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Title: Until the Day Break
Author: Bromfield, Louis (1896-1956)
Date of first publication: 1942
Edition used as base for this ebook:
   New York: Grosset & Dunlap, undated
Date first posted: 1 May 2020
Date last updated: 1 May 2020
Project Gutenberg Canada ebook #1650

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PUBLISHER'S NOTE

Italics in the original printed edition are indicated _thus_.

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UNTIL THE DAY BREAK

by Louis Bromfield




    _To all those brothers regardless of race or creed, color
    or nationality, who have died fighting the Anti-Christ_




UNTIL THE DAY BREAK


In the house in the rue Washington she sat watching d'Abrizzi, and
listening with only half her mind to what he was saying. He sat in a big
chair that was all gilt and mauve brocade and the squat heaviness of his
body and the compressed swarthiness of his face gave him the look of a
toad comfortably ensconced in Byzantine luxury. He was a Levantine with
the blood of Armenians and Turks, Italians and Greeks flowing in the
coarse blue veins which rose above the surface of the skin on the hairy
hands. His lips were thick, rather like half-inflated inner tubes, and
the heavy black eyebrows were joined above the shrewd, pupilless black
eyes. Certainly he was a monster of ugliness, a grotesque, but the eyes
redeemed something of the ugliness, for they glittered with a light of
extraordinary intelligence, and there were moments when they turned soft
and seemed to change color like the eyes of a hurt deer, and sometimes
they could be kind eyes.

As she listened, wondering what he was leading up to, she thought of
him with kindness bordering upon affection. He had done much for her;
without him she might be in the gutter now or a nonentity married to a
husband in the suburbs who had to rise at dawn to catch a train to the
office, or she might even be dead. Then she heard him say, "This morning
they sent for me. I had an interview with a Major von Wessellhoft. They
insist that we reopen the revue. They want it to seem that their being
here has changed nothing. They want the world to get the impression that
Paris has accepted them and that the people desire, as he put it, to
collaborate."

"What a nerve they have!" she said casually. "Are you going to do it?"

"I haven't much choice in the matter. Either I do as they say or I have
to get out, without a penny. I have to give up both theaters and all my
property. Everything I have in Paris."

"I must say it's tough on you."

He looked down at his hands for a moment, studying them, as if they were
not a part of him, as if he had only now discovered them. It was a trick
he had. She knew it but she paid no attention. Then when he noticed that
she was absorbed again in the task of putting lacquer on her nails, he
looked up and stared at her for a moment. She was aware of the stare but
she was used to that too.

Without looking up, she said, "Go on, Lon. What is it? There's
something else you want to tell me. Is it about Nicky? Is he dead?" It
required an immense effort to say the words. She stopped lacquering the
nails and looked up at him, squarely, almost coldly. "I can take it,"
she said.

"No. It's nothing about Nicky. I haven't heard anything about him. It's
about you."

"Me?"

"Yes. The Boches were very insistent that you return to the revue."

"I haven't the slightest intention of returning."

"They pointed out that you were a good star and very popular and well
known and beloved in Paris."

"I'm an American. I have an American passport. They can't make me do
anything."

"No," he said quietly, "if they try to force the issue, they can't do
anything."

She laughed. "Any one of the girls can take off her clothes and walk
down a flight of stairs just as well as I can."

D'Abrizzi grinned. "No, they can't or I wouldn't be paying you what I'm
paying. They just don't look the same. No French girl does."

He leaned back and lighted a very black cigar. For a moment he kept
puffing at it thoughtfully. She knew this trick too. When he wanted
something he would take all the time in the world. He would go round
and round the point coming in upon it slowly in a spiral fashion. She
kept lacquering her nails and heard him saying reflectively, "I'd never
thought about that. A French girl when she takes off her clothes in
public always turns coy and dirty, and after a while she just gets bored
and hardened and is lousy at the job. Every time you come down the
stairs in the Alhambra... every time in more than ten years... it is
always like the first time. And you aren't either coy or bored. You walk
down them with a kind of magnificence, like a goddess. There's nothing
dirty about it any more than there is about the Venus de Milo. Anyway
most French girls--European girls, for that matter--haven't got good
bodies. There's always something wrong somewhere about them... no
magnificence."

She laughed and looked up, "Poetic, I call it." She laughed and said,
"Come on, Lon. What is it you want?"

They were talking in French, which she spoke now as easily as she spoke
English and in much the same direct, picturesque idiom... the idiom of
Broadway or the Place Clichy; it was in the end the same thing.

He said, "_I_ want you to be with the show when we reopen."

"No. I'm going back to America. I'm sick of it and I'm scared."

"Of what? You can take care of yourself."

She put down the lacquer brush and began polishing her nails. Without
looking up, she said, "Do you realize I haven't even got a servant in
this mausoleum I rented? They all ran away before the Germans came."

"I can find you servants."

"No. And it's fourteen years since I've seen Times Square."

He looked at the end of his cigar. "Is it that long?"

"It's fourteen years since you picked me out of the line at the
Ambassadeurs."

He whistled softly.

"I'm thirty-two years old," she said.

"That doesn't matter in Paris. Look at Chevalier. Look at Mistinguette."

"Well, look at them!" Then she stopped polishing and a look of interest
came into her deep blue eyes. "Why did you pick me out of twenty-four
girls, Lon? I've always wanted to ask you that."

He laughed, "Why am I in show business? Why am I a success? Why have I
made a fortune?"

She realized suddenly that outside darkness had come down and that the
light must be shining out of the windows. That was against the blackout
rules and might make trouble. Luckily the light was on the side of the
garden and not the street. Rising, she crossed to the window and
unfastened the heavy gold cords which tied back the brocade curtains.
She had rented the place from an Argentine who had gone home when his
supply of funds had given out. He had furnished it for a Roumanian
mistress and everything in it was heavy and lush and over-elegant. The
gold cords were like ropes of metal.

The heavy curtains fell together of their own weight and as she returned
to her chair she heard him saying, "Paris has meant a lot to you, hasn't
it?"

She sat down. "But for Paris," she said, "I'd be in a burlesque house
back home or on the street. I haven't got any illusions. I may be the
nuts in Paris. Back home I'd be in the third row. There's too much
competition there."

He looked again at the end of his cigar. "I'll have to go to New York
sometimes. If it's all you say it is, it must be something."

"It is... and more, honey."

"But you still like Paris?"

She looked up and a curious light came into her face. "Like Paris.... I
love it! I owe it everything I've got."

"They've been good to you here."

"I'll say so."

"And yet you want to leave it now?"

She looked at him. "If I could be of any use, if I could do any good,
I'd stay. I've thought and thought but there isn't anything I can think
of. No, I'm going home."

He did not answer her directly. He said after a minute, "One of the
reasons I'm staying... maybe the principal reason... is that I can't
imagine living anywhere else. I wouldn't mind losing everything. I'm
smart enough to begin all over again somewhere else... only I'd be
homesick always." He fell to studying the end of his cigar again, and
again she knew that he hadn't said yet what he meant to say. But he did
say an extraordinary thing. He said, "I was born in Alexandretta. Before
I was born, before I ever saw Paris, it was my home. It's that way with
a lot of people." The look of kindness and warmth which sometimes
redeemed his ugliness came into the black eyes.

She thought for a moment and then answered him, "I see what you mean.
It's kind of like that with me."

"And Nicky," he said suddenly.

"What do you mean 'and Nicky'?"

"You're going to walk out and leave him?"

"Yes, Lon, I think it's better that way." And then a change came into
her voice. "Anyway I don't know what's become of him. He's probably a
prisoner or dead."

At the change in her voice, he looked away from her and presently said,
very casually, "I suppose you can dine with me tonight?"

"I haven't anything else to do. What about curfew hours?"

He grinned, "That's taken care of. That's part of a bargain. I have a
pass for myself and one for you." He took a wallet out of his jacket and
extracted from it a pass, stamped and made out in her name. "All you
have to do is paste a passport picture in the blank space. We're
entertainers. They need us. They didn't make any objections as neither
of us was born French. But don't lose it. Having it is a great
advantage. You can go and come as you like."

With astonishment she took the pass from him and examined it. Then she
looked at him, "But I'm going back to America just the same."

"It doesn't matter. You can use it till you leave. Where do you want to
dine? Some small joint?"

"No, I don't feel like it. I couldn't bear to see Germans sitting
around."

"Where shall we go?"

"Some place in Montmartre... Luigi's."

"Luigi's is fine. Have you got champagne in the house? We might not be
able to get any."

"Yes, but only in the wine cellar."

"Can I get it?"

She stood up. "No, it's not easy to find. I'll go with you." She opened
the drawer of the vulgar brass and marquetry table and took out two
keys. "The Argentine," she said, "must have had an awful lot of
wonderful wine the way he locked it away. There isn't much left now."

When he stood up his bristling black head scarcely came above her
shoulders. "Have you ever seen the wine cellar here?" she asked.

"No."

"It's something."

She went before him out of the room and down the curved stairway which
led to the hall and the heavy street door below. In the hallway she
opened a small door and switched on a light--a single glaring electric
bulb at the foot of a worn stone stairway which had the appearance of
great age.

Belowstairs the cellar, an immense room, had a vaulted stone ceiling.
D'Abrizzi stopped and looked about him. "But this is much older than the
house," he said.

"The Argentine said the cellar was part of an old monastery. They just
built the house on the top of it."

He took the cigar out of his mouth. "It's plenty old," he said, with
sudden awe.

The room was dusty and filled with a clutter of old and broken
furniture, packing cases and rubbish. She moved away from him among the
columns which supported the roof and after a moment he followed her. She
came to a wooden door set in the stone and with one of the keys she
unlocked it. When it was swung open, a stone-vaulted gallery appeared
dimly. When she switched on another light, the vaulted gallery emerged;
it was perhaps forty feet in length and eight feet wide. At the far end
there was another door of steel. This too she unlocked.

Inside, beyond the steel door, the rows of bottles lay in wooden racks
in the shadows on either side of the gallery. She pointed to a wooden
box. "You'd better stand on that," she said, "the Lanson is on the top
row."

With the aid of the box, he was just able to reach the rows of bottles
she indicated. He treated the two bottles he brought down with
reverence. "That should do us," he said.

"I should hope so."

Then they went back again, closing and locking the doors and turning out
the lights. The steel door of the inner room swung shut easily, the lock
snapping into place.

"He certainly took good care of his wine," said d'Abrizzi. Again on
their way back, he stopped in the middle of the cellar and stood for a
long time looking about him.

       *       *       *       *       *

Luigi's was a small restaurant in an impasse a little way from the Place
Clichy. Not many foreigners knew of it and very few Parisians save those
in the world of the theater. To them it was a kind of haven. In hard
times they came there--jugglers from Poland, young girls from Lyons and
Lisieux and Dijon who hoped one day to be _vedettes_, Roumanian
tumblers, Russian guitarists, "gypsy" violinists--because it was cheap
and sometimes, if Luigi himself had no bills to pay, they could eat even
when they had no money. The successful ones, the rich ones, came there
too sometimes because they remembered the little restaurant with
gratitude from the days when they had not been successful, and sometimes
they came simply to eat because in all Paris there was no spaghetti and
ravioli and minestrone like that made by Luigi's wife, Maria, in the
tiny kitchen at the back of the restaurant. Garlic and dried red peppers
hung from the ceiling and when the door of the little kitchen opened,
the breath of Italy itself came through the door into the
restaurant--the breath of faintly resinous red wine and garlic and
tomatoes, of olive trees and lemon flowers and sunlight, all compounded
into one delicious nostalgic odor that was rich and bright, friendly and
warm. It was worth coming a long way simply to sniff that perfume which
flowed through the door from Madame Luigi's kitchen.

Madame Luigi, who had the simple name of Maria, was a small, birdlike,
brisk woman with very black hair and eyes. Her husband was large and
comfortable. Save on the bitterest days of winter, when the damp cold
crept up trouser legs from the sidewalk, he never wore a coat but
appeared only in trousers and shirt with bright-colored suspenders.

The restaurant itself was a small room with _banquettes_ along the wall
and iron tables with tops of worn and pitted white marble. On the floor
there was freshly dampened sawdust and on the walls between the mirrors
there were very bad paintings of scenes from Naples, Capri and Sorrento.

Luigi and Maria were Italian by every drop of blood but they were French
citizens because one of them was born in Nice and the other in
Ventimiglia just across the border from Italy on the French side of the
town.

Roxie had said Luigi's to d'Abrizzi instead of Maxim's for two reasons.
One was that Maxim's had seemed to her unthinkable with Germans and
Fifth Columnists and rat Fascist French all about, and the other was
that in the faraway rue Washington, the scent of Maria's kitchen was in
her imagination. For three days, since the German army arrived and her
own cook disappeared, she had been living upon pick-ups. She was a
healthy woman who worked hard. She was hungry, but she was hungry not
only for minestrone and ravioli but also for the warmth and friendliness
of Luigi's hole-in-the-wall establishment.

She and d'Abrizzi took the Mtro at the rue de Berri and changed at
Concorde. She said to d'Abrizzi, "This is the first time I've been in
the Mtro for at least ten years."

He grinned. "Times change."

There were three German soldiers in the car with them and a sprinkling
of French--small French, bookkeepers, and clerks and waitresses and a
couple of workingmen in corduroy, the kind who had not run away because
they had chosen to guard their few small possessions or because there
was no way to get out of Paris or because in a kind of apathy it had
seemed foolish for them to run away. It was their apathy which struck
d'Abrizzi; it had the curious quality of the defeated who, without
resentment or ambition, have accepted their tiny monotonous role in
life. They were little white-collar people--all but the two workmen who
seemed more tough; you could find them the world over in any city, the
dross, the waste of cities and industrial life. They looked
undernourished and pallid and discouraged.

"It was the same kind in Germany," thought d'Abrizzi with detachment,
"who gave Hitler his start. He made them believe there was a chance for
them. And he knew all the time there wasn't a chance and when he got
ready he double-crossed them. He was one of them but he was smarter than
the others."

The three German soldiers seemed ill at ease. One was tall and thin and
red-haired and wore gold-rimmed glasses through which he peered at a
guidebook. One was heavy and blond and stolid and the third was the
small scrawny type of German which no amount of beer and sausage will
ever feed into plumpness. Their gray uniforms, bordered and tipped with
green, fitted them badly and although they were quite young, they were
misshapen and extraordinarily ugly.

"Cannon fodder," thought d'Abrizzi. "The more intelligent ones they give
better jobs."

One had the impression that the young Germans were quite bewildered by
Mtros, by Paris, by the whole extraordinary chain of events which had
hurled them out of the villages and slums in which they were born,
through battle into the white beauty of this strange city which they
could not understand because nothing of their blood had contributed to
its creation, because it was so utterly, completely foreign. They seemed
self-conscious and ill at ease, squirming a little on the hard seats, as
if they suffered bad consciences.

"The Germans as a race," thought d'Abrizzi, relishing the satisfaction
he got from the thought, "are an extremely ugly race. Very often they
are grotesque. They are so often out of scale, out of proportion." In
the pleasure of the moment his own grotesque ugliness did not occur to
him, perhaps because long ago he had come to accept it.

He was aware of the glimmer of interest that lightened the resigned
faces of the others in the car at the sight of his companion. Roxie was
a beautiful woman, admirably dressed in expensive clothes. He knew what
they were thinking--that of course Roxie must be his mistress, that of
course he gave her a great deal of money because he himself was so ugly,
and he felt a sudden gust of obscene and perverse pleasure partly
because they were wrong and partly because their thoughts made him
important in a new and different fashion.

Beside him Roxie looked at the newspaper he had bought her at the rue de
Berri station, but her mind was not on what she read. Nothing in the
paper seemed important. What was important, what claimed possession of
her was the heavy sense of apathy and defeat in the car which carried
them. _Parisiens_, even the dreary ones, were rarely like this. It was
as if a light had gone out.

"No," she thought, "I can't bear it. I can't stay here. It's all over.
There is nothing I can do to change it." And she felt a sickness deep
inside her.

The train stopped at La Trinit and the three German soldiers got out.
She watched them rise and shuffle toward the door, the one with the
glasses still holding the guidebook, and she thought, like d'Abrizzi,
"How ugly they are!" It was not like the ugliness of d'Abrizzi himself
for that ugliness was illuminated by a kind of inward incandescence; it
was ugliness which was alive. This shuffling unilluminated ugliness was
heavy and loutish, the kind of ugliness one never found south of the
Rhine. Yet as they disappeared, the door banging closed behind them, she
was suddenly sorry for them. They seemed so young and lost and timid and
stupid.

It struck her as odd that d'Abrizzi, with the champagne under his arm,
did not talk at all. Usually he talked and talked. Now he only sat
watching the others in the car.

In the Place Clichy it was very dark and for a moment they had to stand
quite still until their eyes grew accustomed to the darkness and they
regained their sense of direction. It was odd how in darkness you could
lose yourself in a spot so familiar as the Place Clichy. She had crossed
it many thousand times going to and from the theater. Instinctively she
looked toward the Alhambra but it was dark like the rest of the square
and the streets leading from it. There were no lights spelling out the
words, "_Paris en Folie_" with her own name and the names of the other
stars. "_Paris en Folie!_" The name echoed for a second in her brain as
she stood there in the darkness. That was it! "_Paris en Folie!_" a
bitter true ironical name now. That was it! She had never thought of it
before. _"France en Folie!" "L'Europe en Folie!" Folie_ in English meant
not only folly but madness.

Then out of the darkness at her side came d'Abrizzi's velvety voice,
"_Viens petite!_" and following him she walked toward the impasse where
Luigi's hole in the wall hid away in the same blackness.

Just outside the door they very nearly collided with a big fat woman
leading a little dog on a leash. The little dog yapped at them out of
the darkness. Then she heard d'Abrizzi laugh and his voice saying, "_Ah,
c'est toi, Filomena!_" and she knew that it was Luigi's older sister, a
massive widow of fifty who helped in the kitchen.

"_Qu'est-ce que tu fais?_" Lon asked. And out of the darkness came
Filomena's coarse hearty voice, "_Je fais pisser mon chien et je me
cherche un Boche. On dit qu'ils aiment les gros types comme moi._" Her
hearty laugh filled the little street for a moment, almost shocking in
the stillness, and a sad curious thought came to Roxie, "No, I can't
leave it. I can't go where I will never again hear things like that."

But almost at once she thought too, "That's silly. The thing for me is
to go."

Then Filomena, recognizing her, cried out with vast warmth, "_Ah, c'est
toi, Mademoiselle! La Grande Vedette._" Her French carried the rich
Latin roll of the Cte d'Azur, which seems to echo back inside the
mouth. "I thought you had run away. You--an American had no reason to
stay."

"No," said Roxie, "I'm still here."

Curiously she could think of nothing more to say. It was as if Filomena
had reproached her for the thoughts inside her head. The reproach was
all the worse because Filomena had uttered it without meaning it as a
reproach, honestly. It seemed to Filomena that to go away was the course
dictated by common sense and therefore commendable.

The little dog began to bark again savagely into the darkness and
Filomena, chortling, said, "_Voil, mon Boche! Le petit veut que je me
promne._" In the darkness, she waved a big hand. Neither Lon nor Roxie
saw it actually, but they knew she had waved to them with an expansive
gesture. "_Bon appetit!_"

"_Merci._"

Filomena in tow of the barking little dog vanished into the thick
darkness and Lon opened the door of Luigi's.

Inside there was less light than usual but enough to distinguish the
figures and faces of seven patrons. Four of them sat at one table, two
at another and the seventh, a woman with a raddled face, a red wig
beneath a hat covered with plumes and talon-like fingers covered with
stage jewelry, sat alone in the corner. She was drinking Pernod and
reading _Comoedia_. As Lon and Roxie came in the door, she looked up and
Lon said, "_Bon soir_, Margot."

The painted lined face with the liquid powder congealed in the wrinkles,
cracked into a grin of recognition. There was something curious in the
grin--the reflection, the echo of some concealed, half-forgotten glory
and magnificence. When she spoke her voice was like that of a bull frog
on a warm spring night, hoarse but warm with vitality and ardor and sex.
Long ago as a beauty, she was known as La Biche--the Doe--because of her
great lustrous eyes. Lon could remember. His voice had turned kind.
There was a warm beauty in it which, like his eyes, unexpectedly
redeemed his ugliness.

She said, "_Bon soir... et vous, Mademoiselle._ Is the Alhambra going
to reopen?"

"I don't know," said Lon. "That depends."

"And my job? I can still dance. I can still wear clothes and take them
off too." She chortled wickedly, "_Nom de Dieu!_ What has come into our
world?"

"I'd take you on at once but for the jealousy of the other girls. It
would make too much trouble for me."

She chuckled, aware dimly that this was a joke but aware too with a
remote part of her befuddled intelligence that she was old and finished
and raddled, that of everything there only remained an indestructible
constitution and vitality.

She leaned toward them. "You know," she said, "a Boche made me a
proposition." Then she winked. "The military governor himself, General
Stulpnagel." She used the name, fresh out of the columns of _Comoedia_.

"I'd accept it," said Lon. "You're not as young as you once were."

Again she chortled. "You aren't any younger yourself, Lon. Look at that
belly."

Then the door from the kitchen opened and Luigi himself came into the
restaurant, borne on a cloud of the heavenly odor that was the smell of
Maria's tiny kitchen. He came toward Lon and Roxie, his broad face
glowing with a kind of overstrained cordiality.

"I thought you had both gone away with the others," he said. "_Quel
plaisir!_"

"No," said Lon. "We had business here."

"A lot of them did run away," said Luigi. "The faithful stayed."

He pulled back two chairs at a table between La Biche and the table with
four people seated at it.

"I'm glad you stuck it," he said. And then he made a curious remark:
"Those of us who remain give Paris dignity. All the politicians have
scrammed except the traitors."

They sat down and Lon handed him the champagne. "It's champagne. Have
you got any ice?"

"No ice, but Maria will make it cold as possible. You'll want Chianti
with the dinner?"

"Yes," said Lon. "The champagne afterward."

At the next table the four occupants, three men and a tired untidy
woman, were speaking a foreign tongue, strange to Roxie. She looked
toward them and Lon said, "They are speaking Roumanian."

"Yes" said Luigi. "They are acrobats... refugees without papers." Then
he said, "I'll call Maria." And went to the door of the kitchen.

