kendall had paid little attention to andree’s assertion that she had seen maude knox in paris, yet on monday he received a petit bleu from her informing him that she was again at the h?tel wagram and would be delighted to have him call that evening if he were free. at his first reading of the note maude knox seemed to him an intrusion. somehow be rather resented her existence because, subconsciously, he knew that association with her was going to be disquieting. it would give rise to argument within himself and to speculations upon the future which he would have liked to avoid. he was satisfied and as happy as he had ever been in his life—and maude was a complication. if maude knox had been less important in his life he would have welcomed her more heartily.
however, as he thought more and more of her presence, he found himself desiring greatly to see her. there was something sympathetic and dependable about her, something that he could understand and approve. she was american, thoroughly american. yes, by all means, he wished to see her, but he would hold himself in restraint. they should not become at all personal, and he would watch the conversation carefully to see that it did not turn any unexpected corners or wander down lanes ending in disagreeable obstacles to be cleared.
“there’s no reason why i shouldn’t be decent to her,” he told himself, speciously. “she’s probably lonesome, and we are both americans....” he remembered the hour or so he had spent with her in montreuil, and how he had come away from her in a state of perplexity, wondering if it were possible for a man to love two women at the same time.... “it isn’t that,” he told himself. “i love andree and nobody but andree ... but that’s no reason i shouldn’t see maude. anyhow, she’ll be here only a day or so....”
the truth of the matter was that, without realizing it, kendall did not trust himself. he was afraid that a thing might happen which he was in a queer sort of way half willing should happen—that he might fall in love with maude knox or that he might realize in her presence that he actually was in love with her. it was a singular position. undoubtedly he loved andree—but how? that he did not ask himself. he loved her, he had a sort of reverence for her, and he had besides a real friendship for her, but—he would inevitably have reached that but if he had allowed himself to analyze his love for her.... a man may have one child and love it with a love which he fancies is boundless and exclusive. he may believe that every fraction of the love he has to give belongs to that child, and he may resent the coming of a second child and look upon it as an interloper. but very shortly he finds himself loving the new-comer not one whit less than the first-born.... if love can become miraculous in this manner—inexhaustible like the loaves and fishes—with respect to children, cannot it be the same with respect to women? kendall had seen the first develop in the case of a friend, had heard the friend speak in confidence before the coming of his second child, and had observed him after the passage of a few weeks. he took it as the basis of an argument and, using it as a stepping-stone, reached a conclusion which was disturbing ... but not lacking in a certain allurement.... and what of countries where there are plural marriages? how in the case of a man lawfully possessed of more than one wife? does such a man love all, or only one, or none?...
it was in this uncertain frame of mind that he went to the wagram and called maude knox’s room on the rather difficult house telephone.
“captain ware!...” said her voice. “i hardly expected you, but it’s good of you to have come. i’ll be right down.”
she appeared presently, not in her uniform, but in such a dress as she might have worn at home in america when going out for the evening with a young gentleman.
“what are you doing in paris?” he demanded. “i thought you were busy being the queen of the doughboys.”
“the division’s being moved, i don’t know where, and i was sent in to wait for orders. some of our men marched on the fourth.”
“i suppose it seems good to get back into the world again.”
“anybody can be in paris,” she said. “i’ve been having the time of my life—and, really, i think i was some good. i believe i was. the men liked to have me there.”
“naturally.”
she shrugged her shoulders. “do i understand that you are taking me to dinner?”
“you do. where shall it be?”
“anywhere, so long as there is food i don’t have to cook myself.... i’ve been living on things out of cans—except when the officers’ mess had something particularly good and sent some over.”
“it hasn’t hurt you a bit.... you look mighty well.” he was thinking that she did look very well, indeed. not exactly beautiful, but satisfyingly good-looking—the way he liked to see a girl look. a fellow might be proud to be seen with her. she showed class....
“how about the continental?” he asked.
