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“Not in the Guidebook.”

(Woman’s Home Companion, November 1925)

This story began three days before it got into the papers. Like many other news-hungry Americans in Paris this spring, I opened the “Franco-American Star” one morning and having skimmed the hackneyed headlines (largely devoted to reporting the sempiternal “Lafayette-love-Washington” bombast of French and American orators) I came upon something of genuine interest.

“Look at that!” I exclaimed, passing it over to the twin bed. But the occupant of the twin bed immediately found an article about Leonora Hughes, the dancer, in another column, and began to read it. So of course I demanded the paper back.

“You don’t realize—” I began.

“I wonder,” interrupted the occupant of the twin bed, “if she’s a real blonde.”

However, when I issued from the domestic suite a little later I found other men in various cafés saying “Look at that!” as they pointed to the Item of Interest. And about noon I found another writer (whom I have since bribed with champagne to hold his peace) and together we went down into Franco-American officialdom to see. We discovered that the story began about three days before it got into the papers.

It began on a boat, and with a young woman who, though she wasn’t even faintly uneasy, was leaning over the rail. She was watching the parallels of longitude as they swam beneath the keel, and trying to read the numbers on them, but of course the S. S. Olympic travels too fast for that, and all that the young woman could see was the agate-green, foliage-like spray, changing and complaining around the stern. Though there was little to look at except the spray and a dismal Scandinavian tramp in the distance and the admiring millionaire who was trying to catch her eye from the first-class deck above, Milly Cooley was perfectly happy. For she was beginning life over.

Hope is a usual cargo between Naples and Ellis Island, but on ships bound east for Cherbourg it is noticeably rare. The first-class passengers specialize in sophistication and the steerage passengers go in for disillusion (which is much the same thing) but the young woman by the rail was going in for hope raised to the ultimate power. It was not her own life she was beginning over, but someone else’s, and this is a much more dangerous thing to do.

Milly was a frail, dark, appealing girl with the spiritual, haunted eyes that so frequently accompany South European beauty. By birth her mother and father had been respectively Czech and Roumanian, but Milly had missed the overshort upper lip and the pendulous, pointed nose that disfigure the type—her features were regular and her skin was young and olive-white and clear.

The good-looking, pimply young man with eyes of a bright marbly blue who was asleep on a dunnage bag a few feet away was her husband—it was his life that Milly was beginning over. Through the six months of their marriage he had shown himself to be shiftless and dissipated, but now they were getting off to a new start. Jim Cooley deserved a new start, for he had been a hero in the war. There was a thing called “shell shock” which justified anything unpleasant in a war hero’s behavior—Jim Cooley had explained that to her on the second day of their honeymoon when he had gotten abominably drunk and knocked her down with his open hand.

“I get crazy,” he said emphatically next morning, and his marbly eyes rolled back and forth realistically in his head. “I get started, thinkin’ I’m fightin’ the war, an’ I take a poke at whatever’s in front of me, see?”

He was a Brooklyn boy, and he had joined the marines. And on a June twilight he had crawled fifty yards out of his lines to search the body of a Bavarian captain that lay out in plain sight. He found a copy of German regimental orders, and in consequence his own brigade attacked much sooner than would otherwise have been possible, and perhaps the war was shortened by so much as a quarter of an hour. The fact was appreciated by the French and American races in the form of engraved slugs of precious metal which Jim showed around for four years before it occurred to him how nice it would be to have a permanent audience. Milly’s mother was impressed with his martial achievement, and a marriage was arranged—Milly didn’t realize her mistake until twenty-four hours after it was too late.

At the end of several months Milly’s mother died and left her daughter two hundred and fifty dollars. The event had a marked effect on Jim. He sobered up and one night came home from work with a plan for turning over a new leaf, for beginning life over. By the aid of his war record he had obtained a job with a bureau that took care of American soldier graves in France. The pay was small but then, as everyone knew, living was dirt cheap over there. Hadn’t the forty a month that he drew in the war looked good to the girls and the wine-sellers of Paris? Especially when you figured it in French money.

Milly listened to his tales of the land where grapes were full of champagne and then thought it all over carefully. Perhaps the best use for her money would be in giving Jim his chance, the chance that he had never had since the war. In a little cottage in the outskirts of Paris they could forget this last six months and find peace and happiness and perhaps even love as well.

“Are you going to try?” she asked simply.

“Of course I’m going to try, Milly.”

