n brought him unexpected encounters with the
elegant students who were going and coming.

"Desnoyers!" some feminine voices would exclaim behind him. "Isn't it
Desnoyers?"

And he would find himself obliged to relieve their doubts, saluting
the ladies who were looking at him as though he were a ghost. They were
friends of a remote epoch, of six months ago--ladies who had admired
and pursued him, trusting sweetly to his masterly wisdom to guide them
through the seven circles of the science of the tango. They were now
scrutinizing him as if between their last encounter and the present
moment had occurred a great cataclysm, transforming all the laws of
existence--as if he were the sole survivor of a vanished race.

Eventually they all asked the same questions--"Are you not going to the
war? . . . How is it that you are not wearing a uniform?"

He would attempt to explain, but at his first words, they would
interrupt him:

"That's so. . . . You are a foreigner."

They would say it with a certain envy, doubtless thinking of their loved
ones now suffering the privations and dangers of war. . . . But the fact
that he was a foreigner would instantly create a vague atmosphere of
spiritual aloofness, an alienation that Julio had not known in the good
old days when people sought each other without considering nationality,
without feeling that disavowal of danger which isolates and concentrates
human groups.

The ladies generally bade him adieu with malicious suspicion. What was
he doing hanging around there? In search of his usual lucky adventure?
. . . And their smiles were rather grave, the smiles of older folk who
know the true significance of life and commiserate the deluded ones
still seeking diversion in frivolities.

This attitude was as annoying to Julio as though it were a manifestation
of pity. They were supposing him still exercising the only function of
which he was capable; he wasn't good for anything else. On the
other hand, these empty heads, still keeping something of their
old appearance, now appeared animated by the grand sentiment of
maternity--an abstract maternity which seemed to be extending to all the
men of the nation--a desire for self-sacrifice, of knowing first-hand
the privations of the lowly, and aiding all the ills that flesh is heir
to.

This same yearning was inspiring Marguerite when she came away from
her lessons. She was advancing from one overpowering dread to another,
accepting the