“How strange to meet you here in Paris so unexpectedly! Your sister, Yvonne, thinks you are with the French Army of Occupation. At least this is the last news I heard of you. Small wonder I have been so interested in watching you for the last few moments. I must unconsciously have realized that I knew you!”
The young officer flushed.
“I wish you had not seen me in these last few minutes. But perhaps you were my good angel, although I was as unaware of your presence as I was at the time you nursed me back to health in the ruined château near your old farmhouse. At least I was preserved from striking an American soldier! I do not see now how I could so far have forgotten myself! Will you wait here a short time until I am able to find him and apologize. I believe the fault was entirely mine, although at the beginning of our conversation I thought he said something discourteous about the French people. No, my sister does not know I am in Paris. I hoped to come out to Versailles tomorrow to see her and her friends and to explain.”
The French officer swung round, only to find the young American soldier standing within a few feet of him.
“I am extremely sorry, sir,” he began, “I believe I was rude, but I have been in a prison camp in Germany for the past few months and I am afraid I have rather lost my nerve. I have been asking a simple question for the past hour until I was under the impression that no one was willing to tell me what I wished to know. After all perhaps no one has understood!”
For a moment, while Lieutenant Fleury was endeavoring to make his own apology, Sally Ashton stood quietly regarding them both.
The following moment she was standing between them.
“Dan Webster, perhaps you will allow me to introduce you to Lieutenant Fleury, since I have the honor of knowing you both. Certainly I never expected to see either of you. Come home with me to Tante and Peggy, won’t you, Dan? They both think you are still a prisoner in Germany, although we have been hoping for word of your release each day.”
Subtly the tones of Sally Ashton’s voice had changed, her manner had grown gentler.
Ever since they were children, because of the close intimacy between their families, she and Dan had known each other. Two years before they had spent the summer in camp together “Behind the Lines” in southern California. Soon after, Dan, who at the time was too young for the draft, had volunteered so that they had not met since then.