As the sun went down, the outlines of the rejoicing city took on the
faint mist-blue of a dream city. It softened the outlines of the Eiffel
tower to strange and fairy-like beauty and gave to the trees in the
Tuileries gardens the lack of definition of an old engraving. And as
if to remind the rejoicing of the price of their happiness, there came
limping through the crowd a procession of the mutilees. They stumped
along on wooden legs or on crutches; they rode in wheeled chairs; they
were led, who could not see. And they smiled and cheered. None of them
was whole, but every one was a full man, for all that.
Audrey cried, shamelessly like Suzanne, but quietly. And, not for the
first time that day, she thought of Chris. She had never loved him, but
it was pitiful that he could not have lived. He had so loved life. He
would have so relished all this, the pageantry of it, and the gayety,
and the night's revelry that was to follow. Poor Chris! He had thrown
everything away, even life. The world perhaps was better that these
mutilees below had given what they had. But Chris had gone like a pebble
thrown into a lake. He had made his tiny ripple and had vanished.
Then she remembered that she was not quite fair. Perhaps she had never
been fair to Chris. He had given all he had. He had not lived well, but
he had died well. And there was something to be said for death. For the
first time in her healthy life she wondered about death, standing here
on the Crillon balcony, with the city gone mad with life below her.
Death was quiet. It might be rather wonderful. She thought, if Clay did
not want her, that perhaps it would be very comforting just to die and
forget about everything.
From beneath the balcony there came again, lustily the shouts of a dozen
doughboys hauling a German gun: "Hail! hail! the gang's all here!
What the hell do we care?
What the hell do we care?
Hail, hail, the gang's all here!
What the hell do we care now?"
Then, that night, Clay came. The roistering city outside had made of her
little sitting-room a sort of sanctuary, into which came only faintly
the blasts of horns, hoarse strains of the "Marseillaise" sung by
an un-vocal people, the shuffling of myriad feet, the occasional
semi-hysterical screams of women.
"Mr. Spencer is calling," said the concierge over the telephone, in his
slow English. And suddenly a tight band snapped which had seemed to bind
Audrey's head all day. She was calm. She was herself again. Life was
very wonderful; peace was very wonderful. The dear old world. The good
old world. The kind, loving, tender old world, which separated people
that they might know the joy of coming together again. She wanted to
sing, she wanted to hang over her balcony and teach the un-vocal French
the "Marseillaise."