“You’re going to make me think I didn’t make a mistake?”

“Sure I am, Milly. It’ll make a different person out of me. Don’t you believe it?”

She looked at him. His eyes were bright with enthusiasm, with determination. A warm glow had spread over him at the prospect—he had never really had his chance before.

“All right,” she said finally. “We’ll go.”

They were there. The Cherbourg breakwater, a white stone snake, glittered along the sea at dawn—behind it red roofs and steeples and then small, neat hills traced with a warm, orderly pattern of toy farms. “Do you like this French arrangement?” it seemed to say. “It’s considered very charming, but if you don’t agree just shift it about—set this road here, this steeple there. It’s been done before, and it always comes out lovely in the end!”

It was Sunday morning, and Cherbourg was in flaring collars and high lace hats. Donkey carts and diminutive automobiles moved to the sound of incessant bells. Jim and Milly went ashore on a tug-boat and were inspected by customs officials and immigration authorities. Then they were free with an hour before the Paris train, and they moved out into the bright thrilling world of French blue. At a point of vantage, a pleasant square that continually throbbed with soldiers and innumerable dogs and the clack of wooden shoes, they sat down at a café.

“Du vaah,” said Jim to the waiter. He was a little disappointed when the answer came in English. After the man went for the wine he took out his two war medals and pinned them to his coat. The waiter returned with the wine, seemed not to notice the medals, made no remark. Milly wished Jim hadn’t put them on—she felt vaguely ashamed.

After another glass of wine it was time for the train. They got into the strange little third-class carriage, an engine that was out of some boy’s playroom began to puff and, in a pleasant informal way, jogged them leisurely south through the friendly lived-over land.

“What are we going to do first when we get there?” asked Milly.

“First?” Jim looked at her abstractedly and frowned. “Why, first I got to see about the job, see?” The exhilaration of the wine had passed and left him surly. “What do you want to ask so many questions for? Buy yourself a guidebook, why don’t you?”

Milly felt a slight sinking of the heart—he hadn’t grumbled at her like this since the trip was first proposed.

“It didn’t cost as much as we thought, anyhow,” she said cheerfully. “We must have over a hundred dollars left anyway.”

He grunted. Outside the window Milly’s eyes were caught by the sight of a dog drawing a legless man.

“Look!” she exclaimed. “How funny!”

“Aw, dry up. I’ve seen it all before.”

An encouraging idea occurred to her: it was in France that Jim’s nerves had gone to pieces; it was natural that he should be cross and uneasy for a few hours.

Westward through Caen, Lisieux and the rich green plains of Calvados. When they reached the third stop Jim got up and stretched himself.

“Going out on the platform,” he said gloomily. “I need to get a breath of air; hot in here.”

It was hot, but Milly didn’t mind. Her eyes were excited with all she saw—a pair of little boys in black smocks began to stare at her curiously through the windows of the carriage.

“American?” cried one of them suddenly.

“Hello,” said Milly. “What place is this?”

“Pardon?”

They came closer.

“What’s the name of this place?”

Suddenly the two boys poked each other in the stomach and went off into roars of laughter. Milly didn’t see that she had said anything funny.

There was an abrupt jerk as the train started. Milly jumped up in alarm and put her head out the carriage window.

“Jim!” she called.

She looked up and down the platform. He wasn’t there. The boys, seeing her distraught face, ran along beside the train as it moved from the station. He must have jumped for one of the rear cars. But—

“Jim!” she cried wildly. The station slid past. “Jim!”

Trying desperately to control her fright, she sank back into her seat and tried to think. Her first supposition was that he had gone to a café for a drink and missed the train—in that case she should have got off too while there was still time, for otherwise there was no telling what would happen to him. If this were one of his spells he might just go on drinking, until he had spent every cent of their money. It was unbelievably awful to imagine—but it was possible.

She waited, gave him ten, fifteen minutes to work his way up to this car—then she admitted to herself that he wasn’t on the train. A dull panic began—the sudden change in her relations to the world was so startling that she thought neither of his delinquency nor of what must be done, but only of the immediate fact that she was alone. Erratic as his protection had been, it was something. Now—why, she might sit in this strange train until it carried her to China and there was no one to care!

After a long while it occurred to her that he might have left part of the money in one of the suitcases. She took them down from the rack and went feverishly through all the clothes. In the bottom of an old pair of pants that Jim had worn on the boat she found two bright American dimes. The sight of them was somehow comforting and she clasped them tight in her hand. The bags yielded up nothing more.

