“That is different altogether. There would be no reason why I shouldn’t marry him then.”
“But I tell you, it is the same. Behol’! he loves me so ver’ much, and one day he does not love me bicause the war is done and he mus’ go home, and it is not possible for him to carry me weeth him.... The theeng is ended. It is as if I were dead—as I should desire it to be. The love was the same as if I have marry him.... He would then nevair be weeth me any more. I would be as if I were not.... And he would have taken no harm.... To say that he would be harmed is to say that to love a man more than any other theeng in the worl’ is to harm him, and to say that, mademoiselle, is impie—blasphématoire—to say a theeng which is an insult to God.... No!... No!... You make a wrong.... Because he have love’ then he is better—not more wicked.... I say to you, mademoiselle, that the love like I have for Monsieur Ware makes to keep him from a sin. I know.”
Maude’s eyes were not dry. She was listening to a thing that rang with truth and with goodness. She saw what she had never been able to perceive before, and it showed her that Kendall Ware could take no harm from Andree, let their relations be what they might, for Andree was good, with a simplicity and a faith and a purity greater and better than any she had ever known. American as she was, reared upon the traditions of Plymouth Rock, which are as unbending as the laws of the Medes and Persians, she perceived the truth, saw that to judge is a power withheld from mortals and jealously guarded by God....
“My dear!... My dear!...” she said, tremulously. “I—Can you forgive me?... You are right—right. Nobody could be harmed by you.... You are sweet and—and wonderfully good....”
Andree smiled wanly. “So we need speak no more. We have done. There remains but one little thing, mademoiselle. You love thees yo’ng man, and I love thees yo’ng man.... He loves me now, and until I am dead I shall keep him—keep him.... I shall make to fight for him as I can.... But I am sorry that it mus’ make you sad—if I can keep him. I am ver’, ver’ sorry.... Good-by, mademoiselle, we shall not be friend’—no, that ees not possible—and one of us mus’ be ver’ sad.... I mus’ pray that it shall not be myself....”
“Good-by,” said Maude, extending her hand.
Andree turned and walked with quaintly stiff tread and daintily erect body out of the dining-room. Maude ascended to her room to think, to readjust herself.... Her state of confusion was almost as great as Kendall Ware’s. She was conscious of her own inadequacy and of her inability to pierce to the true heart of events and see them as they would be seen by a mind at once perfect in logic and perfect in purity.... But, in spite of prejudices bred into her being from youth, she could not see Andree as otherwise than right, Andree as untainted by evil ... and it seemed a thing impossible that Kendall Ware could have been made one whit unworthier by any contact with her....
CHAPTER XXV
Kendall Ware went to his office on September 1st just as he went to it on any other day, anticipating a day like a hundred of its predecessors had been. He enjoyed the walk through the clear sunny air of Paris and felt not the slightest foreboding of heavy events to come. Fifteen minutes after his arrival the day had taken upon itself the importance of marking the close of an epoch in his life.... He was ordered to report himself in Brest on the morning of September 4th to board the first returning transport for America.
The order partook of the essentials of a calamity. It came so unexpectedly, with such sudden shock, that he did not sense immediately the full meaning of it nor what it involved. In the beginning he saw only the misfortune of being sent home, of being removed from proximity to the war. That alone was enough to give him keenest distress, but as he returned to his desk and sat staring gloomily at the wall before him this first effect was swallowed up and lost forever by the inrush of cold dread of the major consequences of his enforced departure.