Now commenced a brief period which was, perhaps, to be the happiest of Kendall Ware’s whole life. It was happy because it was free from doubts and questionings. From the depths he had mounted to the heights from which he looked upon a world bathed in sunshine, rich in harvest, beautiful as a world could be beautiful only when it was freed from all evil. He saw everything as good, and it contented him. He ate of the lotus of inexperienced youth, flavored with the pungent spice of sophistry, and the taste of it was sweet in his mouth. Plymouth Rock had sunk beneath its sands, the vestibule of the Presbyterian church had vanished behind the mists of an intervening ocean. He did not think; he only felt and acted—and was happy.

His work was interesting, and he could recognize its value, so he became less dissatisfied with the necessity that held him far behind the battle-line. Not that he was content, rather that he was resigned.... And at the end of the day there was Andree....

There were few evenings which they did not spend together, either by themselves or with Bert and Madeleine, dining at home, at Poccardi’s, at Marty’s, or in interesting, homelike little cafés across the river where excellent food could be had very cheaply. Sometimes they went to the theater or to the music-halls. Sometimes they strolled up and down the Avenue du Bois de Boulogne until they were tired and then sat and talked contentedly on springy iron chairs along the promenade. Once they walked out that street, so crowded of evenings—that street of the ever-changing names—Montmartre, Poissonnière, Nouvelle, St.-Denis, St.-Martin—as far as the Place de la République. It was interesting, if tiresome. More than once Kendall was impressed with the fact that Parisians of a certain class take their pleasures simply and childishly. More than one glaring palace, open at the front, showed rows upon rows of those devices, long extinct in America, before which one could sit or stand with the ends of a rubber tube in one’s ears and listen to such tunes as found favor with him played by phonograph. The popularity of these places surprised him. They were always crowded.... It seemed to him that this was the most crowded thoroughfare in Paris, as well as one of the most questionable. The crowds impressed him as being questionable and bent on questionable errands.... And yet he did not know; he only guessed. So far as his knowledge went, these folk might be the most respectable in all France—all save the numerous soft-voice girls who threaded their way in and out.... And for a mere child, a girl who seemed hardly in her teens, who bit and struggled in the hands of two gendarmes, shrieking in a voice that remained long in Kendall’s ears, “I have the age!... I have the age!... I have the age!...” over and over again....

Madeleine had laughed and shrugged her shoulders with some flippant word of comment, but Kendall looked down at Andree to see her eyes moist and big with pity.

“Pauvre p’tite!... Pauvre p’tite!... It is not she who should be punish’. She have made no wrong.... I theenk it is the crime of poverty. N’est-ce pas? Oh, to be pauvre—it is not well....”

“Yet le bon Dieu permits it,” said Madeleine.

“Non!... Non!... It is not of God, ma’m’selle; it is of man—thees poverty and thees awful theengs.... It mus’ be that tears come often to the eyes of the good God....”

Kendall was affected deeply. She spoke of the good God with such simplicity, with the sort of intimacy which children use. He felt almost a reverence for her.... There was a rightness about her, a simple, unaffected, unconscious goodness, that set her apart and made her different, to him, from all mankind.

“Mignonne!” he whispered, and pressed her arm, and she, looking up shyly into his face, gave answering pressure, and, perhaps, wondered a little.

She was always so, never changing, yet always possessed of that infinite variety of which Shakespeare speaks. But it was a variety which was always Andree. In no mood, in no manifestation, could she be anything but Andree. If she were sad, it was with a sadness peculiar to her, and very lovable; if she were gay, it was with her own gaiety; if she were mischievous, it was with a charming impishness which no other being could have managed. And always she was natural—as natural as the rain that falls or the sun that shines or the breezes that blow.... She was Andree.

“To-morrow is the great fête,” said Andree. “There will be much to see.”

“And I can’t show it to you. I must work in the morning, and in the afternoon I am ordered to go to the front.”

“How long?” she said, quickly.

“But one day. I shall be here again Sunday—and we shall play, eh? We shall have déjeuner together and do something in the afternoon, and find a place to dine....”

“It is well—but you mus’ be ver’ careful. You mus’ not let the boche keel you.... Oh, I should be sad, sad.”

Already Paris was dressing for the American fête-day, the Fourth of July, which, by methods of law, had been made her own national holiday this year. Everywhere were American flags. There was no house in Paris too poor to show some small copy of the Stars and Stripes, for just now Paris was mad about America and Americans ... as it had had its day of madness over the Belgians and then the English. Paris is given to such enthusiasms, and at the moment there were men in the service of the great god Propaganda who labored to bring it about that this latest passion should not die and become sudden ashes as the others had done, but rather to persuade it to subside slowly, unnoticeably, leaving a pleasant memory behind....

“The boches will pull something off to-morrow,” said Bert. “You see. They’ll do something to bust up the celebration.”

This was the opinion of the Paris streets—that the Hun would, by some ingenious and disagreeable means, make the fête memorable in the history of the city.