She came in, small, preoccupied, worried, wiping her hands on her apron.
At sight of them a smile like a sunrise illumined the dark leathery
face.

"What a surprise!" she said. "What a wonderful surprise! You stayed
too... how wonderful, how dignified!"

Her reverberating accent was even stronger than that of her husband or
Filomena. Roxie smiled, a smile which came from deep inside her,
spontaneous and unsummoned. She felt a sudden unexpected pride at the
praise of Maria. She had, it seemed, done the proper thing--staying
behind when most of the others fled--without thinking very much about
it.

"After the war," said Luigi, "there will be a society of us--the
survivors, the _costauds_, the tough ones who stayed behind to face it."

"And what do you want to eat?" asked Maria.

"It is for Mademoiselle to decide," said Lon, looking at Roxie.

She planned the meal--antipasto, minestrone, ravioli with spinach and a
salad of lettuce with bread crusts impregnated with garlic, a good rich
full meal. She liked to eat well and plenty.

"That sounds good," said Lon. Then he looked suddenly at the table
where the two men were seated. One of them was very Jewish in
appearance. They were speaking German, the thick, heavy German of
Silesia. Lon beckoned for Luigi to lean nearer to him. Then he asked,
"What are they?"

"Refugees," said Luigi. "No papers. One came in two days ago from a camp
in the south."

Lon studied them for a moment. Then he turned to Luigi and, grinning,
said, "What do you run here--a concentration camp?"

Luigi grinned and shrugged his shoulders, "What do _you_ think? They
came to France believing they would be safe. We promised them that."

Roxie looked at him sharply, astonished by two things--that Luigi who
was not really French should feel that France owed these shabby people
an obligation, the other that he should be so simple and frank when such
information could cause him fine, imprisonment and perhaps worse. True,
he had known them both for a long time, for many years. In that time he
must have judged them and decided that they were decent and all right.
Again the warm feeling of pride and satisfaction came over her.

Then she heard Lon asking, "Those other people. Have they eaten well?"

"They've eaten, but not well."

"Ask them if they'd like the same as we're having?"

Luigi grinned because this was the kind of thing he liked. As he crossed
to the table of the acrobats, Lon turned to the old woman with the red
wig.

"Hey, Biche! What about eating?"

La Biche again turned on them the battered incandescence of her grin.
"Sure," she said, "I can eat any hour of the day or night."

The acrobats and the two men at the other table were looking toward them
now and Roxie noticed that the man who sat with the Jew had a deformed
face. It was as if a part of his jaw had been broken and removed. He was
smiling but one could only recognize the smile by the eyes. The effort
only contorted the grotesquely shattered face, but the eyes gleamed with
gratitude. It was the eyes of all of them that were remarkable. There
was something soft in them and frightened and defeated, all save the
untidy "_allay-oop_" woman on the team of acrobats. There was pride in
her eyes and vengeance. She was perhaps thirty-five or six, handsome in
the way of dark Slavs. Very likely she was much younger than she
appeared to be.

In a low voice she said in bad French, "We thank you very much,
Monsieur. We have eaten but we are hungry. When one has been hungry and
afraid for a long time, it is like that. One stays hungry. One stokes
up when one has the opportunity." She spoke simply with remarkable
dignity. When she had spoken she returned at once to the intimacy of her
own group.

Roxie said, "It's lucky we brought two bottles of champagne."

When the food came, La Biche did not attempt to force her company upon
them. She pushed aside her newspaper and absinthe and began her second
meal with enthusiasm.

The others ate hungrily. It was as the woman acrobat had said; when one
is hungry for a long time, one stays hungry. There was too, said
d'Abrizzi, watching them, the knowledge that this meal might have to
last them a long time.

"I have been hungry myself," he said. "I have been hunted too... by the
Turks in the old days. They killed my father and carried off my mother."

He spoke quite calmly between mouthfuls of ravioli and his very calmness
made Roxie suddenly embarrassed. It was as if she felt the need of
apologizing because, as an American, nothing very terrible had ever
happened to her. She had been hungry sometimes. She had made compromises
with men. Her stepfather had been cruel to her long ago in Indiana until
she had run away; but these things were nothing. It was as if the dull
misery of these others in the room was a reproach. It was a very long
story--the misery of Europe, a long story always returning to the same
theme, always astonishing her anew.

The ravioli was as good as it always was. The Chianti was just right,
faintly resinous and slightly vinegary. For the first time in days,
since the day the gray columns came up the Champs Elyses, she was
feeling well again. The sensation of apathy began to leave her.

She laughed and said, "By the time we're through with the champagne
we'll be a mass of acidity."

Luigi came and sat with them for a time talking about what was to come.
No one knew anything. The English would give in. The English wouldn't
give in. The Americans were going to help. The Americans were not going
to help. Laval was up to dirty work. They had shot Daladier and Lon
Blum. They had not shot Daladier and Lon Blum. The Germans were being
very correct. The Germans had lined up and shot a lot of students.

In the end Luigi shrugged his shoulders and said, "What is one to
believe?"

D'Abrizzi said, "Don't believe anything now. Wait."

La Biche in her corner began suddenly to sing and at the sound, one of
the acrobats, a dark man with sad eyes and a mole on his chin, suddenly
produced a concertina and feeling his way into the proper key began to
accompany her. It was an old song, a very old song, she was singing in
her cracked voice, "_Savez-vous planter les choux?_" She was suddenly
quite drunk and sang in a croaking voice. At the encouraging sound of
the concertina's approval, she began to sing with real gusto using the
old-fashioned gestures of the music halls of fifty years earlier. The
fake jewelry on her fingers sparkled and glittered. The Jew and his
companion turned to listen, curiously but without mockery. The acrobats,
being of the profession, understood that La Biche too was a
professional. They did not laugh at her--at the glittering bogus
jewelry, the raddled face, the nodding plumes of her battered hat. Luigi
watched her, smiling with the peculiar paternal feeling which good
Italians have for those who are "touched." It was as if he said, "There
but for the grace of God go I."

D'Abrizzi leaned across toward the acrobats and said in a low voice,
"You know, she was a famous performer once--a star. Her name was Yvette.
They called her La Biche."

The performance of La Biche both fascinated and terrified Roxie. She
thought, "She was like me once. What if that happens to me? I am almost
thirty-three. I already have to think of my figure." And with a sudden
start she realized that she had been thinking in French. To herself she
was saying, "_Elle tait comme moi dans le temps. Si cela m'arrive? J'ai
dj trente-trois ans. Dj il faut que je me mfie de ma taille._" She
was not only thinking in French, she was thinking in the French of the
_coulisses_, of the Alhambra and the Place Clichy... as if this were
her home, as if long ago Indiana and Broadway had faded out of her
existence. And suddenly she thought, "But it is true. They have been
good to me. All the success I've ever had is here. In a way it is my
home."

"_Savez-vous planter les choux?_" came the hoarse voice of La Biche like
a reproach, and then suddenly La Biche was out of breath. She pressed
her dirty bejeweled hand against her enormous bosom and began to laugh
wild, drunken hysterical laughter. The music of the concertina died away
in a slow wheeze and La Biche said, "Ah, General Boulanger loved to hear
me sing that. I was only seventeen." She hiccoughed and added soberly,
"It was women who ruined General Boulanger but he was a very handsome
man."

"Bring the champagne," said d'Abrizzi. And as Luigi rose, d'Abrizzi
asked, "Where's Filomena? She must have found her Boche."

Luigi smiled mysteriously and said, "Filomena's doing patrol duty."

Maria came in from the kitchen and nervously carried away the plates in
a huge tray. Luigi returned with the two bottles and glasses for all and
as he put the bottles on the table the street door opened, admitted
Filomena and the little dog, and was closed immediately.

"They're coming," she said. And Luigi, whisking the extra glasses on to
the shelf above their heads, said to the Jew and his companion and the
acrobats, "Go into the kitchen. My wife will tell you where to go." They
did not appear terrified. They rose with indifference, as if this sort
of thing had long since become a habit, and filed out through the door
into the kitchen. Quickly Luigi crossed to La Biche. "Don't say
anything. _Compris?_"

She looked at him dully and then slowly the light of understanding came
into her face. "You can count on me. I wouldn't help the bastards." With
an effort she sat up and pulled her hat straight on her head. In some
fantastic way by this single gesture she acquired grandeur.

To d'Abrizzi and Roxie he said, "Just answer what they ask you... only
the others," he made a gesture in the direction of the kitchen door,
"they weren't here. They don't exist. See?"

At the same moment the door opened and in the doorway appeared a German
officer, a sergeant and a little French policeman. The policeman had
dark hair, blue eyes and pink cheeks. The officer was very stiff and
straight with an expressionless face. The sergeant was a heavy
pink-faced man with hands like sausages. Beside them the little
policeman seemed all grace and line like a dancer.

Luigi put down the champagne bottle and said, "Good evening, Messieurs."
There was dignity in his manner and even a little condescension.

The little policeman was embarrassed and behaved like a bad actor. He
was giving a performance because inside him there was a deep hurt and
shame. He said that they had come to check the papers of the people in
the place. They were making the rounds of all restaurants and cafs.
There was such confusion the last few days with many dangerous
characters at liberty. As he spoke he grew more and more miserable. The
blue eyes said, "I don't want to do this, but what can I do?"

Luigi summoned Maria and Filomena and they came out of the kitchen
leaving the door open to show there was no one there. The two Germans
and the policeman turned first to La Biche. She had opened the enormous
shabby handbag she carried and taken out her _carte d'identit_. As they
came up to her she laid it on the table and pushed it toward them,
withdrawing her hand in a dramatic and insulting gesture as if she
wished to have no contact whatever with them. There was in the gesture
a grotesque splendor, a travesty of the splendor of _Phdre_.

The little policeman grinned and said, "She's all right. She's a
character here. Everybody knows her." He made a brief gesture to
indicate that she had wheels in her head.

This she took as a compliment and said, "Know La Biche? Of course
everyone knows me."

The officer glanced at the identity card, clicked his heels, bowed and
returned it to her. She did not touch it until he had turned away. Then
with the tips of her fingers she picked it up and dropped it into the
vast moth-eaten handbag as if in some way it had been contaminated.

Luigi, Maria and Filomena dutifully held out their cards. The policeman
said, "These are good people. They are citizens."

The officer looked at the three of them and then back at the photographs
on the cards. The gigantic Filomena, with a perfectly straight face,
said, "Yes, Monsieur--the photograph is of me. I am, of course, much
handsomer. The photographer caught none of my beauty!"

The officer looked at her as if he did not know whether or not she was
mocking him. From her face it was impossible to tell. Then he turned to
d'Abrizzi and Roxie and at sight of their special passes, his manner
changed. He bowed more deeply and clicked his heels a little more
loudly. His whole manner said, "Ah, these are different! They must be
rich and important. At any rate they have some connection with the big
bugs."

The little policeman echoed his thoughts in speech. He said, "These are
important people. Monsieur d'Abrizzi is owner of the Alhambra Theatre
and Mademoiselle is a famous actress. She is an American star."

"I see she is American. It says so on the card." Something seemed to
puzzle the officer, perhaps that he should find important people in so
small and humble a place. Things like that rarely happened in Germany.

D'Abrizzi said, "Mademoiselle has not had time to paste on her
photograph. As you see the pass was only issued this afternoon."

The officer stared at her for a moment. Then he said, "Yes, I see. I am
delighted to make your acquaintance, Mademoiselle. I have seen pictures
of you in the German papers... many pictures. My compliments."

"_Merci_, Monsieur."

He did not go away at once. He gave back the passes and then stood
awkwardly looking at Roxie with a kind of unashamed admiration. At last
he said, "I hope I shall have the pleasure of seeing you perform."

It was d'Abrizzi who answered, "Yes, of course. She is opening soon in a
new revue."

She smiled at the officer, why she did not know, except that it had long
since become a kind of professional habit and because she felt
d'Abrizzi's compulsion. It was as if he willed her to smile.

Then the officer clicked his heels once more and turning to Luigi he
said, "Remember, everybody out and lights out at eleven. That is the
Governor's order."

The three of them went out and Luigi followed, locking the door behind
them. "They won't come back again," he said. And turning to Filomena
added, "Bring the others up out of the coal cellar."

As she and Maria left the room, La Biche pulled herself together.
"Shameful!" she said. "The dirty Boches!"

D'Abrizzi shrugged his shoulders. "It is only the beginning, honey.
We'll have to put up with it; on the surface at least." Then a sudden
rage appeared to seize him and he cried out savagely, "It stinks--it all
stinks. To smell Germans in Paris--in Paris of all the cities in the
world."

Filomena reappeared followed by the acrobats and the Jew and the man
with the shattered jaw. At sight of them Luigi turned suddenly cheerful.
"The pigs have gone," he said. "Now for the champagne."

He got down the glasses and filled them and then putting down the bottle
he raised his glass and said, "To the day when no Boche will dare show
his face in our beloved Paris!" He spoke wildly, nobly, with all the
Italian flare for operatics, like Tamagno in a florid scene.

La Biche raised her glass. The old hands shook so that the champagne
dripped on the untidy expanse of her vast bosom, "_A bas les Boches!_"
she croaked.

       *       *       *       *       *

The rue Washington is one of the few streets of Paris with little
character; it is neither beautiful and splendid, nor narrow, nor dark
and picturesque. It runs off the wide, now somewhat shabby splendor of
the Champs Elyses in the very heart of Napoleon's Paris, only a little
way from the Arc de Triomphe, a simple street of second-rate apartments
with houses dating from the Second Empire squeezed between them, houses
like the more important homes of a French village rather than Paris,
which turn their backs upon the street and show the glories of their
faades to the walled gardens beyond. The gardens are remarkable in the
very heart of Paris, large gardens with terraces and chestnut trees and
lilacs. From the street one is unaware of them; one sees only the
faades of houses without character save for the large wooden doors
which once swung open to admit carriages. It is a long time since
carriages have passed through the great doors; the tenants use only the
small doors set in the big ones; one has to step high over the threshold
to enter.

It was one of these houses Roxie had rented from the Argentine. She took
it not because it was charming or especially beautiful; its Second
Empire charm and beauty had long since disappeared beneath the
decorative efforts of a succession of rich foreigners and kept women,
for it was an ideal hideaway. No one who was anyone ever lived in the
rue Washington; it was a forgotten area in which even the police found
nothing of interest. Roxie took it because it was cheap and convenient
and comfortable in an over-luxurious fashion, and because of Nicky.
Except for the weathered soot-covered house on the wrong side of the
railway tracks in Evanston, Indiana, she had never had any home and she
had no instinct for one. Home to her was any boardinghouse or hotel
where she put down her trunk. In Paris she had lived nearly always at
the Claridge. The rue Washington was only a little way off; she was not
even forced to change the neighborhood. It was a neighborhood she liked
with its cafs and tourists and foreigners and Fouquet's only a little
way off with its good food and its changing spectacle of actresses and
racing people, and kept women and bookmakers and expensive pimps. In the
end it was Nicky who made the house in the rue Washington desirable.
When she took up with Nicky a hotel was no longer desirable.

When they left Luigi's in time for the last Mtro, big Filomena went out
with them into the street and walked as far as the Place Clichy with the
little dog. In the darkness figures passed them; they were all German
soldiers, clumping along on their way back to quarters from cafs and
cinemas. A warm, voluptuous fog had settled over the city and the
Germans appeared out of it and disappeared into it like ghosts.

At the entrance to the Mtro Filomena in her deep, rich voice said,
"Good night and come back again soon." Then she turned to Roxie and
said, "You will not go back to America."

"Yes," said Roxie, "I am tired. I mean to go back."

"No," said Filomena, "you will not go back."

She felt suddenly bored, too bored to argue with the big Italian woman.
In any case it did not matter now, not with those gray ghosts coming out
of the haze and pushing past her into the Mtro.

They left Filomena and went down the stairs in silence. The train was
filled with German soldiers, most of them like the three they had
encountered earlier in the evening, dull, youngish, heavy. They stared
dully, like cattle, at her and d'Abrizzi. There was a kind of hunger in
their eyes. Watching them Roxie again felt a curious detached pity for
them because they seemed so loutish and bewildered, so completely lost
and homesick in Paris... where no one should ever be homesick. Once she
turned toward d'Abrizzi to speak, but the sight of him checked her. He
was sitting hunched up in his corner staring at the soldiers. In his
ugliness he looked like a malignant spider. All kindness, all warmth had
gone out of the pupilless black eyes; there was only hatred in them, so
bitter, so hard that the eyes appeared to glitter. It was a d'Abrizzi
she had never seen before. She had seen him angry and vengeful and
jealous and full of contempt but never like this. There was something
shocking in the spectacle.

She did not speak to him until they changed at Concorde for the Porte de
Lilas line, and then only to ask, "Do you feel all right?"

"All right," he answered.

At the rue de Berri a sergeant accompanied by a policeman stepped out of
the fog and asked them to show their papers. The policeman was
apologetic like the little policeman at Luigi's and said to the
sergeant, "It is all right. She is a well-known actress. Everybody knows
her." The German stared at her and gave them back their papers. Roxie
felt a sudden pleasure. It was nice to be so well known; it gave you a
kind of protection wherever you went.

All the way along the Champs Elyses and into the rue Washington,
d'Abrizzi was still silent. Once in the rue Washington he stopped and
looked both directions in the dark street. She asked, "What's the
matter?" to which he replied, "Nothing. I was just working out
something." It was, she knew from long experience, no good trying to
discover what was going on in Lon's head if he chose not to reveal it.

At the door she took the key out of her handbag and said, "You can't
walk all the way home. I'll give you a pair of Nicky's pajamas."

"I don't need them," he said. "They wouldn't fit anyway."

They stepped inside and as she switched on the light in the big fake
Venetian lantern, he said, "It's idiotic for you to stay in this house
alone with all your jewelry and furs."

"I hadn't thought much about it. I've never been the scared kind. I keep
a revolver under my pillow."

They went up the stairs and she asked, "Do you want more champagne or
some _pt_?"

"No. I overate at Luigi's."

She went into her room and brought out a dressing gown that belonged to
Nicky. It was expensive and handsome, heavy black silk with red silk
lapels and tassels, from Charvets. The touch of it made her feel
suddenly cold and a little sick, because she did not know where Nicky
was or even whether he was alive. He might never use it again.

As she gave it to Lon she said, "I sleep late. If you want coffee
before I wake, knock on the door and I'll get up and make it."

"I'll want to sleep late myself," said d'Abrizzi. "I haven't slept much
since that first day they came in."

She held open the door of a room that opened into the salon with the
heavy curtains and the metallic gold cords. "I think there's everything
you need. Good night, Lon."

He stopped in the doorway, started to speak and then checked himself.

"What were you going to say?" she asked.

"Nothing. It isn't ready to be said yet. It isn't born yet. In the
morning perhaps."

"Okay. Try to sleep."

"Thanks. Same to you."

He spoke in an absent-minded fashion. The thing was still going on in
his brain. Suddenly she found herself making an extraordinary statement.
"I don't think I've ever said it to you, Lon, but if anything should
ever happen that we shouldn't see each other again, I want you to know
I'm grateful for all you've done for me. Except for you, I'd still be
just a lousy chorus girl. Just a punk!"

He looked at her with soft shyness in his eyes. "Thanks, honey. I get
what you mean. You've always been on the level too."

"I guess it's because we know most of the answers."

He laughed, "I guess that's it." Then his voice changed a shade. "Maybe
we'll need to know them more than ever now."

Then with Nicky's dressing gown over his arm, he went out of the room
and closed the door, leaving her standing there, faintly bewildered and
filled with affection and pity for his ugliness. No woman could ever
love him. Whatever travesty of love he had known he had been forced to
buy, one way or another. With her he had always been on the level. Never
once in all their association had he ever bothered her, or so much as
touched her.

Thoughtfully she put out the light and went into her own room. It had
been the room of the Argentine's mistress and she had not troubled to
change it, feeling that it was like any hotel bedroom. The bed was
gilded with a canopy of peach-colored satin rising to a crown of
gigantic white ostrich plumes. The furniture was all gilded and the
curtains were of the same peach-colored satin as the canopy. One whole
end of the room was mirrored. On the dressing table among the gold
toilet articles stood the photograph of a man. He was very dark and
handsome in a reckless, virile, half-savage fashion, with high
cheekbones, intense dark eyes, a sensual mouth and a proud nose. Across
the face of it was written in English "All my love forever to
Roxie--Nicky." The inscription was a gay cynical denial of everything
that was written in the face, for it was the face of a man who would
never be able to give all his love to anyone or anything because there
were too many things in the world to be loved.

She was aware now for the first time of weariness. It was as if the
evening with Lon and the excursion to Luigi's had restored for a moment
something of the old world that had been shattered by the confusion of
that awful afternoon when she had seen the streets filled with trucks
and gray-green uniforms that were an obscenity against the gray white of
the Paris streets. The strain was gone now and with it the curious
apathy which had alternated with fits of the only real fear she had
ever experienced, a fear which was all the worse, because it was
formless and unanswerable.

She undressed slowly and when she had taken off all her clothing, she
stood for a moment regarding her naked reflection in the mirror. As if
she sought somehow to punish herself, she tried to find some flaw, some
sign of fading or age; but there was none. Her body was firm and young,
like the body of a young girl, a little more rounded perhaps but because
of that all the more beautiful. God had given her beauty, a lavish
beauty of body and face, and she was grateful to God for his favor to
the daughter of a father she had never seen and a mother born in Poland.
She had always been proud of that beauty in an odd fashion as if it did
not really belong to her but was something which she should share, out
of gratitude, as one might share the beauty of a work of art. And so she
had never had any special modesty. When Lon, that night at the
Ambassadeurs long ago, had offered to feature her as an American
novelty--a fan dancer--she had no qualms. She accepted.

She was lucky, she knew. Her whole career had been built upon the beauty
of this body and the shrewd exploitation of Lon. She was good as long
as the body lasted. "A stripper," she thought, "is just as good as her
figure. When it goes she goes with it." In Paris they had been very
kind. They had never grown tired of her. On the contrary, they grew fond
of her and faithful, loving her a little more each year so that she had
become a fixture, a necessity at the Lon's Alhambra. Paris was like
that, very different from New York where people grew tired of stars and
forgot them easily.

