ow to what
our disappointment was due, and, as usual, the same cry consoles
us all: "None of these things will change the final result!" and most
people keep silent under the growing conviction that this "may go on
for years."

One thing I really must tell you--not a person mentioned the Lusitania
at the tea-party, which was, I suppose, a handsome effort at
reticence, since the lady of the house was an American, and the
Stars and Stripes, in little, were fluttering over the chimney.

I take note of one remark in your last letter, in reply to mine of May
18. You twit me with "rounding off my periods." I apologize. You must
remember that I earned my bread and salt doing that for years, and
habit is strong. I no longer do it with my tongue in my cheek. My word
for that.

XIV

August 1, 1915

Well, dear girl, not a bit of news to tell you. I have really done nothing
this last month but look at my flowers, superintend the gathering of
my plums, put up a few pots of confiture, mow the lawn, and listen to
the guns, now and then, read the communiques, and sigh over the
disasters in the east and the deadlock at Gallipoli.

At the end of the first year of the war the scene has stretched out so
tremendously that my poor tired brain can hardly take it in. I suppose
it is all clear to the general staff, but I don't know. To me it all looks
like a great labyrinth,--and the Germans are at the gates of Warsaw.
Of course this does not "alter the final result"--when that comes--but it
means more destruction, more land to win back, and, I imagine, such
desolation in Poland as makes even the Belgian disaster look, by
comparison, small.

Oddly enough, while we know that this will brace up the Germans,
fighting all about their borders on invaded territory, it does not effect
the faith of the people here, who have even the courage to turn aside
from their own grief, with tears in their eyes, to pity Poland. What a
price Belgium pays for her courage to be honorable, and at what a
price Poland must accept her independence! Everyone is philosophical
here, but one does not have to be heartless to be that.

I find it ironical that my flowers bloom, that gay humming-birds hover
over my Mas de Perse, that I have enough to eat, that sleep comes
to me, and that the country is so beautiful.

Our dragoons have ridden away--on to the front, I am told, and
silence has settled down on us.

I am well--there ends the history of a mo