thout her, already begun to be
easier?"

It had. I began to take pleasure in seeing my friends; to look forward
to the Newport season, to the international tennis, to the golf
championship at Ekwanok, to the thousand and one things that make for
the happiness of a butterfly's summer.

After a month of Newport, days passed with only hurried thoughts of
Lucy. Chance mention of her name gave me no uneasiness; they affected
my heart, like sudden trumpets, but I knew that my face had become an
inscrutable mask, and that my voice was in perfect control. Those who
had thought that there was something between us began to think
differently.

And then, after days of suspense, surmise, and real consternation, the
legs of civilization seemed to have been knocked from under it, and the
greatest nations of Europe flew at each other.

Now indeed there seemed an easy way to the year's end. The Germans
rolled through Belgium and into France, outraging humanity. It looked
as if they would roll right into Paris, and sow salt where the world's
first city had stood.

I rushed up to Bar Harbor to tell my parents that I was going to France
to enlist in the foreign legion. Oh, how swiftly the time would fly, I
thought. That I might get crippled or killed never occurred to me. I
thought only that having failed at everything else, I must obviously be
possessed of military genius. I pictured myself climbing the bloody
ladder of promotion to high command and winning the gratitude of that
country which next to my own I love the most.

My mother, to whom I first broached the news, did not cry or make a
fuss. But I saw that I had distressed her terribly.

"It isn't our war," she said; "and what use will one more enlisted man
be to _them_? And besides, my dear, _only_ sons are always the first
ones to get hurt; only sons and men whose families are dependent upon
them. But . . ." and here she gave me a wonderful look . . . "I think
I know why you want to go. And that makes me very proud."

"I think you _do_ know, Mumsey," I said. "It's because we'd rather get
hurt trying to do something worth while, than go on the way we've
always gone on, amounting to nothing, and disappointing everybody."

Then she got me in her arms, and cried over me a little.

My father, as usual, took my decision with the most good-natured
indifference.

"Fine experience," he said, "for any man that's free to go. Makes me
wish I were younger and witho