Suddenly for the first time in her life she thought of the future. Until
now it had never been necessary; it was as if things, mostly lucky
things, had simply happened to her.... That dimly remembered elopement
with a traveling salesman from Evanston, her first job in a night club,
Old Stokes who had paid for her dancing lessons and wanted nothing of
her but to be seen about with her, because he had once been a famous
lady killer and wanted to keep the reputation of his prowess alive
before the world; and then the chance to come to Paris with a troupe of
Albertina Rasch girls and then the curious chance which made Lon pick
her from sixteen girls dancing on the floor of the Ambassadeurs. And
after that the fact that she had what Paris wanted, and last of all
Nicky. And she did not know whether Nicky was good luck or bad. She only
knew that he was the first and only man with whom she had ever been even
remotely in love.

Before she switched off the lights and went to bed, she put her shining
red-gold hair into _bigourdis_ and took down from the empty book shelves
a pile of magazines in French and English, devoted to astrology. For a
long time she went through them, searching for something, some sign,
some reassurance, regarding the future, exactly what she did not know.
In the end she took from the drawer a chart made for her by Madame de
Thonars in the square Chausse D'Antin. Studying it she came again for
the tenth time upon the prediction that the period into which she was
entering would be one of change, excitement and probably suffering--all
of which meant nothing to her. It might mean only the uncomfortable fact
of the Germans' presence in Paris, the closing of the theater, the lack
of all knowledge concerning Nicky, the desertion by the servants. Or it
might mean something more terrible, something which she could escape by
fleeing to America. But the chart said nothing whatever concerning any
voyage, even a short one.

       *       *       *       *       *

Despite the deep sense of weariness and nervous exhaustion, she was not
able to sleep. In the darkness, faintly scented by the odor of expensive
perfume, she lay awake, tormented and driven in a nightmare of
emptiness, by a thousand thoughts, memories and fears.

The fear--that nameless inexplicable sense of contagious panic which had
seized her when the first news came that France was falling and that the
Germans were on their way to Paris was long since gone. For three days
before they arrived, people had been quitting Paris--Jews, millionaires,
concierges, shopkeepers, working men and their families. It was as if a
plague of terror, horribly contagious, had swept over the whole city,
picking its victims like the plague, at random, stealing away the sanity
and common sense of people of every station in life. They had fled by
train, by automobile, by delivery truck, by bicycle, on foot with
children and household belongings pushed ahead in a perambulator. On the
third day, as the city turned sad and empty and still like a body
drained of all blood, the panic had finally seized her when she returned
to the house to find that the cook and the chambermaid had both vanished
with all their belongings. She had gone to their rooms to find them
stripped and bare. In the kitchen a meal, half-prepared, cluttered the
narrow tables. The sight of the bare rooms and the evidence of panic in
the kitchen made her aware suddenly of her own _aloneness_, in the
house, in Paris, in the whole world. Then there followed a strange
interlude of which, curiously, she could remember nothing at all. She
only knew that she had awakened from it by suddenly catching the
reflection of her own face in the mirror at the end of the room, a face
which so terrified her that the sight of it shocked her into an
awareness of her surroundings and what she was doing.

There, on the bed beside her was a handbag already packed, beside it a
jewel case and two coats, one of mink and one of ermine. She had not
considered how she would flee nor where. There had been simply a moment
of atavistic panic, compounded of many vague confused fears of fire and
rape and torture and death at the hands of invaders. When clarity
returned she sat down, facing her reflection in the mirror, thinking,
"You are a fool! All you have in the world is here in Paris! Nothing can
happen to you! You are an American with an American passport, born in
Evanston, Indiana! You have always taken care of yourself since you were
a child, because you had to. Nothing can happen!"

Then quite calmly she had unpacked and putting on a hat and jacket had
gone out into the gray empty streets to walk round the corner to the
Claridge. The hotel was empty. The concierge remained and a man at the
desk and four or five men and two women who looked as if they had been
expecting the Germans all day long and were delighted that they were at
last arriving. There had always been a great many Germans at the
Claridge. Thyssen himself had always stayed there.

The man at the desk was glad to see her again. Oddly enough they never
mentioned the approach of the Germans. She asked for a room on the
Champs Elyses side and the concierge took her up to it. But never once
did they speak of the Germans.

There in the window of the room she waited.

It was a gray afternoon with the sky overcast by clouds which shut out
the sun and dimmed the gaiety of everything that was Paris. The long
expanse of the Champs Elyses lay, nearly empty, the shutters and
doorways closed. Now and then someone passed on the sidewalk. The Mtro
no longer ran and no one entered or left the gaping station entrances.
From her window she could see the decapitated turret of the Astoria
Hotel and remembered the old story that the Astoria was built by German
money with a turret and balcony overlooking the Arc de Triomphe from
which the Kaiser had meant to review his troops as they marched beneath
the arc. After _that_ war they had cut down the turret and destroyed the
balcony but that had not stopped the Germans from coming in twenty-five
years later.

They would be coming now, at any moment, up the long vista from the
Place de la Concorde to the Arc de Triomphe. She was here now
alone--Roxie Dawn, born Irma Peters of Evanston, Indiana, in the
embrasure of a high window in the Claridge Hotel waiting for the Germans
to arrive. She was here because this was something one did not see every
day--the death of Paris, the entry of a conquering army. She was dimly
aware that this was one of the great occasions of history but she
thought of it as a sight which she would be able to describe, a story
which she would be able to tell for the rest of her life, as long as she
lived. She could say, "I was there. I saw it. I did not run away." She
could tell it if ever she went back to America.

In the soberness of the moment, all alone in the strange hotel room,
thoughts occurred to her which had never occurred before in all her
restless life, thoughts tinged by philosophical intimations, strange to
her and born of the moment. How odd it was that she should be here alone
at this moment, no longer afraid for herself but worried and afraid for
a Russian whom she loved, whose life was even stranger and more
disordered than her own. And this business of the stars and their effect
upon her life; certainly there must be something in it, for whatever had
happened to her throughout her whole life had been unplanned. It had
happened, without reflection, without thought.

And then she heard music, distantly, from the far end of the great
avenue, breaking obscenely the frightening unnatural stillness. There
was no place for music in this empty gray city. Slowly the music took
form as "_Deutschland, Deutschland, ber Alles_" and she felt suddenly
sick and held more tightly to the brocade curtains. And after a little
while she could, by leaning out, see the muzzle of the advancing column
of mechanized troops coming slowly up the avenue between the chestnut
and plane trees. Then a curious thing happened to her. She thought, "I
don't want to see it. It is too awful--I cannot look!" And drawing the
curtains across the window she went over to the bed and lay down.

But the curtains did not shut out the sounds. The music of the band died
away and in its place came the throbbing, clanking sound of the trucks,
and then just opposite the hotel the band blared out again, this time in
the strains of the song written by the pimp Horst Wessell. She put her
hands over her ears but the sound still came through the drawn curtains
into the darkened room.

When it was over, she waited for a long time before going down to the
street. It was nearly dark and there were already German officers in the
great hall of the Claridge and German soldiers on the streets. Quickly
with her hat pulled over her eyes, the collar of her jacket high up to
hide her face, she made her way back to the rue Washington and the empty
house of the Argentine. It was like the end of the world and she knew
suddenly that she really loved Nicky who by now must be a prisoner or
dead.

He had gone as a volunteer, since although he was born in Russian
Georgia, he had no nationality whatever except that given him by the
League of Nations passport. Once when she said to him, "Why do you go?"
he said with sudden seriousness, "When we were chased out of Russia,
France took us in. Paris is the only home I've ever known since I was
fourteen years old. I shouldn't want to see Germans in Paris... never
Germans."

Now and then, rarely, he had turned serious and for a moment she would
have a glimpse deep inside him, into another Nicky that was secret and
hidden away. She had asked, "Why do you hate the Germans so much?" He
looked at her sharply, "Because I have lived among them." Remembering
the speech brought to mind the sudden furious hatred in the eyes of
d'Abrizzi as he sat staring at the young German soldiers in the Mtro.
When she said, "Why are the Germans worse than other people?" Nicky had
only laughed and said, "Because they just damned well are! They're dull
and pompous and sentimental and muddled and brutal. And now let's forget
it."

So he had gone to join a battalion of foreign volunteers--refugee Czechs
and Poles, Jugoslavs and Jews and Spanish and whatnot. It wasn't a
pleasant prospect. Such a battalion wasn't too well treated and was
always under suspicion. When he came back on leave he said he did not
mind because he had been through much worse experiences, which was
probably true since his fourteenth birthday had found him an orphan,
penniless, singing and dancing for his supper, in Stamboul with what was
left of Wrangel's army. And after that he had wandered about Europe,
sometimes with papers, sometimes without, through Roumania, Jugoslavia,
Prague and Berlin and finally Paris where friends of his dead parents
got him a passport. He had worked as bus boy and taxi driver, as dancing
teacher and chauffeur and gigolo. He had been or done very nearly
everything in life, and so he was tough. But nothing had ever quenched
his vitality nor saddened his gaiety. She knew others like him who had
never had any proper, decent life. If he had done odd, immoral, shady
things, she could understand since she herself knew as a child what it
was to be hungry. And he had known from the time he was a boy hunger and
cold and death and worse things. She did not mind giving him money.
Disordered and strange as her own life had been, she had been lucky,
compared to Nicky.

And now she did not know where he was or whether he was dead or alive
and she did know how much difference this made to her. She thought, "If
he is still alive, if I ever see him again we will go to America and
begin all over again. I will make him go."

It did not matter that he had never been there or that she herself had
been away for so long that she would know no one there. They had both
lived always, in a way, by their wits; they would be able to get on
somehow. She did not attempt to deceive herself. She was thirty-two
years old and all the success she had ever had was here in Paris. She
was no longer a young girl who might love many times, carelessly because
there was so much time still before her. She could not begin all over
again as a chorus girl of eighteen.

In her sleeplessness, she thought suddenly of the radio, thinking
"perhaps there will be something, some news." It was three in the
morning. She was able to find only a foreign broadcast in a language
which she decided must be Russian and a program of weird music which she
discovered at length came from Casablanca... nothing else.

Then she switched it off and heard a knock, very light, on her door.
Switching on the light, she said, "Come in!"

The one who knocked was, as she expected, Lon. He wore Nicky's black
and scarlet dressing gown. It was much too long for him and he had tied
the scarlet cord tightly around his little belly and hitched the extra
length up beneath the cord. His bristling black hair was rumpled and
standing on end. He carried a half-smoked cigar in his hand. He was very
awake, his black eyes glittering with the excitement of some idea which
had taken possession of him.

"Did I waken you?" he said.

"No. I couldn't sleep. Come in."

"I can't sleep when I'm developing ideas... I was developing one all
evening."

She laughed. "I knew that."

He crossed over to the bed and sat on the edge of it. "Do you mind the
cigar?"

"No."

"Are you really awake--enough to talk?"

"Yes. What's the idea?"

He looked at the end of the cigar. "It's like this." Again he paused and
at last he said without looking at her, "It is true that Nicky means
something to you?"

"Yes... a great deal."

"And it is true that you don't want to go to America till you know what
has become of him?"

"Yes."

"It might be that if he was a prisoner you could help him."

"How? How with Germans?"

He grinned. "You are handsome. I might even say beautiful. You are a
famous star. All Germans, even the most sophisticated, are like country
bumpkins just come to the city."

"So I am to play Tosca now?"

"Maybe."

"It's very melodramatic."

He looked at her sharply. "And what do you think we have been living in
for twenty years... ever since the last war. What have we been living
in but melodrama? What is Hitler but melodrama and Mussolini and
Daladier and Reynaud and their girl friends? What is Stalin but
melodrama, and Carol and Lupescu? What was Rasputin and the Czarina?
What is more melodramatic than Schuschnigg and his mistress and Fifth
Columnists and poor Dollfuss? And Stavisky and Thyssen? And Chamberlain
with his umbrella as the comedy country bumpkin? It's all rotten
melodrama; the kind you couldn't play on the stage because it will
stink. We've been living it in Europe for twenty years."

She sat up in bed suddenly fascinated by the passion of the ugly little
man. She had never thought about it before but what he said brought back
a rush of memories. Paris itself, always on the edge of tragedy and
disaster, had been bad melodrama.

"It could be done," he said. "You might be able to help Nicky if he is
alive. You are not stupid."

"Thanks."

"You could possibly find out a great many other things from the Boches."

"Am I to be Mata Hari as well as Tosca?"

His swarthy face was suddenly contorted in an expression of annoyance.
"This is serious," he said. "It is not funny." His cigar had gone out
and he put it aside and lighted another. "You don't think _Parisiens_
are going to take this lying down. You don't think Paris is going on
like this... beaten, without spirit. It's apathetic now, but it will
change and then our time will come."

"_Our_ time?"

"Yes, our time. There is a job to be done. We can make Paris so
uncomfortable for the Boches, they'll be glad to go home. They're
homesick already after three days. No German is ever really at home in
Paris. To him its always a wicked, immoral place where everyone's wits
are sharper than his own where he understands nothing."

"You _do_ hate them, don't you?"

"Yes, I've always hated them wherever they've turned up--in
Alexandretta, in Athens, in Milano, but most of all in Paris. They never
belong anywhere but in Germany."

"I don't hate them. I haven't any feeling at all except that they don't
belong in Paris."

"Have you ever known Germans?"

"No... not really."

"Some day you will know what I mean."

"So what do you want me to do?"

"You heard what Filomena said tonight?"

"You mean that I wasn't going back to America? That is silly."

"Maybe, but I think not. I want you to stay here until you know what has
become of Nicky. I want you to be in the show when I reopen it. They'll
come to you like flies to honey--the Boche officers. Because you're
American you'll have a special _chic_, more than the _Parisiennes_
themselves. Because you're American, they won't be suspicious of you."

"If you mean that I'm to two-time Nicky for the cause, the answer is
no."

"That is up to you... how well you manage the game. I'll do my part.
Some of the girls will play. They'll play to the limit. I'll be very
important to the Boche."

"As a procurer?"


He shrugged his shoulders. "Call it anything you like, diplomacy,
spying, sabotage, pimping... it's all the same to me under the
circumstances. It's been all the same in Europe for twenty-five years.
The war isn't over. France is not defeated forever. One day there won't
be a German left in Paris because it won't be safe even for a German
traveling salesman. One day you'll see them hanging from lampposts
alongside our friend Laval and the others who invited them in."

"I don't know. It's all too fantastic. I can't tell you now."

And then the sound of footsteps in the hallway came to them faintly.
D'Abrizzi heard the sound first and sat up very straight. Then Roxie
heard the sound too and quickly took the revolver from under her pillow.
They both looked toward the door. In the hallway someone turned on a
light which showed beneath the door. D'Abrizzi quickly took the
revolver.

The door opened and in the doorway stood Nicky.

He was dressed in a fantastic suit of large checks and wore a bowler
hat. The suit was too small for his big frame. It was the kind of suit
one saw on bookmakers at Auteuil and Longchamps in the enclosures
frequented by the concierges.

His face wore an expression of utter astonishment. Then he grinned,
"_En bien! Enfin je suis devenu cocu!_"

Lon stood up, uncertain whether or not Nicky was serious. Roxie threw
back the bed covering and climbing out of bed crossed the room. She
said, "Nicky!" and that was all she was able to say for she began to
cry. The tears were tears of happiness, of relief, of utter relaxation.
She would have fallen on the floor but for Nicky's arms. He held her for
a moment, kissing the top of her head and grinning sheepishly at
d'Abrizzi. He said, "And so I enlist and then another fellow tries to
make my girl." Then d'Abrizzi knew that he had not been serious even in
the beginning, and he felt an odd hurt strike at his heart... that no
man ever considered him a rival because he was so small and ugly. To be
like this scamp of a Nicky he would have given all his money, his
theaters, everything he possessed. To be tall and handsome and always
certain that when you came into a room every woman turned to look at
you, and most of them found you desirable on sight.

Nicky began to laugh, "It was like a scene in one of your own shows," he
said, "you sitting on the end of Roxie's bed in my dressing gown with a
gat in your hand."

D'Abrizzi threw the gun on the bed. It was a curious anti-climactic
gesture, as grotesque and comical as his own short thick figure in
Nicky's dressing gown. It had always been like this for him, as far back
as he could remember. He moved to the door and before he went out, he
said, "You needn't worry about me. I'll get some coffee around the
corner."

They did not answer him. They were scarcely aware that he had gone out
of the room for in all the world, in the midst of defeat and confusion
and death, there were only the two of them.

       *       *       *       *       *

Afterward, when everything was still again and peaceful in the awful
peach and gold bedroom, he told her as nearly as he could what had
happened to him.

He could not tell her much that had happened to him during those last
days because he had been unconscious most of the time. The first thing
he remembered had happened a week ago when he awakened, aware that he
was in a strange place he had never seen before and that he had come out
of a nightmare through a tunnel of darkness. The room in which he found
himself, with a bandaged head, lying in bed, was small and dun-colored,
with faded wallpaper in an ugly design of stripes interspersed with
liver-colored roses. There was at the far end a washstand with a cheap
pitcher and a bowl of the sort one sees outside bazaars with the
packing straw still sticking to them, and there were two chairs, one
large and upholstered in olive-colored plush, the other black, stiff and
forbidding as a puritanical priest. The bed in which he lay was of some
dark and heavy wood and above it hung a cheap crucifix with the body of
Christ done in vulgar polychrome. The curtains at the window were of
cheap lace, white and stiff with starch, hanging behind over-curtains of
heavy dark-brown plush ornamented with ball fringe.

Slowly he understood from the room itself that he was in a humble house
in some provincial town. And then slowly, fragment by fragment, like the
shattered colors of a kaleidoscope which in the end resolve themselves
into a pattern, odd fragments and pieces of events returned to him and
took form. He remembered the flight along the roads and through
shattered villages with the planes swooping down, bombing and
machine-gunning soldiers and old men and women and children alike. He
remembered seeing one old woman and a fair-haired little girl fall dead
beside the road, their bodies riddled by the bullets of some young
German in the plane overhead. He remembered shaking his fist and cursing
with an anger so violent and impotent that afterward he vomited in the
ditch where he had taken refuge. He remembered too the curious wild
sense of panic and rage at the suspicion and finally the certainty that
he and the other men in his regiment had been betrayed by someone,
somewhere in the government or in the army itself. And he remembered at
the same time thinking of these people, a few of them friends, many of
them acquaintances, out of the bright life of Paris, who had talked of
the Nazis with indifference or sympathy; the Nazis were not so bad, they
said; the Nazis stood for order and decent government; they would
protect the people with money. And even as he thought of these people he
knew that these were the ones who had betrayed him and his friends in
the regiment.

And there was that last memory of fighting from behind a low wall in a
trampled garden, and the fury which had flowed in his veins like fire,
above all that last wild reckless fury when he fired his rifle, first at
the planes overhead and then at the Germans coming across an open field,
again and again until the barrel of the gun burned his skin.

There had been only one thought in his mind. These louts, these monsters
must never reach Paris. They had no right there, even as tourists. They
were brutes who could not possibly understand all that Paris was.
Delicacy, beauty, gaiety, wit, were all things beyond the comprehension
of Germans. In that moment, while he stood there fighting without
concern as to whether he lived or died, he remembered all the things
which had always been distasteful to him in Germans wherever he had met
them... in Paris, in the Alps, in Istanbul, in the Tyrol, at home on
their own ground. As he fired at each gray figure coming out of the
forest, he found himself making a game, savage and bitter, out of the
killing. "That one," he would say, "is for your muddled thinking! That
one for your sloppy sentimentality! That one for your self-deception!
That one for your devastating national sense of inferiority! That one
for your cruelty! That one for your revolting emotionalism! That one for
your lack of good taste--for the architecture of Berlin, for the way
your women dress and the way you furnish your houses! That one for your
bad food and gross appetites!"

Lying in bed he remembered it all very clearly. Beside him almost
shoulder to shoulder had fought a little dark man with blue eyes called
Chico who had been a garage mechanic in Montparnasse. Chico kept
muttering and firing and swearing. And every now and then he'd yell,
"You'll never get to Paris... you fat, dumb, swine! You'll never get to
Paris!" And then suddenly he didn't hear Chico's voice any more and
turning to see what had become of him, he found Chico lying dead on his
face, his tough muscular arm hugging his rifle close to him.

Then he had gone on firing, cursing the gray figures, filled always with
the obsession that the ugly, clumsy, gray figures must never pass him
and get to Paris. That was all that mattered in that moment; the
rest--the doubts, the betrayals, the confusion--was forgotten, save that
now and then in some remote part of his brain a voice kept saying, "When
it's over we'll get those who betrayed us! We'll hang them to every
lamppost up and down the Champs Elyses."

The odd thing was that he thought and acted like a Frenchman although he
possessed not a square meter of French soil nor a drop of French blood
but was a foreigner born in the wild remote mountains fifty miles from
Tiflis.

When the tanks came out of the forest, plunging and tossing as they
came, like elephants of steel, he kept on firing, now at the tanks, but
nothing happened. The steel elephants simply came on and on toward the
neat village gardens. He remembered thinking what a pity it was that
they should crush the carefully tended rows of lettuce and young onions
and cabbage and green peas. And suddenly he saw the gardens in a new
fashion. He had never before thought of them in that way--each small
square of garden as a tiny work of art, created by the carpenter, the
little shopkeeper, the plumber, the clerk at the _Mairie_. Into each
small plot a man or perhaps a woman had poured something of his serene
and orderly spirit. They were there, each little garden neat and ordered
and beautiful because some Frenchman loved the earth, because he loved
to eat well, because he had for nature itself, whether it manifested
itself in the pollen carried from flower to flower by the bees or in
making love to his own wife or mistress, a kind of mystical devotion. It
was not the drum-beating Wagnerian emotionalism that found its
expression in Wotan and Fricka and Thor and Freia, but something clearer
and more beautiful, filled with order and reason. It all became clear to
him suddenly as he fired across the crumbling wall at the tanks moving
forward to smash the little gardens. He knew why it was that the Germans
and the Frenchmen were so far apart, so remote from each other that
understanding was very nearly beyond hope. It came to him, out of the
spectacle of the tanks and the gardens, suddenly in a burst of
understanding.

One of the tanks was quite near now. It veered suddenly and as it passed
in front of him, its machine gun sent a stream of bullets rattling
against the wall which sheltered him. That was the last thing he
remembered.

