el times.
He learned a few things about that mystic period she would never
disclose. And he was glad that she had never told him more. He fled
from her, for eavesdropping on a delirium has something of the
contemptible quality of peeping at a nakedness.

He supposed that Mamise would die. All the poor women with pasts that
he had read about, in what few novels he had read, had died or it had
been found out that they had magically retained their innocence
through years of evil environment.

He supposed also that Mamise would die, because that was the one thing
needful to make his life a perfect failure. He had not gone to war,
yet he had lost his arm. He had never really desperately loved before,
and now he would lose his heart. It was just as well, because if
Mamise lived he would lose her, anyway. He would not tie her to the
crippled thing he was.

While the battalions of disease ravaged the poor Belgium of Mamise's
body the world outside went on making history. The German Empire kept
caving in on all sides. Her armies held nowhere. Her only pride was in
saving a defeat from being a disaster. Her confederates were
disintegrating. The newspapers mentioned now, not cities that
surrendered to the Allies, but nations.

And at last Germany added one more to her unforgivable assaults upon
the patience of mankind. Just as the Allies poised for the last
tremendous all-satisfying _coup de grace_ the Empire put up her hands
and whined the word that had become the world-wide synonym for
poltroonery, "_Kamerad!_"

Foch wept, American soldiers cursed because they could not prove their
mettle and drive the boche into the Rhine. Never was so bitter a
disappointment mingled with a triumph so magnificent. The world went
wild with the news of peace. The nations all made carnival over the
premature rumor and would not be denied their rhapsodies because the
story was denied. They made another and a wilder carnival when the
news was confirmed.

Davidge took the peace without enthusiasm. Mamise had been better, but
was worse again. She got still better than before and not quite so
worse again. And so in a climbing zigzag she mounted to health at
last.

She had missed the carnival and she woke on the morning after. Nearly
everybody was surprised to find that ending this one war had brought a
dozen new wars, a hundred, a myriad.

The danger that had united the nations into a holy crusade had ended,
and the crusaders were men again