"No----but--."
"Get well, my boy--and these silly introspective fancies will leave
you--Self analysis all the time for those who sit still--they imagine
that they matter to the Bon Dieu as much as a Corps d'Armée--!"
"You are right, Duchesse, that is why I said Miss Sharp--my
typist--probably thinks me a poor creature--she gets at my thoughts when
I dictate."
"You must master your thoughts----"
And then with a total change of subject she remarked.
"Thou art not in love, Nicholas?"
I felt a hot flush rise to my face--What an idiotic thing to do--more
silly than a girl--Again how I resent physical weakness reacting on my
nerves.
"In love!"--I laughed a little angrily--"With whom could I possibly be
in love, chère amie?! You would not suggest that Odette or Coralie or
Alice could cause such an emotion!"
"Oh! for them perhaps no--they are for the senses of men--they are the
exotic flowers of this forcing time--they have their uses--although I
myself abhor them as types--but--is there no one else?"
"Solonge de Clerté?--Daisy Ryven?--both with husbands--."
"Not as if that prevented things" the Duchesse announced
reflectively--"Well, well--Some of my blessés show just your symptoms,
Nicholas, and I discover almost immediately it is because they are in
love--with the brain--with the imagination you must understand--that is
the only dangerous kind--. When it is with a pretty face alone--a good
dose and a new book helps greatly."
"There would be no use in my being in love, Duchesse--"
"It would depend upon the woman--you want sympathy and a guiding
hand--Va!--"
Sympathy and a guiding hand!
"I liked ruling and leading when I was a man--"
"----We all have our ups and downs--I like my own bed--but last night
an extra batch of blessés came in--and I had to give it up to one
whose back was a mass of festers--he would have lain on the floor
else--. What will you--hein?--We have to learn to accommodate
ourselves to conditions, my son."
Suddenly the picture of this noble woman's courage came to me vividly,
her unvarying resourcefulness--her common sense--her sympathy with
humanity--her cheerfulness--I never heard her complain or repine, even
when fate took her only son at Verdun--Such as these are the glory of
France--and Coralie and Odette and Alice seemed to melt into
nothingness--.
"The war will be finished this autumn--" she told me presently--"and
then our difficult time will begin--. Quarrels for all the world--Not
good fighting--But you will live to see a Renaissance, Nicholas--and so
prepare for it."