And then he had wakened in the dull, ugly little room, knowing nothing
of what had happened since the moment the tank had spit its bullets at
him. He did not even know whether the steel treads of the tanks had
ripped up the pretty gardens and smashed the wall. He did not know how
long he had been unconscious nor where he was, nor what had happened in
the world outside, nor whether those clumsy, ugly, gray figures had ever
reached Paris. What troubled him most was the fact that he did not know
what had become of Roxie. When he had gone away to the regiment the idea
that the Germans would ever reach Paris was fantastic and impossible.

It troubled him because he was aware vaguely that, unlike any other
woman he had ever known, she was in some curious way a part of his
existence, a part indeed of himself. He had not thought of it before; in
his reckless fashion he had accepted her as he had accepted many women.
Perhaps she had gone back to that odd country America from which she had
come. There was no reason why she should stay behind when she had only
to board a train to leave for her own country where she would be safe
and warm and comfortable and well fed.

Certainly he was not without experience of women. He had loved a great
many women in various shades and degrees, but this one was different.
For him she had something the others had not possessed. With his tired
mind he attempted, wearily, because his bandaged head ached and he felt
weak, to analyze what it was that made Roxie different. There was her
singular beauty, her beautiful long legs and her feet and ankles, the
beautiful hands, which seemed to be a special gift of nature to American
women. But it was more than that which made him love her; it was,
perhaps her quality of honesty and warmth, even her disillusionment, her
lack of all sentimentality. Beauty could fade; you could grow sated with
beauty or become weary of it. Beauty of body and face alone was not
enough. It was more than that--much more. It was something deep and
hidden which neither of them ever spoke of. He could not, in his
weariness, quite define it.

He tried to remember her, dancing at the Alhambra or at home, or at
Maxim's, or in the country at St. Jean-Aux-Bois, in the cheap little
villa by the river. Sometimes he succeeded, sometimes he failed.
Sometimes the memory of her returned only dimly in a kind of haze.
"That," he thought, "is because there is something the matter with my
head."

He felt presently an immense weariness. His eyes closed of themselves
and presently he was asleep.

When he wakened there was a small dumpy woman in a black dress with
graying hair strained back from her plump sallow face standing beside
the bed looking at him. As he opened his eyes, she smiled and said,
"Good morning, I see you are much better." She had a bowl of broth on a
tray with two rolls lying beside it.

He said good morning and then asked, "Where am I and what has happened?"

She put down the tray and asked, "Do you feel well enough to sit up?"
She put one strong arm behind his shoulders and pulled up the pillows.

"Yes, I feel quite well."

"When you have the broth you will feel better."

She placed the tray on his knees and started to feed him the broth from
a spoon but he protested, "I can feed myself." It was extraordinarily
good broth, savory and pungent. "Just tell me what happened... what has
happened to Paris?"

She looked away from him out of the window and said in a low voice,
"Paris has fallen!"

It was a simple speech and she endowed it with an extraordinary quality
of bitter tragedy. She was a commonplace, plain little woman, dressed in
dowdy black. There were millions of others like her in France. He knew
well enough what her life was. She had a husband and one or two
children, and the husband had a little shop and she kept this dull
little house for him and managed his bookkeeping as well. At holiday
times she would work in the shop. And they had a small garden like the
ones he had seen menaced by the tanks, where they worked side by side in
long summer evenings and on Sundays after all the family, dressed in
their best black clothes, had come home from mass.

He knew her well. In her small way she was France. She had never wanted
war. All she had asked was to live her small, quiet, self-contained
existence. She was dull and unpretentious and conventional and thrifty.

She was all the things which to him as far back as he could remember had
been tiresome and boring, all the things he himself was not. Yet now in
that modest dreary room he felt very near to her, and he was aware of
the curious profound dignity of the woman as she said, "Paris has
fallen!" and turned away, her black eyes wet and glistening. He felt
near to her, he thought, because they felt the same about Paris. Her
Paris and his were quite different cities--hers a great and beautiful
city which she visited perhaps three times a year to shop at the
Galeries Lafayette or the Bazaar de l'Htel de Ville and eat her lunch
in a cheap restaurant and then shop again and then hurry to catch the
suburban train to be home in time to cook supper for her husband and her
children. His Paris was a city of lights and gaiety and champagne, of
Maxim's and the Ritz and the races--a city of gaiety and brilliance no
other city ever attained.

But there was another Paris which belonged to them both as it belonged
to Chico, the little garage mechanic, who had fallen beside him there at
the garden wall. This was the Paris which belonged to all of France, to
the great and the simple, the rich and the poor, the clever and the
stupid, because all of them through centuries had created it--the Paris
which was the blossoming of all that was French. It was a generous
Paris, and in a way it was a symbol; in a way it had been given to the
world. It had taken fugitives and the unfortunate and people like
himself who had no country, and it had given great treasures lavishly to
the rest of the world--treasures of thought, of reason, of art, of
beauty.

So he understood the dignity and the beauty of the dumpy little woman in
black when she said, "Paris has fallen!"

It had happened two days earlier, she told him. For a long time there
had been no news and only confusion and rumor with German tanks and
armored cars and infantry passing through the streets of the
half-wrecked village. And then a neighbor who had run away returned on a
bicycle to say that the Germans were in Paris.

She herself had not run away when the others had gone. With three or
four old men and women and three neighbors she had gone to hide in the
crypt of the church. They had been ordered like all the others to leave
the village, but she and the others had remained behind because it had
seemed safer than to run away. For two days before the Germans came they
had seen others who had fled, pouring through the village streets. They
had heard their stories of the panic, the slaughter by German planes
along the road. One woman carried her dead child; they could not make
her leave it. On the top of a wagon in the straw in the midst of piled
up furniture lay a grandmother, the poor old body riddled by machine-gun
bullets. There was a little girl with her arm shattered....

So they had decided to remain behind rather than join the long line of
refugees. In any case, the woman said quite simply, this village was
their home; if they were to die it was better to die here than among
strangers on some lonely crowded road.

In the crypt they had been safe enough, and when the Germans had gone
they had come out and gone to their houses. Some of the houses had been
bombed. Luckily her own house was untouched save for a shattered window
or two. Her husband and two sons were in the army. She did not know
where they were nor whether they were alive or dead.

Tears filled her eyes again as she said, "In the last war I lost two
brothers and my husband was wounded. It is too much to ask... two wars
in a lifetime."

As if her emotions had exhausted her, she sat down on the ugly plush
chair and took a handkerchief out of her plump bosom and blew her nose.

"When I came back to the house," she said, "I found you by the garden
wall. There was another soldier dead beside you. The pharmacist helped
me carry you into the house. We buried the dead one in the little garden
on the other side of the wall."

Then, noticing that he had finished the broth, she rose briskly and came
over and took away the tray. "The pharmacist says you were very lucky.
He says that you might have been killed but all you had was a bad
concussion. The bullet pierced your helmet and glanced off your head."
She smiled weakly. "You must have a hard head. You'll be all right in a
few more days... but you must lie still and be very quiet." Then quite
formally she said, "My name is Madame Dupuy, Madame Jacques Dupuy. My
husband is a contractor here in Bthisy."

Quite formally he answered her, "My name is Nicholas Stejadze. I am a
_Parisien_."

"I know your name. I found it on the plaque. It is an odd name for a
_Parisien_." Then as if unable to support her curiosity she asked, "Are
you in business, too?"

He grinned. Now he was going to be exposed to her disapproval. "No," he
said, "I'm not in business."

"Ah, a professor or a _fonctionnaire_?"

"No, Madame, I'm afraid I do nothing at all but enjoy myself."

"How old are you?" she asked bluntly.

"Thirty-three." As if in apology he added, "I was born in Russia... in
Georgia. I was an orphan. I had no education."

She shook her head and made a clucking sound of disapproval, but almost
immediately a sudden light came into her eyes and she said, "Well, I
suppose all of us would live like that if we could afford it. There is
so much to be enjoyed in the world. I can never understand people who
say they do not know what they would do with themselves if they did not
have to work."

That was a very French remark and also a very polite and thoughtful one.

"Perhaps you are an _amateur_? Perhaps you collect something?"

He smiled again, "No, madame, I am afraid I do not even collect
anything." He thought, "I might have said I collected women." But that,
he knew, would shock her. In all the world there was nothing so
respectable as this _petite bourgeoise_.

Suddenly while she was speaking to him she walked to the window. So he
only added, "I'm afraid I am a useless person... one of those for whom
there will be no more place in the world when this is finished."

Her answer was muffled by a sigh, "If it is ever finished...."

She fussed with the curtains. "You must not go to the window," she said.
"They might see you."

"Are there many quartered in the village?"

"No. It is a very small place. There is only a corporal and four
soldiers, but if they found you they would ship you off to a prison
camp. No one in the village but the pharmacist knows you are here." As
an afterthought, she said, "And it would be very hard on me. They are
very severe to people caught sheltering soldiers."

"I will be careful. I will go away tomorrow."

"No. You won't be strong enough."

"Well... as soon as I can."

"Then you must go south below the Loire."

"No. I mean to go to Paris."

Her face crinkled with alarm. "That is very dangerous for any soldier,
but especially for a foreigner like yourself...."

"There is someone there I must see. Would it be too much trouble to ask
for a pencil and a bit of paper?"

"Of course not."

"And I would like to shave. I must look very savage."

"No. Your beard gives you a romantic look. I can remember when a great
many soldiers had beards." She smiled in a nostalgic way. "I always
liked beards. I was sorry to see them go out of fashion."

She went away and in a little while returned with paper, a corroded
inkwell and a frightful needle-pointed pen. On a second trip she fetched
hot water, a bowl and her husband's extra razor--a huge old-fashioned
elegant affair with a tortoiseshell handle. Clearly it was his best
razor left at home and reserved only for special occasions. Before she
left, she turned in the doorway.

"Do you think that in the end they'll be driven out of Paris?" she
asked.

"Of course. We shall drive them out somehow."

"It seems so awful," she said. "Like having pigs in the salon."

If the remark had not been made with such seriousness he would have
laughed. Again the air of tragic dignity invested the small dumpy
figure. She felt as he felt... the Germans must be driven out because
they did not belong there. It was a situation which was insupportable,
like a violation of nature. It could not endure.

Her sallow face still pinched with worry, she closed the door and went
away.

When she had gone he got weakly out of bed and went to the mirror to
look at himself. The reflection made him laugh. The beard and the
bandage were grotesque enough but Madame Dupuy and the pharmacist had
put him into one of Monsieur Dupuy's nightshirts, a cotton affair
embroidered in a design of red thread, which reached only to his knees.
He thought, "If Roxie could see me now, she would certainly laugh."

When he had shaved, he sat down and pushing aside the wash bowl he wrote
a letter with the horrible pen. It read:

     "Darling: I am in a little place called Bthisy somewhere near
     Compigne. I was wounded, very slightly and am coming to Paris in a
     day or two. If this reaches you it's just to tell you I'll turn up.
     Don't think I'm dead. Alive or dead I'll haunt you always. Nicky."

When he asked Madame Dupuy if there was some way of sending the note to
Roxie's house in the rue Washington she was pessimistic. There was, she
said, no post, no telephone, no telegraph. One could only enter or leave
Paris if one had special papers. However, she would do her best.

Suddenly, while she was speaking to him, she walked to the window and
drew the heavy plush curtains.

"It is the patrol," she said.

He heard the sound of heavy boots... the four German soldiers and the
corporal... on the cobblestones outside the window. Then he heard the
hoarse voice of the corporal shouting, "_Halt!_"

       *       *       *       *       *

While he dressed two of them guarded him. The corporal and the other two
took dumpy, sallow little Madame Dupuy away to the _Mairie_. He
protested but there was nothing to do. The corporal said in German that
she was a dangerous person, that people like her shot good German
soldiers from ambush. When the corporal returned, he would not say what
had become of her, and when he looked at Nicky's papers he said, "Ugh! A
Russian pig! A Slav!" The corporal was a dumpy little man, clearly a
nobody, now swollen with his importance as the _Gauleiter_ of Bthisy.

They took him to the local prison, a single dark little room with barred
windows, and later at sundown he was placed in a truck in charge of a
squad of soldiers, and driven away through the blue dusk of summer
evening in Northern France. It was lovely country, with the river
wandering through flat green pastures, with lines of poplars against the
sky. The men in the truck revealed that they had been ordered to treat
refugee volunteers with special severity. They tried to discover why he
had run away from Russia, and when he told them his story of the escape
with the last remnants of Wrangel's shattered army, their faces went
blank and stupid. They were too young to remember anything of the
Revolution or the last war, and it was clear that they had been taught
nothing save that the Germans were the master race and that their Fhrer
was a miracle. They could not understand that he was a refugee from the
last war and not the political oppression which preceded this one. They
could not understand that he believed himself, if not actually French,
at least _Parisien_. Why, they asked, if he was Russian, had he troubled
to fight for a degenerate, weak people like the French?

After a little time he did not attempt to argue or explain; it was like
trying to have an intelligent conversation with a troup of baboons.
Their very training had made intelligent conversation impossible.

It was long after dark when they arrived at a concentration camp set up
on the edge of what had been an air field. He knew vaguely where he
was--probably in the Department of the Oise, but he was unable to
interpret even the landmarks or the road signs which still remained. His
head hurt him and the growing darkness made everything confused.

That first night he lay down almost at once on the pile of straw that
was pointed out to him in the barracks, and fell asleep. In the morning
he felt better and strong enough to look about him and talk to the
others in the camp. They were an odd mixture, mostly foreigners like
himself, some of them Jews, of all ages and nationalities--many of them
refugees from Austria and Czechoslovakia and Germany. There were a few
soldiers from the volunteer refugee battalion. Most of the older men and
some of the younger ones were frightened. It was clear that all of them
had been herded together here as foreigners who had found sanctuary in
France or who loved France enough to fight for it. Some of them had been
sent out from Paris after the Germans had entered the city and their
patrols had begun picking up people. It was clear too that they had been
herded together because some special punishment had been reserved for
them. One of the older men, an Austrian Jew, told him that this was a
camp reserved for Jews and communists--a label which always included
anyone whom the Germans wished to liquidate.


When he had had a breakfast of coffee and bread, he tried to discover
what had become of his papers, but the corporal to whom he addressed the
inquiry only spat at him and said, "Nobody knows and anyway it doesn't
matter because you won't need any papers from now on."

After that he returned to the barracks and sat down and tried to think;
everything in him of the scamp, the rogue, of the fugitive, of the
gentleman who lived by his wits, came suddenly to life. He thought,
"They can't keep me shut up here--not these stupid Germans! I've got to
get out of here. I've got to get back to Paris. I can still fight them
from there, no matter if there isn't any French army left, no matter if
in France there isn't any more war." And what he meant always was, "I
must get back to Paris. I must fight for my beloved Paris, to make her
free again." For Paris was the only home he had ever known. Paris had
been kind to him.

He was filled suddenly with a great contempt for everything German. It
was a profound contempt, for not only the _Parisien_ spoke out but the
poetic Slav and the Asiatic, who was older even than Paris.

He went out of the barracks quietly, he engaged a rich Austrian refugee
in conversation and picked his pocket of two packages of cigarettes.
Money he did not want or need; he had never had any money and despite
that fact he had always managed to live very well.

Then in a leisurely, casual way he made a circuit of the barbed-wire
enclosure. It was not the first wire which had shut him in. He had been
in camps like this in Bucharest, in Budapest, in Germany. None of them
had ever held him. This one, he knew after the tour, could not hold him.
It was hurriedly constructed, a makeshift affair in which to corral the
victims the German army was gathering in wholesale day by day. Any of
the prisoners could escape if they had the courage and the initiative;
the only risk was the chance of a shot from a sentry. But most of the
prisoners were too frightened. Some of the more wretched seemed to have
been paralyzed by a kind of animal fear. They lay face down on their
straw, or they sat holding their heads in despair. One old Jew leaned
against the side of the barracks and wailed as if he were in Jerusalem
instead of the open country north of Paris.

In himself there was no fear. There was only hatred of his captors and
contempt and defiance and a kind of excitement and pleasure at the
challenge to escape. He forgot the dull pain inside his bandaged head
and grew impatient for the sun to go down.

       *       *       *       *       *

It was easier than he had imagined. He had only to go to the latrine and
wait until the sentry outside the wire had passed on his round. It was
too easy; he would have enjoyed it more if there had been searchlights
and machine guns and sentries every few yards. This was nothing. He had
only to wait until the single loutish sentry had passed. Then quickly he
slipped through the wire and vanished in the darkness that closed down
around the whole camp.

All night he walked, following roads which, by the stars, led southward.
Sometimes they ran through forests which he fancied he recognized, and
sometimes they ran between open fields. He passed through three tiny
villages whose names meant nothing to him as he ran his finger over the
signs and read them in the darkness by sense of touch. They were called
St. Pierre-sous-bois, Anglet and Pontavec. Three or four times he was
forced by weakness to rest and three or four times, when the dimmed
lights of a motor appeared on the road, he slipped into the ditch and
lay there until the gray cars had disappeared into the darkness.

The dawn came up slowly as it does in northern France, in a warm blue
haze which blurred the outlines of farms and poplar trees. The road
turned a deep gray and then a paler gray and at last it lay white
between the thick forests on either side. On the one side there was a
high ivy-covered wall that ran as far as the next turn in the road, one
of those walls which guarded a great property. This he followed for
nearly half a mile when it was broken suddenly by an opening more than a
hundred feet wide. There through the opening appeared a wide vista cut
through the forest. Below, surrounded by water and a vast expanse of
green lawn there rose out of the morning mists a great false Renaissance
chteau which seemed to float in the waters of the wide moat. Halfway
down the vista in an open space stood the statue of a man on a horse. In
the mist rising from the moat both horse and rider appeared like ghosts.

And then he knew suddenly where he was. This was the Chteau de
Chantilly and the ghostly rider was the Grand Cond.

He had had great luck for in Chantilly he was certain to find people who
would help him. Chantilly was filled with stables and horse trainers and
jockeys and people like himself of uncertain nationality. That he had
no papers would be less troublesome here than in some provincial
village. Making his way along the wall he passed the old houses on the
outskirts of the village and once he had crossed the bridges over the
Duc d'Aumale's canals he knew where he was. He had been here many times
to the races. He knew the stables. He might even have the luck to fall
upon a trainer or a jockey whom he knew.

The streets were empty, perhaps because of the early hour, perhaps
because of the German patrol which twice he sighted in the distance.

Once inside the town he took the narrow back streets. Here and there a
bomb had fallen, shattering a house or a stable. In one place a high
wall had been tumbled across the narrow street, leaving the house inside
the wrecked garden naked with all its insides obscenely exposed. The
bombing must have been done simply from a wanton sense of destruction
for there was nothing in Chantilly--only the chteau and the summer
villas and the horses and the race course. Again he cursed the Germans.

A moment later he passed an open gateway and through it he saw a
red-haired woman building a fire in the big courtyard. Opposite the
gateway was a simple stucco-covered house and on either side of the
courtyard were empty stables, their doors open, the horses gone.
Quickly he entered the gateway, closing the big gates behind him. As the
gates creaked on their hinges, the woman looked toward them and, seeing
him, screamed.

       *       *       *       *       *

While he lay telling the story, Roxie listened without once speaking.
She watched the dark intelligent face, speculating with some detachment
as to what went on behind it, deep inside him, in that part of him which
she had never been able to reach. All she had known of him was the
surface, attractive, amusing, tender, fickle, charming, ardent. What lay
beneath all that--the thing he really was, the soul, what he believed
and _was_, she had never touched. And now even while she listened she
understood that the fault was not altogether his. She herself had a
surface at times very nearly as shiny and attractive as that which
concealed Nicky. She was aware presently that both of them had
constructed over years this glittering hard surface as a kind of
protection against the softness inside which was themselves. It was a
process which happened in the world in which they had both lived for so
long. There was pride which must be protected from hurt by the built-up
scales of cynicism and mockery, and affections which must not be hurt
in a world where lasting affection and loyalty and even love were not
common. One had, sometimes, she knew, to be a scamp, to be hard, to be
deceitful merely to keep a roof over one's head and fend off starvation.
Anyone would have said that Nicky, without background, without home,
without nationality, was also without loyalty to anyone or anything; yet
she knew that was not true. There was something there deep inside him
which was warm and gay and kindly and perhaps even loyal. Only there was
no way of getting to it. It was there, she knew, else he could not have
made so great a difference in her life.

She could, of course, have said to him, "Come now, my friend, let's
chuck all the wisecracks and the laughs and be ourselves. Let's tear off
all these protective scales and come to really know each other. It will
be much better that way. What we have now is wonderful, but it is
shallow and cannot last. We must somehow know each other, know what we
_are_ and why we love each other."

But that too she could not do, because the process, even if it were
possible, would be so painful that it might be a cure that killed. She
understood that he, like herself, had been hurt and disillusioned so
many times that the very tissue of the scars themselves protected them.
If ever it happened, if ever she got through to him, it must come about
through some catastrophe, some tragedy of such violence that they would
be revealed to each other in the end, naked and stripped of all but the
very essence.

It had all begun casually because they found each other attractive and
amusing and sympathetic, but it had become much more than that. The
knowledge alarmed her because there was always the doubt that after all
her instinct might be wrong. It might be that Nicky was only charm and
good looks and cynicism. Underneath the protection there might be
nothing at all.

"And maybe," she thought, "I am just being a fool again." Only this time
there was pleasure in being a fool.

Then suddenly she heard him talking about the red-haired woman building
the fire and for the first time she spoke to interrupt him. She asked,
"Was she good-looking?"

He laughed and taking his arms from under his head, lay on his side with
his head supported by one arm. He touched her and asked, "What's the
matter? Are you jealous?" And she thought, "There it is again... the
shell, the professional manner." There was a cheapness about the speech
which struck back into his shady, disordered past. And she answered,
"No, I just asked out of curiosity."

"Well, to tell the truth, she wasn't either young or pretty. She had
nice red hair but she was freckled and middle-aged and fat." But even as
he spoke she did not believe him.

"Not that she wouldn't have given in," he added. "She didn't have the
opportunity."

He said that at first the woman was frightened. She was building the
fire outside to make coffee because the gasworks had been bombed and her
stove burned only gas. When she heard his story, she wasn't any longer
frightened--at least not by his appearance. On the contrary she turned
rather coy and said, "All right, you can hide here but come inside.
Someone might come in the gates or look over the walls."

