man,--like the photographs of his mother's
cousins and schoolmates. Lieutenant Gerhardt introduced him to
Madame Joubert. He was quite disheartened by the colloquy that
followed. Clearly his new fellow officer spoke Madame Joubert's
perplexing language as readily as she herself did, and he felt
irritated and grudging as he listened. He had been hoping that,
wherever he stayed, he could learn to talk to the people a
little; but with this accomplished young man about, he would
never have the courage to try. He could see that Mme. Joubert
liked Gerhardt, liked him very much; and all this, for some
reason, discouraged him.

Gerhardt turned to Claude, speaking in a way which included
Madame Joubert in the conversation, though she could not
understand it: "Madame Joubert will let you come, although she
has done her part and really doesn't have to take any one else
in. But you will be so well off here that I'm glad she consents.
You will have to share my room, but there are two beds. She will
show you."

Gerhardt went out of the gate and left him alone with his
hostess. Her mind seemed to read his thoughts. When he uttered a
word, or any sound that resembled one, she quickly and smoothly
made a sentence of it, as if she were quite accustomed to talking
in this way and expected only monosyllables from strangers. She
was kind, even a little playful with him; but he felt it was all
good manners, and that underneath she was not thinking of him at
all. When he was alone in the tile-floored sleeping room
upstairs, unrolling his blankets and arranging his shaving
things, he looked out of the window and watched her where she sat
sewing under the cherry tree. She had a very sad face, he
thought; it wasn't grief, nothing sharp and definite like sorrow.
It was an old, quiet, impersonal sadness,--sweet in its
expression, like the sadness of music.

As he came out of the house to start back to the barracks, he
bowed to her and tried to say, "Au revoir, Madame. Jusq' au ce
soir." He stopped near the kitchen door to look at a
many-branched rose vine that ran all over the wall, full of
cream-coloured, pink-tipped roses, just a shade stronger in
colour than the clay wall behind them. Madame Joubert came over
and stood beside him, looking at him and at the rosier, "Oui,
c'est joli, n'est-ce pas?" She took the scissors that hung by a
ribbon from her belt, cut one of the flowers and stuck it in his
buttonhole. "Voila." She made a little fl