“Yes, Mademoiselle.”
“Long?”
“I went in with the mobilization.”
“May I ask why you, an American, did that?”
“I could not help myself. It was so much bigger than anything else that had come into my life.”
She thought this over a moment and then nodded as though pleased.
“Ah, yes—the mobilization. It made us very proud of our old French race.”
“It made me proud of my fellow beings!”
“You—an American—felt that?”
“Particularly because I was an American,” I found myself saying, with great warmth. “Oh, I do not sentimentalize war. I have lived it.”