Brand took his wife’s hand and stroked it in his big paw.
“All this is temporary and the work of the Old Men steeped in the old traditions which led to war. We must wait for them to die. Then out of the agony of the world’s boyhood will come the new revelation.”
Elsa clasped her hands and leaned forward, looking across the lake in the Bois de Boulogne.
“I would like to live long enough to be sure of that,” she said, eagerly. “If we have children, my husband, perhaps they will listen to our tales of the war as Franz and I read about wolves and goblins in our fairy-tales. The fearfulness of them was not frightening, for we knew we were safe.”
“God grant that,” said Brand, gravely.
“But I am afraid!” said Elsa. She looked again across the lake, so blue under the sky, so golden in sunlight; and shivered a little.
“You are cold!” said Brand.
He put his arms about her as they sat side by side, and her head drooped upon his shoulder and she closed her eyes, like a tired child.
They went to the opera that night and I refused their invitation to join them, protesting that they would never learn to know each other if a third person were always present. I slipped away to see Pierre Nesle, and found him at an office in a street somewhere off the Rue du Louvre, which was filled with young men, whose faces I seemed to have seen before under blue shrapnel helmets above blue tunics. They were typewriting as though serving machine-guns, and folding up papers while they whistled the tune of “Madelon.” Pierre was in his shirt-sleeves, dictating letters to a poilu in civil clothes.
“Considerable activity on the Western front, eh?” he said when he saw me.