An hour later, when it was dark outside, the train slid in under the yellow misty glow of the Gare du Nord. Strange, incomprehensible station cries fell on her ears, and her heart was beating loud as she wrenched at the handle of the door. She took her own bag with one hand and picked up Jim’s suitcase in the other, but it was heavy and she couldn’t get out the door with both, so in a rush of anger she left the suitcase in the carriage.

On the platform she looked left and right with the forlorn hope that he might appear, but she saw no one except a Swedish brother and sister from the boat whose tall bodies, straight and strong under the huge bundles they both carried, were hurrying out of sight. She took a quick step after them and then stopped, unable to tell them of the shameful thing that had happened to her. They had worries of their own.

With the two dimes in one hand and her suitcase in the other, Milly walked slowly along the platform. People hurried by her, baggage-smashers under forests of golf sticks, excited American girls full of the irrepressible thrill of arriving in Paris, obsequious porters from the big hotels. They were all walking and talking very fast, but Milly walked slowly because ahead of her she saw only the yellow arc of the waiting room and the door that led out of it and after that she did not know where she would go.

II

By 10 p.m. Mr. Bill Driscoll was usually weary, for by that time he had a full twelve-hour day behind him. After that he only went out with the most celebrated people. If someone had tipped off a multi-millionaire or a moving-picture director—at that time American directors were swarming over Europe looking for new locations—about Bill Driscoll, he would fortify himself with two cups of coffee, adorn his person with his new dinner coat and show them the most dangerous dives of Montmartre in the very safest way.

Bill Driscoll looked good in his new dinner coat, with his reddish brown hair soaked in water and slicked back from his attractive forehead. Often he regarded himself admiringly in the mirror, for it was the first dinner coat he had ever owned. He had earned it himself, with his wits, as he had earned the swelling packet of American bonds which awaited him in a New York bank. If you have been in Paris during the past two years you must have seen his large white auto-bus with the provoking legend on the side:

WILLIAM DRISCOLL

he shows you things not in the guidebook

When he found Milly Cooley it was after three o’clock and he had just left Director and Mrs. Claude Peebles at their hotel after escorting them to those celebrated apache dens, Zelli’s and Le Rat Mort (which are about as dangerous, all things considered, as the Biltmore Hotel at noon), and he was walking homeward toward his pension on the Left Bank. His eye was caught by two disreputable-looking parties under the lamp post who were giving aid to what was apparently a drunken girl. Bill Driscoll decided to cross the street—he was aware of the tender affection which the French police bore toward embattled Americans, and he made a point of keeping out of trouble. Just at that moment Milly’s subconscious self came to her aid and she called out “Let me go!” in an agonized moan.

The moan had a Brooklyn accent. It was a Brooklyn moan.

Driscoll altered his course uneasily and, approaching the group, asked politely what was the matter, whereat one of the disreputable parties desisted in his attempt to open Milly’s tightly clasped left hand.

The man answered quickly that she had fainted. He and his friend were assisting her to the gendarmerie. They loosened their hold on her and she collapsed gently to the ground.

Bill came closer and bent over her, being careful to choose a position where neither man was behind him. He saw a young, frightened face that was drained now of the color it possessed by day.

“Where did you find her?” he inquired in French.

“Here. Just now. She looked to be so tired—”

Bill put his hand in his pocket and when he spoke he tried very hard to suggest by his voice that he had a revolver there.

“She is American,” he said. “You leave her to me.”

The man made a gesture of acquiescence and took a step backward, his hand going with a natural movement to his coat as if he intended buttoning it. He was watching Bill’s right hand, the one in his coat-pocket, and Bill happened to be left-handed. There is nothing much faster than an untelegraphed left-hand blow—this one traveled less than eighteen inches and the recipient staggered back against a lamp post, embraced it transiently and regretfully and settled to the ground. Nevertheless Bill Driscoll’s successful career might have ended there, ended with the strong shout of “Voleurs !” which he raised into the Paris night, had the other man had a gun. The other man indicated that he had no gun by retreating ten yards down the street. His prostrate companion moved slightly on the sidewalk and, taking a step toward him, Bill drew back his foot and kicked him full in the head as a football player kicks a goal from placement. It was not a pretty gesture, but he had remembered that he was wearing his new dinner coat and he didn’t want to wrestle on the ground for the piece of poisonous hardware.