“Maybe it’s just as well I’m going away,” laughed Ken. “So you, Ma’m’selle Pourquoi—you look out for yourself. Don’t you let anything hurt you.”

“Me—pouf!... It could not be. While there is you nothing can happen to me—nothing. I am ver’ safe.”

They tried in vain to persuade a voiture or a taxicab to take them home, but, with that perversity which belongs to the Paris cabby alone, none of them would go. One reason or another was given—the horse was tired, the gasolene supply was depleted, it was the wrong quarter of the city. A large volume, serious or comic, might be written on the habits and moods of these public conveyances of the most charming city in the world. Paris would not be the same without them. While they are one of the irritations, none the less they are of the quaint and pleasant memories of the city, and Kendall could often see himself, as he sat at some future day, retailing to audiences of less traveled Americans than he his adventures with the war-time taxi.

Finally they were obliged to descend to the Metro, which carried them to the Place de l’Opéra, to change there for the short ride to the Palais Royal, where another change was necessary to carry them to the étoile. It was late and they were tired.

“Oh, we have make the beaucoup travail—the so great labor thees day,” said Andree, shaking her head. “I have the fatigue.... But it is well to be weary. Are you weary, Monsieur Ken?”

“I am happy,” he said.

“Yes.... Yes.... That is bes’ of all—to be happy. Tell me, when you have gone to the front—will you theenk of me?”

“In the morning, at noon, in the afternoon—”

“Oh, oh!... It is not possible. But sometimes. Once, twice? For I shall be theenking of you always.”

“Do you love me?”

“Yes,” she nodded emphatically, and then—he would have missed it had she omitted it—“and you?”

“More than anybody in the world.”

“More than thees yo’ng American girl?... I have seen her thees day. She is in Paris. Do you know?”

“You must be mistaken, mignonne. Miss Knox is out at the front.”

“It is so.... It is so. I have seen her—thees day. Oh, do you theenk I do not know her? I am ver’ jalouse—mos’ jalouse. She come for take you away from me.”

“Don’t you let her do it,” said Ken happily. “Don’t you dare let her do it.”

“I do not know,” she said, becoming suddenly grave. “You are American—she is American.... Some day...” Then she laughed gaily, impishly. “Mais these American girl, they do not know how to dress. Oh, it is terrible!”

“You mustn’t judge all American women by these uniforms you see in France,” said Bert. “Just now it is the style in America for women to get into something they think are uniforms. I wonder who designed these Y. M. C. A. uniforms, anyhow?... But really, Mademoiselle Andree, our women do know how to dress.”

“I have never seen,” she said, stubbornly. “Also they do not always wear uniforms, but always they wear their feet. Their feet they cannot take off. Mais non. It is too bad. If only they could leave at home their feet.”

Kendall suspected that American women were suffering for the sins of Maude Knox, so he did not rush to their defense. He did not want to think about Maude Knox to-night—he wanted to think of no woman but Andree.

“Méchante!” he whispered.

“It is so—what I say,” she said, severely. “I do not like American women.... I do not like thees girl. She ees ver’ wicked, for she wish to steal you from me.”

The street was very dark. Kendall made youth’s answer to youth’s jealousy. He lifted her slight form in his arms and kissed her until she returned his kisses.

“There,” he said, “you are punished.”

“It ees ver’ nice to be wicked,” she said. “Thees punishment is ver’ well.”

Maude Knox was banished. They two found themselves the sole inhabitants of a brightly glowing world....

Next morning Kendall made his way through early assembling crowds to his office, where he was much occupied until noon, making preparations for his trip to the front. Then he was driven through the holiday-making streets crowded with a populace in holiday humor to the barrière, and thence into the country. On every building waved an American flag, in every buttonhole was a tiny American flag, and the appearance of an American military automobile was the signal for applause and lifting of hats. Small boys shouted as small boys of all countries shout; friendly old gentlemen waved their canes; young women smiled broadly or demurely, invitingly or shyly. Kendall felt as if he were enjoying some sort of a triumph, as if this celebration were for him. The frankness and open-heartedness and courtesy of it were delightful.

They drove rapidly through little villages, between rolling fields cultivated as only the French agriculturist seems to be able to cultivate. The villages, too, were in gala dress and the people in holiday attire. In one place a brief stop was made. Immediately the car was surrounded by children who shouted eagerly for “penny,” for “gu-um,” for “cigarette.” So it was all over France. Let but an American soldier appear and the children of the neighborhood formed a group about him demanding tribute.

Soon the civil inhabitants disappeared. Whole villages were occupied by billeted troops, poilus and colonials, black-skinned men wearing red fezzes and speaking strange tongues who gave to the picture an exotic tint. The countryside swarmed with soldiers en repos, a zone miles deep crowded with the guardians of Paris and of the Channel ports.... Now came forests in whose depths could be caught fleeting glimpses of huge ammunition-dumps, skilfully camouflaged, then a wonderful woods, clean as the floor of a kitchen, a forest of magnificent trees, but as well kept as a Michigan peach-orchard.... Dusk descended, then darkness. The car seemed to be running into a black curtain upon a thread of white cloud. Kendall could not see the length of his nose to one side or the other, but ahead could be discerned that pale cloud avenue, a sort of milky way that disappeared itself into blackness a hundred feet away. He was now upon one of those roads of white chalk, deep with dust which arose in clouds and nestled in the hair and eyebrows and penetrated the very pores of the skin, giving to men the singular appearance of having been carved out of bronze.

