hilip smiled sorrowfully, knowing well what
the implacable power of the crowd does with weak souls and with their
will.

* * * * *

MARCH was back again with a longer day and the first songs of birds. But
along with the days increased the sinister flames of the war. The air
was feverish with waiting for springtime--and waiting for the cataclysm.
One heard the monstrous rumbling grow in intensity, the arms of millions
of enemies clashing together, heaped up for the past months against the
dyke of the trenches, and all ready to spill over like a tidal bore upon
the Ile de France and the nave of La Cite. The shadow of frightful
rumors preceded the plague; a fantastic report of poisoned gases, of
deadly venom scattered through the air, which was about, so it was said,
to descend on whole provinces and destroy everything like the
asphyxiating overflow from Pelee Mountain. Finally the visits of bombing
Gothas, coming oftener and oftener, cleverly kept up the nervousness of
Paris.

Pierre and Luce continued to refuse to recognize anything about them,
but the slow fever which they breathed in, whether they would or not,
from that atmosphere heavy with menace, kindled the desire that glowed
in their young bodies. Three years of war had propagated in European
souls a freedom of morals which reached even the most honest and
straight. And of the two children, neither one nor the other, had any
religious beliefs. But they were protected by their delicacy of heart,
their instinctive modesty. Only, in secret they had decided to give
themselves completely one to the other before the blind cruelty of
mankind should separate them. They had not spoken of this. They said it
to themselves that evening.

Once or twice during the week Luce's mother was kept at the factory by
her night work. On these nights Luce, in order not to stay alone in that
desert quarter, slept in Paris with a girl friend. Nobody kept watch
over her. The two lovers took advantage of this freedom to pass a
portion of the evening together and sometimes they took a simple dinner
in a little out-of-the-way restaurant. On leaving after dinner on this
mid-March evening they heard the bomb-alert signal sound. They took
refuge in the nearest place as if it were an affair of a rain shower,
and for some time amused themselves observing their chance comrades. But
the danger seeming distant or no longer there, although nothing had
occurred to announce the end of the bom