"Don't you now?"
"Not always. I've had plenty of time to get tired of being grown up."
"Maybe you've been a soldier, and have seen sad things," she suggested. "I was thinking when I first saw you, that you looked like a soldier."
"I wish I had been. Unfortunately I was too disgustingly young, when our only war of my day was on. I mean, the sort of war one could volunteer for."
"In South Africa?"
"Yes. You were a baby in that remote time."
"Oh no, I wasn't. I'm eighteen now, going on nineteen. I was in Paris then, with my stepmother and my sister. We used to hear talk about the war, though we knew hardly any English people."
"So Paris won't be a new experience to you?" said Stephen, disappointed that he had been mistaken in all his surmises.
"I went back to America before I was nine, and I've been there ever since, till a few weeks ago. Oh see, there are the lights of France! I can't help being excited."
"Yes, we'll be in very soon—in about ten minutes."