'No, I do not wish. You will go back, and marry, and tell your children that the French are a charming nation, but immoral and insincere.'

He shook his head.

'Oh, yes, you will. I hope you will marry, I mean.'

'Perhaps,' said Adrian. 'But that will be millions of years hence, "after the war.

666

'After the war," she echoed. 'Sometimes I am so selfish that I hope it will not end soon because I shall lose you. Oh, que je suis méchante!'

She looked quickly toward him in contrition. But Adrian only smiled anew, and fell again to throwing pebbles at his target, now washed by the little waves of the incoming tide.

'And you?' he asked at length. 'What will you do after the war?'

Anne gave a little shudder.

'Mon ami,' she said gravely, 'you must ask me that question again. At present it frightens me. I have not yet tried to think of an answer.'

'In any case that would be looking into the future, which is forbidden,' she said a moment later, gay again. 'Life for the moment is the motto of our alliance.'

'Liaison mondaine et extra-moderne!' said Adrian laughingly.

'But, as far as you are concerned, mon cher,' she said, laying her hand for a moment on his arm, 'I must take just one glance. Above all things, I do not wish that you should spoil your future because of me. It is part of the terms of the alliance that this should only be an interlude in our lives."

Marché conclu!' said Adrian. 'I never hope to have a better.'

'We have both the spirit of the trifler, the only spirit that makes love bearable,' said Anne. "To all the serious people I have known it brings sorrow to us nothing but delight.'

But after Adrian had gone, she re

lapsed into a melancholy not at all befitting such a love as they had planned that theirs should be. She sat long in silence in her room after her return from the station, staring out over the sea.

'And you, mon cher ami,' she said aloud suddenly, viciously stabbing with a hat-pin the straw hat lying on her knee. 'You do not play quite fair either. When you turned away so abruptly, and said good-bye almost as if you hated me, then I knew

But what she knew she left unsaid. She returned to her old life soon afterwards. It was, indeed, unchanged except that the flirtations had no further part in it. In the autumn Adrian was made Staff-Captain of his Brigade, which made possible two or three flying visits by car. But a settled melancholy had fallen upon Anne, from which his visits scarcely roused her. There were, for the first time, misunderstandings and recriminations. There were even letters in which, forgetful of her rôle, she taunted her lover with tiring of her. It seemed that their love affair was not to escape the sordid ending of the most commonplace intrigue.

In February, Adrian, whose division was helping to hold the strung-out British line, wrote that he had been slightly wounded by a fragment of shrapnel in the shoulder, and was on his way home. He would soon be well, he declared, and was looking forward to a few weeks' convalescence at home, and to being nursed and petted by his mother and sisters.

'Yes,' said Anne viciously, 'and perhaps other people's sisters also.' And in a bitter mood she wrote and wished him a speedy return to health, and told him to remember the contract.

'And if,' she concluded, 'the English miss whom you think worthy should present herself, do not hesitate on my

Follow the terrible days of March, when it really seemed that Germany would succeed in her attempt to engulf France and humanity, and the hearts of the watchers stood still for fear. The postal service collapsed utterly, and for weeks after the first onslaught at St. Quentin there was no word from Adrian. A letter came at last to Anne when she was again by the sea. Their village had been occupied by a Corps Staff, which had apparently attracted German bombing planes, and she had fled with her parents. In it Adrian informed her that he was engaged to be married.

'So, you see,' he wrote, 'I have taken you at your word. I do not feel that I have done you any wrong, and I do not feel that I am doing any wrong to my fiancée. I hope I shall be the best of husbands to her, and who knows whether or not I should have been so to you, even if what we have so often imagined had taken place, and I had met you six years ago? But as somebody very wise said: "Dieu nous a donné le souvenir et personne ne peut le retirer." I am a person with sensibilities perhaps too fine for ordinary wear and tear, and when I write to you in future I shall feel bound to write to you as a friend. But I shall write, and I hope, above all things, that you will answer, and that we shall be kept in mind of the other's joys and sorrows. I do not expect to be married till after the war. I do not think it will be very long now, but God knows which way it is going to end. This is, in any case, the last lover's letter.

"Adieu, chère maitresse que j'ai tant aimée, et que- but that is all there is to be said. Adrian.'