“i’d like it. i’ve never eaten there.”
they passed out of the hotel and strolled up the rue de rivoli to the rue royale, and then dodged careless taxi-cabs to cross the broad avenue which stretched with an air of pride to the face of the madeleine. two or three american officers were loitering about the entrance to the continental, and ken experienced a sense of satisfaction as he became conscious of their surreptitious stares of admiration at his companion.... they traversed the court and entered the big dining-room which stretched along the rue de rivoli and through whose windows one may look out upon the place de la concorde and across the river to the palais legislatif. the occupants of the room were mostly americans—officers, officials of the red cross, and women of that organization and the y. m. c. a.
“what have you been doing? tell me all the news,” maude said, as they seated themselves at a table close to the windows.
“i?... working as usual, and there isn’t any news. never come to the war if you want news of the war. i knew a lot more about it when i was back in detroit than i do in paris.”
“our division was full of rumors of a big american offensive.”
“and paris is full of rumors of a big german offensive. it was to have started on the fourth of july, but now it has been postponed to the fourteenth—bastille day.... you can hear anything.”
“i think something is going to happen. the blue devils are up the other side of meaux. i’ve seen them. everybody tells me their presence is a sign that something is going to happen.”
“frankly, i don’t believe it. if anything comes i think it will be a german attack. i don’t look for the allies to do much before spring—”
“when our aeroplanes get here?” she interjected. “my! but our boys have grumbled about aeroplanes. it makes them irritable to see german planes buzzing around.”
“don’t blame them. there are rumors about aeroplanes, too. a poilu asked me the other day if it was true that we had twenty thousand of them over here.”
the conversation was following a matter-of-fact, commonplace, impersonal lane—just such a way as ken had determined it should follow. yet he was dissatisfied with it. he felt that it lacked something, and that, consequently, maude and himself were not getting the most out of each other’s company. he had resolved not to talk about himself nor about maude nor about the sentiments they inspired in each other, but he found himself wanting to do so. the staple, as well as the most absorbing, topic for any young person is himself. it becomes doubly absorbing if two young persons can join and discuss themselves and their reactions to each other.... maude seemed a trifle bored, he thought. then, suddenly and with a touch of impatience, she said:
“what has been happening to you?... and that pretty little girl? what was her name?”
she, too, seemed to desire to alter the character of the conversation.
nothing had been happening to him—at least that he could tell her about. he insisted that life had been a dull affair of work and sleep for him.
“nonsense! i’m interested.... oh, i remember her name—it was andree. tell me about andree.”
“she’s a mighty nice little girl. i see her every now and then.”
“every now and then,” she mocked. “when did you see her last?”
“yesterday.”
“and before that?”
“i was away for a few days.”
“but you saw her the night before you went away?”
“yes.”
“and if i hadn’t interfered you’d have seen her to-night.”
“no—we had no engagement for to-night.”
she laughed. “you’re not especially subtle. are you really in love with this girl?... do tell me all about her. i know i’m prying and curious—but—oh, i’m just curious about her.”
“i—there’s nothing to tell.”
“there must be. how is she different from us american girls? she seemed very attractive—and sweet.”
“she says the difference between french and american girls is that you don’t know how to dress your feet,” he said, with an uneasy laugh. it rather pleased him that maude looked blank an instant and then made an evident effort to look at her footgear. “do you want to go to the casino or some other place to-night?”
“not until i’ve found out more about your friend. you know i liked her looks very much.... why can’t i meet her? she wouldn’t be jealous, would she? you did introduce her, you know. can’t we have a little party—the three of us?”
“no,” he said, with flat finality in his voice.
“why?”
he did not want to reply, did not know what to reply. the reason that he did not even want to put into definite thought was that maude ought not to meet andree—because andree was to him what she was.... maude was an american girl, a compatriot living under the laws of the medes and the persians, and it would not be proper for her to associate with andree.
“why?” she repeated. “you said she was nice.” she accented the nice. “if you don’t let me meet her i shall think she isn’t nice at all—and a great many other things.”
