of the Americans who had none. In front
of the station, waiting for the train, they sat at the little tables of
cafes, lolling comfortably in the early morning sunlight, and drank beer
and cognac.

Small railway carriages into which they were crowded so that their knees
were pressed tight together--and outside, slipping by, blue-green
fields, and poplars stalking out of the morning mist, and long drifts of
poppies. Scarlet poppies, and cornflowers, and white daisies, and the
red-tiled roofs and white walls of cottages, all against a background of
glaucous green fields and hedges. Tours, Poitiers, Orleans. In the names
of the stations rose old wars, until the floods of scarlet poppies
seemed the blood of fighting men slaughtered through all time. At last,
in the gloaming, Paris, and, in crossing a bridge over the Seine, a
glimpse of the two linked towers of Notre-Dame, rosy grey in the grey
mist up the river.

* * * * *

"Say, these women here get my goat."

"How do you mean?"

"Well, I was at the Olympia with Johnson and that crowd. They just
pester the life out of you there. I'd heard that Paris was immoral, but
nothing like this."

"It's the war."

"But the Jane I went with ..."

"Gee, these Frenchwomen are immoral. They say the war does it."

"Can't be that. Nothing is more purifying than sacrifice."

"A feller has to be mighty careful, they say."

"Looks like every woman you saw walking on the street was a whore. They
certainly are good-lookers though."

"King and his gang are all being sent back to the States."

"I'll be darned! They sure have been drunk ever since they got off the
steamer."

"Raised hell in Maxim's last night. They tried to clean up the place and
the police came. They were all soused to the gills and tried to make
everybody there sing the 'Star Spangled Banner.'"

"Damn fool business."

* * * * *

Martin Howe sat at a table on the sidewalk under the brown awning of a
restaurant. Opposite in the last topaz-clear rays of the sun, the
foliage of the Jardin du Luxembourg shone bright green above deep alleys
of bluish shadow. From the pavements in front of the mauve-coloured
houses rose little kiosks with advertisements in bright orange and
vermilion and blue. In the middle of the triangle formed by the streets
and the garden was a round pool of jade water. Martin leaned back in his
chair looking dreamily out through