"Come here, my friend, and see what you can do to make this child change her mind."
I ran toward him. I saw the flash of Angele's white gown, but when I reached her side, Louis had gone. She awaited me. Somehow she looked like the poppies at twilight, when their petals are folded. . . .
We were there together so long, that at length Louis' voice broke in upon us and startled us. He shouted that he must leave in six hours—that a brother returning to the Front had some claim upon his sister's time. Angele flew to his side, begging him to forgive her selfishness, but he pinched her cheek and laughed at her, brimming over with happiness at the romance for which he claimed he was responsible.
"But you must not take her away until after the war," he pleaded. "I want her here to greet me when I come home. I am a selfish brute, I know, but I would have nothing to return to if my little sister were gone."
I promised him. I would have promised anything that night I was so happy. It did not seem, as I stood in that quiet, leafy garden, with Angele's hand in mine, that there could be pain and anguish in the world—that cannons could be roaring and star shells bursting less than a hundred miles away!
Louis left at daybreak. We drove to Paris with him and to the station. It was a gay morning with a red sun rolling up from the east.
Angele was all smiles and animation, full of eager plans for his next leave. She submitted to his teasing with a laugh, but, for all that, her eyes looked as though they held a world of unshed tears, and I saw her, once or twice, press her lips together as though to choke back the sobs.
The station was full of men returning to the Front. They called eagerly to one another—they compared packages, and boasted of the good times they had had. Louis caught my hand and wrung it. Then he laid Angele's in it.
"She is all I have," he said; "it is fitting I leave her in the care of our beloved ally."
He kissed her and teased her about capturing an American in seven days, saluted us smartly and stalked through the great gate, turning to wave and smile and kiss his hand.