Part 20

"I just want to say that the things she told me, the things she pretended to betray, were things I knew more or less already. I'd been coming to the same conclusions for myself, only I hadn't quite reached them.... And then you came back, and everything was so strange ... after I'd been in mourning for you ... and given those prints as a memorial in your name! I wish--" I detected something like a sob--"I wish you could make some allowances for me, Billy."

The minute was a hard one for me, but I stood my ground:

"I make all allowances, Vio; I've no hard feelings whatever."

She advanced toward me by a pace.

"Then will you do this for me? If I can find a way to--to give you your liberty will you--will you marry Mildred Averill, and--and be happy?"

Though my heart was going wild I know my eyes must have been cold as I said:

"I can't promise you that, Vio, for a double reason. First, I'm not in love with her; and then she's not in love with me."

"Oh, but I thought she was. Everybody says so."

"Who's everybody?"

"Well--well, Alice Mountney."

"I can see how Alice Mountney might make that mistake; but it is a mistake, Vio, and please let my saying so convince you. I'll be quite frank with you and say that I thought so once myself. I'll even go so far as to say that at one time, if everything had been different, it might have happened. But--but everything was as it was, and so-- Well, the long and short of it is that there's nothing in it, and I must beg you to take that as decisive."

"Then--then, who is it?"

"No one. I've found my work, a very humble work, as you've just seen."

"A very fine and useful work."

"I hope so; and I'm not--not unhappy, specially."

She moved along the line of cases, as if carelessly examining the contents.

"What's that?" she asked, coming to a pause.

Obliged to go close to her, I was careful not to touch so much as the surface of her clothes.

"It's just a cup and saucer, Ludwigsburg, an old Rhine valley factory now extinct. They liked those little fancy scenes."

"It seems to be a woman pleading with a man, doesn't it?"

"It looks like that. It probably means nothing beyond a bit of decoration."

"And he seems so implacable, while she's down on her knees, poor thing!" She looked round at me. "Are you busy here still?"

"Oh, there are always things to do. Why?"

"I thought you might walk back to--to the hotel with me."

I took out my watch, though unable to read the time even when I looked at it.

"I'm so sorry, but I'm afraid--"

"Oh no, you're not." There was a repetition of the catch in the tone that suggested a sob. "Billy, aren't we--aren't we going to be friends?"

I couldn't soften toward her. I felt no springs of forgiveness.

"Why should you want to be friends with me?"

"Because I can't help it, for one thing," she cried; "and for another--" Turning away wearily she began to move toward the door. "Of course if you don't want to, I can't urge it, and so must learn to get along by myself."

Something in the last phrase prompted me to say:

"Is there anything specially wrong?"

"No; only everything specially wrong. If you had come back to the hotel with me I could have told you."

"Can't you tell me now? Is it about--about Stroud?"

"Oh no, Billy. Can't you forget about that? I have. He's dropped out of my existence. That was all a mistake, like the other things."

"What other things?"

"All the other things." She pointed to the big word "PEACE" staring at us from a chair to which I had thrown the newspaper. "Look at that. Doesn't it make all the last five years seem unreal, like a nightmare after you've got up? Well, that's the way I feel now ... about ... about--"

"About me?"

"Of course. I never should have thought it at all, only that Wolf and Dick Stroud, and even the military authorities-- But at heart I _didn't_ believe them--"

"Do you mean that--?"

She nodded without waiting for me to finish the question.

"But I want it very plainly, Vio."

"I'll tell you as plainly as you like, Billy, but--but not now. I'm too worried."

"But what about? Is it--?"

"Oh, everything!" she burst out, desperately. "Money for one thing. Didn't you see how shabby the house was, and run down?" The sobs began to come freely now, and without restraint. "And--and Lulu Averill has a little boy, a perfect darling, and our little Bobby--"

"I'll go back with you to the hotel," I said, quietly, "only, don't--don't cry here, with people coming in and out."

She dried her eyes, drew down her veil, and took her sunshade from a corner. Picking up the paper she had brought, I folded it and slipped it into my pocket. I began to wonder if it might not prove a souvenir.

On the way to the main exit we passed through a corridor lined with cases of old silver.

"Do you think your boys would like a day with those things?" she asked, with the slight convulsion of her throat that a child has after tears.

"I'm sure they would."

"I could--I could take them, some day, when you didn't want to go, if you'd let me. It's one of the few things I know something about."

"I'm afraid it would bore you."

She paused for just an instant. "Bore me? Billy, nothing will ever bore me again so long as you--you let me--"

As she could say no more we resumed our walk.

Out in the open a boy rushed up to us, a Slavic creature with huge questioning eyes.

"Peace, mister! Peace, miss! Buy one! Great historic 'casion!"

They were like doves, all up and down the avenue, white, fluttering, bearing the one blessed, magical word. They were in motor-cars, carriages, and on the tops of omnibuses--all white, all fluttering, all blessed, and all magical. Up and down and everywhere the cry burst from hundreds of raucous little throats:

"Peace! _Peace_! PEACE!"

"It's like coming out into a new world, isn't it?" I said.

"It _is_ a new world, for me. Do you remember saying that day when you first came home that the new world made the war? Now it's made something else, in which it seems to me there'll be just as much struggle called for, only with a difference. Then the hard things were done to break us down; now they may be just as hard, only they'll be to build us up. The East isn't farther from the West, is it, than these two motives? I've never wanted to build up anything in my life; but now I feel as if--"

Once more we walked silently among the doves, listening to that throaty, lusty cry that was sheer music:

"Peace! _Peace_! PEACE!"

We had come to that avenue in the park sacred to little boys and girls, when she said:

"He's a darling, Lulu Averill's baby; and they--quite understand each other--now."

This second reference prompted me to give her a long sidewise look, but she did not return it.

"Perhaps--" I ventured.

"Oh, Billy!"

It was barely a sigh, but for the minute it was enough for me, as she pressed forward, with veiled profile set, like one gazing into the future.

THE END