Four Days | Page 9

Marjorie squeezed his fingers.
"Aren't you just a little bit jealous?" she pleaded.
"Jealous of a Hun?" answered Leonard, knocking the ashes from his
pipe. "No." But he squeezed her hand somewhat viciously in return.
"Not a bit. Stop wriggling! Not a bit. When did you see him again?"
"Not for a long time. One day I came home and on the hall table was a
gold sword and a gold helmet with an eagle crest. Maybe I heard his
voice in the parlor, maybe I didn't. Anyway, I put the helmet on my
head and took the sword out of the scabbard. Oh, wasn't it shiny! I was
admiring myself in the mirror when he came out.--Stop whistling,
Leonard, or I won't go on.
"He was dressed all in blue and gold, and he wore a gray cape lined
with red, and oh, he looked like a picture in a fairy book, I can tell you,
and he just stood there and stared at me. And he said, in a very low
voice, 'I didn't dare to kiss you under the mistletoe.' And I wanted to
say something, but couldn't think of anything because he wouldn't take
his eyes away; and then Frau Müller came out and said 'Good-bye' to
him with great formality. And afterward she said it was very unziemlich
to talk to a young officer alone in the hall, and, oh, I don't know--a
whole lot of things I didn't listen to."
"And of course that only fanned your ardor and you continued to
meet?" prompted Leonard.
He lighted a pipe and stuck it in the corner of his mouth, and never took
his smiling eyes off Marjorie's thin little face, all animated in the dusk.
"Of course we met, but only on the avenue, when we girls were

walking in a long line, dressed alike, two by two, guarded by dragons
of teachers. But I'd lie awake every night and think of all kinds of
things--his look, and the way his sword clanked against his boots. And
twice I saw him at the opera, looking at me from one of the boxes filled
with officers. You can't think how big I felt having him notice me--and
you can't think how beautiful I thought he was. Little thrills ran up and
down my spine every time I looked at him. Is that the way you felt
when you looked at your silly actresses?"
"Maybe," said Leonard, grinning with the corner of his mouth
unoccupied by the pipe, and staring out into the shadowy darkness.
"Was that all?"
They were drawing near to London.
"Mostly," answered Marjorie, fingering the buttons on Leonard's sleeve.
"Last time I saw him it was in the garden on the same bench in the sun.
He came over the fence, and he told me that his regiment had been
ordered to Berlin the next day."
"You knew more German then?" asked Leonard.
"Yes, I suppose so; but I didn't need to understand. It was all in the sun,
and the air was all warm from the cut clovers, and his eyes were, oh, so
blue! And--I don't know. He took off his helmet and put it on my head,
and he took his sword out of the scabbard and he put it in my hand, and
he said, oh, all kinds of things in German that I couldn't understand
very well."
"He was probably asking you how much your dowry was."
"Maybe, but his eyes didn't ask me that. And that was all. I never saw
him again, and I don't ever expect to."
"Should rather think not."
"Would you mind?"

"Certainly," said Leonard.
"They're horrible tyrants, English husbands," said Marjie, kissing his
arm.
"Not so bad as German ones," he replied, putting his head down to
hers.
The casements rattled. Into the little dark square of the compartment
window peered a confusion of lights, the myriad eyes of a great city.
"Why, it's London!" cried Marjorie. "I'd lost all track of time. Hadn't
you, Leonard?"
"No," he answered laconically, slamming down the lid of the
tea-basket.
But Marjorie squeezed up against him and gave a little laugh.
"Supposing it could be the same man, Leonard," she said.
"What man?" asked Leonard, snapping the lock.
"Why, the man of the Helmet--the Dying Gaul--and my man I've been
telling you about."
Leonard looked at her, and for some reason his eyes flinched. "What
difference would that make? He was German," was all he said.
It was a sultry evening. Flowers were being sold in profusion on street
corners. Hurdy-gurdies played war tunes in the gutter. The streets were
filled with soldiers in khaki and florid civilians in their summer clothes.
Suddenly she remembered a passage in the Bible that always seemed
beautiful to her, but