g here. These people have had an awfully rough time; can't
you admire their pluck?"

"Oh, yes, I do! It's awkward for me, though." Claude pulled off
his coat and began to brush his hair vigorously. "I guess I've
always been more afraid of the French than of the Germans. It
takes courage to stay, you understand. I want to run."

"But why? What makes you want to?"

"Oh, I don't know! Something in the house, in the atmosphere."

"Something disagreeable?"

"No. Something agreeable."

David laughed. "Oh, you'll get over that!"

They had tea in the garden, English fashion--English tea, too,
Mlle. Claire informed them, left by the English officers.

At dinner a third member of the family was introduced, a little
boy with a cropped head and big black eyes. He sat on Claude's
left, quiet and shy in his velvet jacket, though he followed the
conversation eagerly, especially when it touched upon his brother
Rene, killed at Verdun in the second winter of the war. The
mother and sister talked about him as if he were living, about
his letters and his plans, and his friends at the Conservatoire
and in the Army. Mlle. Claire told Gerhardt news of all the girl
students he had known in Paris: how this one was singing for the
soldiers; another, when she was nursing in a hospital which was
bombed in an air raid, had carried twenty wounded men out of the
burning building, one after another, on her back, like sacks of
flour. Alice, the dancer, had gone into the English Red Cross and
learned English. Odette had married a New Zealander, an officer
who was said to be a cannibal; it was well known that his tribe
had eaten two Auvergnat missionaries. There was a great deal more
that Claude could not understand, but he got enough to see that
for these women the war was France, the war was life, and
everything that went into it. To be alive, to be conscious and
have one's faculties, was to be in the war.

After dinner, when they went into the salon, Madame Fleury asked
David whether he would like to see Rene's violin again, and
nodded to the little boy. He slipped away and returned carrying
the case, which he placed on the table. He opened it carefully
and took off the velvet cloth, as if this was his peculiar
office, then handed the instrument to Gerhardt.

David turned it over under the candles, telling Madame Fleury
that he would have known it anywhere, Rene's wonderful Amati,
almost too exquisite in tone for the concert hall, like