duties; for the
American--

Sitting there alone Audrey felt already the reactions of peace. The war
had torn up such roots as had held her. She was terribly aware, too,
that she had outgrown her old environment. The old days were gone. The
old Audrey was gone; and in her place was a quiet woman, whose hands had
known service and would never again be content to be idle. Yet she knew
that, with the war, the world call would be gone. Not again, for her,
detached, impersonal service. She was not of the great of the earth.
What she wanted, quite simply, was the service of love. To have her own
and to care for them. She hoped, very earnestly, that she would be able
to look beyond her own four walls, to see distress and to help it, but
she knew, as she knew herself, that the real call to her would always be
love.

She felt a certain impatience at herself. This was to be the greatest
day in the history of the world, and while all the earth waited for the
signal guns, she waited for a man who had apparently determined not to
take her back into his life.

She went out onto her small stone balcony, on the Rue Danou, and looked
out to where, on the Rue de la Paix, the city traffic moved with a sort
of sporadic expectancy. Men stopped and consulted their watches. A few
stood along the curb, and talked in low voices. Groups of men in khaki
walked by, or stopped to glance into the shop windows. They, too, were
waiting. She could see, far below, her valet de chambre in his green
felt apron, and the concierge in his blue frock coat and brass buttons,
unbending in the new democracy of hope to talk to a cabman.

Suddenly Audrey felt the same exaltation that had been in Suzanne's
eyes. Those boys below in uniform--they were not tragic now. They were
the hope of the world, not its sacrifice. They were going to live. They
were going to live.

She went into her bedroom and put on her service hat. And as she opened
the door Suzanne was standing outside, one hand upraised. Into the quiet
hallway there came the distant sound of the signal guns.

"C'est l'armistice!" cried Suzanne, and suddenly broke into wild
hysterical sobbing.

All the way down-stairs Audrey was praying, not articulately, but in her
heart, that this was indeed the end; that the grapes of wrath had all
been trampled; that the nations of the world might again look forward
instead of back. And--because she was not of the great of the earth, but
only a loving woman--that