She had run away with most of the rest of the town but had turned back
because she remembered the horses and could not bear the idea of leaving
them without food or water. Her husband was in the army and the stable
boys had gone away. There were twelve horses. But when she returned the
Germans were already there and the stables empty. She was half-French
and half-Irish, the daughter of a trainer who had come to France from
Ireland.

And Nicky, going on with the story, looked at Roxie suddenly grinning
and said, "She liked me very much. She fell for me at once." To which
Roxie answered, "Yes, I take all that for granted. I've seen women look
at you. I know just how they look at you--the damned fools. It makes me
ashamed of being a woman. Get on with the story."

There wasn't much more to tell. He had a bath and shaved with the razor
of another husband and the woman gave him the suit with the loud checks
which fitted so badly, and a bowler hat which did fit fairly well, and
when darkness fell he set out for Paris following the tracks of the
Chemin de Fer du Nord which seemed the shortest way and the way least
likely to bring him into trouble.

There hadn't been any trouble. In fact the whole trip had been
remarkably easy, especially since the engineer and fireman of a stray
engine had given him a lift, almost to the Gare du Nord. They didn't
care for the Germans any more than he did and could not support the idea
of Germans in Paris. A little way outside the Gare du Nord they slowed
down the engine and let him off.

"And so," he concluded, "I came straight here to discover you and Lon
in a compromising situation."

"Oh, lay off that," she said. "And what are you going to do now?"

He shrugged his shoulders, "Who knows? Who knows anything these days?"

"I want to go to America and I want you to go with me."

He did not answer but sat up suddenly resting his chin on his knees.
"America," he said presently. "That's a great idea. I'd like to see New
York... to see if it's as wonderful as all Americans say. But not now.
Now isn't the time."

"Even if I went?"

"You don't want to go... not really. Not now. Anyone would be a fool to
leave Paris now. The fun has only begun."

"What do you mean?"

"There's a job to be done here. There's a lot of excitement. I want to
be in on it."

"And what are you supposed to be? What are you going to do about
papers?"

He laughed. "Lon can fix that up. He's smart enough and corrupt enough.
He knows all the inside tricks. He's helped me out before. I might have
gone to jail with some of the Stavisky boys but for Lon." He looked at
her suddenly. "I've known Lon for a long time... in a way I've known
him always. We're both part Asiatic. I think we'll be able to handle the
Germans."

She remained thoughtful for a long time and presently said, "Lon is
going to reopen the Alhambra."

"That's an excellent idea."

"And he wants me to stay with the show."

"There's nothing wrong with that."

"He has some other ideas too. He wants me to do the Mata Hari stuff."

He looked at her sharply, and after a moment said, "Do you think you
have brains enough?"

"Do you?"

"Yes."

"Then you don't object?"

The dark face grew serious and for a moment she thought, "Maybe now I am
going to get through the shell. Maybe now I'll know what he is, what he
feels." Her heart began to beat so violently that beneath her breast she
felt pain.

But he only said, "I couldn't answer that now. It's something that would
need thought. But you certainly could be useful."

She said quietly, "You wouldn't mind my going the whole hog?"

"What do you mean?"

"Doing everything a female spy is supposed to do."

The color came suddenly into his face and the black eyes grew brilliant.
"If ever I caught you two-timing me I'd beat the hell out of you." And
suddenly she felt wildly happy. America did not matter now. Nothing
mattered because for a moment she had seen inside him.

She said, "I'll go and wake Lon and make some coffee."

       *       *       *       *       *

Major Freiherr Kurt von Fabrizius von Wessellhoft was the son of Herr
and Frau Doktor Freiherr Oberregierungsrath Frederick von Fabrizius von
Wessellhoft. He was eight years old two days before the signing of the
Armistice of November 11th, 1918. At that time he was a blond,
straight-backed little boy living in a great white house in Silesia with
his mother, his older sister, a young nurse schoolteacher from Swabia
called Lisa Dinkel and four or five old servants. They were safe in the
remote huge old house on the edge of the dark forest and had plenty to
eat because there was a large farm and no matter how severe the
restrictions nor the levies made by government law there were always
ways of hiding away plenty of food. And the government agents of the
district did not trouble too much if Frau Doktor Freiherr
Oberregierungsrath Frederick von Fabrizius von Wessellhoft failed to
turn in as much as such a rich estate should contribute. She was the
widow of a great judge and of a very old family descended remotely from
the Elector of Brandenburg, and in any case, no one in their part of
Germany went hungry except the workers in the mines and the small
factories so it did not seem to matter.

Small Kurt and his sister were having supper with their mother and Lisa
in the little room off the great hall when the old forester Herman
brought in the news. The mother was a straight, thin woman, handsome in
a provincial fashion which had nothing to do with clothes or styles. She
had rather cold blue eyes, a noble profile and a severe manner. She wore
her hair in braids drawn and pinned so tightly about her head that the
skin seemed drawn back from the high cheekbones. Lisa, the governess,
was only twenty-three, slim and ivory-skinned with red-gold hair which
she wore cut short. There was a softness about her that was nowhere
evident in the thin stiff Lutheran figure of Frau von Wessellhoft. Lisa
came from the south, from Swabia. There was in her both the blood of
Austrians and Slavs. When she moved it was with the grace of a swan. Her
voice was soft and she laughed easily.

When the old forester came in he stood holding his hat in his hand
respectfully, for this part of the world was still dimly feudal. One's
relationships, one's dignity, one's respect, were less determined by
what one was than by what one's ancestors had been. The forester was an
old man, too old for any service, with a broad, weatherbeaten face, a
beard and very bright blue eyes. When he addressed Frau von
Wessellhoft, it was with her full title Frau Doktor Oberregierungsrath.

He said, "Frau Doktor Oberregierungsrath, I have bad news. Our army has
stopped fighting. There is an Armistice!"

The great blue eyes of the Swabian governess grew darker suddenly and
tears began to stream down her face. Frau von Wessellhoft's narrow
handsome face seemed to grow even narrower and more Gothic. The lines
about the mouth hardened and the nose seemed to grow sharper. She sat a
little more erect. For a long time she sat staring into nothingness,
while the forester waited.

At last she said, "It is indeed bad news, Herr Forester. Now only God
knows what will happen to us."

Lisa, weeping, said, "It has all been for nothing... for nothing." And
the older ones knew that she was thinking not like Frau von Wessellhoft
of wounded pride and ravished glory but of her own fianc and her
brother.

The forester asked, "Shall I tell the others, Frau Doktor
Oberregierungsrath?" And Frau Wessellhoft said, "No, that is my duty. Go
back to your own wife and house. I will tell the others." She rose and
turned to the governess. "Weeping does no good, Lisa. Tears will not
help us now. It has to begin over again. That is the only way."

She went out followed by the forester, and when she had gone the boy and
his sister got down from their chairs and went over to Lisa, leaning
against her, rubbing their small faces like little animals against her
breasts. This was something they were never allowed to do in the
presence of their mother. The girl kissed the tops of their heads to
comfort them but the tears would not stop flowing. Presently when she
was able to speak, she said, "Come, we'll go up to the nursery and play
a game of Ludo before you go to bed."

The two children understood nothing, but the boy said, "It doesn't mean
that you'll leave us, does it, Lisa?"

"No. You mustn't think about it at all." And then the boy said, "Can we
all sleep together, all of us in the big bed tonight, Lisa?"

She looked at him, smiling, "If your respected mother gives permission."

"Please," the child said, "I am frightened."

"What is there to be frightened of?"

He did not answer her because he could not describe what it was that he
was frightened of, for it was a strange phantasmagoria of fears in which
the ghosts of slaughtered boar and deer, of cannon and flags, of dead
men, and strange nightmare figures half-men and half-beast seemed to
come toward him screaming and crying out words which he could not
understand. Sometimes the nightmare came to him in the dark hours of the
night, sometimes in daylight, as it had come on him now at the sight of
Lisa's tears and his unbending mother's pride. It was like the old
picture that hung in the dark back stairway, moldy and forgotten.
Whenever he had to pass the picture he ran very fast. Once when he was
seven years old, he fell on the stairs and broke off a tooth. Sometimes
in the nightmare his grandfather, the general, was there and his dead
father who had become a bitter judge instead of a soldier because he was
born lame. They were the most frightening of all.

So to Lisa he said, "I don't know."

"Never mind," she said and pressed him close to her side. She loved him
very much and there were times when she felt a wild desire to take him
in her arms and flee with him away from the dark forests of the north to
the pleasant valleys, the gay music, the dancing, the bright clothes of
her own Swabian country in the south. There, she was sure, the nightmare
would disappear.

       *       *       *       *       *

Twenty-two years after the night the forester had come to tell the news
of Germany's defeat, Freiherr Kurt von Fabrizius von Wessellhoft rode
into Paris in the gray and green uniform of a major in a great gray
Mercedes armored car. He sat beside the General who had been appointed
military Governor of Paris, a paunchy man with gray eyes from which the
heavy lower lids sagged away, leaving a faint rim of red beneath their
gray coldness.

The General, twenty-four years earlier, had seen the Eiffel Tower and
domes of the Sacr-Coeur shining in the misty sunlight twenty miles
away, but neither he nor any of the German army had come any nearer. For
four years they fought and in the end they lost and now they were here
at last entering Paris on the road by which all invaders had entered the
city since the beginning--the famous Route de Flandres which led down
from the north through the fertile fields of Picardy and the Valois.
Many times invaders had entered the city by this road and many times
they had gone away and never had Paris suffered any change.

The column in which the General and his aide now rode passed through Le
Bourget, past the great flying field, past the factories of
Aubervilliers, past the nearly demolished fortifications which had held
the Germans back for so long in another earlier war which France had
lost.

It was not a triumphant entry. The day was gray and the streets were
empty. Most of the houses were shuttered and here and there, like lost
forgotten people, there appeared on the narrow sidewalks beneath the
trees the figure of an old woman or a pair of men in workingmen's
corduroys and neck cloths. There were no flags and no cheers, but only
silent stares. There was an air of defeat, of deadness, but no cheering
nor even any curiosity. The General sourly thought, "We will find no
welcome here in the workingmen's quarter. We will find friends only in
the middle of the city--among the rich and the powerful, who invited us
in... the rich and powerful who are fools, the ones we will pick fast,
as clean dry bones." For the General was old, older than his years and
wily and wise and without illusions. He knew the game the Party played
and he knew exactly the part he played in the scheme of things.

He did not like any of it very much. He was much more concerned with the
disease of his kidneys which caused the great dark pouches beneath his
red-rimmed eyes. He did not like rich men, he did not like
industrialists, he did not care for bankers. They were vulgar. The Party
could pilfer all of them so far as he was concerned, and more luck to
the process. He was an army man and his father had been and his father's
father before him, back to Frederick the Great. He had been sent to
Paris because he was no longer young and was shrewd and had the
reputation of being a good administrator. There would be a lot of
tiresome meetings and negotiations with the slippery, quick-witted
French and no pleasure at all in the job. He did not even find any
satisfaction in this "triumphant" entry. If it had come twenty-four
years ago at the time when from Meaux you could see the domes of the
Sacr-Coeur shining in the morning sun, there would have been some
feeling of pride and triumph. But for him it had come too late. He was
too old and too bored. Slyly he glanced at the young officer beside
him--Major Freiherr von Fabrizius von Wessellhoft, a fellow who came of
good enough Prussian stock. A Wessellhoft had been a marshal under
Frederick the Great. The young fellow should be all right, but somehow
he was not, perhaps because he belonged to the Party. A lot of the
younger men were like that. It did something to them: it made them
shifty and divided and uneasy, as if they found it impossible to serve
two masters competently. It made them both vulgar and dishonorable.

He had not asked for the Major as one of his aides. The Major had been
imposed upon him from above, by what means he was unable to discover,
but he suspected that he had been assigned to spy and report back not to
the army but to the Party.

The column had come to a temporary halt and the General sighed heavily
and looked about him. A motorcyclist shot past and the band in the lead
of the column began to play the "Horst Wessell" song. At the sound of
the music the young Major at his side sat up a little straighter, his
small blue eyes grew bright. But the General only grunted. The sound he
made might have meant anything at all. In fact it was a grunt of
contempt for the song and the pimp for whom it was named. A fine sort
the Party had been in the beginning--pimps and gangsters, homosexuals,
neurotics, small crooks and paperhangers and shopkeepers! A fine lot!
Well, they would come and go, murdering, torturing, killing each other
off, but the German army went on and on. It would survive them all.

The motorcyclist shot back past them and the column started to move
again. They were now actually entering the gates of Paris.

       *       *       *       *       *

Beside the General, the young Major was suddenly alive with satisfaction
in the moment. This was a supreme moment of triumph, of revenge, of
glory. It was a moment which in some way struck far back into the past
to that night when the old forester had come into the small room and
said, "Frau Doktor Oberregierungsrath, I have bad news," and Lisa,
lovely kind Lisa, had burst into tears and Mama had risen and gone out
with the frightening, hard look of suffering in her blue eyes.

Now, long afterward, he recognized that moment as the beginning of it
all. A little while afterward the big white house on the edge of the
forest was sold and they had all gone to live in Berlin where they
sometimes went hungry and in winter they always were cold because, Mama
said, the money they had got for the big white house wasn't worth
anything. It took ninety million marks to buy a newspaper and Mama had
only been paid two million marks for all the good farm land and the big
house on the edge of the forest--not enough to buy a newspaper. And he
and his sister had been forced to go to a common school where other
children, who his mother told him contemptuously were communists and
liberals, had teased his sister and himself. For most of his childhood
he had not really had enough to eat and he had been humiliated and
scarred by wounds which his mother tried to heal with words of pride and
glory. And then a miraculous man who called himself Der Fhrer had
changed all that, and when he was eighteen he joined with other young
men like himself who suffered from humiliation and hurt pride in a great
army of young men who learned that his country, like himself, had been
tricked and swindled, humiliated and treated with contempt.

Now at last, he would have revenge for the humiliations which he had
known as far back as he could remember. He would be revenged on those
people who laughed when one uttered the word "German," on all those who
laughed at the sight of German tourists, fat, bespectacled, staring
while they munched sausages before the wonders of Paris and Vienna and
Rome. He would be revenged on those who in drawing rooms in London or
salons in Paris had turned away coldly when they heard his very German
name. He would be avenged upon all the world which thought Germans crude
and brutal and uncivilized and politically undeveloped. All his life,
whenever he had gone outside his own country, he had been aware of the
words "German" or "_Deutscher_" or "_Allemand_" as something which
aroused varying shades of mockery or hatred or scorn or ridicule. He was
not the only one who experienced these emotions, but all those who like
himself had grown up from childhood humiliated and disinherited by the
whole world outside Germany--disinherited, even scorned for a time by
great masses of their own people.

It was a long account to settle. One by one, the items of the account
would be settled in every country in the world until at last all of them
groveled before the word "German." The account was already settled with
weak, soft Austria, with sturdy Czechoslovakia, with Poland, stiff and
proud in her contempt for everything German, with Norway and Holland and
Belgium and the other soft democracies which did not understand true
nobility, true civilization, true beauty--all those countries which
stubbornly resisted the imposition or even the influence of true Kultur.
They had all been betrayed by the very civilizations which resisted
Germany--by their very gaiety and freedom and softness and good living,
by all the things which had always been absent from the world he had
known since the very beginning.

The excitement raced through his body like fire, an excitement greater
than he had ever felt before even in the arms of a woman. It was a
physical thing, almost choking in violence. No longer would Germans need
to ask, almost with a whimper in their voice, "Why do you not like us?
Why do you refuse to be our friends?" Now the others would have no
choice. Now it did not matter whether Germans were liked or hated.
Nothing mattered so long as they were feared.

Once he turned to the General and said, indicating a little group of
French workingmen beneath the chestnut trees, "See how feeble they are!
How small! How degenerate!"

The General did not answer him. He only turned his head phlegmatically
as if the effort hurt him and then looked straight ahead once more at
the thick muscular neck of the Silesian driver.

It was a pity, thought young Major von Wessellhoft, that cities could no
longer be sacked as the Huns had sacked Rome. Alas! The orders were that
the invading army was to be "correct... very correct." By being
"correct" the theory was that they would soon win over these feeble
French, and then they would be able to attack the enemy they hated most
of all--the English--those _verdammte_ English, so rich, so powerful, so
arrogant, who even while they smiled and shook your hand made you feel
inferior and awkward and crude. No, there were still the English and
after that their mongrel cousins, the Americans, who in their way were
worse since they did not even seem to care what you were. The Americans,
a debased people incapable ever of understanding culture.

No, there was a long account to settle. Fate had been very good to him,
sending him here as aide to the Military Governor, to witness the
humiliation of the degenerate French.

Yet there was a sense of uneasiness and dissatisfaction even now as he
rode at the head of the column occupying Paris. It was not as he had
imagined it. This was scarcely a triumphant entry with the city empty
and only a handful of workingmen and their women--all of them doubtless
_verdammte_ communists--watching the long gray column with apathy. It
was too much like the way Englishmen and Viennese and Dutch and even
Americans had behaved in the past when he came into a room--as if an
outsider, an outcast had suddenly come through the door.

_Ach!_ They would find out! They would be taught manners if they had
none! They would be made to love the Germans and grovel before them! To
the Major it did not occur that one could not love and grovel at the
same time. It was one of the many things which had never occurred to him
in all his thirty years.

Then suddenly the long steel-gray cavalcade came into a great white
square, ordered and beautiful in line and scale and proportion and
beyond it a wide avenue rising up and up to the final triumph of a great
arch. It was like the singing beauty of a great symphony rising to a
climax. The square and the great avenue were empty, but their emptiness
only made them seem the more splendorous and magnificent, symbols of
something which had never touched him nor his father nor his father's
father, something which had never been in the loins or heart of any
German. Swiftly Major von Wessellhoft experienced again the sickening
feeling of inferiority which had poisoned all his existence since the
beginning.

The band ahead in the heavy trucks blared "_Deutschland, ber Alles_"
with all the strength of brass horns and leather lungs, but the brazen
music only echoed in mockery across the great empty space. Rage took
possession of him. The cold handsome face grew red like the face of a
drunken man, and a curious thought was born somewhere in the remote
regions of his baffled regimented mind, "Only when all this is utterly
destroyed, only when everything which is not German has been smashed
from the face of the earth will Germans be given the honor and respect
they deserve!"

At that very moment the big gray Mercedes passed the Hotel Claridge
where an American showgirl lay on a bed with curtains drawn, her hands
over her ears because the sound of "_Deutschland, ber Alles_" in the
streets of Paris was unendurable.

       *       *       *       *       *

There was for d'Abrizzi no question of simply putting on the new revue
he had planned for the stage of the Alhambra. Its very title was
impossible. It had been called "_A Nous la Victoire_" and now there was
no victory but only defeat and the title on the placards before the
Alhambra and on buildings and walls and wooden fences all over Paris
made reading which the ordinary citizen found unendurable. One by one
they were ripped down or defaced, not because of any hatred for
d'Abrizzi or the Alhambra, but because with the gray-green uniforms
everywhere it was impossible to have cried at you from walls and
houses--"_A Nous la Victoire!_ A revue in five acts with Roxana Dawn,
Pernod, Sally d'Arville, Constanza, Lilli de Perche, Les Tiller Girls
and eighty beautiful models--eighty!" So the placards came down. It was
clearly not possible to stage skits which depicted Hitler as a
light-witted house painter, and Goering as a eunuch guarding a harem,
and Goebbels in the costume and make-up of a rat. And there were the
tableaux depicting the triumphs of Napoleon with the uniforms of the
German armies filled by the overplump bodies of somewhat elderly chorus
girls.

When d'Abrizzi sat down with Nicky and Roxie, he was forced to check off
nearly all the revue as a loss. A new one had to be written and staged
in which every speech, every scene would be subject to the censorship of
the Germans.

"It will," he said, "be a frightful headache."

"And the others..." asked Nicky, "are they all coming back?"

"They are all coming back but Lilli de Perche. She is a Jewess. She has
gone to Nice with everything she possessed."

"You can't blame her," said Nicky.

When Nicky had gone to the cellar to fetch wine, Roxie looked at Lon
and said, "What about his papers? If they can't be fixed up, I'll force
him out of the country with me."

"Don't worry about the papers. By tonight he'll be a French citizen with
a French passport and all the necessary papers. He will be Pierre
Chastel, born in Cairo in 1904, the son of the French vice-consul."

"You might have asked him what he wanted to be," said Roxie.

"There wasn't any question. That is who he had to be."

"He can't stay forever in this house. I'm afraid he'll get bored and go
out and get picked up. They might treat him as a spy."

D'Abrizzi chuckled, "He's a brigand. That's what he really is, born in
the wrong century and wrong place."

Then Nicky returned with the bottles and they no longer talked of him.
Only Roxie went on watching him slyly and thinking about him, thinking
that he could charm the birds off the trees.

When Nicky had opened the wine, he said to Lon, "You know that this
reopening business is going to make you and Roxie damned unpopular with
decent French people? It's going to look as if you approved of the
Germans and believed in collaboration."

Lon laughed, "I'm prepared for that. When it's all over, people will
understand. I wouldn't ask Roxie to go back in the show if it wasn't
like that."

"All the same, it's going to be unpleasant," said Nicky.

"It's not worth doing at all if people don't believe we're friendly
toward the Boches. That's what lets us get away with the rest of it."

The wine made him suddenly gay. Nothing could dampen the natural spirits
of Nicky but Roxie didn't feel anything at all. She wasn't enthusiastic
about the idea of sabotage. She still liked none of the plan. She didn't
feel anything at all, only a sort of blankness tinged with dread. She
had no feeling of the Germans being awful. She couldn't even hate them.
She didn't know anything about them. They were simply shadowy figures in
gray-green who seemed rather dreary. They were certainly very strange
and foreign in Paris, stranger even than the Algerian rug merchants who
sold dope.

Lon gathered up the papers he had spread on the table. They included an
outline of the new revue, a list of the cast and a list of questions.
Slipping them into his dispatch case, he said, "And now for the lion's
mouth."

"And when do I get out?" asked Nicky.

"Tonight or tomorrow. Don't be a damned fool! You'll have plenty of
excitement later." Then he kissed the top of Roxie's head and was forced
to stand on tiptoe to do it.

For the first time, she laughed. "_Vraiment_, Lon," she said, "_tu es
formidable_!"

"_Toi aussi_," he replied. "Once in rehearsal you'll cheer up."

"I can never be any good as Mata Hari."

