They got into a taxi to drive to the Majestic, and on the way she forgot politics and put. her hand in his. They danced together in the onyx-lined ballroom; a gay and festive scene, with half the men and many of the women wearing uniforms. They too had suffered, and been under strain; they too needed relaxation from heavy duties, and it wasn't fair to blame them for dancing. But Lanny was haunted by the faces of the angry workers; he was haunted by the millions of children who were growing up stunted and deformed, because of things which these dancing ladies and gentlemen had done and were still doing.
The young English girl, with soft brown hair and merry eyes and disposition, was pleasant to hold in your arms. Lanny held her for an hour, dancing with no one else; she made plain that she liked him, and he had got the impression that she would be his for the asking. So many of the women were in a reckless mood, in these days of deliverance from anxieties too greatly prolonged. Lanny couldn't very well say to her: “I've had an unhappy love affair, and I've sworn off the sex business for a while.” What he said was: “Don't you think maybe your chief could do something with Lloyd George, if he told him about this meeting, and what a fury the people are in? Really, you know, it's a very bad state of affairs!”
V
Lieutenant Jerry Pendleton showed up in Paris, having got a week's leave. He had won promotion in the Argonne Forest by the method of being luckier than other sergeants of his outfit. In his new uniform he looked handsome and dignified, and Lanny at first thought he was the same gay and buoyant red-head from whom he had parted back at Camp Devens. But soon he noticed that Jerry had a tendency to fall silent, and there would come a brooding, somber look. Apparently going to war did something to a man. Lanny had been expecting to be entertained with accounts of hairbreadth 'scapes i' the imminent deadly breach; but his former tutor said: “Let's not talk about it, kid. All I want is to go home and try to forget.”
“Aren't you going down to see Cerise?”
“I haven't enough time.”
Lanny knew that wasn't true, for Jerry could have taken the night express and been in Cannes in the morning. The youth let the subject drop; but later, after he had told about his misadventure with Gracyn in Connecticut, the lieutenant warmed up and revealed what was troubling his mind. “The plain truth is, I just don't like the French. I'm sore at the whole damn country.”
“What have they done to you?”
“It's just that we're so different, I guess. I'm always stumbling on things I dislike. I realize I don't know Cerise very well, and I'm never going to be allowed to know her until I've married her; and then what will I find out?”
“My mother married a Frenchman, and they were very happy.”