* * * * *
Said good-by to Alan,—a stiff, unsatisfactory parting, in which we acted like puppets, rather than human beings. But that is the Anglo-Saxon of it. He gave me his decoration, to put in father’s hand, and immediately began to joke about the family fetiches, our cave-dweller’s point of view, etc., but I think it was to cover up his emotion. He hates sentimentality.
“Good-by, then—”
“Good-by.”
We had separated as though it were the most casual parting in the world. I wonder if I shall see him again.
X
Bordeaux
My last night on the soil of France. To-morrow I leave for America, and for a brief, incredible two months go back into the life that was once mine, but which to-night is incomprehensible, strange and unreal. I am writing in a little bedroom of the Hotel de l’Europe, fitfully awake, and stirred at the thought of the change as I never had believed possible. I don’t quite know this sudden self that is come so imperiously into my mood. I am older by a dozen years than this morning,—and by a mental decision that I feel deep down in my heart has been made. To-night I believe has brought a crisis in my life. I am not quite sure of my motives; I do not know that I wish to examine them too closely. But to-night the old rebellion against the obvious in life has somehow left me. I am conscious of a new point of view. Acceptance of life, a middle-age philosophy, a yielding to safe currents? Yes, all of these and, perhaps, most of all, just an overpowering homesickness,—the cry in my heart to be back among my own kind. For all of which I have Mr. Brinsmade to thank and the strangest of strange confidences.
* * * * *
It began quite naturally and I had not the slightest suspicion of any serious purpose. We were dining in a papier-maché grotto of the celebrated Chapon Fin when, in the midst of the meal, he looked over at me and said abruptly: