1919

Eveline Hutchins

Eveline had moved to a little place on the rue de Bussy where there was a street market every day. Eleanor to show that there was no hard feeling had given her a couple of her Italian painted panels to decorate the dark parlor with. In early November rumors of an armistice began to fly around and then suddenly one afternoon Major Wood ran into the office that Eleanor and Eveline shared and dragged them both away from their desks and kissed them both and shouted, “At last it’s come.” Before she knew it Eveline found herself kissing Major Moorehouse right on the mouth. The Red Cross office turned into a college dormitory the night of a football victory: it was the Armistice.

Everybody seemed suddenly to have bottles of cognac and to be singing, There’s a long long trail awinding or La Madellon pour nous n’est pas sévère.

She and Eleanor and J.W. and Major Wood were in a taxicab going to the Café de la Paix.

For some reason they kept getting out of taxicabs and other people kept getting in. They had to get to the Café de la Paix but whenever they got into a taxicab it was stopped by the crowd and the driver disappeared. But when they got there they found every table filled and files of people singing and dancing streaming in and out all the doors. They were Greeks, Polish legionaires, Russians, Serbs, Albanians in white kilts, a Highlander with bagpipes and a lot of girls in Alsatian costume. It was annoying not being able to find a table. Eleanor said maybe they ought to go somewhere else. J.W. was preoccupied and wanted to get to a telephone.

Only Major Wood seemed to be enjoying himself. He was a greyhaired man with a little grizzled mustache and kept saying, “Ah, the lid’s off today.” He and Eveline went upstairs to see if they could find room there and ran into two Anzacs seated on a billiard table surrounded by a dozen bottles of champagne. Soon they were all drinking champagne with the Anzacs. They couldn’t get anything to eat although Eleanor said she was starving and when J.W. tried to get into the phone booth he found an Italian officer and a girl tightly wedged together in it. The Anzacs were pretty drunk, and one of them was saying that the Armistice was probably just another bloody piece of lying propaganda; so Eleanor suggested they try to go back to her place to have something to eat. J.W. said yes, they could stop at the Bourse so that he could send some cables. He must get in touch with his broker. The Anzacs didn’t like it when they left and were rather rude.

They stood around for a long time in front of the opera in the middle of swirling crowds. The streetlights were on; the grey outlines of the opera were edged along the cornices with shimmering gas flames. They were jostled and pushed about. There were no busses, no automobiles; occasionally they passed a taxicab stranded in the crowd like a rock in a stream. At last on a side street they found themselves alongside a Red Cross staffcar that had nobody in it. The driver, who wasn’t too sober, said he was trying to get the car back to the garage and said he’d take them down to the quai de la Tournelle first.

Eveline was just climbing in when somehow she felt it was just too tiresome and she couldn’t. The next minute she was marching arm in arm with a little French sailor in a group of people mostly in Polish uniform who were following a Greek flag and singing la Brabançonne.

A minute later she realized she’d lost the car and her friends and was scared. She couldn’t recognize the streets even, in this new Paris full of arclights and flags and bands and drunken people. She found herself dancing with the little sailor in the asphalt square in front of a church with two towers, then with a French colonial officer in a red cloak, then with a Polish legionaire who spoke a little English and had lived in Newark, New Jersey, and then suddenly some young French soldiers were dancing in a ring around her holding hands. The game was you had to kiss one of them to break the ring. When she caught on she kissed one of them and everybody clapped and cheered and cried Vive l’Amerique. Another bunch came and kept on and on dancing around her until she began to feel scared. Her head was beginning to whirl around when she caught sight of an American uniform on the outskirts of the crowd. She broke through the ring bowling over a little fat Frenchman and fell on the doughboy’s neck and kissed him, and everybody laughed and cheered and cried encore. He looked embarrassed; the man with him was Paul Johnson, Don Stevens’ friend. “You see I had to kiss somebody,” Eveline said blushing. The doughboy laughed and looked pleased.

“Oh, I hope you didn’t mind, Miss Hutchins, I hope you don’t mind this crowd and everything,” apologized Paul Johnson.

People spun around them dancing and shouting and she had to kiss Paul Johnson too before they’d let them go. He apologized solemnly again and said, “Isn’t it wonderful to be in Paris to see the armistice and everything, if you don’t mind the crowd and everything… but honestly, Miss Hutchins, they’re awful goodnatured. No fights or nothin’… Say, Don’s in this café.”

Don was behind a little zinc bar in the entrance to the café shaking up cocktails for a big crowd of Canadian and Anzac officers all very drunk. “I can’t get him out of there,” whispered Paul. “He’s had more than he ought.” They got Don out from behind the bar. There seemed to be nobody there to pay for the drinks. In the door he pulled off his grey cap and cried, “Vive les quakers… à bas la guerre,” and everybody cheered. They roamed around aimlessly for a while, now and then they’d be stopped by a ring of people dancing around her and Don would kiss her. He was noisy drunk and she didn’t like the way he acted as if she was his girl. She began to feel tired by the time they got to the place de la Concorde and suggested that they cross the river and try to get to her apartment where she had some cold veal and salad.

Paul was embarrassedly saying perhaps he’d better not come, when Don ran off after a group of Alsatian girls who were hopping and skipping up the Champs Elysées. “Now you’ve got to come,” she said. “To keep me from being kissed too much by strange men.”

“But Miss Hutchins, you mustn’t think Don meant anything running off like that. He’s very excitable, especially when he drinks.” She laughed and they walked on without saying anything more.

When they got to her apartment the old concièrge hobbled out from her box and shook hands with both of them. “Ah, madame, c’est la victoire,” she said, “but it won’t make my dead son come back to life, will it? For some reason Eveline could not think of anything to do but give her five francs and she went back muttering a singsong, “Merci, m’sieur, madame.”

Up in Eveline’s tiny rooms Paul seemed terribly embarrassed. They ate everything there was to the last crumb of stale bread and talked a little vaguely. Paul sat on the edge of his chair and told her about his travels back and forth with despatches. He said how wonderful it had been for him coming abroad and seeing the army and European cities and meeting people like her and Don Sevens and that he hoped she didn’t mind his not knowing much about all the things she and Don talked about. “If this really is the beginning of peace I wonder what we’ll all do, Miss Hutchins.” “Oh, do call me Eveline, Paul.” “I really do think it is the peace, Eveline, according to Wilson’s Fourteen Points. I think Wilson’s a great man myself in spite of all Don says, I know he’s a darn sight cleverer than I am, but still… maybe this is the last war there’ll ever be. Gosh, think of that…” She hoped he’d kiss her when he left but all he did was shake hands awkwardly and say all in a breath, “I hope you won’t mind if I come to see you next time I can get to Paris.”

For the Peace Conference, J.W. had a suite at the Crillon, with his blonde secretary Miss Williams at a desk in a little anteroom, and Morton his English valet serving tea in the late afternoon. Eveline looked dropping into the Crillon late in the afternoon after walking up the arcades of the rue de Rivoli from her office. The antiquated corridors of the hotel were crowded with Americans coming and going. In J.W.’s big salon there’d be Morton stealthily handing around tea, and people in uniform and in frock coats and the cigarettesmoky air would be full of halftold anecdotes. J.W. fascinated her, dressed in grey Scotch tweeds that always had a crease on the trousers (he’d given up wearing his Red Cross major’s uniform), with such an aloof agreeable manner, tempered by the preoccupied look of a very busy man always being called up on the phone, receiving telegrams or notes from his secretary, disappearing into the embrasure of one of the windows that looked out on the place de la Concorde with someone for a whispered conversation, or being asked to step in to see Colonel House for a moment; and still when he handed her a champagne cocktail just before they all went out to dinner on nights he didn’t have to go to some official function, or asked if she wanted another cup of tea, she’d feel for a second in her eyes the direct glance of two boyish blue eyes with a funny candid partly humorous look that teased her. She wanted to know him better; Eleanor, she felt, watched them like a cat watching a mouse. After all, Eveline kept saying to herself, she hadn’t any right. It wasn’t as if there was anything really between them.

When J.W. was busy they often went out with Edgar Robbins who seemed to be a sort of assistant of J.W.’s. Eleanor couldn’t abide him, said there was something insulting in his cynicism, but Eveline liked to hear him talk. He said the peace was going to be ghastlier than the war, said it was a good thing nobody ever asked his opinion about anything because he’d certainly land in jail if he gave it. Robbins’ favorite hangout was Freddy’s up back of Montmartre. They’d sit there all evening in the small smokycrowded rooms while Freddy, who had a big white beard like Walt Whitman, would play on the guitar and sing. Sometimes he’d get drunk and set the company up to drinks on the house. Then his wife, a cross woman who looked like a gypsy, would come out of the back room and curse and scream at him. People at the tables would get up and recite long poems about La Grand’ route, La Misère, L’Assassinat or sing old French songs like Les Filles de Nantes. If it went over everybody present would clap hands in unison. They called that giving a bon. Freddy got to know them and would make a great fuss when they arrived, “Ah, les belles Américaines.” Robbins would sit there moodily drinking calvados after calvados, now and then letting out a crack about the day’s happenings at the peace conference. He said that the place was a fake that the calvados was wretched and that Freddy was a dirty old bum, but for some reason he always wanted to go back.

J.W. went there a couple of times, and occasionally they’d take some delegate from the peace conference who’d be mightily impressed by their knowledge of the inner life of Paris. J.W. was enchanted by the old French songs, but he said the place made him feel itchy and that he thought there were fleas there. Eveline liked to watch him when he was listening to a song with his eyes half closed and his head thrown back. She felt that Robbins didn’t appreciate the rich potentialities of his nature and always shut him up when he started to say something sarcastic about the big cheese, as he called him. She thought it was disagreeable of Eleanor to laugh at things like that, especially when J.W. seemed so devoted to her.

When Jerry Burnham came back from Armenia and found that Eveline was going around with J. Ward Moorehouse all the time he was terribly upset. He took her out to lunch at the Medicis Grill on the left bank and talked and talked about it.

“Why, Eveline, I thought of you as a person who wouldn’t be taken in by a big bluff like that. The guys nothing but a goddam megaphone…. Honestly, Eveline, it’s not that I expect you to fall for me, I know very well you don’t give a damn about me and why should you?… But Christ, a damn publicity agent.”

“Now, Jerry,” said Eveline with her mouth full of hors dœuvres, “you know very well I’m fond of you… It’s just too tiresome of you to talk like that.”

“You don’t like me the way I’d like you to… but to hell with that… Have wine or beer?”

“You pick out a nice Burgundy, Jerry, to warm us up a little…. But you wrote an article about J.W. yourself… I saw it reprinted in that column in the Herald.”

“Go ahead, rub it in… Christ, I swear, Eveline, I’m going to get out of this lousy trade and… that was all plain oldfashioned bushwa and I thought you’d have had the sense to see it. Gee, this is good sole.”

“Delicious… but Jerry, you’re the one ought to have more sense.”

“I dunno I thought you were different from other upperclass women, made your own living and all that.”

“Let’s not wrangle, Jerry, let’s have some fun, here we are in Paris and the war’s over and it’s a fine wintry day and everybody’s here….”

“War over, my eye,” said Jerry rudely. Eveline thought he was just too tiresome, and looked out the window at the ruddy winter sunlight and the old Medici fountain and the delicate violet lacework of the bare trees behind the high iron fence of the Luxemburg Garden. Then she looked at Jerry’s red intense face with the turnedup nose and the crisp boyishly curly hair that was beginning to turn a little grey; she leaned over and gave the back of his hand a couple of little pats.

“I understand, Jerry, you’ve seen things that I haven’t imagined… I guess it’s the corrupting influence of the Red Cross.”

He smiled and poured her out some more wine and said with a sigh:

“You’re the most damnably attractive woman I ever met, Eveline… but like all women what you worship is power, when money’s the main thing it’s money, when it’s fame it’s fame, when it’s art, you’re a goddamned artlover… I guess I’m the same, only I kid myself more.”

Eveline pressed her lips together and didn’t say anything. She suddenly felt cold and frightened and lonely and couldn’t think of anything to say. Jerry gulped down a glass of wine and started talking about throwing up his job and going to Spain to write a book. He said he didn’t pretend to have any selfrespect, but that being a newspaper correspondent was too damn much nowadays. Eveline said she never wanted to go back to America, she felt life would be just too tiresome there after the war.

When they’d had their coffee they walked through the gardens. Near the senate chamber some old gentlemen were playing croquet in the last purplish patch of afternoon sunlight. “Oh, I think the French are wonderful,” said Eveline. “Second childhood,” growled Jerry. They rambled aimlessly round the streets, reading palegreen yellow and pink theatre notices on kiosks, looking into windows of antique-shops. “We ought both to be at our offices,” said Jerry. “I’m not going back,” said Eveline, “I’ll call up and say I have a cold and have gone home to bed… I think I’ll do that anyway.” “Don’t do that, let’s play hookey and have a swell time.” They went to the café opposite St. Germain-des-Prés. When Eveline came back from phoning, Jerry had bought her a bunch of violets and ordered cognac and seltzer. “Eveline, let’s celebrate,” he said, “I think I’ll cable the sonsobitches and tell ’em I’ve resigned.” “Do you think you ought to do that, Jerry? After all it’s a wonderful opportunity to see the peace conference and everything.”

After a few minutes she left him and walked home. She wouldn’t let him come with her. As she passed the window where they’d been sitting she looked in; he was ordering another drink.

On the rue de Bussy the market was very jolly under the gaslights. It all smelt of fresh greens, and butter and cheese. She bought some rolls for breakfast and a few little cakes in case somebody came in to tea. It was cosy in her little pink and white salon with the fire of brickettes going in the grate. Eveline wrapped herself up in a steamerrug and lay down on the couch.

She was asleep when her bell jingled. It was Eleanor and J.W. come to inquire how she was. J.W. was free tonight and wanted them to come to the opera with him to see Castor and Pollux. Eveline said she was feeling terrible but she thought she’d go just the same. She put on some tea for them and ran into her bedroom to dress. She felt so happy she couldn’t help humming as she sat at her dressingtable looking at herself in the glass. Her skin looked very white and her face had a quiet mysterious look she liked. She carefully put on very little lipstick and drew her hair back to a knot behind; her hair worried her, it wasn’t curly and didn’t have any particular color: for a moment she thought she wouldn’t go. Then Eleanor came in with a cup of tea in her hand telling her to hurry because they had to go down and wait while she dressed herself and that the opera started early. Eveline didn’t have any real evening wrap so she had to wear an old rabbitfur coat over her eveningdress. At Eleanor’s they found Robbins waiting; he wore a tuxedo that looked a little the worse for wear. J.W. was in the uniform of a Red Cross major. Eveline thought he must have been exercising, because his jowl didn’t curve out from the tight high collar as much as it had formerly.

They ate in a hurry at Poccardi’s and drank a lot of badly made Martinis. Robbins and J.W. were in fine feather, and kept them laughing all the time. Eveline understood now why they worked together so well. At the opera, where they arrived late, it was wonderful, glittering with chandeliers and uniforms. Miss Williams, J.W.’s secretary, was already in the box. Eveline thought how nice he must be to work for, and for a moment bitterly envied Miss Williams, even to her peroxide hair and her brisk chilly manner of talking. Miss Williams leaned back and said they’d missed it, that President and Mrs. Wilson had just come in and had been received with a great ovation, and Marshal Foch was there and she thought President Poincaré.

Between the acts they worked their way as best they could into the crowded lobby. Eveline found herself walking up and down with Robbins, every now and then she’d catch sight of Eleanor with J.W. and feel a little envious.

“They put on a better show out here than they do on the stage,” said Robbins.

“Don’t you like the production…. I think it’s a magnificent production.”

“Well, I suppose looked at from the professional point of view….”

Eveline was watching Eleanor, she was being introduced to a French general in red pants; she looked handsome this evening in her hard chilly way. Robbins tried to pilot them in through the crowd to the little bar, but they gave it up, there were too many people ahead of them. Robbins started all at once to talk about Baku and the oil business. “It’s funny as a crutch,” he kept saying, “while we sit here wrangling under schoolmaster Wilson, John Bull’s putting his hands on all the world’s future supplies of oil… just to keep it from bolos. They’ve got Persia and the messpot and now I’ll be damned if they don’t want Baku.” Eveline was bored and thinking to herself that Robbins had been in his cups too much again, when the bell rang.

When they got back to their box a leanfaced man who wasn’t in evening clothes was sitting in the back talking to J.W. in a low voice. Eleanor leaned over to Eveline and whispered in her ear, “That was General Gouraud.” The lights went out; Eveline found she was forgetting herself in the deep stateliness of the music. At the next intermission she leaned over to J.W. and asked him how he liked it. “Magnificent,” he said, and she saw to her surprise that he had tears in his eyes. She found herself talking about the music with J.W. and the man without a dress suit, whose name was Rasmussen.

It was hot and crowded in the tall overdecorated lobby. Mr. Rasmussen managed to get a window open and they went out on the balcony that opened on the serried lights that dimmed down the avenue into a reddish glow of fog.

“That’s the time I’d liked to have lived,” said J.W. dreamily. “The court of the sun king?” asked Mr. Rasmussen. “No, it must have been too chilly in the winter months and I bet the plumbing was terrible.” “Ah, it was a glorious time,” said J.W. as if he hadn’t heard. Then he turned to Eveline, “You’re sure you’re not catching cold… you ought to have a wrap, you know.”

“But as I was saying, Moorehouse,” said Rasmussen in a different tone of voice, “I have positive information that they can’t hold Baku without heavy reinforcements and there’s no one they can get them from except from us.” The bell rang again and they hurried to their box.

After the opera they went to the Café de la Paix to drink a glass of champagne, except for Robbins who went off to take Miss Williams back to her hotel. Eveline and Eleanor sat on the cushioned bench on either side of J.W. and Mr. Rasmussen sat on a chair opposite them. He did most of the talking, taking nervous gulps of champagne between sentences or else running his fingers through his spiky black hair. He was an engineer with Standard Oil. He kept talking about Baku and Mohommarah and Mosul, how the Anglo-Persian and the Royal Dutch were getting ahead of the U.S. in the Near East and trying to foist off Armenia on us for a mandate, which the Turks had pillaged to the last blade of grass, leaving nothing but a lot of starving people to feed. “We’ll probably have to feed ’em anyway,” said J.W. “But my gosh, man, something can be done about it, even if the president has so far forgotten American interests to let himself be bulldozed by the British in everything, public opinion can be aroused. We stand to lose our primacy in world oil production.” “Oh, well, the matter of mandates isn’t settled yet.” “What’s going to happen is that the British are going to present a fait accompli to the Conference… findings keepings… why it would be better for us for the French to have Baku.” “How about the Russians?” asked Eveline. “According to selfdetermination the Russians have no right to it. The population is mostly Turkish and Armenian,” said Rasmussen. “But, by gorry, I’d rather have the reds have it than the British, of course I don’t suppose they’ll last long.”

“No, I have reliable information that Lenine and Trotsky have split and the monarchy will be restored in Russia inside of three months.” When they finished the first bottle of champagne, Mr. Rasmussen ordered another. By the time the café closed Eveline’s ears were ringing. “Let’s make a night of it,” Mr. Rasmussen was saying.

They went in a taxicab up to Montmarte to L’Abbaye where there was dancing and singing and uniforms everywhere and everything was hung with the flags of the Allies. J.W. asked Eveline to dance with him first and Eleanor looked a little sour when she had to go off in the arms of Mr. Rasmussen who danced very badly indeed. Eveline and J.W. talked about the music of Rameau and J.W. said again that he would have liked to have lived in the times of the court at Versailles. But Eveline said what could be more exciting than to be in Paris right now with all the map of Europe being remade right under their noses, and J.W. said perhaps she was right. They agreed that the orchestra was too bad to dance to.

Next dance Eveline danced with Mr. Rasmussen who told her how handsome she was and said he needed a good woman in his life; that he’d spent all his life out in the bush grubbing around for gold or testing specimens of shale and that he was sick of it, and if Wilson now was going to let the British bulldoze him into giving them the world’s future supply of oil when we’d won the war for them, he was through. “But can’t you do something about it, can’t you put your ideas before the public, Mr. Rasmussen?” said Eveline, leaning a little against him; Eveline had a crazy champagneglass spinning in her head.

“That’s Moorehouse’s job not mine, and there isn’t any public since the war. The public’ll damn well do what it’s told, and besides like God Almighty it’s far away… what we’ve got to do is make a few key men understand the situation. Moorehouse is the key to the key men.” “And who’s the key to Moorehouse?” asked Eveline recklessly. The music had stopped. “Wish to heaven I knew,” said Rasmussen soberly in a low voice. “You’re not, are you?” Eveline shook her head with a tightlipped smile like Eleanor’s.

When they’d eaten onion soup and some cold meat J.W. said, “Let’s go up to the top of the hill and make Freddy play us some songs.” “I thought you didn’t like it up there,” said Eleanor. “I don’t, my dear, said J.W., “but I like those old French songs.” Eleanor looked cross and sleepy. Eveline wished she and Mr. Rasmussen would go home; she felt if she could only talk to J.W. alone, he’d be so interesting.

Freddy’s was almost empty; it was chilly in there. They didn’t have any champagne and nobody drank the liqueurs they ordered. Mr. Rasmussen said Freddy looked like an old prospector he’d known out in the Sangre de Cristo mountains and began to tell a long story about Death Valley that nobody listened to. They were all chilly and sleepy and silent, going back across Paris in the old mouldysmelling twocylinder taxi. J.W. wanted a cup of coffee, but there didn’t seem to be anywhere open where he could get it.

Next day Mr. Rasmussen called Eveline up at her office to ask her to eat lunch with him and she was hard put to it to find an excuse not to go. After that Mr. Rasmussen seemed to be everywhere she went, sending her flowers and theatre tickets, coming around with automobiles to take her riding, sending her little blue pneumatiques full of tender messages. Eleanor teased her about her new Romeo.

Then Paul Johnson turned up in Paris, having gotten himself into the Sorbonne detachment, and used to come around to her place on the rue de Bussy in the late afternoons and sit watching her silently and lugubriously. He and Mr. Rasmussen would sit there talking about wheat and the stockyards, while Eveline dressed to go out with somebody else, usually Eleanor and J.W. Eveline could see that J.W. always liked to have her along as well as Eleanor when they went out in the evenings; it was just that welldressed American girls were rare in Paris at the time, she told herself, and that J.W. liked to be seen with them and to have them along when he took important people out to dinner. She and Eleanor treated each other with a stiff nervous sarcasm now, except occasionally when they were alone together, they talked like in the old days, laughing at people and happenings together. Eleanor would never let a chance pass to poke fun at her Romeos.

Her brother George turned up at the office one day with a captain’s two silver bars on his shoulders. His whipcord uniform fitted like a glove, his puttees shone and he wore spurs. He’d been in the intelligence service attached to the British and had just come down from Germany where he’d been an interpreter on General McAndrews’ staff. He was going to Cambridge for the spring term and called everybody blighters or rotters and said the food at the restaurant where Eveline took him for lunch was simply ripping. After he’d left her, saying her ideas were not cricket, she burst out crying. When she was leaving the office that afternoon, thinking gloomily about how George had grown up to be a horrid little prig of a brasshat, she met Mr. Rasmussen under the arcades of the rue de Rivoli; he was carrying a mechanical canarybird. It was a stuffed canary and you wound it up underneath the cage. Then it fluttered its wings and sang. He made her stop on the corner while he made it sing. “I’m going to send that back home to the kids,” he said. “My wife and I are separated but I’m fond of the kids; they live in Pasadena… I’ve had a very unhappy life.” Then he invited Eveline to step into the Ritz bar and have a cocktail with him. Robbins was there with a redheaded newspaper woman from San Francisco. They sat at a wicker table together and drank Alexanders. The bar was crowded. “What’s the use of a league of nations if it’s to be dominated by Great Britain and her colonies?” said Mr. Rasmussen sourly. “But don’t you think any kind of a league’s better than nothing?” said Eveline. “It’s not the name you give things, it’s who’s getting theirs underneath that counts,” said Robbins.

“That’s a very cynical remark,” said the California woman. “This isn’t any time to be cynical.”

“This is a time,” said Robbins, “when if we weren’t cynical we’d shoot ourselves.”

In March Eveline’s two week leave came around. Eleanor was going to make a trip to Rome to help wind up the affairs of the office there, so they decided they’d go down on the train together and spend a few days in Nice. They needed to get the damp cold of Paris out of their bones. Eveline felt as excited as a child the afternoon when they were all packed and ready to go and had bought wagon lit reservations and gotten their transport orders signed.

Mr. Rasmussen insisted on seeing her off and ordered up a big dinner in the restaurant at the Gare de Lyon that Eveline was too excited to eat, what with the smell of the coalsmoke and the thought of waking up where it would be sunny and warm. Paul Johnson appeared when they were about half through, saying he’d come to help them with their bags. He’d lost one of the buttons off his uniform and he looked gloomy and mussed up. He said he wouldn’t eat anything but nervously drank down several glasses of wine. Both he and Mr. Rasmussen looked like thunderclouds when Jerry Burnham appeared drunk as a lord carrying a large bouquet of roses. “Won’t that be taking coals to Newcastle, Jerry?” said Eveline. “You don’t know Nice… you’ll probably have skating down there… beautiful figure eights on the ice.” “Jerry,” said Eleanor in her chilly little voice, “you’re thinking of St. Moritz.” “You’ll be thinking of it too,” said Jerry, “when you feel that cold wind.”

