ermanently in the house on the avenida Victor
Hugo, after the nuptial ceremony witnessed by a dozen people.

Don Marcelo had had dreams of other things for his daughter--a grand
wedding to which the daily papers would devote much space, a son-in-law
with a brilliant future . . . but ay, this war! Everybody was having his
fondest hopes dashed to pieces every few hours.

He took what comfort he could out of the situation. What more did they
want? Chichi was happy--with a rollicking and selfish happiness which
took no interest in anything but her own love-affairs. The Desnoyers
business returns could not be improved upon;--after the first crisis
had passed, the necessities of the belligerents had begun utilizing
the output of his ranches, and never before had meat brought such high
prices. Money was flowing in with greater volume than formerly, while
the expenses were diminishing. . . . Julio was in daily danger of death,
but the old ranchman was buoyed up by his conviction that his son led
a charmed life--no harm could touch him. His chief preoccupation,
therefore, was to keep himself tranquil, avoiding all emotional storms.
He had been reading with considerable alarm of the frequency with which
well-known persons, politicians, artists and writers, were dying in
Paris. War was not doing all its killing at the front; its shocks were
falling like arrows over the land, causing the fall of the weak, the
crushed and the exhausted who, in normal times, would probably have
lived to a far greater age.

"Attention, Marcelo!" he said to himself with grim humor. "Keep cool
now! . . . You must avoid Friend Tchernoff's four horsemen, you know!"

He spent an afternoon in the studio going over the war news in the
papers. The French had begun an offensive in Champagne with great
advances and many prisoners.

Desnoyers could not but think of the loss of life that this must
represent. Julio's fate, however, gave him no uneasiness, for his son
was not in that part of the front. But yesterday he had received a
letter from him, dated the week before; they all took about that
length of time to reach him. Sub-lieutenant Desnoyers was as blithe and
reckless as ever. They were going to promote him again--he was among
those proposed for the Legion d'Honneur. These facts intensified Don
Marcelo's vision of himself as the father of a general as young as those
of the revolution; and as he contemplated the daubs and sketches around
him, he marvel