In a moment two gendarmes in a great hurry came running down the moonlit street.

III

Two days after this it came out in the papers—“War hero deserts wife en route to Paris ,” I think, or “American Bride arrives penniless, Husbandless at Gare du Nord .” The police were informed, of course, and word was sent out to the provincial departments to seek an American named James Cooley who was without carte d’identité . The newspapers learned the story at the American Aid Society and made a neat pathetic job of it, because Milly was young and pretty and curiously loyal to her husband. Almost her first words were to explain that it was all because his nerves had been shattered in the war.

Young Driscoll was somewhat disappointed to find that she was married. Not that he had fallen in love at first sight—on the contrary, he was unusually level-headed—but after the moonlight rescue, which rather pleased him, it didn’t seem appropriate that she should have a heroic husband wandering over France. He had carried her to his own pension that night, and his landlady, an American widow named Mrs. Horton, had taken a fancy to Milly and wanted to look after her, but before eleven o’clock on the day the paper appeared, the office of the American Aid Society was literally jammed with Samaritans. They were mostly rich old ladies from America who were tired of the Louvre and the Tuileries and anxious for something to do. Several eager but sheepish Frenchmen, inspired by a mysterious and unfathomable gallantry, hung about outside the door.

The most insistent of the ladies was a Mrs. Coots, who considered that Providence had sent her Milly as a companion. If she had heard Milly’s story in the street she wouldn’t have listened to a word, but print makes things respectable. After it got into the “Franco-American Star,” Mrs. Coots was sure Milly wouldn’t make off with her jewels.

“I’ll pay you well, my dear,” she insisted shrilly. “Twenty-five a week. How’s that?”

Milly cast an anxious glance at Mrs. Horton’s faded, pleasant face.

“I don’t know—” she said hesitantly.

“I can’t pay you anything,” said Mrs. Horton, who was confused by Mrs. Coots’ affluent, positive manner. “You do as you like. I’d love to have you.”

“You’ve certainly been kind,” said Milly, “but I don’t want to impose—”

Driscoll, who had been walking up and down with his hands in his pockets, stopped and turned toward her quickly.

“I’ll take care of that,” he said quickly. “You don’t have to worry about that.”

Mrs. Coots’ eyes flashed at him indignantly.

“She’s better with me,” she insisted. “Much better.” She turned to the secretary and remarked in a pained, disapproving stage whisper, “Who is this forward young man?”

Again Milly looked appealingly at Mrs. Horton.

“If it’s not too much trouble I’d rather stay with you,” she said. “I’ll help you all I can—”

It took another half hour to get rid of Mrs. Coots, but finally it was arranged that Milly was to stay at Mrs. Horton’s pension, until some trace of her husband was found. Later the same day they ascertained that the American Bureau of Military Graves had never heard of Jim Cooley—he had no job promised him in France.

However distressing her situation, Milly was young and she was in Paris in mid-June. She decided to enjoy herself. At Mr. Bill Driscoll’s invitation she went on an excursion to Versailles next day in his rubberneck wagon. She had never been on such a trip before. She sat among garment buyers from Sioux City and school teachers from California and honeymoon couples from Japan and was whirled through fifteen centuries of Paris, while Bill stood up in front with the megaphone pressed to his voluble and original mouth.

“Building on our left is the Louvre, ladies and gentlemen. Excursion number twenty-three leaving tomorrow at ten sharp takes you inside. Sufficient to remark now that it contains fifteen thousand works of art of every description. The oil used in its oil paintings would lubricate all the cars in the state of Oregon over a period of two years. The frames alone if placed end to end—”

Milly watched him, believing every word. It was hard to remember that he had come to her rescue that night. Heroes weren’t like that—she knew; she had lived with one. They brooded constantly on their achievements and retailed them to strangers at least once a day. When she had thanked this young man he told her gravely that Mr. Carnegie had been trying to get him on the ouija board all that day.

After a dramatic stop before the house in which Landru, the Bluebeard of France, had murdered his fourteen wives, the expedition proceeded on to Versailles. There, in the great hall of mirrors, Bill Driscoll delved into the forgotten scandal of the eighteenth century as he described the meeting between “Louie’s girl and Louie’s wife.”

