sophistry! It's
so perfectly disguised that I seldom recognize it except at night when
I lie awake, and it sits on my bed, without its becoming mask.

Being the Becketts' adviser-in-chief, and having his lungs full of ozone
every day should be enough to account for Brian's improvement.
Yet--well, I can't help thinking that he takes a lot more trouble than
he need for Dierdre O'Farrell. Oh, not that he's _in love_! Such an idea
is ridiculous, but he's interested and sorry for the girl, because she
goes about with a chip on her shoulder, defying the world to knock it
off. He won't admit that it's the fault of her outlook on the world, and
that the poor old world isn't to blame at all.

What if he knew the truth about that brother and sister? Naturally I
can't tell him, of all people on earth, and they take advantage of my
handicap. They've used their time well, in my absence, when they had
Brian to themselves. He had his doubts of Julian, but the creature has
sung himself into my blind brother's heart. From what I hear, the three
have spent most of their time at the piano in the private _salon_ which
the Becketts invited the O'Farrells to engage.

Now, as I write, we are making our headquarters in Compiegne, sleeping
there, and sightseeing by day on what they call the "Noyon Front."

After Rheims and before Noyon we stopped three days in Paris instead of
one, as we'd planned, for Mother Beckett was tired. She wouldn't confess
it, but "Father" thought she looked pale. Strange if she had not, after
such experiences and emotions! Sometimes, when I study the delicate old
face, with blue hollows under kind, sweet eyes, I ask myself: "Will she
be able to get through the task she's set herself?" But she is so
quietly brave, not only in fatigue, but in danger, that I answer my own
question: "Yes, she will do it somehow, on the reserve force that kept
her up when Jim died."

The road from Paris, past Senlis, to Compiegne, was even more thrilling
than the road to Nancy and beyond, for this was the way the Germans took
in September, 1914, when they thought the capital was theirs to have and
hold: "_la route de l'Allemagne_" it used to be called, but never will
French lips give it that name again.

Just at first, running out of the city in early morning, things looked
much the same as when starting for Nancy: the unnatural quiet of streets
once crammed with busy traffic for feeding gay Paris; military motors of
all sorts and s