Meanwhile Paul and Mr. Rasmussen had picked up their bags. “Honestly, we’d better make tracks,” said Paul, nervously jiggling Eveline’s suitcase. “It’s about traintime.” They all scampered through the station. Jerry Burnham had forgotten to buy a ticket and couldn’t go out on the platform; they left him arguing with the officials and searching his pockets for his presscard. Paul put the bags in the compartment and shook hands hurriedly with Eleanor. Eveline found his eyes in hers serious and hurt like a dog’s eyes.

“You won’t stay too long, will you? There’s not much time left,” he said. Eveline felt she’d like to kiss him, but the train was starting. Paul scrambled off. All Mr. Rasmussen could do was hand some papers and Jerry’s roses through the window and wave his hat mournfully from the platform. It was a relief the train had started. Eleanor was leaning back against the cushions laughing and laughing.

“I declare, Eveline. You’re too funny with your Romeos.” Eveline couldn’t help laughing herself. She leaned over and patted Eleanor on the shoulder. “Let’s just have a wonderful time,” she said.

Next morning early when Eveline woke up and looked out they were in the station at Marseilles. It gave her a funny feeling because she’d wanted to stop off there and see the town, but Eleanor had insisted on going straight to Nice, she hated the sordidness of seaports she’d said. But later when they had their coffee in the diner, looking out at the pines and the dry hills and headlands cutting out blue patches of the Mediterranean, Eveline felt excited and happy again.

They got a good room in a hotel and walked through the streets in the cool sunshine among the wounded soldiers and officers of all the allied armies and strolled along the Promenade des Anglais under the grey palmtrees and gradually Eveline began to feel a chilly feeling of disappointment coming over her. Here was her two weeks leave and she was going to waste it at Nice. Eleanor kept on being crisp and cheerful and suggested they sit down in the big café on the square where a brass band was playing and have a little dubonnet before lunch. After they’d sat there for some time, looking at the uniforms and the quantities of overdressed women who were no better than they should be, Eveline leaned back in her chair and said, “And now that we’re here, darling, what on earth shall we do?”

The next morning Eveline woke late; she almost hated to get up as she couldn’t imagine how she was going to pass the time all day. As she lay there looking at the stripes of sunlight on the wall that came through the shutters, she heard a man’s voice in the adjoining room, that was Eleanor’s. Eveline stiffened and listened. It was J.W.’s voice. When she got up and dressed she found her heart was pounding. She was pulling on her best pair of transparent black silk stockings when Eleanor came in, “Who do you think’s turned up? J.W. just motored down to see me off to Italy… He said it was getting too stuffy for him around the Peace Conference and he had to get a change of air… Come on in, Eveline, dear, and have some coffee with us.”

She can’t keep the triumph out of her voice, aren’t women silly, thought Eveline. “That’s lovely, I’ll be right in, darling,” she said in he most musical tones.

J.W. had on a light grey flannel suit and a bright blue necktie and his face was pink from the long ride. He was in fine spirits. He’d driven down from Paris in fifteen hours with only four hours sleep after dinner in Lyons. They all drank a great deal of bitter coffee with hot milk and planned out a ride.

It was a fine day. The big Packard car rolled them smoothly along the Corniche. They lunched at Monte Carlo, took a look at the casino in the afternoon and went on and had tea in an English tearoom in Mentone. Next day they went up to Grasse and saw the perfume factories, and the day after they put Eleanor on the rapide for Rome. J.W. was to leave immediately afterwards to go back to Paris. Eleanor’s thin white face looked a little forlorn Eveline thought, looking out at them through the window of the wagonlit. When the train pulled out Eveline and J.W. stood on the platform in the empty station with the smoke swirling milky with sunlight under the glass roof overhead and looked at each other with a certain amount of constraint. “She’s a great little girl,” said J.W. “I’m very fond of her,” said Eveline. Her voice rang false in her ears. “I wish we were going with her.”

They walked back out to the car. “Where can I take you, Eveline, before I pull out, back to the hotel?” Eveline’s heart was pounding again. “Suppose we have a little lunch before you go, let me invite you to lunch.” “That’s very nice of you… well, I suppose I might as well, I’ve got to lunch somewhere. And there’s no place fit for a white man between here and Lyons.”

They lunched at the casino over the water. The sea was very blue. Outside there were three sailboats with lateen sails making for the entrance to the port. It was warm and jolly, smelt of wine and food sizzled in butter in the glassedin restaurant. Eveline began to like it in Nice.

J.W. drank more wine than he usually did. He began to talk about his boyhood in Wilmington and even hummed a little of a song he’d written in the old days. Eveline was thrilled. Then he began to tell her about Pittsburgh and his ideas about capital and labor. For dessert they had peaches flambé with rum; Eveline recklessly ordered a bottle of champagne. They were getting along famously.

They began to talk about Eleanor. Eveline told about how she’d met Eleanor in the Art Institute and how Eleanor had meant everything to her in Chicago, the only girl she’d ever met who was really interested in the things she was interested in, and how much talent Eleanor had, and how much business ability. J.W. told about how much she’d meant to him during the trying years with his second wife Gertrude in New York, and how people had misunderstood their beautiful friendship that had been always free from the sensual and the degrading.

“Really,” said Eveline, looking J.W. suddenly straight in the eye, “I’d always thought you and Eleanor were lovers.” J.W. blushed. For a second Eveline was afraid she’d shocked him. He wrinkled up the skin around his eyes in a comical boyish way. “No, honestly not… I’ve been too busy working all my life ever to develop that side of my nature… People think differently about those things than they did.” Eveline nodded. The deep flush on his face seemed to have set her cheeks on fire. “And now,” J.W. went on, shaking his head gloomily, “I’m in my forties and it’s too late.”

“Why too late?”

Eveline sat looking at him with her lips a little apart, her cheeks blazing. “Maybe it’s taken the war to teach us how to live,” he said. “We’ve been too much interested in money and material things, it’s taken the French to show us how to live. Where back home in the States could you find a beautiful atmosphere like this?” J.W. waved his arm to include in a sweeping gesture the sea, the tables crowded with women dressed in bright colors and men in their best uniforms, the bright glint of blue light on glasses and cutlery. The waiter mistook his gesture and slyly substituted a full bottle for the empty bottle in the champagnepail.

“By golly, Eveline, you’ve been so charming, you’ve made me forget the time and going back to Paris and everything. This is the sort of thing I’ve missed all my life until I met you and Eleanor… of course with Eleanor it’s been all on the higher plane… Let’s take a drink to Eleanor… beautiful talented Eleanor… Eveline, women have been a great inspiration to me all my life, lovely charming delicate women. Many of my best ideas have come from women, not directly, you understand, but through the mental stimulation… People don’t understand me, Eveline, some of the newspaper boys particularly have written some very hard things about me… why, I’m an old newspaper man myself… Eveline, permit me to say that you look so charming and understanding… this illness of my wife… poor Gertrude… I’m afraid she’ll never be herself again…. You see, it’s put me in a most disagreeable position, if some member of her family is appointed guardian it might mean that the considerable sum of money invested by the Staple family in my business, would be withdrawn… that would leave me with very grave embarrassments… then I’ve had to abandon my Mexican affairs… what the oil business down there needs is just somebody to explain its point of view to the Mexican public, to the American public, my aim was to get the big interests to take the public in…” Eveline filled his glass. Her head was swimming a little, but she felt wonderful. She wanted to lean over and kiss him, to make him feel how she admired and understood him. He went on talking with the glass in his hand, almost as if he were speaking to a whole rotary club. “… to take the public into its confidence… I had to throw overboard all that… when I felt the government of my country needed me. My position is very difficult in Paris, Eveline…. They’ve got the President surrounded by a Chinese wall… I fear that his advisers don’t realize the importance of publicity, of taking the public into their confidence at every move. This is a great historical moment, America stands at the parting of the ways… without us the war would have ended in a German victory or a negotiated peace… And now our very allies are trying to monopolize the natural resources of the world behind our backs…. You remember what Rasmussen said… well, he’s quite right. The President is surrounded by sinister intrigues. Why, even the presidents of the great corporations don’t realize that now is the time to spend money, to spend it like water. I could have the French press in my pocket in a week with the proper resources, even in England I have a hunch that something could be done if it was handled the right way. And then the people are fully behind us everywhere, they are sick of autocracy and secret diplomacy, they are ready to greet American democracy, American democratic business methods with open arms. The only way for you to secure the benefits of the peace to the world is for us to dominate it. Mr. Wilson doesn’t realize the power of a modern campaign of scientific publicity… Why, for three weeks I’ve been trying to get an interview with him, and back in Washington I was calling him Woodrow, almost… It was at his personal request that I dropped everything in New York at great personal sacrifice, brought over a large part of my office staff… and now… but Eveline, my dear girl, I’m afraid I’m talking you to death.”

