When I read these two letters and thought of Aunt Janie (it was like her, never to refer to the captain she didn’t marry) and dear old Molly, a lump was in my throat. And, though it was a shock, there was only one thing I thought of and that was what a little Spartan my sister was. I rushed out and sent her the following cable:

God bless you. With you from start to finish. Bully for Aunt Janie!

VI

November, Paris
New York

Dear David:

I have been here a month, staying with my cousins, the Barristers. You remember Nina, who was such a wild scatterbrain: well, she has settled down into the most matter-of-fact, quietest little worker in the world. You would never know her. She is up at six each morning and off to her work in the Women’s Auxiliary Corps, has given up all her society interests and looks with scorn upon her old friends. I think she has shamed at least a dozen of her old social set into service work with her point-blank way of saying: “Well, what are you doing in the war?”

At that, it isn’t quite fair, because the country is wonderful. No matter what is asked of it, it gives immediately and impulsively. I’m doing my part to prepare myself for service abroad when the time comes. I know father will oppose, but I have made up my mind and I shall go.

David, there is the loveliest little French woman here as companion to Nina,—a Mademoiselle Duvernoy, and my heart has gone right out to her. Every one adores her and I think it is her influence that has made Nina over. There is some story back of her deep, sad eyes, I know. You will never get me to believe she is not a gentlewoman born and bred. I don’t know when I have gone so impulsively to any one. Just to be with her makes life, the right way of living, the things that do count, seem the simplest things in the world. I loved her from the first day we sat and talked together over the womanhood of France, and I think she was drawn at once to me, for she put out her hand and laid it over mine and said:

“Mademoiselle, you have a very big and beautiful nature. It is the suffering and the responsibilities that will bring it out in you and make you worthy some day to be a great inspiration to a true man. We women are not our best or happiest when we are denied the hard things in life. And that is where life is so different for one in your position, for those who love you can hurt you most.”

She said it so sweetly and her eyes had such understanding and such gentleness in them that I said:

“Mademoiselle Duvernoy, I don’t think I ever wanted anything more in the world; will you really be my friend?”

“I have wanted to from the first,” she said. “Perhaps we can be of help to each other.”

Help her? How can I help her, except by loving her, and every one does that,—but I know what she can mean to me.

Later

I spoke of you to-day, and, to my surprise, she told me that she had crossed on the steamer with you and father. Do you remember her? I am sure you do, for no one can forget her. I have asked her to come with me as my friend and companion, for Nina really doesn’t need her. To my surprise and delight, she answered:

“Mademoiselle Brinsmade, I shall do so with all my heart.”

I do know she is drawn to me, too, for there were tears in her eyes as she said it. I know the Barristers won’t want to let her go, but it is decided between us.

I laid the letter down, too moved to go on. Bernoline with Anne! Every thought that must have been in her heart, I think, came instantly into mine at that moment. Is there any depth of sacrifice and generosity before which her loyal nature would recoil? Never have I felt more deeply the sublimity of sacrifice in woman. How can I find it in my heart to rebel against her evident purpose? For I know that what she has done has been done for my sake in a spirit of self-effacing loyalty to my happiness as she conceives it. Thank heaven that I know at least that she is well and with those who love her. Yet why has she ceased to write me?

* * * * *

Bernoline with Anne! No, I don’t resent it; though I still cannot comprehend it. Why it should be so, I don’t know, yet a feeling of great calm and certainty has come to me since I have known it, that and a feeling of humble reverence before something that shames me in my own tempestuous revolt against the loneliness that has been on me. Good God, how I love her, yet almost without hope, as some dear vision that I have only the right to worship from afar!

* * * * *

Paris

How could I have doubted her for a single moment! I have been to the bank, and there were her letters awaiting me, and on each written directions to hold until my arrival. I tore open the first hurriedly, for the explanation of this mystery. It was there in the first.