“Du Barry skipped in, wearing a creation of mauve georgette, held out by bronze hoops over a tablier of champagne lace. The gown had a ruched collarette of Swedish fox, lined with yellow satin fulgurante which matched the hansom that brought her to the party. She was nervous, ladies. She didn’t know how the queen was going to take it. After awhile the queen walked in wearing an oxidized silver gown with collar, cuffs and flounces of Russian ermine and strappings of dentist’s gold. The bodice was cut with a very long waistline and the skirt arranged full in front and falling in picot-edged points tipped with the crown jewels. When Du Barry saw her she leaned over to King Louie and whispered: ‘Royal Honeyboy, who’s that lady with all the laundry on that just came in the door?’

“‘That isn’t a lady,’ said Louie. ‘That’s my wife.’

“Most of the Court almost broke their contracts laughing. The ones that didn’t died in the Bastille.”

That was the first of many trips that Milly took in the rubberneck wagon—to Malmaison, to Passy, to St-Cloud. The weeks passed, three of them, and still there was no word from Jim Cooley, who seemed to have stepped off the face of the earth when he vanished from the train.

In spite of a sort of dull worry that possessed her when she thought of her situation, Milly was happier than she had ever been. It was a relief to be rid of the incessant depression of living with a morbid and broken man. Moreover, it was thrilling to be in Paris when it seemed that all the world was there, when each arriving boat dumped a new thousand into the pleasure ground, when the streets were so clogged with sight-seers that Bill Driscoll’s buses were reserved for days ahead. And it was pleasantest of all to stroll down to the corner and watch the blood-red sun sink like a slow penny into the Seine while she sipped coffee with Bill Driscoll at a café.

“How would you like to go to Château-Thierry with me tomorrow?” he asked her one evening.

The name struck a chord in Milly. It was at Château-Thierry that Jim Cooley, at the risk of his life, had made his daring expedition between the lines.

“My husband was there,” she said proudly.

“So was I,” he remarked. “And I didn’t have any fun at all.”

He thought for a moment.

“How old are you?” he asked suddenly.

“Eighteen.”

“Why don’t you go to a lawyer and get a divorce?”

The suggestion shocked Milly.

“I think you’d better,” he continued, looking down at the pavement. “It’s easier here than anywhere else. Then you’d be free.”

“I couldn’t,” she said, frightened. “It wouldn’t be fair. You see, he doesn’t—”

“I know,” he interrupted. “But I’m beginning to think that you’re spoiling your life with this man. Is there anything except his war record to his credit?”

“Isn’t that enough?” answered Milly gravely.

“Milly—” He raised his eyes. “Won’t you think it over carefully?”

She got up uneasily. He looked very honest and safe and cool sitting there, and for a moment she was tempted to do what he said, to put the whole thing in his hands. But looking at him she saw now what she hadn’t seen before, that the advice was not disinterested—there was more than an impersonal care for her future in his eyes. She turned away with a mixture of emotions.

Side by side, and in silence, they walked back towards the pension. From a high window the plaintive wail of a violin drifted down into the street, mingling with practice chords from an invisible piano and a shrill incomprehensible quarrel of French children over the way. The twilight was fast dissolving into a starry blue Parisian evening, but it was still light enough for them to make out the figure of Mrs. Horton standing in front of the pension. She came towards them swiftly, talking as she came.

“I’ve got some news for you,” she said. “The secretary of the American Aid Society just telephoned. They’ve located your husband, and he’ll be in Paris the day after tomorrow.”

IV

When Jim Cooley, the war hero, left the train at the small town of Evreux, he walked very fast until he was several hundred yards from the station. Then, standing behind a tree, he watched until the train pulled out and the last puff of smoke burst up behind a little hill. He stood for several minutes, laughing and looking after the train, until abruptly his face resumed his normal injured expression and he turned to examine the place in which he had chosen to be free.

It was a sleepy provincial village with two high lines of silver sycamores along its principal street, at the end of which a fine fountain purred crystal water from a cat’s mouth of cold stone. Around the fountain was a square and on the sidewalks of the square several groups of small iron tables indicated open-air cafés. A farm wagon drawn by a single white ox was toiling toward the fountain and several cheap French cars, together with a 1910 Ford, were parked at intervals along the street.

“It’s a hick town,” he said to himself with some disgust. “Reg’lar hick town.”

But it was peaceful and green, and he caught sight of two stockingless ladies entering the door of a shop—and the little tables by the fountain were inviting. He walked up the street and at the first café sat down and ordered a large beer.

