“Anywhere, so long as there is food I don’t have to cook myself.... I’ve been living on things out of cans—except when the officers’ mess had something particularly good and sent some over.”
“It hasn’t hurt you a bit.... You look mighty well.” He was thinking that she did look very well, indeed. Not exactly beautiful, but satisfyingly good-looking—the way he liked to see a girl look. A fellow might be proud to be seen with her. She showed class....
“How about the Continental?” he asked.
“I’d like it. I’ve never eaten there.”
They passed out of the hotel and strolled up the rue de Rivoli to the rue Royale, and then dodged careless taxi-cabs to cross the broad avenue which stretched with an air of pride to the face of the Madeleine. Two or three American officers were loitering about the entrance to the Continental, and Ken experienced a sense of satisfaction as he became conscious of their surreptitious stares of admiration at his companion.... They traversed the court and entered the big dining-room which stretched along the rue de Rivoli and through whose windows one may look out upon the Place de la Concorde and across the river to the Palais Legislatif. The occupants of the room were mostly Americans—officers, officials of the Red Cross, and women of that organization and the Y. M. C. A.
“What have you been doing? Tell me all the news,” Maude said, as they seated themselves at a table close to the windows.
“I?... Working as usual, and there isn’t any news. Never come to the war if you want news of the war. I knew a lot more about it when I was back in Detroit than I do in Paris.”
“Our division was full of rumors of a big American offensive.”
“And Paris is full of rumors of a big German offensive. It was to have started on the fourth of July, but now it has been postponed to the fourteenth—Bastille Day.... You can hear anything.”
“I think something is going to happen. The Blue Devils are up the other side of Meaux. I’ve seen them. Everybody tells me their presence is a sign that something is going to happen.”