“she is nice,” he said, sullenly. “she’s good.... you wouldn’t understand her. i don’t think i’ve ever known anybody who was as good as andree—really good.... but ...”
“i think i understand,” she said, slowly. “it was really what i wanted to know.” she frowned a trifle and became thoughtful. then: “you know i said before that—that i didn’t blame these girls.... it’s the war—and their men being killed—and—well, there’s something in the air.... i don’t suppose i shall ever understand them, or be able to see as they see—but i’m—well, i have a lot of sympathy.... a great many of us are going to look at things more broadly when we get home to america. we had never come into contact with other standards and other ways of trying for happiness.... i know i’m talking in a muddle, but i hope you understand. what i mean is that i wouldn’t object to meeting andree....”
“in paris,” said ken.
“in paris? what do you mean?”
“would you be willing to meet her in new york or cleveland or chicago?”
she wrinkled her brows. “honestly, i don’t know.”
“here she would be just one of the sights of france—an experience. well, i’m not going to have her on exhibition, like notre dame.”
“it isn’t that. it isn’t curiosity.... really, i don’t know just what it is, but i want to be acquainted with her. i think it is so i can find out if it is really true that she—that she can live as she does and still be—nice.”
“i tell you she is nice.”
“but you are in love with her? aren’t you in love with her? somehow that makes a difference. it would seem sordid and inexcusable if you weren’t.”
“i am very fond of her.”
“do you love her?”
“yes,” he said, desperately.
she was just picking up her fork. at his words it dropped and her lips compressed, but he did not notice. perhaps he would have attached no significance to these signals if he had noticed, because he was fully occupied in thinking about himself. he had never taken time to consider maude knox’s possible feelings toward himself, although he had more than once tried in an inconclusive way to assay his own sentiments toward maude. not that he was exceptionally selfish or self-centered. he was only at that stage in his relations with maude when he was trying to make out what those relations might develop into. until a young man is fairly sure he wants a young woman very much he does not start to worry about whether she will want him.
and maude ... she had advanced a trifle farther than ken, perhaps. ken had attracted her from the first, and, peculiarly enough, the rather open mystery of his affair with andree had made him a more striking figure, if not more desirable. it had accented him.... she had never confessed to herself that she wanted to establish proprietary rights in ken, but she did realize that he was of some importance to her. he was the one individual in paris that she had been anxious to see. when she had been ordered to paris her first thought had been that she would see ken. these things were only indicative. they proved nothing to her.... but when she heard ken baldly admit that he loved andree she was close to proof. undoubtedly it had been a shock and an unpleasant shock. ken was more important to her than she had supposed. she was glad that the waiter appeared at that moment with the viande, for it gave her an excuse for silence and attention to her plate.
she wondered if this feeling were jealousy.... then she repeated to herself, “he loves this girl,” and refused to believe it, and then was doubtful, and then was afraid.... other aspects of the affair did not present themselves to her then—only the fact that this man, who might have been, whom she wanted to be, something to her, was in love with another woman, an alien, a frenchwoman. then she asserted to herself, “it’s only an affair....” there was some comfort and promise in this.
she looked up suddenly. “what are you going to do, ken?” she asked. “are you going to marry her?”
he stammered, hesitated. this was very disquieting. she had no right to ask such a question. “i—i’ve never thought about marriage—in connection with andree,” he said. he was almost honest in his statement. they two had been living in the present, had eaten of the lotus, and the future was only a vague time that might have to be faced when it arrived. he had been living in a world which was not a world of reality. it had been a species of imaginary world into which practical matters like marriage do not obtrude.
“you don’t think of—of settling in france? i hear some of the men say they want to.”
“no.” he was certain of that. america was his home, and the homing instinct was strong in him. he was a citizen of the united states, and it seemed unnatural and impossible for him to give up that citizenship. to do so appeared to him to be in the same category as divorcing a wife, a thing which seemed incredible to him. but to leave america permanently, to become a citizen of some other country, seemed more impossible than divorce. it was simply an act so absurd as to be beyond consideration. this was not patriotism, but a habit of mind. he was an american, and it was a natural impossibility to become anything else—that was it.
