eyes I had sinned.

"You _meant_ well, Ambo," she said with a gentleness that yielded
nothing--"you and Mona. Meaning well's what I feel now I can never quite
forgive you. _You_, Ambo. Poor Mona doesn't count in this. But you--I
thought I was safe with you. No matter."

Later she said: "I've seen Madame Guyot--a horrible woman; and the baby.
He's a nice baby. You did just right about him, Ambo. Thank you for
that." She mused a moment. "I suppose it's absurd to think he looks like
Jimmy? But to me he does. I'm going to adopt him, Ambo. You see"--her
smile was wistful--"I _am_ going to have a baby of my own, after all."

"I'd thought of adopting him, myself," I babbled; "but of course----"

"Of course," said Susan.

In so many subtle ways she had made it clear to me. I had disappointed
her; revealed a blindness, a weakness, she would never be able to
forget. In my hotel room that night I faced it out and accepted my
punishment as just. Just--but terrible.... There is nothing in life so
terrible as to know oneself utterly and finally alone.

IX

On the night of the eighth of March the Gothas, so long expected,
returned; to be met this time by a persistent _barrage_ fire from massed
75's, which proved, however, little more than the good beginnings of a
really competent defense. Many bombs fell within the fortifications, and
we who dwelt there needed no other proof that the problem of the defense
of Paris against air raids had not yet successfully been solved.

There were thickening rumors, too, of an imminent German attack in
force. Things were not going well at the Front. It was common gossip
that there was division among the Allies; the British and French
commands were pulling at cross purposes; Italy seemed impotent; Russia
had collapsed; the Americans were unknown factors, and slow to arrive.
It began to seem possible--to the disaffected or naturally pessimistic,
more than possible--that the Prussian mountebank might make good his
anachronistic boast to wear down and conquer the world.

Even the weather seemed to fight for his pinchbeck empire; it was
continuously dry, and for the season in Northern France extraordinarily
clear. By its painful contrast with our common anxieties, the
unseasonable beauty of those March days and nights weighted as if with
lead the sense of threat, of impending calamity, that pressed upon us
and chilled us and made desperate our hearts.

I saw Susan daily. She did not avoid me