Eveline leaned over and patted his hand that lay on the edge of the table. Her eyes were shining, “Oh, it’s wonderful,” she said. “Isn’t this fun, J.W.?”

“Ah, Eveline, I wish I was free to fall in love with you.”

“Aren’t we pretty free, J.W.? and it’s wartime… I think all the conventional rubbish about marriage and everything is just too tiresome, don’t you?”

“Ah, Eveline, if I was only free… let’s go out and take a little air… Why, we’ve been here all afternoon.”

Eveline insisted on paying for the lunch although it took all the money she had on her. They both staggered a little as they left the restaurant, Eveline felt giddy and leaned against J.W.’s shoulder. He kept patting her hand and saying, “There, there, we’ll take a little ride.”

Towards sunset they were riding around the end of the bay into Cannes. “Well, well, we must pull ourselves together,” said J.W. “You don’t want to stay down here all alone, do you, little girl? Suppose you drive back to Paris with me, we’ll stop off in some picturesque villages, make a trip of it. Too likely to meet people we know around here. I’ll send back the staff car and hire a French car… take no chances.” “All right, I think Nice is just too tiresome anyway.”

J.W. called to the chauffeur to go back to Nice. He dropped her at her hotel and saying he’d call for her at ninethirty in the morning and that she must get a good night’s sleep. She felt terribly let down after he’d gone; had a cup of tea that was cold and tasted of soap sent to her room; and went to bed. She lay in bed thinking that she was acting like a nasty little bitch; but it was too late to go back now. She couldn’t sleep, her whole body felt jangled and twitching. This way she’d look like a wreck tomorrow, she got up and rustled around in her bag until she found some aspirin. She took a lot of the aspirin and got back in bed again and lay perfectly still but she kept seeing faces that would grow clear out of the blur of a halfdream and then fade again, and her ears buzzed with long cadences of senseless talk. Sometimes it was Jerry Burnham’s face that would bud out of the mists changing slowly into Mr. Rasmussen’s or Edgar Robbins’ or Paul Johnson’s or Freddy Seargeant’s. She got up and walked shivering up and down the room for a long time. Then she got into bed again and fell asleep and didn’t wake up until the chambermaid knocked on the door saying that a gentleman was waiting for her.

When she got down J.W. was pacing up and down in the sun outside the hotel door. A long lowslung Italian car was standing under the palms beside the geranium bed. They had coffee together without saying much at a little iron table outside the hotel. J.W. said he’d had a miserable room in a hotel where the service was poor.

As soon as Eveline got her bag down they started off at sixty miles an hour. The chauffeur drove like a fiend through a howling north wind that increased as they went down the coast. They were in Marseilles stiff and dustcaked in time for a late lunch at a fish restaurant on the edge of the old harbor. Eveline’s head was whirling again, with speed and lashing wind and dust and vines and olivetrees and grey rock mountains whirling past and now and then a piece of slateblue sea cut out with a jigsaw.

“After all, J.W., the war was terrible,” said Eveline. “But it’s a great time to be alive. Things are happening at last.” J.W. muttered something about a surge of idealism between his teeth and went on eating his bouillabaisse. He didn’t seem to be very talkative today. “Now at home,” he said, “they wouldn’t have left all the bones in the fish this way.” “Well, what do you think is going to happen about the oil situation?” Eveline started again. “Blamed if I know,” said J.W. “We’d better be starting if we’re going to make that place before nightfall.”

J.W. had sent the chauffeur to buy an extra rug and they wrapped themselves up tight under the little hood in the back of the car. J.W. put his arm around Eveline and tucked her in. “Now we’re snug as a bug in a rug,” he said. They giggled cosily together.

The mistral got so strong the poplars were all bent double on the dusty plains before the car started to climb the winding road to Les Baux. Bucking the wind cut down their speed. It was dark when the got into the ruined town.

They were the only people in the hotel. It was cold there and the knots of olivewood burning in the grates didn’t give any heat, only puffs of grey smoke when a gust of wind came down the chimney, but they had an excellent dinner and hot spiced wine that made them feel much better. They had to put on their overcoats to go up to their bedroom. Climbing the stairs J.W. kissed her under the ear and whispered, “Eveline, dear little girl, you make me feel like a boy again.”

Long after J.W. had gone to sleep Eveline lay awake beside him listening to the wind rattling the shutters, yelling around the corners of the roof, howling over the desert plain far below. The house smelt of dry dusty coldness. No matter how much she cuddled against him, she couldn’t get to feel really warm. The same creaky carrousel of faces, plans, scraps of talk kept going round and round in her head, keeping her from thinking consecutively, keeping her from going to sleep.

Next morning when J.W. found he had to bathe out of a basin he made a face and said, “I hope you don’t mind roughing it this way, dear little girl.”

They went over across the Rhone to Nîmes for lunch riding through Arles and Avignon on the way, then they turned back to the Rhone and got into Lyons late at night. They had supper sent up to their room in the hotel and took hot baths and drank hot wine again. When the waiter had taken away the tray Eveline threw herself on J.W.’s lap and began to kiss him. It was a long time before she’d let him go to sleep.

Next morning it was raining hard. They waited around a couple of hours hoping it would stop. J.W. was preoccupied and tried to get Paris on the phone, but without any luck. Eveline sat in the dreary hotel salon reading old copies of l’Illustration. She wished she was back in Paris too. Finally they decided to start.

The rain went down to a drizzle but the roads were in bad shape and by dark they hadn’t gotten any further than Nevers. J.W. was getting the sniffles and started taking quinine to ward off a cold. He got adjoining rooms with a bath between in the hotel at Nevers, so that night they slept in separate beds. At supper Eveline tried to get him talking about the peace conference, but he said, “Why talk shop, we’ll be back there soon enough, why not talk about ourselves and each other.”

When they got near Paris, J.W. began to get nervous. His nose had begun to run. At Fountainebleau they had a fine lunch. J.W. went in from there on the train, leaving the chauffeur to take Eveline home to the rue de Bussy and then deliver his baggage at the Crillon afterward. Eveline felt pretty forlorn riding in all alone through he suburbs of Paris. She was remembering how excited she’d been when they’d all been seeing her off at the Gare de Lyons a few days before and decided she was very unhappy indeed.

Next day she went around to the Crillon at about the usual time in the afternoon. There was nobody in J.W.’s anteroom but Miss Williams, his secretary. She stared Eveline right in the face with such cold hostile eyes that Eveline immediately thought she must know something. She said Mr. Moorehouse had a bad cold and fever and wasn’t seeing anybody.

“Well, I’ll write him a little note,” said Eveline. “No, I’ll call him up later. Don’t you think that’s the idea, Miss Williams?” Miss Williams nodded her head dryly. “Very well,” she said.

Eveline lingered. “You see, I’ve just come back from leave… I came back a couple of days early because there was so much sightseeing I wanted to do near Paris. Isn’t the weather miserable?”

Miss Williams puckered her forehead thoughtfully and took a step towards her. “Very… It’s most unfortunate, Miss Hutchins, that Mr. Moorehouse should have gotten this cold at this moment. We have a number of important matters pending. And the way things are at the Peace Conference the situation changes every minute so that constant watchfulness is necessary… We think it is a very important moment from every point of view… Too bad Mr. Moorehouse should get laid up just now. We feel very badly about it, all of us. He feels just terribly about it.”

“I’m so sorry,” said Eveline, “I do hope he’ll be better tomorrow.”

“The doctor says he will… but it’s very unfortunate.”

