Boone Wellver had been in Paris a short time only, and tomorrow he was leaving for England—and then home. He felt that Congress was no longer his place of first duty—and he meant to resign. Pitched to a tone as much deeper than feud hatreds as the bay of artillery is deeper than rifle-fire, the voice which called for vengeance rang in his ears, and his hands ached for the feel of the musket.
He would have preferred that today, his last in Paris, should have been left untrammelled. He wanted to drift with the laughing crowds between the chestnut trees and to return the gay salutation of eyes that gleamed the more brightly because they had been washed with tears. He wanted to lose himself in that general picture which portrayed the spirit of France so simply and gloriously valiant that, as one laughed, one felt a catch in the throat for the background of tragedy against which all the brightness was painted.
But a requirement of civility had robbed him of that full liberty and left him no choice but to follow the instructions which had been contained in a letter from a New York member of the House of Representatives.
"If you have the opportunity in Paris," his colleague had written, "my wife and I wish very much that you would look up some close friends of ours.
"They are a little group of New York women who, with some reconstruction unit, have been doing worth-while work in stricken territories of France and Belgium. Our particular friend is Mrs. L. N. Steele, and while I can't direct you to her, at the enclosed address they can give you greater particulars. I understand they are occasionally in Paris, and, if so—" Boone had groaned impatiently, then had dutifully made inquiries, with the result that at noon today he was to meet and lunch with a party including his friend's friend.
Now he reluctantly made his way along the thronged streets to the designated restaurant in the Rue de Rivoli.
Even of her grim necessity, Paris had made a decorative virtue. The pasted-paper designs on the shop windows—put there to prevent bomb-shattered panes from flying dangerously—seemed to have had no other purpose than the expression of their designers' originality and temperament. The piled sand-sacks that buttressed monuments and arches had a certain deftness of arrangement that escaped the unsightly.
Boone crossed the Place de la Concorde—where once the guillotine had stood—and turned under the arches, looking at the signs.
He entered a restaurant that was, today, crowded, looking vaguely about him, and with a shepherding urbanity of deportment the head waiter came forward to his assistance.
Boone paused, still searching the tables across the colour scraps which two colours always dominated—horizon-blue and mourning black.