. What next!

"Life has changed in a fortnight," he continued. "It seems as if we were
living in another planet; our former achievements are not appreciated.
Others, most obscure and poor, those who formerly had the least
consideration, are now promoted to the first ranks. The refined man of
complex spirituality has disappeared for who knows how many years!
. . . Now the simple-minded man climbs triumphantly to the top, because,
though his ideas are limited, they are sure and he knows how to obey. We
are no longer the style."

Desnoyers assented. It was so; they were no longer fashionable. None
knew that better than he, for he who was once the sensation of the day,
was now passing as a stranger among the very people who a few months
before had raved over him.

"Your reign is over," laughed Argensola. "The fact that you are a
handsome fellow doesn't help you one bit nowadays. In a uniform and with
a cross on my breast, I could soon get the best of you in a rival
love affair. In times of peace, the officers only set the girls of the
provinces to dreaming; but now that we are at war, there has awakened in
every woman the ancestral enthusiasm that her remote grandmothers used
to feel for the strong and aggressive beast. . . . The high-born dames
who a few months ago were complicating their desires with psychological
subtleties, are now admiring the military man with the same simplicity
that the maid has for the common soldier. Before a uniform, they feel
the humble and servile enthusiasm of the female of the lower animals
before the crests, foretops and gay plumes of the fighting males. Look
out, master! . . . We shall have to follow the new course of events or
resign ourselves to everlasting obscurity. The tango is dead."

And Desnoyers agreed that truly they were two beings on the other side
of the river of life which at one bound had changed its course. There
was no longer any place in the new existence for that poor painter of
souls, nor for that hero of a frivolous life who, from five to seven
every afternoon, had attained the triumphs most envied by mankind.

CHAPTER III

THE RETREAT

War had extended one of its antennae even to the avenue Victor Hugo. It
was a silent war in which the enemy, bland, shapeless and gelatinous,
seemed constantly to be escaping from the hands only to renew
hostilities a little later on.

"I have Germany in my own house," growled Marcelo Desnoyers.

"Germany" was Dona Elen