Eveline stood hesitating. She didn’t know what to say. Then she caught sight of a little gold star that Miss Williams wore on a brooch. Eveline wanted to make friends. “Oh, Miss Williams,” said, “I didn’t know you lost anyone dear to you.” Miss Williams’s face got more chilly and pinched than ever. She seemed to be fumbling for something to say. “Er… my brother was in the navy,” she said and walked over to her desk where she started typing very fast. Eveline stood where she was a second watching Miss Williams’s fingers twinkling on the keyboard. Then she said weakly, “Oh, I’m so sorry,” and turned and went out.

When Eleanor got back, with a lot of old Italian damask in her trunk, J.W. was up and around again. It seemed to Eveline that Eleanor had something cold and sarcastic in her manner of speaking she’d never had before. When she went to the Crillon to tea Miss Williams would hardly speak to Eveline, but put herself out to be polite to Eleanor. Even Morton, the valet, seemed to make the same difference. J.W. from time to time gave her a furtive squeeze of the hand, but they never got to go out alone any more. Eveline began to think of going home to America, but the thought of going back to Santa Fé or to any kind of life she’d lived before was hideous to her. She wrote J.W. long uneasy notes every day telling him how unhappy she was, but he never mentioned them when she saw him. When she asked him once why he didn’t ever write her a few words he said quickly, “I never write personal letters,” and changed the subject.

In the end of April Don Stevens turned up in Paris. He was in civilian clothes as he’d resigned from the reconstruction unit. He asked Eveline to put him up as he was broke. Eveline was afraid of the concièrge and of what Eleanor or J.W. might say if they found out, but she felt desperate and bitter and didn’t care much what happened anyway; so she said all right, she’d put him up but he wasn’t to tell anybody where he was staying. Don teased her about her bourgeois ideas, said those sorts of things wouldn’t matter after the revolution, that the first test of strength was coming on the first of May. He made her read L’Humanité and took her up to the rue du Croissant to show her the little restaurant where Jaurès had been assassinated.

One day a tall longfaced young man in some kind of a uniform came into the office and turned out to be Freddy Seargeant, who had just got a job in the Near East Relief and was all excited about going out to Constantinople. Eveline was delighted to see him, but after she’d been with him all afternoon she began to feel that the old talk about the theater and decoration and pattern and color and form didn’t mean much to her any more. Freddy was in ecstasy about being in Paris, and the little children sailing boats in the ponds in the Tuileries gardens, and the helmets of the Garde Republicaine turned out to salute the King and Queen of the Belgians who happened to be going up the rue de Rivoli when they passed. Eveline felt mean and teased him about not having gone through with it as a C.O.; he explained that a friend had gotten him into the camouflage service before he knew it and that he didn’t care about politics anyway, and that before he could do anything the war was over and he was discharged. They tried to get Eleanor to go out to dinner with them, but she had a mysterious engagement to dine with J.W. and some people from the quai d’Orsay, and couldn’t come. Eveline went with Freddy to the Opera Comique to see Pélléas but she felt fidgety all through it and almost slapped him when she saw he was crying at the end. Having an orange water ice at the Café Néapolitain afterwards, she upset Freddy terribly by saying Debussy was old hat, and he took her home glumly in a taxi. At the last minute she reflected and tried to be nice to him; she promised to go out to Chartres with him the next Sunday.

It was still dark when Freddy turned up Sunday morning. They went out and got some coffee sleepily from an old woman who had a little stand in the doorway opposite. They still had an hour before train time and Freddy suggested they go and get Eleanor up. He’d so looked forward to going to Chartres with both of them, he said; it would be old times all over again, he hated to think how life was drawing them all apart. So they got into a cab and went down to the quai de la Tournelle. The great question was how to get in the house as the street door was locked and there was no concièrge. Freddy rang and rang the bell until finally the Frenchman who lived on the lower floor came out indignant in his bathrobe and let them in.

They banged on Eleanor’s door. Freddy kept shouting, “Eleanor Stoddard, you jump right up and come to Chartres with us.” After a while Eleanor’s face appeared, cool and white and collected, in the crack of the door above a stunning blue negligée.

“Eleanor, we’ve got just a half an hour to catch the train for Chartres, the taxi has full steam up outside and if you don’t come we’ll all regret it to our dying day.”

“But I’m not dressed… it’s so early.”

“You look charming enough to go just as you are.” Freddy pushed through the door and grabbed her in his arms. “Eleanor, you’ve got to come… I’m off for the Near East tomorrow night.”

Eveline followed them into the salon. Passing the half open door of the bedroom, she glanced in and found herself looking J.W. full in the face. He was sitting bolt upright in the bed, wearing pyjamas with a bright blue stripe. His blue eyes looked straight through her. Some impulse made Eveline pull the door to. Eleanor noticed her gesture. “Thank you, darling,” she said coolly, “it’s so untidy in there.”

“Oh, do come, Eleanor… after all you can’t have forgotten old times the way hardhearted Hannah there seems to have,” said Freddy in a cajoling whine.

“Let me think,” said Eleanor, tapping her chin with the sharp pointed nail of a white forefinger, “I’ll tell you what we’ll do, darlings, you two go out on the poky old train as you’re ready and I’ll run out as soon as I’m dressed and call up J.W. at the Crillon and see if he won’t drive me out. Then we can all come back together. How’s that?”

“That would be lovely, Eleanor dear,” said Eveline in a singsong voice. “Splendid, oh, I knew you’d come… well, we’ve got to be off. If we miss each other we’ll be in front of the cathedral at noon… Is that all right?”

Eveline went downstairs in a daze. All the way out to Chartres Freddy was accusing her bitterly of being absentminded and not liking her old friends any more.

By the time they got to Chartres it was raining hard. They spent a gloomy day there. The stained glass that had been taken away for safety during the war hadn’t been put back yet. The tall twelfth-century saints had a wet, slimy look in the driving rain. Freddy said that the sight of the black virgin surrounded by candles in the crypt was worth all the trouble of the trip for him, but it wasn’t for Eveline. Eleanor and J.W. didn’t turn up; “Of course not in this rain,” said Freddy. It was a kind of relief to Eveline to find that she’d caught cold and would have to go to bed as soon as she got home. Freddy took her to her door in a taxi but she wouldn’t let him come up for fear he’d find Don there.

Don was there, and was very sympathetic about her cold and tucked her in bed and made her a hot lemonade with cognac in it. He had his pockets full of money, as he’d just sold some articles, and had gotten a job to go to Vienna for the Daily Herald of London. He was pulling out as soon after May 1 as he could…“unless something breaks here,” he said impressively. He went away that evening to a hotel, thanking her for putting him up like a good comrade even if she didn’t love him any more. The place felt empty after he’d gone. She almost wished she’d made him stay. She lay in bed feeling feverishly miserable, and finally went to sleep feeling sick and scared and lonely.

The morning of the first of May, Paul Johnson came around before she was up. He was in civilian clothes and looked young and slender and nice and lighthaired and handsome. He said Don Stevens had gotten him all wrought up about what was going to happen what with the general strike and all that; he’d come to stick around if Eveline didn’t mind. “I thought I’d better not be in uniform, so I borrowed this suit from a feller,” he said. “I think I’ll strike too,” said Eveline. “I’m so sick of that Red Cross office I could scream.”

“Gee, that ud be wonderful, Eveline. We can walk around and see the excitement…. It’ll be all right if you’re with me… I mean I’ll be easier in my mind if I know where you are if there’s trouble… You’re awful reckless, Eveline.”

“My, you look handsome in that suit, Paul… I never saw you in civilian clothes before.”

Paul blushed and put his hands uneasily into his pockets. “Lord, I’ll be glad to get into civvies for keeps,” he said seriously. “Even through it’ll mean me goin’ back to work… I can’t get a darn thing out of these Sorbonne lectures… everybody’s too darn restless, I guess… and I’m sick of hearing what bums the boche are, that’s all the frog profs seem to be able to talk about.”

“Well, go out and read a book and I’ll get up…. Did you notice if the old woman across the way had coffee out?”

“Yare, she did,” called Paul from the salon to which he’d retreated when Eveline stuck her toes out from under the bedclothes. “Shall I go out and bring some in?”

“That’s a darling, do…. I’ve got brioches and butter here… take that enamelled milkcan out of the kitchen.”

Eveline looked at herself in the mirror before she started dressing. She had shadows under her eyes and faint beginnings of crowsfeet. Chillier than the damp Paris room came the thought of growing old. It was so horribly actual that she suddenly burst into tears. An old hag’s tearsmeared face looked at her bitterly out of the mirror. She pressed the palms of her hands hard over her eyes. “Oh, I lead such a silly life,” she whispered aloud.

