veil.

“You are not an enemy, Monsieur Littledale.”

When I looked at her I was so shocked by the pallor of her face and the

dark stricken eyes that I cried involuntarily:

“I have made you suffer like that!”

“It is right that I should suffer,” she said bravely, though her lips

trembled a bit, “for I have done wrong in even permitting you to speak

to me.”

“Why? What wrong?” I said desperately. “What wrong is there in our

friendship? I have never said a word to you, Mademoiselle, that could

not be said before a third person. I never shall. Leave it as it is.

Keep me in your life--as a friend, only.”

She shook her head, and her eyes never wavered from mine.

“You make it very hard for me. Yet, because I feel that what has

happened is my fault, I must say things that it is very hard for a

woman to say. _Mon ami_, I shall not disguise from you that, had I

the right, your devotion would mean to me the greatest happiness in

the world. Let us not play with a situation that is too serious for

half-truths. What might be cannot be. I tell you this, and after what

I have told you, my friend, without concealment, I ask you to believe

without further question.”

“Good God! And what do you think I feel!”

“Try to forgive me--if not now, a little later. I accuse myself

bitterly. Don’t--don’t show me how I have hurt you.”

“Bernoline! Bernoline! Don’t say such things.”

I looked away, at the world that grew blurred, and at the sky and

water, which ran together before my eyes. Everything was against

me--the minutes even, dwindling away as we moved inexorably towards the

final parting. At one moment I rebelled against the needless insensate

pain of it all. Something in me called out: “She is a woman--a

woman that suffers as you do. Clasp her in your arms--beat down all

opposition--still all her doubts and fears with the thing that is above

reasoning. Be cruel. It is the only way. Be cruel now, to be happy

always.”

But at the next moment, at the thought of all it must have cost her to

have said what she had said; at the struggle I had seen in her eyes,

just to spare her this one added touch of pain, I was ready to accept

everything she asked as she asked it. So, I stood, struggling with many

impulses. At the end, I raised my head, and said:

“Bernoline, you are right: it can be no question of friendship between

us. You have done a very brave thing. I wish I could do as big a thing.

I cannot. There is no earthly reason which I can conceive of that can

come between us. Do you think, now, after what you have shown me, I

could go away without an explanation and not be haunted by the thought

of what might have been!”

“Monsieur Littledale, you do not realize the difference between

our positions. I am come here to this world to earn my living, as

governess, nurse, companion, in whatever way God will show me.”

“Good heavens, what difference does that make to me?”

“It does, to me: it is a question of pride. I have chosen my way, and I

must do as others do. Are you going to make it harder?”

“Bernoline, that is not the real reason,” I said sternly.

“_Mon ami_, there is the difference in religion--”

“Bernoline, that is not the real reason!”

“Monsieur Littledale,” she said, wavering from the look in my eyes, “I

repeat, I alone have the right to decide, and I do not admit--”

“And I tell you now I will never let you go out of my life, no matter

what you may ask of me!”

There was a long moment before she again raised her head.

“You make it very difficult for me, _mon ami_; if you knew how

difficult, I think you would be more generous.”

The rebellious combat in me died away before the break in her voice. I

looked, and saw her eyes closed with sudden tears.

“Oh, don’t,” I said brokenly. “Anything--anything but that, Bernoline!”

“My friend, I will not lie to you,” she said, after a moment. “If

I could--if it were right--I should prize beyond all things your

friendship.”

“Friendship!”

“It cannot be. I have been wrong, very, very wrong to have even talked

to you as I have--but at moments it was beyond my strength. I reproach

myself, bitterly! David, _mon ami_,” she said suddenly, and her hand

came out bravely and lay on mine. “I have more than I can bear, now.

If you insist, I will tell you, but--it will break my heart to do

so. I am going to ask you, once more. If you have the great heart I

believe you have, my friend, my good loyal friend, if you do not want

me to suffer more than I can bear to suffer, if I am to hold to my

own respect, give me your promise never to see me again. Ask me no

questions; trust me. Go your own way and let me go mine.”

Her hands had come together in supplication; her eyes had in them a

terror of returning pain and their look hung in mortal distress on my

decision. Her agitation communicated itself to me; confusion was in my

eyes, and in my heart was a chill.