       *       *       *       *       *

When he reached the street, he crossed to the opposite side and looked
back carefully at the house. Certainly it had possibilities--with its
dreary, inconspicuous faade, and the curious ancient cellar beneath.
And the rue Washington itself. Looking at it, no one would believe that
anything could happen in so commonplace a street--anything but bourgeois
domesticity and boredom.

At the corner he had the luck to pick up a horse-drawn fiacre. He
directed the driver to go to the Ritz and settled back into the tempo of
the days of carriages. There were still very few French people on the
wide sidewalks. The cafs were doing business but the tables on the
sidewalks were surrounded by German officers. He passed the Traveler's
Club and thought, "That is where La Pava lived. It must have been odd
in her day when the Champs Elyses was still a magnificent street and
there were no picture houses and automobile agencies." Now it was very
little better than the Boulevard des Italiens. La Pava was the last of
the real demimondaines; now all women seemed alike. At Maxim's it was
impossible to tell tarts from ladies. Look at Roxie. Once a girl with
her beauty and wits would have had a palace and jewels and the richest,
most elegant motor in town. All Roxie wanted was a taxi, a bedroom,
sitting room and Nicky.

Against the clop-clop of the horse's hooves, he sighed heavily. Paris
had changed... even within his memory it had changed. How much would
the Germans change it? From somewhere in the back of his mind the answer
came quickly--"Not at all. Six weeks after the Germans have gone, you
won't know they've ever been here. Life will be just the same." It was
probably the same two thousand years ago when Julius Caesar wrote of it
as his "dear Lutetia." You couldn't change Paris because it was an idea,
a point of view, a way of living, a philosophy. It was indestructible.

Clop! Clop! went the hooves of the horse on the warm asphalt. By fiacre
it was a long trip from the rue Washington to the Place Vendme; in the
same time you could go from one end of Paris to the other by taxi.

His mind fell into a groove, slipping along in a chorus of names: La
Pava, Clo de Merode, Miss Howard, La Castiglione, Cora Pearl... the
names strung together were like a wreath of jewels or of flowers... all
the luxurious trollops of the past. They belonged to Paris, growing out
of the earth of Paris itself, with their grace and wit and beauty. Each
name opened up a vista of gaiety and charm which enchanted the Byzantine
mind of the ugly little man, dulling the edge of the frantic boredom
born of the slowness of the fiacre. The Place de la Concorde swept past
him in a kind of dream. He did not fully wake from it until the fiacre
turned into the rue Castiglione and entered the ordered spaces of the
Place Vendme.

       *       *       *       *       *

The Ritz was not Lon's dish. It had always lain outside the circle of
his Paris, a world which to him was too rich, too exaggerated, too
pompous. He preferred Fouquet's to the Ritz bar. In Fouquet's you might
find pimps and bookmakers and kept women and swindlers, but there was a
kind of reality, even an earthiness about them; in the Ritz bar you saw
kept men and lecherous middle-aged women and over-rich Americans and
tramps in sequins. The difference was, d'Abrizzi sometimes reflected,
that in the world of Fouquet's people worked at what they did; the world
of the Ritz was full of phonies. And d'Abrizzi liked people who worked;
the others made him uneasy.

So when he paid off the driver of the fiacre and turned toward the door
of the Ritz, the old uneasiness smote him although the Ritz was now a
German hotel and the kept men and lecherous old women had fled Paris.

There were Germans everywhere, in the entry, in the main hall, with a
sprinkling of men who were there like himself, on business, and two or
three women who by their clothes and figures, he judged to be the wives
of Boche officers and officials, in Paris to clean up now that they
could order anything they wanted and pay for it on their own terms.
Watching them, d'Abrizzi speculated that not all the jewels and French
clothes in the world could make much difference in their appearance.
They possessed a kind of destructive magic, even the dozen or so German
girls who had worked for him in his revues. They could ruin an expensive
costume merely by putting it on.

He sighed and entered the lift, aware that the two tall officers inside
looked at him with distaste and even hostility. He knew they were
thinking, "Another Jew!" although he hadn't any Jewish blood except for
some remote strain which somehow got into the blood of every Levantine.
He stepped aside for one of them to leave the lift, and suddenly
experienced a wild desire to jump up and down on the feet of the man.
When the moment had passed he was frightened at how nearly he had come
to doing it. It was not the arrogance of the fellow which annoyed him
nor even the single glance of contempt, but the fury which he felt deep
inside himself, the sudden fury of a quick-witted intuitive man for
stupidity. The blank stare from the Teutonic blue eyes had been one of
utter fathomless stupidity, the stare of a man without intuition. The
pride was born of stupidity which could not see there were other people
in the world more acute, more clever, who would always defeat him in the
end.

Then the lift stopped at his floor and he got out and walked along the
corridor to the suite of Major Kurt von Wessellhoft.

An orderly opened the door of the sitting room which was like any Ritz
sitting room in the world--red and gold--except that this was a very
large room and a large table had been placed in one end of it, a table
filled with papers, neatly deposed in orderly piles. In German he
explained to the young lieutenant who sat at the table what he had come
for and when the lieutenant had gone into the next room, Lon sat down
on one of the gilt chairs, his dispatch case on his knees against his
paunch, his small feet swinging clear of the red carpet.

Then the door opened and he bounced off the chair. In the doorway stood
Wessellhoft, and in his blue eyes was the same opaque stare of the man
in the lift. Again d'Abrizzi felt the wave of fury sweep up the back of
his neck. One could not talk to eyes like that; nothing happened behind
them; they understood nothing. Their only virtue was that you could
deceive them, because they saw nothing but that which had a material and
a literal existence, things like tables and chairs.

Major von Wessellhoft bowed and sat down behind the table. Without being
bidden d'Abrizzi drew up a chair on the opposite side of the table and
opened his dispatch case.

"I have brought everything for the censorship," he said, "Some of the
acts are ready to begin rehearsals."

"Rehearsals?" asked von Wessellhoft, sitting up straight.

"Yes, it must be a whole new show."

"Why?"

Lon thought, "Here it is again!" Then he said, "As you must understand,
the original revue was a patriotic affair. There were many things in it
that would not be..." He searched for the word and found it,
"appropriate now."

"Yes, I suppose so."

"We are calling it '_Paris! Toujours Paris!_'!"

The German Major was thoughtful for a moment. At last he said, "Yes,
that's good. That is what we want. We do not want to change Paris. We
want it always to be Paris. We want only that it should understand us
and the New Order."

D'Abrizzi's face did not change its expression, but behind it his mind
was working rapidly. He thought, "So far! So good! He does not
comprehend what such a title means!"

From there they went on to one point after another. The Major showed a
surprising interest in the theater and an astonishing amateur knowledge
of odd technical things which a layman could not have known.

"I compliment you, Major," said d'Abrizzi, laying it on rather thick,
but with Levantine skill "on your knowledge. You talk like a
professional." The Major smiled. "I have always had a great love of the
theater, and a knowledge too. That is one of the reasons why I was
assigned this post."

To d'Abrizzi's astonishment he spoke almost with humbleness. He was
being polite, far more polite than Lon had expected. The little man had
come with his dispatch case, prepared for insults, prepared even to
cringe if necessary to achieve this greater thing that was in his heart
and mind. And now this Major was being humble before the theater. There
was something nave about it, like the attitude of a villager in Paris
for the first time. It was, he supposed, the German attitude toward
Kultur--that it was something to be worked at, with great concentration,
awe and laboriousness.

"And the cast... it will be first class? It will be the same?" asked
the Major.

"All the principals have agreed to come back... all save Lilli de
Perche."

"That's a pity! I remember her. She was a very fine low _comdienne_."

"She ran away to Nice. She is a Jewess."

"Perhaps that was wise," said the Major. He piled the manuscript of the
revue neatly together and at the same moment the door was opened by the
orderly. Behind him was a waiter carrying a tray. At sight of him the
Major pushed aside the manuscript and said to the waiter, "Put it down
here before me." His French, Lon noticed, was idiomatic, correct but
spoken with a thick accent.

The waiter was a middle-aged man, rather anemic, half-bald, with black
eyes and an appearance of insignificance. He approached the Major and
then did a curious thing for a waiter at the Ritz Hotel to do; he put
the tray on the wrong side of the Major.

The act caused a sudden explosion. The face of the Major grew red and he
shouted. "Pick up the tray and put it down on the other side! I insist
upon being served properly!"

The waiter apologized rapidly in French, bowed, picked up the tray and
put it down properly on the other side of the young Major. Then he drew
aside the napkin and stood waiting as the Major surveyed it. There was a
chicken sandwich, a small bottle of wine and coffee. After the first
glance his temper flared.

"I asked for the coffee to be brought up _after_ I had eaten, when I
sent for it. Take it away and bring it back again _hot_!"

The waiter again bowed and apologized. He had, he said, only obeyed the
instructions given him.

"I am not interested in your instructions. I want what I order."

The waiter took away the coffee and bowed backward out of the room.
D'Abrizzi turned to watch him and a second before the waiter closed the
door he glanced at d'Abrizzi and Lon understood.

The Major was saying, "I can't understand it... in a hotel like the
Ritz. Everything is always wrong. We wouldn't tolerate such service at
the Adlon."

But d'Abrizzi understood, _Paris! Toujours Paris!_

"We'll read through the manuscripts and send you word if there is
anything unsuitable. You will have them back in twenty-four hours. We
are very anxious that the revue should reopen quickly. We want life in
Paris to go on just as before."

He rang the bell and the lieutenant reappeared. He was a rather soft
pink plump young man who looked as if he had no beard.

"There is one more thing," said d'Abrizzi, "the question of passes and
identification papers for the cast."

"We are changing theater hours so that the theaters will be closed at
ten o'clock."

"That gives the performer a very small margin and it will be difficult
during rehearsal time."

The Major looked at him sharply. "You can vouch for every member of the
cast?"

"As much as I can vouch for anyone. All are actors and actors are
international-minded. They are rarely interested in politics. Otherwise
they would not be willing to reopen."

"Have you a list of the names?"

"Yes." D'Abrizzi fumbled again in the dispatch case and brought out a
neatly typed list of names. It had almost an official look, for
d'Abrizzi had had it attested by a notary and there was a seal and
ribbon attached.

The Major glanced over it and then looked up, "Roxana Dawn. She is still
here?"

"Yes."

"But she is American."

"Yes. But she has lived here for fourteen years. It is like home to her.
She is a great favorite in Paris."

"Yes, I have seen her. Four or five years ago when I was attached to the
Embassy here." Slowly he folded the paper, laid it with the manuscripts
and looked away from d'Abrizzi. "She is a very beautiful woman--very
like a woman I know." Then he said, "You will reserve a box for me on
the opening night."

"That has already been arranged, Major," said d'Abrizzi. It had not been
until this second.

The Major rose as a sign that he was to leave. "I will send an officer
to the theater tomorrow at five. Make certain all the cast is there. He
will check on their identification papers and stamp the passes. That
will put everything in order."

D'Abrizzi stood up. "Thank you, Major, for your co-operation."

"It is nothing at all. I have a great love for the theater. The theater
has always been one of the finest things in our German Kultur."

D'Abrizzi went out, thinking, "It is going to be easier than I had
hoped." He was thankful suddenly, instead of being annoyed, at the
opaqueness of the blue eyes. A Latin would have been intuitive, and
therefore suspicious.

       *       *       *       *       *

When the ugly dark little man had gone, the German Major turned his
attention to the sandwich, but although he had had nothing since his
second breakfast and was hungry, he found no satisfaction in it. The
behavior of the waiter had upset him, profoundly, not simply because the
man had put down the tray on the wrong side and brought the coffee
against orders, but because these two derelictions were only a part of a
long succession of similar annoyances. Things like that were always
happening; the lift stopped for him at the wrong floor, people on the
street turned to look into a window or crossed to the other side when he
approached; the sheets on the bed were pulled too far down by the
chambermaid so that it was impossible to draw them much above his waist;
the operator of the switchboard was forever ringing the wrong number.
Many of these things, he conceded, could be attributed to the natural
inefficiency and sloppiness of an inferior undisciplined people, but
many of them seemed to him deliberate. Even the French could not be so
hopelessly inadequate in their functioning.

These things were superficial but he was aware that beneath them lay a
contempt infinitely more profound, so profound that at times he wished
ardently that he was with a regiment in the line rather than here in the
Ritz in Paris. All the excitement of the first news of his appointment
as aide to the Military Governor of Paris had long since vanished and in
its place there was only a sense of dullness, irritation and boredom.
Nothing was as he had expected. It was all like the "triumphant" entry
into Paris which had been as dull and uninspiring as it was possible to
be, with even the sun hidden behind gray clouds. The Ritz was not like
the Ritz as he had known it before, filled with gaudy people coming and
going, the center of an excitement which he had always viewed from the
outside with scorn but also with enjoyment. The memories of the bar were
not pleasant ones--they were memories of people bowing coldly or turning
away from him because he was German--but they were better than the
dullness which now infested the place. The bar, the whole of Paris, was
like a beautiful animal which, in danger, feigned death. The shell was
there but in it were only the invading soldiers wandering everywhere
with guidebooks and instructions, studying Notre Dame, the Invalides,
the Louvre, the banks of the Seine--all the wonders and beauties which
somehow seemed only to dissipate the satisfaction of victory and weigh
upon the invaders by the very essence of all they represented.

In the back of the Major's mind there was a curious image. He never saw
it quite clearly but it was forever there, stealing into his
consciousness each time he passed a group of German soldiers with open
guidebooks staring, with craned necks, at the white faade of some
superb monument. It was the image, imprinted in his memory since
childhood, of a yellowed engraving which hung in his childhood on the
gloomy back stairway of the big house in Silesia--the stairway where the
monsters of the German forest and German mythology had swarmed about
him. The engraving was called the "Sack of Rome" and in it the Goths and
Vandals, clad in the skins of wild beasts, stood in the Great Forum
staring like savages at the half-ruined wonders of the city.

Major von Wessellhoft had always hated the picture. He hated it now more
than ever and each time the memory of it emerged from the back of his
mind he thrust it back again with a fierce conscious effort of will.

The waiter reappeared presently with the coffee, placed it with
elaborate politeness on the table before the Major. When the Major
lifted the pot and poured it, he discovered that it was not hot as he
liked it. It was not lukewarm either; it was simply wrong but "good
enough" as the waiter belowstairs had remarked "for any Boche." At the
discovery a wild rage swept over him and then vanished suddenly, leaving
him empty and weary, without the force to send the coffee back again. He
could insist that the waiter be discharged and undoubtedly his orders
would be followed, but he knew that even this would do no good.
Undoubtedly the waiter did not care much whether or not he was sent
away. And doubtless he would only be given another place where he would
not be in evidence.

Wearily the Major pushed the coffee aside and took up the papers
d'Abrizzi had left on the desk. It was odd how defeated he felt; he had
accepted eagerly the post of aide so that he might be in Paris to
witness the triumph, and now there was no triumph but only a feeling of
deadness. The victory seemed to crumble the moment you touched it.

But this fellow d'Abrizzi! He rather liked him. Like most people in the
theater he seemed to have very little nationality. Like most Levantines
he was always with the winning side. Very likely he had no loyalty to
anyone or anything. One day they would all be like that, like the
Levantines--Americans, Norwegians, Jugoslavs, English, loyal to nothing
but one idea, the New Order, the glorious new Germany which could impose
loyalty by force. No, this d'Abrizzi was all right. You could do
business with him. If only the others were one-half as reasonable.

The Major set to work on the papers d'Abrizzi had left. The sun had gone
down and it was already growing a little dark in the room. He rang for
the orderly to turn on the lights.

       *       *       *       *       *

Deep in her heart, hidden away even beneath the level of her own
consciousness, Roxie had a sense of awe about life. This was partly
because although she had never planned anything further ahead than where
she would go for her next meal, fortunate things had happened to her,
almost as if she had worked out step by step a calculated career. The
unhappiness, the hunger, even the cruelty she had known, faded out of
her existence so that they had no very lasting reality; this was perhaps
because she was a natural, healthy animal, or perhaps because having
come out of nothing at all, she expected very little and the good things
which occurred to her always astonished her and were remembered.

The first escape from a squalid home in the slums of a factory town had
ended in misery, but it was the escape she remembered and not the
unhappiness of betrayal by a cheap and bragging traveling salesman. The
freedom that came of the escape was worth more than all the misery which
had been the price. When she got her first job in the floor show of a
cabaret, it was by accident and not because she had planned it, but she
took advantage of the accident and worked hard and so she was picked
with fifteen other girls by a Broadway agent to go to Paris to the Caf
des Ambassadeurs. She knew vaguely that Paris was the capital of France
but she had heard nothing of the Caf des Ambassadeurs.

It was in the years when the Ambassadeurs was like the last evil flower
blooming upon a plant that was already rotten and dying, when it was a
brilliant and dazzling interlude in the melodrama of Europe called "The
Long Armistice." While she danced, the scene all about her had no
significance beyond the fact that it was more flamboyant than anything
she had ever seen or imagined. She did not see that among the cabinet
ministers and millionaire speculators, the kept women and the actresses,
the rich tourists, the ambassadors and the beauties, the jewels and the
flowers and the lights, lay the seeds of a corruption and decay which
were to bear fungoid flowers of evil and tragedy. To Roxie it was all
"simply wonderful" and most wonderful of all was the moment when a card
was handed to her by one of the waiters as she stood with the other
girls at the edge of the floor waiting for the star turn to finish.

The card, the other girls told her while they changed from costumes to
street clothes, was from one of the great theatrical producers of Paris.
It was unlikely, they said, that he was on the make for her; a man in
his position could have as many girls as he liked. It must be, the other
girls suggested enviously, that he wanted to offer her a job.

And so she had gone out into the restaurant itself to be led by the
headwaiter with great ceremony to a table where a little dark, ugly man
sat alone with a bottle of champagne. It was her first sight of Lon.

He rose and said in thickly accented English, "I am Lon d'Abrizzi. I
put on shows in Paris. Will you have some supper with me?"

They sat down and she allowed him to order her supper because she was
still a little dazzled and made shy by the spectacle all about her. It
was late and the spectacle was beginning to break up. The ambassadors,
the kept women, the actresses, the speculators were beginning to drift
away. The little dark man, so small that he seemed almost deformed, was
watching them. He said, "Take a good look at this. It is the orgy before
the end of the world. When the end comes, no matter who wins, it will be
terrible, like the fall of Rome."

The speech puzzled her and she did not try to understand it, for not
even remotely did she have the knowledge and background and
understanding of the little man. She simply put it down as "highfalutin"
talk and let it pass.

What he said next interested her more. He said, "I would like to offer
you a place in my new revue."

While they ate, and she ate heavily because she was eighteen and healthy
and dancing was hard work, he explained to her what he wanted. He had
heard of something called "fan dancers" in America. It was a new idea, a
new way of exploiting naked female beauty, which would, he thought, be
very successful in Paris--not for the French as much as for all the
foreigners who came to Paris because it was gay and wicked. He laughed
and said, "It is not the French who make Paris weecked--it is the
foreigners. The French are a drearily respectable people."

The "fan dancer," he said, must be American. That would make the act all
the more exotic and effective. Europe, just then, was mad for
everything American... cigarettes, jazz, girls, automobiles,
everything. He would like to know if she would do the act for him.

She asked, "Why did you pick me?" and he laughed. "That is why I am a
successful manager. I am a good picker. You are young. You are
beautiful. You are graceful. You have a body so beautiful that even
naked there is nothing indecent or immodest about it. And besides you
have a face like a virgin." He lighted a huge cigar and said, "I do not
say this to flatter you or to seduce you. I am stating facts. I am very
professional."

Then he asked her name and she was still so bedazzled that she answered
"Irma Peters." He looked at her in sudden astonishment and asked, "That
is not your professional name?"

"No. I was born Irma Peters. My professional name is Roxana Dawn."

He considered this for a moment with his head a little on one side,
looking like a swarthy turtle. Then he said, "Dawn.... Dawn... _a veut
dire l'aube_. Not bad. A little silly but it will do."

It was as simple as that. When the new d'Abrizzi revue opened it was
called "_Paris en Splendeur_" and in it was a "sensational American fan
dancer" called Roxana Dawn who appeared for her number as the favorite
Peri in a magnificent tableau called "_Le Rve de Paradis_." The number
was a spectacular success and after that Roxana Dawn appeared year
after year in the revues at the Alhambra. Paris was faithful. And so she
had never gone back to America. She sang French like a French woman. She
spoke it, even the "argot," like a Parisian, but she found nothing
remarkable in this. It seemed only natural that you should learn the
language in which you worked. It was almost as if she had never had any
other life.

She was grateful to d'Abrizzi. For fourteen years they had been friends
who treated each other decently in a dying world where betrayal and
thievery were the code of behavior. This too seemed to her a reason for
wonder.

So it was with the feeling she had about Nicky. It was something that
had come to her unsought, which she had accepted as she had accepted all
else that had ever happened to her. She hoped for a little happiness,
and what she found was something she had never suspected--that there
could be an existence without loneliness in which everything was shared
with another person. For that was what it meant to her. It was an
awesome experience which her instinct told her to mistrust. It made her
afraid, and so on the afternoon Lon went to the Ritz, she said to
Nicky, "I am going out for a little time."

"I shall go with you."

"No. You must not until Lon has your pass."

"It is safe enough."

"Wait till he gets your special pass. Then no one will question you."

"Where are you going?"

"To Madame de Thonars."

"Who's she?"

"An astrologer."

He laughed. "Why? Are you afraid of something?"

She did not answer at once. "No. Only I want to know something."

"What? Maybe I can tell you."

"No you couldn't."

"It's all rubbish."

"Maybe. I don't know. Neither do you." She turned toward him. "There
must be something in it... something in the stars. Otherwise things
could not happen to me as they have."

He placed both hands on her shoulders. "Are you going because you want
to find out what is to happen to us?"

"No... and in a way, yes."

He still kept his hands on her shoulders looking at her. But something
happened in his eyes. It was almost as if they changed color or a light
appeared behind them.

"I'll tell you something, honey. I'm satisfied if you are, for good...
for always."

She thought, "Now I am going to hear it. Now I am going to get inside."
But he did not go on. He turned away from her and went to the window.
"I've never had any home or any education except what I picked up by my
wits. I'm really only a savage, but if you can take it that way I'm
yours for good. You don't have to go to an astrologer to find that out."