Presently the horizon glowed for an instant, as with heat lightning, and glowed again and again. There was a mutter and a grumble ahead which was the distant voice of the guns.... Something burst into flower in the sky far ahead, a vivid rose-blossom, then another and another. It was shrapnel, either our own demanding toll of a prowling German aeroplane or the enemy searching the air for an Allied machine.... The heat lightning became continuous, the roar of the guns a rumble without break, almost a single, sustained note.

Ken was riding in the depths of a sea of blackness. To right and left the eyes encountered an impasse; ahead was only that dim milky way of road and those upsurging lights as the guns answered one another across the desert of No Man’s Land. The car was traveling at breakneck speed. Suddenly came a tremendous snap almost in Ken’s ears, a snap as of a mountain being cracked in twain by giant hands. There was a blinding flash across the road ahead and the air was usurped by the scream of a departing shell. A battery by the roadside had taken up its work of the night. Kendall was in the midst of it now. Guns on both sides cracked and roared; projectiles screamed over his head, and now and then would come that easily distinguishable sound, the bursting of a German shell....

Presently the road sank below the level of the fields. The car was running between irregular rows of barely discernible lights which appeared to issue from the ground—as indeed they did—glowing from the dugouts of French artillerymen who had burrowed into the banks at the side of the road. The moon began to climb so that objects became dimly visible. The scene was like that of some village of prehistoric cave-dwellers, save for those breaks in the line of dugouts, cunningly covered with nets of camouflage, under which lurked the cannon, muzzles directed toward the foe.

Now they stopped in a battered, deserted village which was headquarters of our Twenty-eighth Infantry, a component of that First Division made up of our old regulars—a body of troops whose name will be famous as long as the history of America shall endure. And there, in an enormous dugout entered through a narrow tunnel some fifty feet in length, Ken found shelter for the night. He traversed the tunnel, descended steps carved out of the stone to a level twenty feet below, and found himself in a warren. Here, notwithstanding the hour of the night, were bustle and activity. Here were offices where sounded the click of typewriters and the staccato of the telephone; here were passages, bedrooms, a dining-room—a veritable maze hewn out of the chalk formation. It was as if Ali Baba’s forty thieves had turned systematic and were carrying on their trade according to modern business methods. Yet men worked here as casually and nonchalantly, accustomed by long habit, as they would have worked in their New York offices....

Kendall was provided with a cot, and, despite the sounds that penetrated here, the sounds of the Fourth of July celebration of the First Division, he slept....

Early in the morning he awoke, then, after some hours spent with the regimental intelligence officer, he walked abroad to see this historic countryside. Far off to the left the glasses showed him that spot which had been Montdidier; almost straight ahead was the grisly, silent crumble known now to the world by the name of Cantigny.

The day was beautiful. It seemed strange, unnatural that the country should be so beautiful as well. Even the gun-pits among which Kendall quickly found himself did not detract from the beauty, for they were almost invisible even at a distance of a few yards, only appearing as low mounds, scarcely differing in color from the surrounding fields. Yet the guns were there under their tents of chicken-wire covered with stained burlap and grasses. Everywhere he looked were these mounds which during the night that had just passed had been uncovered to the sky while shells filled with deadly gas had screamed through intervening miles of air to fall with deadly effect in the German lines.... It had been mustard gas, six thousand rounds of it, he had been told. He was also told it was the first time American gunners had been supplied with that devilishness of war—to celebrate the Fourth.... Now the gun-pits were neat as a New England parlor, guns were brightly polished. Nothing seemed to have happened there.

He stood above and looked down the slope of the valley, a valley of golden fields, a valley which was a miracle of color. Never had Kendall seen such color, acres upon acres of it, nor such a profusion of flowers. Gold and red and white and blue ... and peace! That valley had been spread there for some painter—not for a battle-field. It impressed the inherited mysticism in him—he saw a symbolism in it all. The fields blazed with gorgeous tints; rectangles acres in extent were red with poppies, not with a sprinkling of poppies here and there, but as with a snowfall of vivid red. Segregated in an adjoining field were cornflowers, a carpet of blue; and then another field glaring white with some flower that Kendall did not know.... Other fields there were in which the three flowers mingled. The panorama spoke of peace and beauty.... It was as if the war irritated God until He spread this, His own camouflage of peace, to hide the horrors from His down-gazing eyes.... Or perhaps, as of olden times He had set His rainbow in the sky as a promise to the sons of Noah, so now He planted this living rainbow in the fields as a new and more wonderful promise to all the sons of men ... a promise that His purposes should nevermore demand another war to devastate the earth..............