“I’m free,” he said to himself. “Free, by God!”

His decision to desert Milly had been taken suddenly—in Cherbourg, as they got on the train. Just at that moment he had seen a little French girl who was the real thing, and he realized that he didn’t want Milly “hanging on him” anymore. Even on the boat he had played with the idea, but until Cherbourg he had never quite made up his mind. He was rather sorry now that he hadn’t thought to leave Milly a little money, enough for one night—but then somebody would be sure to help her when she got to Paris. Besides, what he didn’t know didn’t worry him, and he wasn’t going ever to hear about her again.

“Cognac this time,” he said to the waiter.

He needed something strong. He wanted to forget. Not to forget Milly, that was easy, she was already behind him; but to forget himself. He felt that he had been abused. He felt that it was Milly who had deserted him, or at least that her cold mistrust was responsible for driving him away. What good would it have done if he had gone on to Paris anyways? There wasn’t enough money left to keep two people for very long—and he had invented the job on the strength of a vague rumor that the American Bureau of Military Graves gave jobs to veterans who were broke in France. He shouldn’t have brought Milly, wouldn’t have if he had had the money to get over. But, though he was not aware of it, there was another reason why he had brought Milly. Jim Cooley hated to be alone.

“Cognac,” he said to the waiter. “A big one. Très grand .”

He put his hand in his pocket and fingered the blue notes that had been given him in Cherbourg in exchange for his American money. He took them out and counted them. Crazy-looking kale. It was funny you could buy things with it just like you could do with the real mazuma.

He beckoned to the waiter.

“Hey!” he remarked conversationally. “This is funny money you got here, ain’t it?”

But the waiter spoke no English and was unable to satisfy Jim Cooley’s craving for companionship. Never mind. His nerves were at rest now—body was glowing triumphantly from top to toe.

“This is the life,” he muttered to himself. “Only live once. Might as well enjoy it.” And then aloud to the waiter, “’Nother one of those big cognacs. Two of them. I’m set to go.”

He went—for several hours. He awoke at dawn in a bedroom of a small inn, with red streaks in his eyes and fever pounding in his head. He was afraid to look in his pockets until he had ordered and swallowed another cognac, and then he found that his worst fears were justified. Of the ninety-odd dollars with which he had got off the train only six were left.

“I must have been crazy,” he whispered to himself.

There remained his watch. His watch was large and methodical, and on the outer case two hearts were picked out in diamonds from the dark solid gold. It had been part of the booty of Jim Cooley’s heroism, for when he had located the paper in the German officer’s pocket he had found it clasped tight in the dead hand. One of the diamond hearts probably stood for some human grief back in Friedland or Berlin, but when Jim married he told Milly that the diamond hearts stood for their hearts and would be a token of their everlasting love. Before Milly fully appreciated this sentimental suggestion their enduring love had been tarnished beyond repair and the watch went back into Jim’s pocket where it confined itself to marking time instead of emotion.

But Jim Cooley had loved to show the watch, and he found that parting with it would be much more painful than parting with Milly—so painful, in fact, that he got drunk in anticipation of his sorrow. Late that afternoon, already a reeling figure at which the town boys jeered along the streets, he found his way into the shop of a bijoutier , and when he issued forth into the street he was in possession of a ticket of redemption and a note for two thousand francs which, he figured dimly, was about one hundred and twenty dollars. Muttering to himself, he stumbled back to the square.

“One American can lick three Frenchmen!” he remarked to three small stout bourgeois drinking their beer at a table.

They paid no attention. He repeated his jeer.

“One American—” tapping his chest, “can beat up three dirty frogs, see?”

Still they didn’t move. It infuriated him. Lurching forward, he seized the back of an unoccupied chair and pulled at it. In what seemed less than a minute there was a small crowd around him and the three Frenchmen were all talking at once in excited voices.

“Aw, go on, I meant what I said!” he cried savagely. “One American can wipe up the ground with three Frenchmen!”

And now there were two men in uniform before him—two men with revolver holsters on their hips, dressed in red and blue.

“You heard what I said,” he shouted. “I’m a hero—I’m not afraid of the whole damn French army!”

A hand fell on his arm, but with blind passion he wrenched it free and struck at the black mustached face before him. Then there was a rushing, crashing noise in his ears as fists and then feet struck at him, and the world seemed to close like water over his head.