"I can take it," she said.

He turned toward her with a smile which seemed to envelop her in warmth.
"All right. Go along to your fortuneteller. I'll be a good boy and stay
in the house till Lon comes with the pass. I've a lot of things to
think over. I feel as if I were coming to life again--the way I used to
be. I see prospects."

She did not ask him what he meant for fear of destroying the mood
between them or driving him back again inside the shell of mockery.
Suddenly she felt much older than Nicky, and much wiser, but at the same
time there was in her heart a little pang of sadness and envy.

       *       *       *       *       *

Madame de Thonars lived in a large house in the Square Chause d'Antin.
On one side was a famous and elegant brothel and on the other an
apartment house. The Square itself was old but nondescript and
unpicturesque and across it from time to time had come prime ministers,
kings, actresses, dressmakers, ambassadors and American
millionaires--all people who were afraid, seeking from Madame de Thonars
some hint or assurance about the future which weighed upon them. Nearly
all of them came out of fear although a few came seeking excitement and
a few because they were quite mad. Madame de Thonars was both
fashionable and famous because three times at least she had foreseen
great historical events--the assassination of the Archduke Ferdinand at
Serajevo, the assassination of King Alexander of Yugoslavia and Barthou
at Marseilles and the rise of Adolf Hitler. Her great success she
herself attributed partly to her study of the stars, partly to her
knowledge of European history, and partly to the fact that she was a
clever old woman and made shrewd and daring guesses.

She had not fled Paris when the Germans came because the stars told her
it would be safe to remain, because she was old and fat and liked luxury
and because she enjoyed good food and was greedy. A refugee on the road
did not eat well, sometimes did not eat at all. So she stayed, in the
house in the Square Chause d'Antin behind locked and bolted doors.

Here Roxie found her in the room on the ground floor where she received
her clients. It was a small dark room hung with commonplace _tapisserie
de verdure_ which had slowly accumulated the dust of twenty years. Even
on a sunny day the room was so dark that artificial light was necessary.
This was supplied by a bare electric bulb hung by a wire from the
ceiling.

When Roxie was brought in by the chambermaid, she was seated at a large
table covered with papers spread in disorder beneath the naked light
bulb. The light fell downward on the wide flat, sallow face and the
enormous bosoms. She was dressed like the cashier of a cheap restaurant,
tightly in a dress of shiny black material with a high collar. As Roxie
came through the door she looked up and took off the heavy gold
pince-nez which she wore attached to a heavy black ribbon.

She said, "_Bon jour_, Mademoiselle!" And Roxie seated herself in the
chair on the opposite side of the table where she had sat so many times
before.

When they had made a little talk about the Germans, the weather, the
reopening of the revue, Madame de Thonars said, "I knew you would not go
away. It is in the horoscope that you will stay here... for a long
time--to the very end."

"To the very end," asked Roxie, "of what?"

"Until there isn't a Boche left in Paris."

"They will be driven out?"

"They will go away. They will run away of their own accord when
everything about them collapses."

"And when is that?"

"It may be a long time."

Madame de Thonars swung around in her chair to a fireproof steel filing
case such as you would find in a lawyer's office. Pulling open a drawer
she fingered through a number of folders, choosing one at length,
drawing it out and placing it on the table before her.

"You have not been here for a long time," she said.

"No. Everything was going very well."

"And now?" The seeress looked over the top of her pince-nez at Roxie.

"Now... I don't know. Everything is mixed up."

Madame de Thonars opened the folder before her. "Well, we shall see."

Roxie lighted a cigarette and for a long time Madame de Thonars worked
with pencil and charts. Then she pushed away the folder and the charts,
took off her pince-nez, closed her eyes and pressed her hands against
them. She remained thus for five minutes. Then a shudder passed through
her fat, elderly body. (This was a part of the performance and not
essential.) After a time she opened her eyes and began to speak.

"Something has happened to you. Something to do with a man. It has never
happened to you before. It is a good thing. Stick by it. Go where he
goes. Do what he does, because nothing like it will ever happen to you
again. I cannot predict what the end of it will be, but the thing itself
is good, even if it ends badly. You are planning a new venture, probably
in the theater. This will begin a success and end abruptly. I cannot
tell you the reason. You will be entering on a new phase of life at
about the same time, some kind of work you never did before. On the
whole, everything is good."

Then she opened her eyes and in a businesslike fashion replaced the
pince-nez and closed the folder before her.

A thousand questions rushed through Roxie's brain but there was, she
knew, no use in asking them. Madame de Thonars had spoken. She had
replaced her pince-nez and that meant that the sance was over. After
that gesture she never answered questions.

So Roxie only said, "Thank you. I believe I understand what you mean."
But she did not understand. The whole thing left her confused. Usually
the seeress was more exact, she gave more precise clues.

"You must understand," Madame de Thonars was saying, "that this is a
difficult moment in the world. Too much is happening. The stars
themselves are confused."

Roxie crushed out the end of her cigarette and stood up. And then Madame
de Thonars did an unusual thing. She got heavily out of her chair and
walked with her as far as the doorway. As Roxie went out the seeress
patted her shoulder, "_Au revoir_," she said, "and good luck. There is
much trouble and suffering ahead, but we shall come through it as we
always have."

In the hallway Roxie slipped five hundred francs into the hand of the
chambermaid who held the door open. Madame de Thonars was very delicate
about money. Outside in the square stood a gray German car. Roxie turned
to the chambermaid and asked, "What is that?"

The chambermaid smiled, pleased. "It is from the German governor. He has
sent his car for Madame." Then her face grew serious, "But you must tell
no one."

As she crossed the Square, Roxie thought, "He too is afraid." Only
people who were afraid or a little mad consulted Madame de Thonars.

All the way back to the rue Washington she was thoughtful and puzzled a
little by Madame de Thonars' behavior. For once the seeress had failed
her. What she had said was vague and unsatisfactory and scarcely worth
the fee of five hundred francs; certainly it had brought her no peace
and done nothing to stifle or give form to the vague sense of confusion
which troubled her. She thought, "Probably the whole thing, as Nicky
says, is rubbish. Probably I wouldn't be impressed by her if I had been
decently educated. That's the trouble with both Nicky and me. We really
don't know anything. We were really never taught even how to behave. We
aren't very civilized." But she could not escape the feeling that Madame
de Thonars had suppressed something she had found in the charts,
something which had led the old woman to walk with her as far as the
door to pat her shoulder and say, "Good luck!"

She went home by way of the rue Boissy d'Anglas and the rue Faubourg St.
Honor. It was a bright afternoon and hot and Paris seemed more like
itself. Little shops were opening up again and there were more people in
the streets and the sight of them cheered her. It meant that many of
those who had run away were returning. One saw again the ubiquitous
delivery boys and concierges walking dogs and women with string bags
and long loaves of bread under their arms.

At the rue Washington she unlocked the small door in the great gate
through which carriages had once passed and went up the stairs. The
salon was empty. She went from room to room calling Nicky's name but
there was no sign of him, nor any response. She thought wildly, "He has
gone out! He may never come back!"

The drawer in the boule table gave her the clue. It was open and the
keys to the cellar were gone.

Quickly she went to the hall and through the doorway down the worn stone
stairs. There in the great vaulted cellar she found him, rummaging about
among the pieces of old cast-off furniture. At sight of her he looked
up, grinning.

She tried not to show any anxiety but said, "I thought you had gone
out."

"No. I was trying to amuse myself. I couldn't sit up there doing nothing
all the afternoon."

"What did you find?"

"Nothing. It's all a lot of rubbish. But I did get a couple of ideas."
He looked about him at the ancient cellar. "It's a wonderful hideaway.
You could get away with anything here."

Upstairs in the salon, she asked suddenly, "What do you mean--the place
is a wonderful hideaway?"

"No. I can't tell you. The idea is not yet ripe." His eyes were
brilliant with excitement. It was a Nicky she had never seen before. He
was imitating Lon in his behavior.

"You are not going to do anything foolish?"

"No."

She moved nearer to him, her body filled with foreboding, anguish and
desire. "Listen to me, Nicky. I have said I'd stay here with you. We
could both go to America where it is safe but you refused that. This is
war. They shoot people in war. Promise me that you won't behave like a
fool."

He laughed at her. "Twice in Roumania I was taken out of prison to be
shot. I was only sixteen years old. It didn't happen. No, it's not in
the stars that I end like that."

He had meant to say more, but she clapped her hand over his mouth and
said, "Don't talk like that!"

He pulled away her hand and said, "All right! Whatever you like."

"Listen to me, Nicky. This has nothing to do with us. You're a Russian,
I'm American. None of this has anything to do with us."

The mockery went out of him suddenly and quite soberly he said, "It has
to do with all of us, with you and me and Lon and Luigi. It has to do
with everybody--with everybody in the world. Lon knows that."

"Lon knows nothing at all."

"He's smarter than hell."

She looked directly at him. "There are some things Lon doesn't know. He
doesn't know what a woman feels who loves someone."

He laughed, "Who... me?" And she knew that he had slipped away from her
once more. Then ashamed of his mockery, he kissed her, but it was no
good. She wanted suddenly to cry, but she only said, "You are a son of a
bitch! At heart you're a cheap _maquereau_."

"What do you expect? It's only luck that I can read and write my own
name."

"I'm not going to quarrel. Nothing can make me."

The light footsteps of Lon interrupted them. He came up the stairs into
the salon, carrying his dispatch case and hat. As he came in, Nicky
said, "Well?"

"It went off very well... better than I had hoped it could possibly go.
I've got papers for everyone." He grinned toward Roxie. "Even for Mata
Hari."

"Don't, Lon.... It isn't funny." She forced herself to speak in order
not to cry. It was over and gone again and her instinct told her that
there was something, some secret between the two men, which she was not
permitted to share.

       *       *       *       *       *

Then slowly the new revue began to take form. It was made of bits and
pieces, mostly old-fashioned spectacle and low comedy jokes turning upon
the triangle. There was no satire since it was not possible to risk
offending the Germans. Very often they would take home to themselves
satire not aimed in their direction. That, said Lon, was because of
their vast sense of inferiority and the over-sensibility which
accompanied it. They were, he said, a whole nation of people living
perpetually in the expectation of being mocked or insulted.

Lon had most of the work. He took Nicky as one of his secretaries but
Nicky was very rarely in the theater and the work was done by the same
grim-faced Polish woman who had done it for twenty years. Where he spent
his time was clear not even to Roxie. He said that it was safer that he
come to the theater only often enough to justify the appearance of being
employed by Lon. A good many people knew him as Nicky and not as the
Pierre Chastel recorded on his papers and on Lon's list of employees.

The grim-faced secretary was the daughter of a circus clown who had
been trained when a child as a wire walker but tuberculosis of the hip
had put an end to that career and at twenty Lon had given her a job.
She was very thin and walked with a limp, dressed always in black, and
wore her graying hair drawn back from the thin bitter face. For twenty
years she had satisfied her hunger for tents and journeys and lights by
holding Lon's small black notebook and watching others perform. She was
called Wanda Beck. She remembered everything, from the lines of the
skits, to the smallest button or feather on the costumes of "Les Girls."
Only Lon knew where she lived, and he knew nothing of her life, whether
or not she was married or had a lover, or whether even she had friends.
For at least ten years he had seen no sign of any emotion in her
impassive face until the day when a German sergeant came into his office
bringing a message from Major Kurt von Wessellhoft.

She was standing by Lon's desk when the door opened and the German,
without knocking, opened the door. At sight of the gray-green uniform
her dark face turned a deep red color and before Lon could speak she
said in German, "One knocks before entering the office of a gentleman."

The sergeant stared at her stupidly for a moment and then something,
perhaps the intensity of her fury more than her words, made an
impression. He took off his cap, and awkwardly like a lout, stood there
holding it in his hands, "Pardon," he said, "pardon," pronouncing the
word thickly as "_pardone_."

When he had left the message and gone away, closing the door with awed
gentleness, Lon turned toward her and saw that she had broken the
fountain pen she held in her hand. The hand was bleeding and the blood
mingled with the ink. She seemed unaware that she had injured herself.
Then suddenly the pen fell from her hand to the floor. She began to sob,
pressing her hands against her face so that it too was stained with ink
and blood.

Awkwardly Lon tried to calm her but there was nothing to be done. She
kept crying out, "_Les cochons!_ What have they done to Poland! _Les
cochons!_"

At length her fury wore itself out and, ashamed, she said, "I beg your
pardon, Monsieur," and limped away toward the washroom. When she had
gone Lon went back to his work, thinking, "I can trust her. There is no
doubt of that!"

One more recruit.

       *       *       *       *       *

At Luigi's little restaurant where Lon and Roxie and sometimes Nicky
ate nearly every evening because it was friendly and only a little way
from the theater, there were three more recruits--Luigi himself and his
wife Maria and his sister, the big Filomena. La Biche with her dusty
plumed hat and stage jewelry was always there because she had long since
become a pensioner, and now was a pensioner most of the time on credit,
for all her _clientle_, the rich foreigners and a few Parisians who
once had slipped her banknotes as she made her begging rounds of
theaters and night club doorways, were gone. Now there were only poor
people and German soldiers who chased you to cover at ten o'clock in the
evening. La Biche had eaten her meals at Luigi's for thirty years. It
was not possible now, said Luigi, to turn her away when she had no
money.

Night after night Filomena walked her yapping little dog up and down the
sidewalk outside the small restaurant, her eyes and ears and nose alert
in the darkness for the sight or smell or sound of a German soldier,
ready to pass casually by the darkened door and give three quick warning
raps on the glass. At the sound of the three raps, all those inside who
had no papers disappeared through Maria's trap door into the coal
cellar.

There were more of them lately for the Germans had begun to run to cover
Czechs and Dutch, Belgians and Austrian Poles and Jews and Slovenians
who long ago had fled to Paris because Paris offered refuge and freedom.
Some had not been able to escape and others had remained because Paris
seemed a better hiding place than a concentration camp or a small town.
Paris for centuries had hidden refugees in her bosom. There were hiding
places in Paris which no one could discover, especially when you had
help from honest citizens and sometimes from the authorities themselves.

They made an odd lot; among them were lawyers and acrobats, doctors and
printers, dancers and scientists, even a former cabinet minister and a
chief of police. By day they had no life for it was not possible to risk
being picked up on the open street. By day they hid away in the dingy
flats where someone had given them refuge, in cellars and attics, in
garages and dark alleys. Only at night in the darkness could they come
out into the air and find their way to Luigi's. Some of them had money
and some had none. When they could pay, they paid, when they could not
Luigi fed them on vast pots of spaghetti and macaroni and polenta. It
was not easy because prices rose, but Luigi dipped into his savings and
there was help from another source. One night Lon led him into the
kitchen and said, "Who is paying for all this?"

Luigi shrugged his shoulders. "Sometimes they pay. Sometimes I pay.
What does it matter? Prices are going up. Money is going down. In a
little while there will only be pieces of paper which you will have to
take because the Germans hold a pistol to your head and say, 'Take the
paper. It is worth ten marks.' _Que voulez-vous?_"

"All the same," said Lon. And after that Lon left money from time to
time with Maria. He had plenty of money hidden away; he was not for
nothing a Levantine. No one could trace the thousand-franc notes that
you took from under the floor.

There were times in the evening when a kind of sad gaiety crept into the
caf, as on the evening when the acrobat had taken up his concertina to
accompany plaintively La Biche's rendition of "_Savez-vous planter les
choux?_" and her memories of General Boulanger. There were times when
there was good talk, sometimes in many languages, sometimes in awkward
French. Sometimes there was talk between professors and journalists,
doctors and scientists, which was as brilliant as any talk had been in
the old days at great dinners.

All this Roxie watched, for it was a world that was new and strange to
her, a world whose suffering was outside the realm of any personal
suffering she had ever known or touched. And the talk made her ashamed
because she was so ignorant of the things they talked about. She
herself had known what it was to be poor but these people about her were
at once poorer and richer than any poverty or wealth she had ever known.
There was in their dark eyes a kind of sadness which she had never
before encountered--the sadness of a lost people, not only without a
home or a nationality but without hope. There were times when a light
came into their eyes, the light of a hope which perhaps would never
concern or touch them, who were lost already, but a hope which was that
of others outside the walls of this narrow, tortured world in which they
were trapped. And there was fire too in their dark eyes in the moments
when they talked of things beyond the understanding or experience of
Roxie herself, making her feel small and empty and insignificant. She
would listen to the talk, understanding little of it but impressed,
knowing that the things of which they spoke were beyond the bounds of
things material or real, yet possessed of a reality greater than any of
the shabby things upon which her whole life was founded.

Nicky, beside her, would listen too and sometimes Lon who, with his
Levantine shrewdness, understood far more than themselves. But Nicky was
more impatient, more childish than she or Lon, and after a time he
would grow restless and try to draw their attention away from the talk
by some joke or piece of mockery back into the shallow trivial world in
which he himself felt secure and at home. Watching him, Roxie felt a
sudden, blind pity for him, thinking, "If he had had a chance, he could
have been _someone_. He is clever. He is good at heart. Because he never
had a chance, he is a tramp." And she would know suddenly, with a quick
contraction of the heart, that it was pity which lay at the very
foundation of her strange feeling for him. He was like a child. In spite
of all the evil he had known, in spite of all the shamelessness of his
life, he was innocent.

Once while the three of them were listening to the good talk, she found
herself watching his dark face, the eyes bright with a kind of hunger to
understand what it was not possible for him to understand because he was
half a savage, and as she watched she felt other eyes upon herself and
turning she found ugly Lon's face, smiling a little, the hard
intelligent black eyes soft with that look of kindness which so rarely
illuminated them. He grinned and without saying anything filled his
glass with Chianti, then, raising it, he said, "To you both, _mes
enfants_!" By that gesture she knew that, having caught her unawares, he
had discovered not only the fact that she loved Nicky, but the depth of
that love which Nicky himself did not understand. Only once again did
Lon even speak of it or show any sign of what he had discovered and
that was long after there had ceased to be a Luigi's. In that curious
hard and lonely world in which the three of them had lived since they
were born, there was no place for what he had seen. It was as if what he
had discovered were so precious that in their perverse and shameless
world, one needed to be ashamed, as savages are ashamed before the
shrine of an unseen God. But the knowledge in some hidden way brought
herself and Lon nearer to each other, nearer than they had ever been in
all the years of their friendship and their trust in each other. And
there was in the black eyes of the little man who was so ugly that no
woman had ever loved him, a look of envy and longing.

There was among the motley group of refugees an old Jewish professor
whose story had come out bit by bit as he talked in bad French. He was
Austrian by nationality with a long thin face, gentle eyes and white
hair. First they had taken his son, a doctor, off to Dachau. For a long
time they had heard nothing of him and then one day came a simple notice
that the son was dead, how or why they were never told. A daughter with
her husband and family had been deported to Poland. A second daughter
who was a violinist had been made to scrub the pavement before the Hotel
Bristol in Vienna, day after day while she wore across her back a
placard reading, "I am a Jew and a communist. I do this as penance." One
night she was found dead in a cupboard where she had hanged herself.
Then the professor and his wife had tried to escape by way of the Tyrol,
crossing the frontier near St. Anton at night by way of mountain paths.
They succeeded but the old lady died in Switzerland partly of exposure
and hardship, partly because she no longer had any will to live. After
that the old man made his way alone somehow to Paris, because Paris was
kind to refugees and in Paris there were many men like himself,
distinguished and intellectual men, who would help him. And they had
helped him, hiding him away even after the Germans came, passing him
from house to house when danger threatened. It was a hard life for a man
who had been used all his life to comfort, to having his own books and
his own study. He never told the whole story, perhaps because it would
have been impossible for him to have talked of his suffering. It came to
them in bits and pieces from the other refugees, from Luigi, from the
old man himself. All of them at Luigi's grew very fond of him because of
his gentleness and patience.

And then one night when Lon and Nicky and Roxie came in after
rehearsals, Luigi came to them quietly and said, "Do not ask for the
professor. He is dead."

The old man had written a note of apology to the family of the house
where he was hiding saying that he meant to join his wife, his son and
his daughter since he was too old and too sad to continue living. He
advised them when they found his body to take it after dark into the
street and leave it there. Then no one would ever know who he was or who
had befriended him and hidden him. And that was what they had done.

No one ever spoke of the professor again. He was not the first who had
disappeared from among those who came to Luigi's after dark. Sometimes
it was suicide, sometimes it happened that they were picked up by the
Germans. One did not gossip about things like that. They were too
terrible and too near to everyone in the little room.

Always each night, at a different hour, there would come suddenly
Filomena's three sharp raps on the glass and Luigi would go quickly from
table to table saying, "_A la cuisine!_" and those who had no papers
would disappear through Maria's trap door into the coal cellar. And
every evening at that time Nicky's dark eyes would grow black with
hatred and contempt. And at last before they slipped away into the
darkness, one by one, La Biche would raise her glass of absinthe and
say drunkenly and solemnly "_A bas les Boches!_"

       *       *       *       *       *

"_A bas les Boches!_"

The toast of La Biche Roxie heard again and again from one end of the
city to the other. One heard it whispered. One read it in the eyes of
passers-by on the street, one heard it cried out in secret places like
Luigi's. The apathy of the captured city did not disappear; rather it
changed its form and degree of intensity. Sullenness took its place and
now and then violence broke out suddenly like flames from a smoldering
heap of wood. A German officer was shot outside a Montparnasse garage;
another was stabbed not far from Luigi's in Clichy. A sergeant was
beaten at the Porte de Lilas. German posters threatening punishment were
destroyed and torn from walls or covered with scrawled obscenities. And
La Biche's toast appeared everywhere on walls and boardings. "_A bas les
Boches!_" Big Filomena while walking her dog always carried a piece of
chalk. Her Rabelaisian nature made her very good at thinking up obscene
insults.

Each time she heard of some new violence, the shadow of fear crept over
Roxie, not for herself or even for the future, but only for Nicky, for
she knew that somehow in some way he had to do with these things. It was
not that he said anything. He was secretive when she tried to discover
where he had been during the day. He only laughed and said, "The usual
places," and mentioned a list of bars and restaurants and "clubs."

And then suddenly one night, he said, "Tomorrow there will be some
furniture delivered here. Don't be surprised. The men who deliver it
will know where to put it. Just let them in when they come."

"Furniture?"