“Good God! What can I do, when you ask me like that?” I said

helplessly. “I promise. It shall be as you wish. I--it--I promise.”

“_Merci, oh, mon Dieu!_”

I heard her cry like something far off; all the world had dropped away

from me. She came close to me; perhaps my very helplessness disarmed

her.

“David, I never meant to hurt you so. Believe me, what I do is for

you--for you, first. Keep me as a memory of something beautiful in

your life. Day and night I shall have you in my prayers--you and your

happiness. That will come, David. You will forget what I was too weak

to prevent.”

I bowed my head, incapable of speech.

“There is only one thing I ask, now,” I said at last. “Oh, it’s only a

little thing, otherwise it would be too cruel: I ask only to be allowed

to see you through the landing--just the last courtesies.”

“Yes, _mon ami_.”

I held out my hand abruptly, and she gave me both of hers. She was so

close to me that for a moment we swayed against each other, parting

and longing in our eyes so poignant that all the world seemed like a

whirlpool drawing us down together.

“Your promise, David, your promise!”

I released her hands instantly and my eyes closed not to see her so

near and so weak. When I knew what I was doing again, I was alone.

How long I had been there, I do not know. A great mass was before me,

thrusting a torch into the skies and the kindling stars. I went down

the deck like a drunken man and ran into Hungerford, who came up gayly.

“Hello, there, seen a paper?” He checked himself, staring at my face.

“Here--Big Dale--what’s wrong?”

“Wrong--nothing’s wrong!”

I felt his arm under mine and was glad for this touch of another human

being in my blank loneliness. I heard him rambling on, nodded my

head, and knew not a word he was saying. This for long minutes, while

gradually I fought back to myself.

To this day I can feel the overwhelming insolence of the stone

weight of New York rising out of the waters, crushing me down in my

utter loneliness. An invisible hand was lighting up the city; glass

squadrons suddenly relieved, floated in carnival pomp across the night.

Across the vanishing space of bridges, feverish traveling flames shot

out,--one, two, and then another. A furnace belched against the sky.

Electric signs swarmed out of the dusk. Below me, over the swift,

oily, painted waters, were green lights, red lights, ferryboats afire,

tugs coming and going, shrieking, puffing, roaring,--and always we

moved on, irrevocably on, past the Battery, past the oozing, slimy

hulks of the city wharves, rotting below the fiery splendor of the

city’s rise; stagnant as poverty beneath the soaring pride of wealth,

in the miraculous city of tragic contrasts! How vast it was, how

unhuman! Every note a thousand times multiplied,--every sensation of

multitude! Multitude on multitude--armies of order and disorder--a

collective tyranny that roared over me on the threshold of America, as

the resistless downward plunge of Niagara beats endlessly. Torrent of

forty nations and twenty creeds, conflict of tongues and churning of

races--not my America, but the world-vision of Peter Magnus--multitudes

moving like glaciers towards destinies no one might confidently predict!

And, against this howling contention, this churning, grinding

background, I saw but one figure,--the shadow of a woman, the woman I

loved, exiled and alone.

* * * * *

At six o’clock it was all over. I stood at her carriage door,

bareheaded, bending over her hand. The bustle of the landing, the

examination of the baggage, the damp, noisy, strident wharf, the

pushing and the strife were behind us,--too soon gone. Only this

remained.

“You can give him your address,” I said, stepping back.

“It is St. Rosa’s Convent.”

“Thank you.” Even at that moment, her trust in me brought a little

comfort.

“Do not worry. I shall be well taken care of.”

“St. Rosa’s Convent,” I said loudly to the driver.

The moment had come. I had not realized what it would cost me. Before

the finality of it, I stood, clutching the door, incapable of a word.

“God be with you,” she said, bending forward.

“Bernoline--Bernoline, if ever--”

She leaned forward and, suddenly remembering, drew her veil. Our eyes

met without wavering, unconscious of the crowd that jostled and shouted

behind us. She raised her hand and touched my forehead.

“Thank you, from my heart. I shall keep you in my prayers, day and

night--always, David.”

She sank back, and I saw her face no more. A policeman shouted an angry

order. The carriage moved away. At the window her hand fluttered in

a last weak gesture. Then, even the window grew blank. I was alone,

standing with head uncovered, in the midst of a group of urchins, who

were mocking my long face.