"We met—I met him—in Paris, the very first week. He had gone over there in the beginning as a correspondent. Then he had come all the way back to America and had enlisted for service. He hated it, as every intelligent man did. But he had to do it, he said. We—liked each other right away. I'd never met a man like that before. I didn't know there were any. Oh, I suppose I did know; but they had never come within my range. He had only a second-lieutenancy. There was nothing of the commander about him. He always said so. He used to say he had never learned to 'snap into it' properly. You know what I mean? He was thirty-seven. Winnie Steppler introduced us. She had known him in his Chicago cub reporter days. He went to New York, later. Well, that first week, when I was waiting to be sent out, he and Winnie and I—she met me in Paris, you know, when I came—went everywhere together and it was glorious. I can't tell you. Paris was being shelled but it refused to be terrorised. The streets and the parks and the restaurants were packed. You've no idea what it was, going about with him. He was like a boy about things—simple things, I mean—a print in a window, or a sauce in a restaurant, or a sunset on the Bois. We used to laugh at nothing—foolish, wonderful, private jokes like those families have that are funny to no one outside the family. The only other person I'd ever known like that was a boy at school when I went to Armour. I haven't seen him since I was eighteen, and he's an important person now. But he had that same quality. They call it a sense of humour, I suppose, but it's more than that. It's the most delightful thing in the world, and if you have it you don't need anything else.... Four months later he was wounded. Not badly. He was in the hospital for six weeks. In that time I didn't see him. Then he went back into it but he wasn't fit. We used to write regularly. I don't know how I can make you understand how things were—things——"
Charley looked up at her. "I know what you mean. The—the state of mind that people got into over there—nice people—nice girls. Is that what you mean?"
"Yes. Do you know?"
"Well, I can imagine——"
"No, you can't. The world was rocking and we over there were getting the full swing of it. It seemed that all the things we had considered so vital and fundamental didn't matter any more. Life didn't count. A city to-day was a brick-heap to-morrow. Night and day were all mixed up. Terror and work. Exhaustion and hysteria. A lot of us were girls—women, I mean—who had never known freedom. Not license—freedom. Ordinary freedom of will, or intellect, or action. Men, too, who had their noses to the grindstone for years. You know there's a lot more to war than just killing, and winning battles, and patching people up. It does something to you—something chemical and transforming—after you've been in it. The reaction isn't always noble. I'm just trying to explain what I mean. There were a lot of things going around—especially among the older and more severe looking of us girls. It's queer. There was one girl—she'd been a librarian in some little town up in Michigan. She told me once that there were certain books they kept in what they called 'The Inferno,' and only certain people could have them. They weren't on the shelves, for the boys and girls, or the general public. When she spoke of them she looked like a librarian. Her mouth made a thin straight line. You could picture her sitting in the library, at her desk, holding that pencil they use with a funny little rubber stamp thing attached to it, and refusing to allow some school-girl to take out 'Jennie Gerhardt.' She was discharged and sent home for being what they called promiscuous.... I just wanted you to know how things were.... He got three days' leave. Winnie Steppler was in Paris at the time. I was to try for leave—I'd have gone A. W. O. L. if I hadn't got it—and we three were to meet there. Winnie had a little two-room flat across the river. She'd been there for almost a year, you know. She made it her headquarters. The concierge knew me. When I got there Robert was waiting for me. Winnie had left a note. She had been called to Italy by her paper. I was to use her apartment. We stayed there together.... I'm not excusing it. There is no excuse. They were the happiest three days of my life—and always will be.... There are two kinds of men, you know, who make the best soldiers. The butcher-boy type with no nerves and no imagination. And the fine, high-strung type that fears battle and hates war and who whips himself into courage and heroism because he's afraid he'll be afraid.... He hated to go back, though he never said so.... He was killed ten days later.... I went to Switzerland for a while when.... Winnie was with me.... She was wonderful. I think I should have died without her.... I wanted to at first.... But not now. Not now."
Stillness again. You heard only the child's breathing, gentle, rhythmical.
Aunt Charlotte's wavering tremulous forefinger traced circles round and round on her knee—round and round. The heavy black brows were drawn into a frown. She looked an age-old seeress sitting there in her black. "Well." She got up slowly and came over to the crib. She stood there a moment. "It's a brave lie, Lottie. You stick to it, for her. A topsy-turvy world she's come into. Perhaps she'll be the one to work out what we haven't done—we Thrift girls. She's got a job ahead of her. A job."
Lottie leaned forward in the darkness. "I'll never stand in her way. She's going to be free. I know. I'll never hamper her. Not in word, or look, or thought. You'll see."
"You probably will, Lottie. You're human. But I won't be here to see. Not I. And I'm not sorry. I've hardly been away from the spot where I was born, but I've seen the world. I've seen the world.... Well...."
She went toward the door with her slow firm step, putting each foot down flat; along the hall she went, her black silk skirts making a soft susurrus. Lottie rose, opened a window to the sharp spring air. Then, together, she and Charley tiptoed out, stopping a moment, hand in hand at the crib. The nursery room was quiet except for the breathing of the child.