o disgustingly maudlin as these past weeks--never!"

"So Jimmy's married," I repeated stupidly, for at least the third time.

"Yes," smiled Susan, "to little Jeanne-Marie Valerie Josephine Aulard. I
haven't seen her, of course, but I feel as if I knew her well. They've
been married now almost a year." She paused again. "Why don't you look
gladder, Ambo? Why don't you ask questions? You must be dying to know
why Jimmy kept it a secret from us so long."

I had not dared to ask questions, for I believed I could guess why Jimmy
had kept it a secret from us so long. For the first time in his life, I
thought, Jimmy had been a craven. He had been afraid to tell Susan of an
event which he must know would be like a knife in her heart.

"I suppose I'm foolishly hurt about it," I mumbled.

How bravely she was taking it all, in spite of her physical exhaustion!
Poor child, poor child! But in God's name what then was the meaning of
my vision back there in the hotel room at Evian? Jimmy entering this
room where I now sat, tiptoeing to this very bedside, stooping down and
kissing Susan--and her hand lifted, overcoming an almost mortal
weakness, to touch his hair....

"You mustn't be hurt at all," Susan gently rebuked me. "Jimmy kept his
marriage a secret from us for a very Jimmyesque reason. There was
nothing specially exciting or romantic about the courtship itself,
though. Little Jeanne-Marie's father--he was a notary of Soissons who
had made a nice, comfy little fortune for those parts--died just before
the war. So the Widow Aulard retired with Jeanne-Marie to a
brand-spandy-new, very ugly little country house--south of the Aisne,
Ambo, not far from Soissons; the canny old notary had just completed it
as a haven for his declining years when he up and died. Well then,
during the first German rush, Widow Aulard--being a good extra-stubborn
_bourgeoise_--refused to leave her home--refused, Jeanne-Marie told
Jimmy, even to believe the Boches would ever really be permitted to come
so far. That was foolish, of course--but doesn't it make you like her,
and _see_ her--mustache and all?

"But the deluge was too much, even for her. One morning, after a night
of terror, she found herself compulsory housekeeper, and little
Jeanne-Marie compulsory servant, to a kennel of Bavarian officers. Then,
three weeks or so later, the orderly of one of these officers, an
Alsatian, was discovered to be a spy and was shot--and the Widow Aulard
was sh