“then, if you married her, you would take her home?”
“let’s not talk about it,” he said, uncomfortably, for this opened up a field of disagreeable apprehensions that he did not want to undertake. “we’re talking too much about me. let’s talk about something else.”
“but i want to talk about you.... i’m afraid—afraid you’re getting into an entanglement that will be—a bad thing for you.... if you do marry this girl and take her home, what will your people say? how will your friends receive her?... because the story would leak out. it would be sure to leak out. people know about you. your chum knows, and others know....”
“andree is good,” he said, “and it doesn’t make any difference what people think.”
“not in paris. but in america it would make a lot of difference.... she would be whispered about and talked about—and people might—might refuse to receive her.”
he was angry now. “people are rotten and narrow. andree is better than all of them put together. what do i care for what they say or think?”
“you would care a great deal—and so would she. she would soon find out what people were thinking. here she may be able to go along and believe that she is not doing anything wrong. mind, i don’t say she is bad. i’m almost able to sympathize with her. if i weren’t your friend, if i didn’t know you, and this were all happening to a stranger, i’m sure i should be able to understand and not to blame her.... as it is, i’m truly sorry for her.... but i do know you, and that makes it seem different. things are always different when they strike close to home....”
“i suppose so.”
“well, she would find herself in a different world, a world that lives in a different way, and that world would make her feel as if she had done wrong, and she would be very unhappy....”
“i don’t believe it. not if i were with her.”
“but you—when you get home you will think differently about this.... you wouldn’t marry an american girl who had—done as andree has done.... would you?”
he thought briefly. “no,” he said, honestly.
“so, if you married her, you would begin to think about that some day.... you would.... and you would wonder what she had done before she met you—if—if you had been the only man she ever loved. don’t you see?...”
“i don’t see. i know her. you don’t know her at all. you don’t know how sweet and gentle and decent she is. you don’t know how she thinks.... she is wonderful....” he was loyal, at least, and she could not help being glad of it. loyalty was a quality she especially admired.
“she may be all of that, ken, but it wouldn’t matter. other people wouldn’t know it and wouldn’t believe it.... your mother ...”
his mother!... he knew what his mother would think and what his mother would do. if he took andree home his mother would be suspicious of her because she was french. then, if the story should leak out, or a hint of it should be sent to do its slinking work, his mother would hate andree—no less. she would make it her business to eliminate andree and to render her life unendurable.
with unconscious strategy he made a counterattack. “and you,” he said, “would you marry a man who had—had that sort of an experience?”
she looked up at him suddenly to determine if there were anything personal in this question, but could not make up her mind.
“i—i don’t know.... i—i’ve never imagined—”
“of course not.... but you might have to imagine it. suppose you were in love with a man—suppose you were in love with me”—she concealed a gasp at his clumsiness—“would you marry me?”
she tried to protect herself, and said, with a forced laugh, “am i to consider this as a proposal?”
he disregarded her flippancy. “i suppose i shall marry some day, and if it isn’t andree—if it is some american girl like you—what will she think? i want to know. you have asked me a lot of questions, and that sort of gives me the right to ask you this one: would you marry me?”
“i can’t answer—now. i don’t know.... i don’t think so.... i should have to think....”
he regarded her. mentally he paid her the compliment of thinking that she was a splendid type. he could not help thinking that she was just such a girl as he would like to marry and to live with always. she exerted an attraction that drew him toward her strongly.... a wife! she would be a splendid wife, a wife that his mother would receive joyfully, about whom there could not be the slightest question.... he wondered if she liked him at all—and that was a sign and a portent. suddenly the answer to her question became of large importance to him. he leaned over the table and looked into her eyes—and saw her cheeks color under his gaze.
“i wish you would think,” he said, slowly, “and tell me what you think—” then he added something he had not at all intended to say: “and tell me if it is possible for a man to love two girls at the same time....”
