Besides what difference does it make how
_long_ I want it--since I want it _now_? I want to give a
party--haven't given a party since--since Class Day."

The Divorcee sighed. Still gazing down the garden she said quietly:
"How well I remember--ninety-two!"

Then there was another silence before she turned to him suddenly: "See
here--all this is very irregular-so, that being the case--why
shouldn't we buy it together? We know each other. Neither of us will
ever stay here long. One summer apiece will satisfy us, though it is
lovely. Be a sport. We'll draw lots as to who is to have the first
party."

The Doctor waved the old woman away. Her keen eyes watched too
sharply. Then, with their elbows on the table, they had a long and
heated argument. Probably there were more things touched on than the
garden. Who knows? At the end of it the Divorcee walked away down that
garden vista, and the old woman was called and the Doctor took her at
her word. And out of that arrangement emerged the scheme which
resulted in our finding ourselves, a year later, within the old walls
of that French garden.

Of course a year's work had been done on the interior, and Doctor and
Divorcee had scoured the department for old furniture. Water had been
brought a great distance, a garage had been built with servants'
quarters over it--there were no servants in the house,--but the look
of the place, we were assured, had not been changed, and both Doctor
and Divorcee declared that they had had the year of their lives. Well,
if they had, the place showed it.

But, as Fate would have it, the second night we sat down to dinner in
that garden, news had come of the assassination of Franz
Ferdinand-Charles-Louis Joseph-Marie d'Autriche-Este, whom the tragic
death of Prince Rudolphe, almost exactly twenty-four years and six
months earlier to a day, had made Crown Prince of Austria-Hungary--and
the tone of our gathering was changed. From that day the party
threatened to become a little Bedlam, and the garden a rostrum.

In the earlier days it did not make so much difference. The talk was
good. We were a travelled group, and what with reminiscences of people
and places, and the scandal of courts, it was far from being dull. But
as the days went on, and the war clouds began to gather, the
overcharged air seemed to get on the nerves of the entire group, and
instead of the peaceful summer we had counted upon, every one of us
seemed to live in his own parti