“There, Captain Ware. Will you behave now?”
Ken laughed. “Andree is always very disagreeable. I don’t see how I endure her.”
She nodded. “Yes. I am mos’ disagree-able.” She accented the last syllable quaintly. “It is bicause I do not like you.”
“Mademoiselle is very much interested in America,” said Maude.
“And Monsieur le capitaine he tell me so ver’ leetle.”
“America is a large country. It has a hundred million of population. The Woolworth Building is sixty stories high. Everybody owns an automobile and goes to the movies. Baseball is the national game....”
“And ever’ man ees marry and ees faithful to his wife,” interrupted Andree, “and all are ver’ sérieux and mos’ religious, and they are asham’ when they love. I know! I have study monsieur.” She laughed with childish gaiety. “Oh, mademoiselle, it mus’ be ver’ droll.... Regard them—they are born, these Americans, they become ver’ rich, they marry, they die—but they never live. It is that I believe they are afraid to live....”
“Yes, mademoiselle,” said Maude, “you have hit on something there. We are afraid to live, all of us. We want to live. We want a great happiness, but we are afraid of it. You can’t understand us better than we can understand you.... You have learned to live and be unafraid. We have not learned to get the best out of life, and our greatest terror is of our neighbors’ tongues.... It has been wonderful for me to come to your country and to see....”
“And has mademoiselle really seen?” asked Andree, her eyes on Maude’s face.
Maude hesitated. “I have tried to see, and I think I have understood a little. I have changed. I am not the same.... No, I am not the same girl at all who landed in France a few months ago.”