hat he was sure Mlle. Malo would not have
remained at Rechamp if she could help it. Oh, no, decidedly, the visit
was not a success....

"You see," he explained with a half-embarrassed smile, "it was partly
her fault. Other girls as clever, but less--how shall I say?--less
proud, would have adapted themselves, arranged things, avoided startling
allusions. She wouldn't stoop to that; she talked to my family as
naturally as she did to me. You can imagine for instance, the effect of
her saying: 'One night, after a supper at Montmartre, I was walking home
with two or three pals'--. It was her way of affirming her convictions,
and I adored her for it--but I wished she wouldn't!"

And he depicted, to my joy, the neighbours rumbling over to call in
heraldic barouches (the mothers alone--with embarrassed excuses for not
bringing their daughters), and the agony of not knowing, till they were
in the room, if Yvonne would receive them with lowered lids and folded
hands, sitting by in a _pose de fiancee_ while the elders talked; or
if she would take the opportunity to air her views on the separation of
Church and State, or the necessity of making divorce easier. "It's not,"
he explained, "that she really takes much interest in such questions:
she's much more absorbed in her music and painting. But anything her
eye lights on sets her mind dancing--as she said to me once: 'It's your
mother's friends' bonnets that make me stand up for divorce!'" He broke
off abruptly to add: "Good God, how far off all that nonsense seems!"

IV

The next day we started for Rechamp, not sure if we could get through,
but bound to, anyhow! It was the coldest day we'd had, the sky steel,
the earth iron, and a snow-wind howling down on us from the north. The
Vosges are splendid in winter. In summer they are just plump puddingy
hills; when the wind strips them they turn to mountains. And we seemed
to have the whole country to ourselves--the black firs, the blue
shadows, the beech-woods cracking and groaning like rigging, the bursts
of snowy sunlight from cold clouds. Not a soul in sight except the
sentinels guarding the railways, muffled to the eyes, or peering out
of their huts of pine-boughs at the cross-roads. Every now and then we
passed a long string of seventy-fives, or a train of supply waggons or
army ambulances, and at intervals a cavalryman cantered by, his cloak
bellied out by the gale; but of ordinary people about the common jobs of
life