u know him well?" I asked.

"Yes. I was stationed in Rheims before the war. I used to dance with
Liane when she came home from school."

"Ah, if only her family hadn't stayed here till too late!" I cried.

The captain with the scarred face shrugged his shoulders. "Destiny!" he
said. "Besides, the best people do not run away easily from the homes
they love. Perhaps they have the feeling that, in a home which has
always meant peace, nothing terrible can happen. Yet there's more in it
than that--something more subtle which keeps them in the place where
they have always lived: something, I think, that binds the spirits of us
Frenchmen and women to the spirit of their own hearths--their own soil.
Haven't you found that already, in other places you have visited in this
journey of yours?"

"Yes," I answered, thinking of the old people I had seen at Vitrimont
living in the granaries of their ruined houses, and strangely,
unbelievably happy because they were "at home." "Yes, we have seen that
in little villages of Lorraine."

"Then how much more at Rheims, under the shadow of Notre-Dame!" The
scarred captain still gazed at the headless king, and faintly smiled.

CHAPTER XIX

Of course nothing did happen in Paris to break up the party. I might
have known that nothing would. Nothing happened at all, except that I
received a letter from Doctor Herter with the promised introduction to
an oculist just now at the Front, and that I realized, after three days'
absence, how Brian is improving. He has less the air of a beautiful
soul, whose incarnation in a body is a mere accident, and more the look
of a happy, handsome young man, with a certain spiritual radiance which
makes him remarkable and somehow "disturbing," as the French say. If
anything could stop the rats gnawing my conscience, it would be this
blessed change. Brian is getting back health and strength. When I think
what a short time ago it is that his life hung in the balance, this
seems a miracle. I'm afraid I am glad--glad that I did the thing which
has given him his chance. Besides, I love the Becketts. So does Brian.
And they love us. It's difficult to remember that I've stolen their
love. Surely, they're happier with us than they could have been without
us? Brian's scheme for their visits to the liberated towns is doing good
to them and to hundreds--even thousands--of people whom they intend to
help.

All this is sophistry, no doubt, but oh, it's beguiling