r her up, urging her to accept quietly
her husband's absence so as not to harm the little one who was coming.

"For the unhappy creature is going to be a mother," he said sadly. "She
hides her condition with a certain modesty, but from my window, I have
often seen her making the dainty layette."

The woman had listened to him as though she did not understand. Words
were useless before her desperation. She could only sob as though
talking to herself, "I am a German. . . . He has gone; he has to go
away. . . . Alone! . . . Alone forever!" . . .

"She is thinking all the time of her nationality which is separating
her from her husband; she is thinking of the concentration camp to
which they will take her with her compatriots. She is fearful of being
abandoned in the enemy's country obliged to defend itself against the
attack of her own country. . . . And all this when she is about to
become a mother. What miseries! What agonies!"

The three reached the rue de la Pompe and on entering the house,
Tchernoff began to take leave of his companions in order to climb the
service stairs; but Desnoyers wished to prolong the conversation. He
dreaded being alone with his friend, still chagrined over the evening's
events. The conversation with the Russian interested him, so they all
went up in the elevator together. Argensola suggested that this would
be a good opportunity to uncork one of the many bottles which he was
keeping in the kitchen. Tchernoff could go home through the studio door
that opened on the stairway.

The great window had its glass doors wide open; the transoms on the
patio side were also open; a breeze kept the curtains swaying, moving,
too, the old lanterns, moth-eaten flags and other adornments of the
romantic studio. They seated themselves around the table, near a window
some distance from the light which was illuminating the other end of
the big room. They were in the shadow, with their backs to the interior
court. Opposite them were tiled roofs and an enormous rectangle of blue
shadow, perforated by the sharp-pointed stars. The city lights were
coloring the shadowy space with a bloody reflection.

Tchernoff drank two glasses, testifying to the excellence of the liquid
by smacking his lips. The three were silent with the wondering and
thoughtful silence which the grandeur of the night imposes. Their
eyes were glancing from star to star, grouping them in fanciful lines,
forming them into triangles or squares