."

They were standing on the squared log that made a foot bridge between
the thicketed banks of Little Laurel, and through a heavy mass of clouds
the moon was just emerging into a narrow field of pearl and opal.

Because it was rising and still hung low, its face was not pallid but
rosy, and the top plumes of a single hemlock-clump showed outlined, and
swaying. Elsewhere the sky was still cloud-dark.

"I haven't known you long," Joe Gregory was saying, "and I've always
been a mighty plain, uninteresting sort of man, but if I come back,
there'll be things I've got to say to you." He paused, and there was a
touch of eager hope in his voice as he finished. "The war'll change lots
of things. Maybe it'll change me some, too."

"Don't let it change you too much, Joe," the girl cautioned him, and he
bent forward to assure himself that the light which he thought he saw in
her eyes was real.

CHAPTER XLVIII

Paris by night was a dancer who has taken the veil. Paris by day, when
the siren screamed its air-raid warning, was a bold spirit not cowed but
sobered with a realization of death. Yet today Paris was vibrantly alive
along her boulevards where, despite the shadow, bright currents flowed
and sparkled.

For was not this the Fourth of July, the national day of the sister
republic across the sea? And this afternoon would not the avenues echo
to the tramp of the first marching feet, as columns in khaki swung along
under the flag of the new ally?

Paris had bled as she waited; France had given life and treasure and
made no lament, but now the vanguard of mighty reinforcements had
arrived, and this afternoon, in the welcome poured out upon them, Paris
would voice her quickened spirit of confidence restored and doubt
dispelled.

Along sidewalks, where once the world had come to behold the gaiety and
taste the enchantment, trooped civilian crowds, linking elbows with the
uniformed sleeves of France, of Italy, of Britain, of Belgium and of
Portugal. Everywhere flashed and rang the cheer of a great day, and
everywhere showed the sobering of black with the tunics of horizon blue.
With the fluttering flags went the white of bandages, and with tramp of
feet mingled the stumping of the _blesse's_ crutch.

Boone Wellver had been in Paris a short time only, and tomorrow he was
leaving for England--and then home. He felt that Congress was no longer
his place of first duty--and he meant to resign. Pitched to a tone as
muc