“He is condemned.”
I stood, moodily incredulous, unable to believe that beneath the vital activity of the brain the inevitable, relentless contagion was working in the body. Then I tried to thank her but made a sad botch of it.
“Whatever happens, Toinon,” I said, giving her my address, “remember that I shan’t forget what you’ve done. I shall see that—” She looked at me, so suddenly and so straight that I floundered and stopped. “I meant if ever you were in need—” Still she kept her eyes directly on mine, disdaining a reply and, under that look I stammered: “Forgive me. I’m an ass—but it was kindly meant.”
Then, not knowing what to do, I took off my hat and made her an absurdly exaggerated bow. She shrugged her shoulders and closed the door. Which was no more than I deserved.
* * * * *
At the hotel I found a card from Stephen Brinsmade, offering me a rendezvous for the next day. I wonder if he is behind this transfer to Paris, and what it means?
* * * * *
I have set down as nearly as I can remember the circumstances of my first meeting with my brother after the lapse of years. I do not pretend to judge him for I am not in the mood to formulate judgments. I only know that a great new current of thought flowed into my mind and that I felt an eagerness to encounter again the opposition of his strangely antagonistic and dispassionate mind. As for Toinon, I don’t pretend to sentimentalize her kind. In my experience nothing is further from the truth than the Marguerite Gauthiers of fiction.
The war, after a brief period of the hysterical emotionalism of mob psychology, has shaken down society into much the same order as before. The rear has its pagan side, a revulsion to life, a frantic determination to eat, drink and be merry under the shadow of to-morrow’s realism. There is an outward sobriety and a decent respect for the black democracy of sorrow. Below the surface, revelry is as macabre as ever, for it must compress the passions of a lifetime into a span of hours, and laughter is the hunger for unrealities. A few of Toinon’s class—a very few—have turned Magdalene, some genuinely impelled to service, most of them swayed by a new dramatic loyalty to some man who brings them the new sensations of heroic love.