It could hardly, I decided,
be at Dunkirk; that stricken city, whose inhabitants were forced to dive
like rats into burrows at any hour of the day or night. There was
nothing to suggest the atmosphere of Dunkirk in that quiet,
white-enamelled room. Nice, then--or Mentone? Hardly, I again reasoned;
for Jimmy could not easily have reached them there. A day's leave; a
flight from the lines, so comfortlessly close to Paris--that was always
possible to the air-men, who were in a sense privileged characters,
being for the most part strung with taut nerves that chafed and snapped
under too strict a discipline. And in Paris there must be many such
quiet, white-enamelled rooms. I decided for Paris.

Then I threw five or six articles and a bar of chocolate into my
_musette_, a small water-proof pouch to sling over the shoulder--three
years had taught me at least the needlessness of almost all Hillhouse
necessities--and waited for dawn. It came, as all dawns come at
last--even in January, even in France. And with it came a gulp of black
coffee in the little deserted cafe down-stairs--and a telegram. I dared
not open the telegram. It lay beside my plate while I stained the cloth
before me and scalded my throat and furred my tongue. It was from Paris.
So my decision was justified, and now quite worthless.... I have no
memory of the interval; but I had got with it somehow back to my
room--that accursed blue envelope! Well----

"Susan at Red Cross hospital for civilians,
Neuilly. All in, but no cause for real worry. Is
sleeping now for first time in nearly a week. I
must leave by afternoon. Come up to her if you
possibly can. She needs you.

"JIMMY."

Four hours later all my exasperatingly complicated arrangements for a
two-weeks' absence were made--the requisite motions had been the purest
somnambulism--and by the ample margin of fifty seconds I had caught an
express--to do it that courtesy--moving with dignity, at decent
intervals, toward all that I lived by and despaired of and held
inviolably dear. But the irony of Jimmy's last three words went always
with me, a monotonous ache blurring every impulse toward hope and joy.
Susan was not dead, was not dying! "No cause for real worry." Jimmy
would not have said that if he had feared the worst. It was not his way
to shuffle with facts; he was by nature direct and sincere. No; Susan
wou