Paul was back. She could hear him moving around awkwardly in the salon. “I forgot to tell you… Don says Anatole France is going to march with the mutilays ofla guerre…. I’ve got the cafay o lay whenever you’re ready.”

“Just a minute,” she called from the basin where she was splashing cold water on her face. “How old are you, Paul?” she asked him when she came out of her bedroom all dressed, smiling, feeling that she was looking her best.

“Free, white and twenty one… we’d better drink up this coffee before it gets cold.” “You don’t look as old as that.” “Oh, I’m old enough to know better,” said Paul, getting very red in the face. “I’m five years older than that,” said Eveline. “Oh, how I hate growing old.” “Five years don’t mean anything,” stammered Paul.

He was so nervous he spilt a lot of coffee over his trouserleg. “Oh, hell, that’s a dumb thing to do,” he growled. “I’ll get it out in a second,” said Eveline, running for a towel.

She made him sit in a chair and kneeled down in front of him and scrubbed at the inside of his thigh with the towel. Paul sat there stiff, red as a beet, with his lips pressed together. He jumped to his feet before she’d finished. “Well, let’s go out and see what’s happening. I wish I knew more about what it’s all about.”

“Well, you might at least say thank you,” said Eveline, looking up at him.

“Thanks, gosh, it’s awful nice of you, Eveline.”

Outside it was like Sunday. A few stores were open on the side streets but they had their iron shutters halfway down. It was a grey day; they walked up the Boulevard St. Germain, passing many people out strolling in their best clothes. It wasn’t until a squadron of the Guarde Republicaine clattered past them in their shiny helmets and their tricolor plumes that they had any inkling of tenseness in the air.

Over on the other side of the Seine there were more people and little groups of gendarmes standing around.

At the crossing of several streets they saw a cluster of old men in workclothes with a red flag and a sign, L’UNION DES TRAVAILLEURS FERA LA PAIX DU MONDE. A cordon of republican guards rode down on them with their sabres drawn, the sun flashing on their helmets. The old men ran or flattened themselves in doorways.

On the Grands Boulevards there were companies of poilus in tin hats and grimy blue uniforms standing round their stacked rifles. The crowds on the streets cheered them as they surged past, everything seemed goodnatured and jolly. Eveline and Paul began to get tired; they’d been walking all morning. They began to wonder where they’d get any lunch. Then too it was starting to rain.

Passing the Bourse they met Don Stevens, who had just come out of the telegraph office. He was sore and tired. He’d been up since five o’clock. “If they’re going to have a riot why the hell can’t they have it in time to make the cables… Well, I saw Anatole France dispersed on the Place d’Alma. Ought to be a story in that except for all this damned censorship. Things are pretty serious in Germany… I think something’s going to happen there.”

“Will anything happen here in Paris, Don?” asked Paul.

“Damned if I know… some kids busted up those gratings around the trees and threw them at the cops on the avenue Magenta…. Burnham in there says there are barricades at the end of the place de la Bastille, but I’m damned if I’m going over till I get something to eat… I don’t believe it anyway… I’m about foundered. What are you two bourgeois doing out a day like this?”

“Hey, fellowworker, don’t shoot,” said Paul, throwing up his hands. “Wait till we get something to eat,” Eveline laughed. She thought how much better she liked Paul than she liked Don.

They walked around a lot of back streets in the drizzling rain and at last found a little restaurant from which came voices and a smell of food. They ducked in under the iron shutter of the door. It was dark and crowded with taxidrivers and workingmen. They squeezed into the end of a marble table where two old men were playing chess. Eveline’s leg was pressed against Paul’s. She didn’t move; then he began to get red and moved his chair a little. “Excuse me,” he said.

They all ate liver and onions and Don got to talking with the old men in his fluent bad French. They said the youngsters weren’t good for anything nowadays, in the old days when they descended into the street they tore up the pavings and grabbed the cops by the legs and pulled them off their horses. Today was supposed to be a general strike and what had they done?… nothing… a few urchins had thrown some stones and one café window had been broken. It wasn’t like that that liberty defended itself and the dignity of labor. The old men went back to their chess. Don set them up to a bottle of wine.

Eveline was sitting back halflistening, wondering if she’d go around to see J.W. in the afternoon. She hadn’t seen him or Eleanor since that Sunday morning; she didn’t care anyway. She wondered if Paul would marry her, how it would be to have a lot of little babies that would have the same young coltish fuzzy look he had. She liked it in this little dark restaurant that smelt of food and wine and caporal ordinaire, sitting back and letting Don lay down the law to Paul about the revolution. “When I get back home I guess I’ll bum around the country a little, get a job as a harvest hand and stuff like that and find out about those things,” Paul said finally. “Now I don’t know a darn thing, just what I hear people say.”

After they had eaten they were sitting over some glasses of wine, when they heard an American voice. Two M.P.’s had come in and were having a drink at the zinc bar. “Don’t talk English,” whispered Paul. They sat there stiffly trying to look as French as possible until the two khaki uniforms disappeared, then Paul said, “Whee, I was scared… they’d picked me up sure as hell if they’d found me without my uniform…. Then it’d have been the Roo Saint Anne and goodby Paree.” “Why, you poor kid, they’d have shot you at sunrise,” said Eveline. “You go right home and change your clothes at once… I’m going to the Red Cross for a while anyway.”

Don walked over to the rue de Rivoli with her. Paul shot off down another street to go to his room and get his uniform. “I think Paul Johnson’s an awfully nice boy, where did you collect him, Don?” Eveline said in a casual tone. “He’s kinder simple… unlicked cub kind of a kid… I guess he’s all right… I got to know him when the transport section he was in was billeted near us up in the Marne… Then he got this cush job in the Post Despatch Service and now he’s studying at the Sorbonne…. By God, he needs it… no social ideas… Paul still thinks it was the stork.”

“He must come from near where you came from… back home, I mean.”

“Yare, his dad owns a grain elevator in some little tank town or other… petit bourgeois… bum environment… He’s not a bad kid in spite of it… Damn shame he hasn’t read Marx, something to stiffen his ideas up.” Don made a funny face. “That goes with you too, Eveline, but I gave you up as hopeless long ago. Ornamental but not useful.” They’d stopped and were talking on the streetcorner under the arcade. “Oh, Don, I think your ideas are just too tiresome,” she began. He interrupted, “Well, solong, here comes a bus… I oughtn’t to ride on a scab bus but it’s too damn far to walk all the way to the Bastille.” He gave her a kiss. “Don’t be sore at me.” Eveline waved her hand, “Have a good time in Vienna, Don.” He jumped on the platform of the bus as it rumbled past. The last Eveline saw the woman conductor was trying to push him off because the bus was complet.

She went up to her office and tried to look as if she’d been there all day. At a little before six she walked up the street to the Crillon and went up to see J.W. Everything was as usual there, Miss Williams looking chilly and yellowhaired at her desk, Morton stealthily handing around tea and petit fours, J.W. deep in talk with a personage in a cutaway in the embrasure of the window, halfhidden by the heavy champagnecolored drapes, Eleanor in a pearlgrey afternoon dress Eveline had never seen before, chatting chirpily with three young staffofficers in front of the fireplace. Eveline had a cup of tea and talked about something or other with Eleanor for a moment, then she said she had an engagement and left.

In the anteroom she caught Miss Williams’ eye as she passed. She stopped by her desk a moment: “Busy as ever, Miss Williams,” she said.

“It’s better to be busy,” she said. “It keeps a person out of mischief… It seems to me that in Paris they waste a great deal of time… I never imagined that there could be a place where people could sit around idle so much of the time.”

“The French value their leisure more than anything.”

“Leisure’s all right if you have something to do with it… but this social life wastes so much of our time… People come to lunch and stay all afternoon, I don’t know what we can do about it… it makes a very difficult situation.” Miss Williams looked hard at Eveline. “I don’t suppose you have much to do down at the Red Cross any more, do you, Miss Hutchins?”

Eveline smiled sweetly. “No, we just live for our leisure like the French.”

She walked across the wide asphalt spaces of the place de la Concorde, without knowing quite what to do with herself, and turned up the Champs Elysées where the horsechestnuts were just coming into flower. The general strike seemed to be about over, because there were a few cabs on the streets. She sat down on a bench and a cadaverous looking individual in a frock coat sat down beside her and tried to pick her up. She got up and walked as fast as she could. At the Rond Point she had to stop to wait for a bunch of French mounted artillery and two seventyfives to go past before she could cross the street. The cadaverous man was beside her; he turned and held out his hand, tipping his hat as he did so, as if he was an old friend. She muttered, “Oh, it’s just too tiresome,” and got into a horsecab that was standing by the curb. She almost thought the man was going to get in too, but he just stood looking after her scowling as the cab drove off following the guns as if she was part of the regiment. Once at home she made herself some cocoa on the gasstove and went lonely to bed with a book.

