“I think so. But, remember, I’ve been here as long as you have. I’m not the same. I’ve seen things, too.... I can’t judge anything the way I would have judged it back home. I’ll never be able to again.”
They walked to the rue St.-Honoré and presently turned up the rue Boissy-d’Anglas to the quaint, quiet little English tea-room with its soft lights and absurdly carved fireplace and decorations. That fireplace, Bert had once said, looked like the life-work of a lazy man who loved to whittle. There they found a table—there were but three or four—and gave their orders to the thin, very serious Englishwoman who was the only member of the staff of the place who ever became visible. Nobody knew if she were the proprietress or merely a waitress—and nobody cared especially.
“It’s rotten luck,” said Ken.
“Yes.”
“I’ll be stuck at some desk job in Washington. It wouldn’t have been so bad if they had given me a few months at the front—”
“Or if they never had sent you to France at all.”
He looked at her a moment, then shook his head. “No. I wouldn’t have missed these months over here. I’ve really lived; really appreciated being alive. No.... Whatever happens now, nobody can take this away from me....”
“It has been wonderful,” she agreed.
“Just to see it—Paris, the people, the war going on—would be wonderful.... But I believe I’ve done more than merely see. I’ve felt.”
“You’ve seen and felt, Ken, but how much has it changed you?”