'Et que j'aime encore!' finished Anne in a whisper, and folded up the letter. And on that very day a Great Per

tory, launched a new attack to turn the flank of his adversary. The forces at his disposal for this affair were not overwhelming, but in his pride he trusted to boldness atoning for lack of means. All day long the battle raged in the midst of a horrid waste of shell-holes and mud and water. And before evening the counter-attacks of the defenders had swept all before them, and the Great Personage, looking upon the battle, had to admit the first check since the opening of his great offensive which was to win the

It was not till late July that Adrian Powell returned to France. His wound had been long healed, but on the termination of his convalescence he had been posted to a reserve regiment of cavalry, and had acted as Adjutant for two months. It had needed several letters and a visit to the War Office before he obtained permission to rejoin his regiment. It was, thought his mother and perhaps also his fiancée, somewhat unnecessary zeal on the part of a man who had already served his country well in battle, and who was but lately engaged to be married. Others, they noted, in like circumstances, if they did not try to stay at home, showed no desire to pester the authorities to send them abroad. Himself could not have defined his motives in so doing. Despite his too fine sensibilities, he had a very ordinary workaday sense of duty.

Another few months in England would have nowise shocked it. He knew only that he was obsessed by a feeling of restlessness, and that he desired above all things excitement.

His desires were royally fulfilled. Foch's first blow had been struck before he arrived. On August 8th the second followed, and thenceforward came stroke on stroke, now here, now there, but the heaviest always delivered with the central battering-ram of the First, Third, and Fourth British and First French armies. First French armies. From the day of his rejoining till the day of the armistice he knew scarce an idle moment. Few men love war for its own sake when they are in it, however much they may desire to be in it when they are not. Adrian hated the shriek and crash of a shell or the smack of a machine-gun bullet hitting one of his horses as much as did anyone else. Yet he rejoiced in his activity, and in the fact that he had little time for thinking. So, it seemed to him, would he most quickly become reconciled to the fact that Anne de Wynck was henceforth out of his life. Once that was established in his mind the rest would be easy, for, after all, there is nothing inherently unpleasing in marrying a young lady possessing beauty, brains, and a comfortable income.

It seemed that Anne wished to help him in his task. Her letters were much rarer than of old, and studiously friendly in their tone. Adrian was forced sometimes to smile when she wrote of the war she who in the old days, when love was the only thing that mattered, had never mentioned it in speech or writing. She had much to say of the books she was reading, of the music she was playing, of the exploits of Pépin, her berger alsacien, but very little of her life or of herself. Adrian wrote in the same vein, and

told himself that they were both very wise. He went on leave for Christmas, after the war was won, a Christmas celebrated with something of oldtime ceremony at his father's house, and with a spirit of rejoicing that was truer than the old. As he whirled backward at an average speed of seven miles per hour in the 'Cologne Express,' he felt that now at last he was prepared with serenity to meet his fate.

He found awaiting him a letter from Anne. The Belgian and British postal authorities had tossed it about for a fortnight. The letter differed in tone in no way from five or six preceding letters, but it contained the information that she was shortly returning to Brussels with her parents. They, it seemed, poor souls, were anxious to scrape together the fragments of a business ruined by the war. Of her husband there was no word.

About this time the British military authorities, ever anxious that the moral and intellectual development of the troops should not be neglected, decreed that seventy-two hours' leave might be granted by Divisional Commanders to officers and men to visit 'places of historical interest.' What place, asked many a young officer, was there of greater historical interest than Brussels. What centre more suitable for the study than the Palace Hotel? When soon afterwards Adrian was offered by a relative of his fiancée, who had obtained a command at home, a post on his staff, which he accepted, he determined to make use of this privilege. He wrote to Anne that he would be returning to England in a month's time, and that first he would come to Brussels to say goodbye. Her reply reached him in three weeks. The post was improving.

'I am glad you are coming, and you need have no fears,' ran her letter.

'You will find me now sage comme un image. Such an overwhelming melancholy which I know you will not be vain enough to attribute to your defection has descended upon me lately that I could not be otherwise. Yet it is not altogether an unhappy melancholy, even if a dangerous one. I think I feel things more deeply than I used to, the happy things as well as the sad, but the sad things unfortunately predominate. I play the piano, I sew, I read, I go for walks, but always with a sense of disillusion. And then often I do what used to be forbidden, I look into the future. But when you come I shall be gay, so that you shall not take back with you a feeling of ennui. My mother is looking forward to meeting again "mon charmant ami." Si elle savait! I hope you are flattered.'

Adrian realized with a pang as he mounted the stairs to the flat that prosperity had indeed departed from poor Monsieur and Madame de Florens.' There were no signs of it in the other tenants whom he encountered on his way. But he forgot the outside squalor when he had been shown by a smiling little capless maid into a little parlor with parquet floor so glass-like in its brilliance that it seemed a desecration to tread upon it. There was a huge bowl of pale yellow daffodils on the table that toned down the stiffness of the oak furniture. He turned to the piano and noted with a sudden catch of the breath that Debussy's 'Reflets dans l'Eau' stood open upon it. Then he caught sight of a little Sèvres box that he had given Anne, and next a photograph of her with her wolfdog that had been taken at Deauville for him. Everything in the room seemed to conspire to assail him. He cursed himself for a sentimental fool.