V

When they located him and, after a personal expedition by one of the American vice consuls, got him out of jail, Milly realized how much these weeks had meant to her. The holiday was over. But even though Jim would be in Paris tomorrow, even though the dreary round of her life with him was due to recommence, Milly decided to take the trip to Château-Thierry just the same. She wanted a last few hours of happiness that she could always remember. She supposed they would return to New York—what chance Jim might have had of obtaining a position had vanished now that he was marked by a fortnight in a French prison.

The bus, as usual, was crowded. As they approached the little village of Château-Thierry, Bill Driscoll stood up in front with his megaphone and began to tell his clients how it had looked to him when his division went up to the line five years before.

“It was nine o’clock at night,” he said, “and we came out of a wood and there was the Western Front. I’d read about it for three years back in America, and here it was at last—it looked like the line of a forest fire at night except that fireworks were blazing up instead of grass. We relieved a French regiment in new trenches that weren’t three feet deep. At that, most of us were too excited to be scared until the top sergeant was blown to pieces with shrapnel about two o’clock in the morning. That made us think. Two days later we went over and the only reason I didn’t get hit was that I was shaking so much they couldn’t aim at me.”

The listeners laughed and Milly felt a faint thrill of pride. Jim hadn’t been scared—she’d heard him say so, many times. All he’d thought about was doing a little more than his duty. When others were in the comparative safety of the trenches he had gone into no-man’s land alone.

After lunch in the village the party walked over the battlefield, changed now into a peaceful undulating valley of graves. Milly was glad she had come—the sense of rest after a struggle soothed her. Perhaps after the bleak future, her life might be quiet as this peaceful land. Perhaps Jim would change someday. If he had risen once to such a height of courage there must be something deep inside him that was worth while, that would make him try once more.

Just before it was time to start home Driscoll, who had hardly spoken to her all day, suddenly beckoned her aside.

“I want to talk to you for the last time,” he said.

The last time— Milly felt a flutter of unexpected pain. Was tomorrow so near?

“I’m going to say what’s in my mind,” he said, “and please don’t be angry. I love you, and you know it; but what I’m going to say isn’t because of that—it’s because I want you to be happy.”

Milly nodded. She was afraid she was going to cry.

“I don’t think your husband’s any good,” he said.

She looked up.

“You don’t know him,” she exclaimed quickly. “You can’t judge.”

“I can judge from what he did to you. I think this shell-shock business is all a plain lie. And what does it matter what he did five years ago?”

“It matters to me,” cried Milly. She felt herself growing a little angry. “You can’t take that away from him. He acted brave.” Driscoll nodded.

“That’s true. But other men were brave.”

“You weren’t,” she said scornfully. “You just said you were scared to death—and when you said it all the people laughed. Well, nobody laughed at Jim—they gave him a medal because he wasn’t afraid.”

When Milly had said this she was sorry, but it was too late now. At his next words she leaned forward in surprise.

“That was a lie too,” said Bill Driscoll slowly. “I told it because I wanted them to laugh. I wasn’t even in the attack.”

He stared silently down the hill.

“Well then,” said Milly contemptuously, “how can you sit here and say things about my husband when—when you didn’t even—”

“It was only a professional lie,” he said impatiently. “I happened to be wounded the night before.”

He stood up suddenly.

“There’s no use,” he said. “I seem to have made you hate me, and that’s the end. There’s no use saying any more.”

He stared down the hill with haunted eyes.

“I shouldn’t have talked to you here,” he cried. “There’s no luck here for me. Once before I lost something I wanted, not a hundred yards from this hill. And now I’ve lost you.”

“What was it you lost,” demanded Milly bitterly. “Another girl?”

“There’s never been any other girl but you.”

“What was it then?”

He hesitated.

“I told you I was wounded,” he said. “I was. For two months I didn’t know I was alive. But the worst of it was that some dirty sneak thief had been through my pockets, and I guess he got the credit for a copy of German orders that I’d just brought in. He took a gold watch too. I’d pinched them both off the body of a German officer out between the lines.”

Mr. and Mrs. William Driscoll were married the following spring and started off on their honeymoon in a car that was much larger than the King of England’s. There were two dozen vacant places in it, so they gave many rides to tired pedestrians along the white poplar-lined roads of France. The wayfarers, however, always sat in the back seat as the conversation in front was not for profane ears. The tour progressed through Lyons, Avignon, Bordeaux, and smaller places not in the guidebook.