titude. Perhaps he had loved her as no other man had.

Her eyes, with an irresistible desire for comparison, sought Julio's,
admiring his youthful grace and distinction. The image of Laurier, heavy
and ordinary, came into her mind as a consolation. Certainly the officer
whom she had seen at the station when saying good-bye to her brother,
did not seem to her like her old husband. But Marguerite wished to
forget the pallid lieutenant with the sad countenance who had passed
before her eyes, preferring to remember him only as the manufacturer
preoccupied with profits and incapable of comprehending what she was
accustomed to call "the delicate refinements of a chic woman." Decidedly
Julio was the more fascinating. She did not repent of her past. She did
not wish to repent of it.

And her loving selfishness made her repeat once more the same old
exclamation--"How fortunate that you are a foreigner! . . . What a
relief to know that you are safe from the dangers of war!"

Julio felt the usual exasperation at hearing this. He came very near to
closing his beloved's mouth with his hand. Was she trying to make fun of
him? . . . It was fairly insulting to place him apart from other men.

Meanwhile, with blind irrelevance, she persisted in talking about
Laurier, commenting upon his achievements.

"I do not love him, I never have loved him. Do not look so cross! How
could the poor man ever be compared with you? You must admit, though,
that his new existence is rather interesting. I rejoice in his brave
deeds as though an old friend had done them, a family visitor whom I had
not seen for a long time. . . . The poor man deserved a better fate. He
ought to have married some other woman, some companion more on a level
with his ideals. . . . I tell you that I really pity him!"

And this pity was so intense that her eyes filled with tears, awakening
the tortures of jealousy in her lover. After these interviews, Desnoyers
was more ill-tempered and despondent than ever.

"I am beginning to realize that we are in a false position," he said one
morning to Argensola. "Life is going to become increasingly painful. It
is difficult to remain tranquil, continuing the same old existence in
the midst of a people at war."

His companion had about come to the same conclusion. He, too, was
beginning to feel that the life of a young foreigner in Paris was
insufferable, now that it was so upset by war.

"One has to keep showing passports all the