'Bon jour, mon ami!'

Anne had come to the threshold noiselessly. She was dressed for walk

ing, all in black, which accentuated her pallor, with heavy black fox furs, and a little hat of black straw as if in concession to the sunny day. He noted that she looked graver and more fragile than when he had last seen her, and yet more beautiful—a faëry creature, but a faëry all languorous melancholy.

He bent over her hand without speaking.

'I did not expect you so soon,' she said. 'I was going out to take tea with a friend. But you shall take me out instead, if you like. Voulez-vous?'

Adrian noted the 'vous' with inward amusement.

'Yes,' he answered, 'I shall be very glad to come when I have paid my respects to your father and mother.'

'I will get mother now. Father is out.'

She reappeared in a few moments with her mother. Madame de Florens was as glad to see him as ever. He had never asked himself how much she knew. Charming and easy-going soul that she was, it was enough for her that his presence made her daughter happy.

'Where are you staying?' she asked, and when he replied that it was at the Palace, threw up her arms in mock dismay.

'Prenez garde, monsieur!' she cried gayly. 'A dangerous place with dangerous attractions. En effet,' she added, 'I think it will be safer that you return and dine with us, till you are warned of the pitfalls of Brussels.'

'I shall be delighted to come."

Walking through the sunlit streets with Anne, Adrian studied her covertly while Pépin, the wolfdog, strained at his leash and threatened other dogs. She walked delightfully, taking rather long steps for her height, and with a sort of gliding motion. He noted that the tiny lines at the corners of her

mouth had grown a thought deeper, and that her face seemed to bear the marks of physical suffering.

'Have you been ill?' he asked her. 'A little,' she answered. 'But my real trouble is that I have been having some struggles.'

He did not ask what her struggles had been. He waited to see if she would explain of her own accord, and when he saw she was not going to, answered merely:

'I am sorry. Are they over?'
'Yes, they are over now.'

His mind had instantly flown to that ill-tempered warrior, her husband, and after a short pause he asked where he was now. Anne took her hand from her muff, and made a little movement as though waving away something from her.

'Do not speak about him, please.' 'Look,' she went on, 'there is another snow-squall coming up. Shall we take refuge in this patisserie? It is nearly half-past four.'

They went in and chose the most delightful cakes from the counter.

"This beats Deauville. No war on now, is there?' said Adrian.

Anne had recovered her old gayety. She mocked at him and teased him as of old. She even dared to talk of his marriage and of how he would settle down into an English country gentleman, which being she affected to believe resembled Punch's 'John Bull.'

'And what I said to you at Deauville is true after all, mon cher,' she said. 'I can hear you warning your children to beware of the French, and especially of French women. Oh, you will be a model husband and father, I know! I should like to have a peep at you without your knowing.'

He accompanied her to her door and returned to his hotel to dress for dinner. Then once more he ascended the rather

dingy stairs and once more was shown by the little smiling maid into the pleasant salon. Madame de Florens bustled in to welcome him, and told him that Anne was still dressing.

Madame de Florens was a voluble person. She poured out to Adrian in the next ten minutes a flood of reminiscence and gossip. Adrian listened with a smile. He liked her very much, but he did not think it necessary to attend to all she said. The stove beside which he was sitting was very hot, and he had been traveling all the previous night. Small wonder that a pleasant drowsiness descended upon him and that finally he came near to dozing.

And then, suddenly, he was as wide awake as he had ever been in his life. For a moment he thought that either he or his companion must be stark, staring mad. She had been speaking of Anne, and he had suddenly caught the phrase, 'feu son mari'— her late husband.

'What did you say, Madame?' Adrian asked breathlessly.

Madame de Florens was confused. She murmured something to the effect that Anne had said she was not to speak of her husband. She was evidently very afraid of her daughter.

At this precise moment that young lady entered the room. She was wearing a black silk dress of the new narrow cut that had not yet become general in Brussels, with a short V-shaped opening that showed her beautiful neck. Pépin was at her side, and bounded forward to greet Adrian.

'Dinner will not be ready for ten minutes,' said Anne. "The coal is so bad- mais qu'est-ce qu'il y a?' She looked from one face to the other, suddenly aware that something was wrong.

Madame de Florens, now thoroughly frightened, had an inspiration.