Next evening when she got back to her apartment Paul was waiting for her, wearing a new uniform and with a resplendent shine on his knobtoed shoes. “Why, Paul, you look as if you’d been through a washing machine.” “A friend of mine’s a sergeant in the quartermaster’s stores… coughed up a new outfit.” “You look too beautiful for words.” “You mean you do, Eveline.”

They went over to the boulevards and had dinner on the salmon-colored plush seats among the Pompeian columns at Noël Peters’ to the accompaniment of slithery violinmusic. Paul had his month’s pay and commutation of rations in his pocket and felt fine. They talked about what they’d do when they got back to America. Paul said his dad wanted him to go into a grain broker’s office in Minneapolis, but he wanted to try his luck in New York. He thought a young feller ought to try a lot of things before he settled down at a business so that he could find out what he was fitted for. Eveline said she didn’t know what she wanted to do. She didn’t want to do anything she’d done before, she knew that, maybe she’d like to live in Paris.

“I didn’t like it much in Paris before,” Paul said, “but like this, goin’ out with you, I like it fine.” Eveline teased him, “Oh, I don’t think you like me much, you never act as if you did.” “But jeeze, Eveline, you know so much and you’ve been around so much. It’s mighty nice of you to let me come around at all, honestly I’ll appreciate it all my life.”

“Oh, I wish you wouldn’t be like that… I hate people to be humble,” Eveline broke out angrily.

They went on eating in silence. They were eating asparagus with grated cheese on it. Paul took several gulps of wine and looked at her in a hurt dumb way she hated. “Oh, I feel like a party tonight,” she said a little later. “I’ve been so miserable all day, Paul… I’ll tell you about it sometime… you know the kind of feeling when everything you’ve wanted crumbles in your fingers as you grasp it.” “All right, Eveline,” Paul said, banging with his fist on the table, “let’s cheer up and have a big time.”

When they were drinking coffee the orchestra began to play polkas and people began to dance among the table encouraged by cries of Ah Polkaah aaah from the violinist. It was a fine sight to see the middleaged diners whirling around under the beaming eyes of the stout Italian headwaiter who seemed to feel that la gaité was coming back to Paree at last. Paul and Eveline forgot themselves and tried to dance it too. Paul was very awkward, but having his arms around her made her feel better somehow, made her forget the scaring loneliness she felt.

When the polka had subsided a little Paul paid the fat check and they went out arm in arm, pressing close against each other like all the Paris lovers, to stroll on the boulevards in the May evening that smelt of wine and hot rolls and wild strawberries. They felt lightheaded. Eveline kept smiling. “Come on, let’s have a big time,” whispered Paul occasionally as if to keep his courage up. “I was just thinking what my friends ud think if they saw me walking up the boulevard arm in arm with a drunken doughboy,” Eveline said. “No, honest, I’m not drunk,” said Paul. “I can drink a lot more than you think. And I won’t be in the army much longer, not if this peace treaty goes through.” “Oh, I don’t care,” said Eveline, “I don’t care what happens.”

They heard music in another café and saw the shadows of dancers passing across the windows upstairs. “Let’s go up there,” said Eveline. They went in and upstairs to the dancehall that was a long room full of mirrors. There Eveline said she wanted to drink some Rhine wine. They studied the card a long while and finally with a funny sideways look at Paul, she suggested liebefraumilch. Paul got red, “I wish I had a liebe frau,” he said. “Why probably you have… one in every port,” said Eveline. He shook his head.

Next time they danced he held her very tight. He didn’t seem so awkward as he had before. “I feel pretty lonely myself, these days,” said Eveline when they sat down again. “You, lonely… with the whole of the Peace Conference running after you, and the A.E.F. too… Why, Don told me you’re a dangerous woman.” She shrugged her shoulders, “When did Don find that out? Maybe you could be dangerous too, Paul.”

Next time they danced she put her cheek against his. When the music stopped he looked as if he was going to kiss her, but he didn’t. “This is the most wonderful evening I ever had in my life,” he said, “I wish I was the kind of guy you really wanted to have take you out.” “Maybe you could get to be, Paul… you seem to be learning fast…. No, but we’re acting silly… I hate ogling and flirting around… I guess I want the moon… maybe I want to get married and have a baby.” Paul was embarrassed. They sat silent watching the other dancers. Eveline saw a young French soldier lean over and kiss the little girl he was dancing with on the lips; kissing, they kept on dancing. Eveline wished she was that girl. “Let’s have a little more wine,” she said to Paul. “Do you think we’d better? All right, what the hec, we’ve having a big time.”

Getting in the taxicab Paul was pretty drunk, laughing and hugging her. As soon as they were in the darkness of the back of the taxi they started kissing. Eveline held Paul off for a minute, “Let’s go to your place instead of mine,” she said. “I’m afraid of my concièrge.” “All right… it’s awful little,” said Paul, giggling. “But ish gebibbel, we should worry get a wrinkle.”

When they had gotten past the bitter eyes that sized them up of the old man who kept the keys at Paul’s hotel they staggered up a long chilly winding stair and into a little room that gave on a court. “It’s a great life if you don’t weaken,” said Paul, waving his arms after he’d locked and bolted the door. It had started to rain again and the rain made the sound of a waterfall on the glass roof at the bottom of the court. Paul threw his hat and tunic in the corner of the room and came towards her, his eyes shining.

They’d hardly gotten to bed when he fell asleep with his head on her shoulder. She slipped out of bed to turn the light off and open the window and then snuggled shivering against his body that was warm and relaxed like a child’s. Outside the rain poured down on the glass roof. There was a puppy shut up somewhere in the building that whined and yelped desperately without stopping. Eveline couldn’t get to sleep. Something shut up inside her was whining like the puppy. Through the window she began to see the dark peak of a roof and chimneypots against a fading purple sky. Finally she fell asleep.

Next day they spent together. She’d phoned in to the Red Cross that she was sick as usual and Paul forgot about the Sorbonne altogether. They sat all morning in the faint sunshine at a café near the Madeleine making plans about what they’d do. They’d get themselves sent back home as soon as they possibly could and get jobs in New York and get married. Paul was going to study engineering in his spare time. There was a firm of grain and feed merchants in Jersey City, friends of his father’s he knew he could get a job with. Eveline could start up her decorating business again. Paul was happy and confident and had lost his apologetic manner. Eveline kept telling herself that Paul had stuff in him, that she was in love with Paul, that something could be made out of Paul.

The rest of the month of May they were both a little lightheaded all the time. They spent all their pay the first few days so that they had to eat at little table d’hôte restaurants crowded with students and working people and poor clerks where they bought books of tickets that gave them a meal for two francs or two fifty. One Sunday in June they went out to St. Germain and walked through the forest. Eveline had spells of nausea and weakness and had to lie down on the grass several times. Paul looked worried sick. At last they got to a little settlement on the bank of the Seine. The Seine flowed fast streaked with green and lilac in the afternoon light, brimming the low banks bordered by ranks of huge poplars. They crossed a little ferry rowed by an old man that Eveline called Father Time. Halfway over she said to Paul, “Do you know what’s the matter with me, Paul? I’m going to have a baby.”

Paul let his breath out in a whistle. “Well, I hadn’t just planned for that… I guess I’ve been a stinker not to make you marry me before this…. We’ll get married right away. I’ll find out what you have to do to get permission to get married in the A.E.F. I guess it’s all right, Eveline… but, gee, it does change my plans.”

They’d reached the other bank and walked up through Conflans to the railroad station to get the train back to Paris. Paul looked worried. “Well, don’t you think it changes my plans too?” said Eveline dryly. “It’s going over Niagara Falls in a barrel, that’s what it is.”

“Eveline,” said Paul seriously with tears in his eyes, “what can I ever do to make it up to you?… honest, I’ll do my best.” The train whistled and rumbled into the platform in front of them. They were so absorbed in their thoughts they hardly saw it. When they’d climbed into a third class compartment they sat silent bolt upright facing each other, their knees touching, looking out of the window without seeing the suburbs of Paris, not saying anything. At last Eveline said with a tight throat, “I want to have the little brat, Paul, we have to go through everything in life.” Paul nodded. Then she couldn’t see his face anymore. The train had gone into a tunnel.