He grinned, "Yes. There is all that empty space in the cellar for
storing things. I had a friend who had no place to put his furniture. He
didn't want the Boches to steal it."

She looked at him directly and said, "You're lying, Nicky. It's not
furniture."

Laughing, he said, "No. It isn't."

"What is it then? I don't mind what you and Lon do, only I want to be
in on it. Tell me. What is it?" He didn't answer her and she said, "Are
you afraid I'll betray you? Do you think that little of me?"

Again he grinned, "No. Of course not. It's only that we didn't want to
alarm you. And what you don't know you can't reveal. What Lon and I
are doing is not in your blood. You aren't made for guerrilla warfare.
You don't hate enough. To be a good guerrilla you have to hate enough
not to care what happens to you so long as you accomplish what you set
out to do. I learned to be a guerrilla before I was fifteen years old."

"I do hate the Germans. I hate every one of them in Paris."

He took her hands and spoke very earnestly, "Hate is more than that. A
lot more. It's something deep inside you and it's there all the time.
Gnawing at you. It is not a pleasant thing. It doesn't just come and go
when you are angry about something. It's always there!"

She listened, thinking, "It's true. I don't really hate. How do you
hate? And why?" Perhaps it was not in her. Perhaps she could never hate
the Germans as Lon and Nicky and Luigi hated them, as an inferior race
of savages. It was extraordinary that Lon and Nicky and Luigi with all
their shadiness and their humble stations in life should feel that even
a German general was contemptible. Yet it was true and she understood
the hatred without being able herself to feel it.

"No," Nicky was saying, "you've never really known any Germans." Then
his mood became more serious and he said, "I'll tell you about the
furniture. I have become a newspaper proprietor, financed by Lon. This
'furniture' is not furniture at all. It is a printing press and type and
all the things that are needed--and it's guns too and grenades and stuff
needed for making bombs. And the cellar is to be the newspaper office.
The paper is called, '_La France Eternelle_' which nothing can destroy!"

She was thoughtful for a moment. Then she said, "You might have told me.
After all, it is _my_ house."

He laughed, "You are not going to be mean about it. You're not going to
refuse two old friends like Lon and me?"

"Sometimes I think I am being used by both you and Lon. Sometimes I
think I'm just being a damned fool!"

"No, my dear. You were never a damned fool. You're too smart. But
sometimes you are being used by Lon and me. This house is very
convenient... the last place in the world one would look for trouble.
It's so dull and undistinguished. And you're American and an actress.
And there is plenty of room in your cellar."

He went on listing the advantages of the house. "Best of all," he said,
"it is in the heart of Paris where the Germans have set themselves up
and taken over."

"All the same, I don't like it."

"You aren't being jealous of my seditious activities?"

She felt a desire to slap him but it passed quickly. She said, "There is
really nothing I can do." After a silence she said, "For the last time,
Nicky, will you go to America with me?"

It was a simple question but she was aware of how important the answer
was to both of them. Whatever happened to them for the rest of their
lives would depend upon the answer. It came quickly.

"The answer is no. I have a job to do here. What should I do in America
but go back to rotting away, slowly. I've got something here. I'm alive
again the way I used to be. Even if you went, I would not follow you
much as I love you. That, my dear, is the bad luck of being loved by a
guerrilla. Bandits expect their women to follow _them_ wherever they go.
For a thousand years, the women of my family have followed their men.
Some of them were killed in battle. Some of them starved to death. My
father was born in a forest on the edge of a battlefield while his
father was fighting the Czar in rebellion. Does that make you understand
a little?"

"Yes."

He suddenly put his arm about her and said gently, "You Americans, like
a lot of Europeans, have been too lucky. You have grown soft, thinking
that automobiles and water closets are the beginning and end of life.
You've lost or forgotten the savage pleasures of heroism and hate and
sacrifice."

She was aware suddenly that the revelation was once more very near. This
voice was Nicky speaking, out of the very depths of himself, the Nicky
who was bad and sometimes evil because life had been too soft and
savorless. It was not the boy ashamed because he had never learned to be
civilized, for whom she felt pity, but a hard man, perhaps a savage one.

"Do you love me very much?" she heard him asking.

Quietly she said, "Yes, very, very much." It was the first time in all
her life she had ever spoken those words with feeling and suddenly she
was ashamed.

"Will you go to America or will you follow me?"

She smiled, "There isn't any choice in the matter for me." And she heard
the self-hypnotized voice of Madame de Thonars saying, "Go where he
goes. Do what he does. What has happened to you will never happen
again."

In the morning, after Nicky had gone out, a great furniture van appeared
before the door. The great doors which once had admitted carriages were
swung open on stiff creaky hinges which had been undisturbed for years
and four men carried in several large crates marked "Furniture. Fragile.
Handle with Care." Roxie directed them to the great cellar and when they
had deposited the crates among the accumulated rubbish of years they
went away again. They were workingmen, three of them over sixty, for the
young men were the prisoners of the Germans or dead. One of them grinned
quite openly at Roxie but the others gave no sign of understanding that
she knew what the furniture was.

When they had gone away, closing the great door again, leaving the
exterior of the house blind and undistinguished, she went back to her
room, and for the first time in her life she was really afraid. It was
not the sudden hysteria, the panic which attacked her when all the
others were fleeing Paris. This fear was a thing with deep roots,
extending into the past, flowering perhaps evilly in the future, mingled
with dread and foreboding. Somehow, without seeking it, she had drifted
into a situation which could only end in violence and calamity. For the
first time in her life she was not going it alone. She was entangled
with other people, with Lon and Nicky and, she suspected, Luigi and
Filomena, and the man who had carried in the "furniture." What happened
to her touched them all; what touched any of them touched her. A moment
of panic swept over her, and she thought again of Madame de Thonars and
the stars. It was an odd destiny for a girl born on the wrong side of
the tracks in Evanston.

A little later in the day Nicky returned and with him were a man and
woman, each carrying a valise.

"These are the new servants," said Nicky. "They will take care of the
house and in their spare time they will clean up the cellar." He
introduced them as "Monsieur Chabetz--Henri" and "Madame
Blanc--Josephine." By their manner, Roxie saw they really were servants.
Like the furniture movers they gave no sign of understanding what lay
beneath the surface.

"Josephine," said Nicky, "is an excellent cook. We shan't any longer
have to live on sandwiches."

But to Roxie, their presence meant only one thing. Here were two more
people whose lives were entangled with her own. Their safety was her
safety. Their peril was hers. To her this seemed a terrifying thing.

And the same night Nicky said, "I am going away for two or three days.
Don't worry about me."

"Where are you going?"

His face grew serious. "That I can't tell you. It is one of the rules.
I'll tell you when I return." Then he smiled, "You're not going to be
jealous, are you? It has nothing to do with women."

"No, I'm not jealous. I'm only worried."

"There's nothing to worry about. I'm awfully good at such things. I've
spent most of my life going places, across frontiers and through cities
without any papers. I know all the rules. And this time I have papers...
the most beautiful set of papers."

"The show will open while you're away. I wanted you to be there." She
was aware that she was not behaving as a trouper, or even a sensible
woman, but like a clinging suburban housewife. She was ashamed but she
could not help herself.

"What difference would that make? You've opened shows before now. I've
seen you a hundred times."

"But it's different this time." Again she was ashamed and hated herself.

"You're behaving like an ingnue."

"Perhaps."

       *       *       *       *       *

It was a strange opening, different from any other she had ever known.
There was no enthusiasm among the principals or the chorus people.
There was not even any excitement. Sometimes, during rehearsals, there
had been a laugh which, isolated, died quickly away. And now on the
evening the Alhambra was lighted again after so many weeks, there was
none of the atmosphere of an opening night.

In her dressing room, Roxie put on her make-up and put the flowers which
Lon had found somewhere into a vase. It was not only that Nicky's
absence worried her. She already hated the audience which began to
assemble nearly an hour before curtain time, like country yokels fearful
of being late. Twice she went to the peephole in the curtain to look
over the house and each time what she saw left her depressed and
troubled. One by one the rows began to fill with gray-green uniforms.
Here and there she discovered a single man or a little group of people
in civilian clothes. Who were they? Why were they there? Would they hiss
and boo because the actors on the stage had consented to carry on and
entertain their enemies? They could not know why d'Abrizzi had consented
to reopen, why she and all the others, most of them linked to her now in
a common plot, had returned. They could not know and no one could ever
tell them until it was all over and there were no more Germans in
Paris.

And the Germans themselves, sitting there in the gaudy theater, soberly,
row after row of them like correct well-behaved gray ghosts. How would
they behave at a revue of which they could scarcely understand a word?

As the time drew near, the sense of dread and panic increased. She took
off her dressing gown and stood naked while her elderly maid glued and
stitched and taped the few gilded feathers which were her costume for
the first spectacular scene. Her skin was cold and her hands trembled so
that the maid looked up at her suddenly, saying, "_Mais, vous tes
souffrante, Mademoiselle? Qu'est-ce qu'il y a?_"

"There's nothing the matter with me."

Distantly the music came from the orchestra out front, through the sets,
through the door itself, but this time it brought no excitement, nor any
gaiety. For weeks now she had accepted the presence of the Germans in
Paris; apathetically she had grown used to them. But this was different.
She felt with horror a new sense of their reality, hating them fiercely,
as a kind of formless and menacing mass, and she was glad, for she
wanted to hate as Lon and Nicky hated. But she remembered what Nicky
had said--real hate was something inside you that did not come and go
merely when you were angry or frightened. It was always there, feeding
your strength and your courage.

Then the call boy knocked his double knock and called out, "_Deux
minutes_, Mees Dawn."

She had heard the call a thousand times before but it had never sounded
like this, as if you were being warned that in two minutes you would be
taken out and shot. She stood up, still feeling chilled, although the
room was hot. She thought, "I must go through with it... now! There is
no time to escape. I have to go through with it." And then from
somewhere inside her a voice asked, "Oh, why didn't you go home? Why
didn't you go away before Nicky came back?"

The door opened suddenly and the call boy was standing there. He was
red-faced and excited, "_Venez! Venez! Mademoiselle! On vous attend!_"

Following him she managed somehow to cross through the darkness to the
foot of the ladder which led up to the great flight of stairs sweeping
down from the top of the theater to the lights and the audience.
Dizziness seized her. Climbing the ladder was no easy thing with the
great headdress of gilded feathers that was very nearly her only
costume. The feeling of dread and betrayal returned to her. She
remembered as she climbed what Lon had said, "You needn't be afraid.
The Boches will think that you are meant to be the German eagle and
think that you are paying them a compliment, but all the time you will
be the Eagle of Napoleon which was always gold. The German eagles are
black."

At last she reached the top of the ladder, realizing that for the first
time in all her career she was late and the orchestra was repeating the
last six bars to give her time. Then as she stepped from the ladder into
the spotlight at the top of the stairs she heard the voice of the
_compre_ calling out triumphantly, "_L'Aigle d'or! La Reine des
Oiseaux!_"

Still giddy, she extended her golden wings and her slippered feet felt
their way downward from step to step into the blaze of lights from
below. Her nakedness did not trouble her. She had no consciousness of
it. She waited as she moved down the steps for the jeers of those loyal
French who would believe she was betraying them.

Step by step she descended to the blare of the music. There were no
jeers and no boos, no whistling, and as she reached the bottom of the
steps, a wild, warm roar of applause came to her across the rosy glow of
footlights and the old sense of arrogant confidence in the perfection of
her own body returned to her.

Carefully, to the beat of the music, her naked body undulating in
response to the applause, _la Reine des Oiseaux_ moved forward to the
footlights to take her place in the center of the line of girls each
dressed in a few feathers to represent a bird. She stood between a
blonde girl who represented a heron and a girl with red hair who was a
falcon.

Now on the edge of the footlights she could see into the darkness of the
big theater and discern row after row of gray uniforms, interrupted here
and there by the civilians in black clothes. The German soldiers were
applauding wildly. The faces in the rows near to the stage had a tense
excited hungry look--the look of starved soldiers at the sight of so
much naked female flesh.

Then as she paraded slowly to one end of the great stage, there emerged
out of the yellow darkness the faces of four German officers in a box.
Two of them were applauding, one of them laughing loudly. The aspect of
the fourth was quite different from the others; he sat very stiff and
upright, his arms folded across his chest. He was handsome in a cold
gray, blond fashion. She might have passed by him forgetting his
existence and his indifference but for the peculiar burning look in the
gray-blue eyes. He was looking directly at her--there could be no
mistake about it--with a look in his eyes so concentrated and intense
that she felt a sudden moment of unaccustomed shame at her nakedness.

As she passed the box a second time, she meant not to look in his
direction but it was as if she had no power over her own movement. It
was as if the intensity of the look in the burning eyes forced her to
turn her head. When she looked at the box he was still watching her,
seated stiffly upright, his arms folded. And now after many years, she
was aware, horribly, like a well-brought-up young virgin, that she was
naked. It was the first time it had ever happened to her.

The curtain descended and rose again, not once but four times in
response to the applause and cheers of the hungry soldiers. Each time
the eyes were there in the hazy golden darkness, burning, in the frame
of the harsh handsome young face.

       *       *       *       *       *

Twice during the course of the evening d'Abrizzi came into her dressing
room. Carefully he closed and locked the door behind him and spoke in a
whisper.

"It is going well," he said. "It is terrific!"

For the first time a little of the old excitement gave an edge to his
voice.

"Yes."

She was troubled by the figure in the box but said nothing of it to
d'Abrizzi. He would only think it, after all her years of experience,
silly to be disturbed by the stares of a lecherous spectator. She could
not explain to him that this one was different, that the mad intensity
of his eyes had made her feel ashamed.

"Two more of the girls," he said, "have joined us."

"Are you sure of them?"

"They are old friends--Alice and Odette. One of them has worked for me
for fourteen years. She has a son of twelve. They can be trusted."

"And Nicky?"

"I've heard nothing from him. There's nothing to worry about. He's smart
and he's afraid of nothing."

It was right then, she told herself, what she had said weeks ago--that
Nicky was born out of his time, that he belonged in the Balkans or in
some remote period of the past when there were bandits.

After the final curtain, d'Abrizzi came in again, his black eyes
glittering. He was jubilant.

"The cheese has caught a mouse," he said.

"What kind of a mouse?"

"An aide to the Military Governor... von Wessellhoft himself."

"Oh!"

"The one with whom we had all our dealings. He wants an introduction. He
wants to take you out to supper."

"What am I to do?"

"Accept. We can't turn down so big a rat."

"And Nicky?"

"I wouldn't worry about him. He can trust you." He looked at her
sharply, "Can't he?"

She looked at him with sudden anger. "What do _you_ think?"

He shrugged his shoulders, "Okay, honey." And then went on to the point.
"We may need this Major some day. If you handle him properly, we may be
able to use him. What do you think?"

"I have very little experience as a spy."

"It does not matter. Please him, charm him. It will help keep them off
us."

She was troubled again by the burning look in the eyes of the man in the
box, for she was certain now that he and Major von Wessellhoft were the
same. She had had plenty of experience in handling men. Always she had
been successful, but she did not like drunken men or mad men, because
they were unpredictable. The look in the man's eyes had certainly been a
look of madness.

She was nearly dressed now and d'Abrizzi said, "May I bring him in?"

For a moment she hesitated, still troubled by a curious sense of
foreboding, as if in some part of her brain a voice was warning her.

Then she said, "Yes," and rising, turned away from the mirror.

D'Abrizzi opened the door and groveling a little, falsely and almost too
much she thought, said, "_Entrez!_"

He came through the door and she saw at once that he was the man from
the box.

D'Abrizzi said, "Mademoiselle Roxana Dawn," and the German made a jerky
bow. His face was pale but the same burning look was still in the eyes.
Quite naturally she held out her hand to be kissed, and then in French,
with a strong guttural accent, he said, "It is a pleasure. They tell me
you are American."

"Yes. Thank you."

"May I compliment you on your superb performance?"

"_Merci encore._"

The idea that she gave a superb performance filled her with an
hysterical desire to laugh. God and Nature had given her a superb
figure, developed by climbing trees and swimming in Evanston, Indiana.
She had no illusions about her success, her art or her morals. They were
all simple and natural endowments, very slightly increased or
embellished by conscious effort. Her success had come because
Frenchwomen, even those who exposed themselves in music halls, had
figures which by comparison with her own, were wretched. Vocally she
had a strong, sonorous, untrained natural mezzo-soprano and God had
given her a primitive sense of rhythm denied to the more civilized and
sophisticated French. The rest of her success came from a lack of shame
about displaying the magnificence of her body. For her that was no
trouble at all. Now the compliment made her want to laugh. Performance?
At the same time she was appraising the German's face and figure. There
was something splendid about the perfection of the shoulders and hips
and carriage and the face had a brutal sharp sort of beauty. It was a
male beauty, yet the effect was not male. Out of experience and instinct
her whole body, whose dictates she trusted far more than the dictates of
her untutored uncertain reason, was filled with distrust. This was not
the direct maleness of a man like Nicky; there was something wrong about
the German's good looks, like a projected figure slightly out of scale.

"I would be honored, Mademoiselle, if you would have supper with me."

Her instinct told her to refuse, to make excuses, to save herself before
it was too late, from what she did not know; but behind the Major's
back, d'Abrizzi's black eyes were speaking to her eloquently, urging her
on, repeating now all the things both he and Nicky had said before.

"We will go where you like," he said. "To some correct place."

The word "correct" struck her as absurd. The Germans were obsessed with
the word. Everyone, everything must be correct. Was it because they were
unsure of themselves, not quite civilized? Was that why the idea of
formality and correctness was so important to them?

She obeyed the counsel of d'Abrizzi's eyes. "Yes," she said, "we can go
to Maxim's if you like."

A bright look came into his face, "Good! It is a gala night there. The
Field Marshal is going there. I arranged for his special protection. It
will be very gay and official and correct." He stepped forward and took
from her the mink coat she had picked up from the chair.

"_Permettez_," he said and put it round her shoulders. Then he clicked
his heels together and bowed. "Shall we go?"

       *       *       *       *       *

At the door of Maxim's she felt a sudden wild desire to leave him and
return home. She had not been seen in a great restaurant since the
Germans had come to Paris. She knew what she would find inside--only
Germans and a few of the French who had sold out or compromised with
their enemies. She had no desire to be counted among them, but she knew
that she could be useful only if the Germans accepted her. Her
conscience troubled her too because until now she had been so useless.
Nicky and d'Abrizzi had done everything, all the plotting and organizing
and recruiting. They had taken her house as a kind of headquarters and
she had accepted the risk of discovery, but beyond that she had done
nothing.

In any case it was too late now and too awkward to turn away and leave.
The revolving door was turning against the blackness of the curtains
inside. There was nothing to do but to step forward into the darkness.

She pushed aside the curtain and suddenly she was in the midst of all
the familiar red plush and gold. There was the same music and the same
barman and the same _grues_ sitting on their stools by the bar. But the
men were different, all but one or two in the uniforms of the German
army. There was a sickening sense of wrongness about the figures
reflected in the long mirrors. Maxim's for fifty years had been the
heart of Paris, a kind of symbol with the bar and the music, the red
plush and gilt and the girls at the bar.

Then two of the girls looked toward her and smiled. They were the smiles
of prostitutes filled with admiration for one of their number who had
become a great star and wore sables and diamonds and came in with a
high-ranking officer. Yet there were other things in the
smiles--recognition, understanding perhaps, and something secret too as
if they were saying, "We too are putting up with them but in the end we
shall drive them out."

She thought suddenly, "Perhaps they help to distribute Lon's and
Nicky's paper. Perhaps they are recruits like myself."

Then her old friend, Albert, the _matre d'htel_ was standing there
before her smiling and bowing.

He was delighted to see her again. He had heard that she had stayed
behind in Paris and was troubled because he had not seen her. The
restaurant was carrying on. It seemed the best thing to do. There was
the same good food, the same good wines. But all the time he spoke, so
professionally, so glibly, his pale blue eyes were a negation of the
words he spoke. There was, behind the smile, a curious secret look of
hurt and shame and hatred.

Then to the Major, he said, "I beg your pardon, sir. There will be a
table in a moment. There is a couple leaving." He smiled quickly, almost
secretly at Roxie and again she thought, "Does he know? Is he one of
us?"

The Major was standing beside her, very stiff and upright and unseeing,
as if he did not want to recognize the other soldiers in the place.
Then a couple came out of the square room--a wine merchant and his
American wife. Roxie frowned and looked away. She knew them. They were a
pair who were on the other side, they were among the traitors, the
sellers-out. They had welcomed the Germans to Paris. There were others
like them who had been willing to sell out friends, country, their own
mothers in exchange for what they believed and hoped was protection of
their property and privileges. She looked away, thinking, "The girls at
the bar are worth fifty of them."

Albert was leading them now toward a table for two--the only table in
the room that was free, save for a large empty table on the opposite
side set with a dozen places. That, she divined, would be the table of
the Field Marshal.

Albert drew back the table and summoned a waiter. "Change this for the
gentleman," he said. Then he bowed and went away as Roxie and the Major
seated themselves on the _banquette_. The waiter pushed back the table,
and then an astonishing thing happened. He lifted the cloth to replace
it with a fresh one and there beneath the cloth just in front of Major
von Wessellhoft lay a copy of a newspaper. She saw first the black
headlines in bold type.

    "L'EUNUQUE ARRIVE  PARIS!
    LE MARECHAL, SYMBOLE D'UNE
    CIVILIZATION STRILE!"

That was all she saw. For a second she thought wildly, "They know! They
have planned this!"

And then almost at once she saw that this was not true. The strange,
stiff Major did not know. He stared for a moment at the newspaper as if
fascinated, as if a snake instead of a newspaper had appeared from
beneath the cloth. The waiter regarded him in terror, still holding the
cloth in his trembling hands.

She was aware that all three--the Major, the waiter and herself were the
victims of a kind of suspended animation. The waiter broke the
enchantment. He said passionately, "Monsieur, I know nothing about it! I
did not know it was there! I swear it!"

Then Major von Wessellhoft did a strange thing. He picked up the paper,
folded it carefully and put it into his pocket. To the waiter he said,
"I believe you. Go on with your work."

To Roxie he said, "Have you seen that paper before?"

She spoke quickly, her heart still pounding, "No. I know nothing about
it."

"It is a pity. We are trying to be so correct. We want all Frenchmen to
understand that we are to be their friends, to save them from their
corrupt democracy. This sort of thing does no good."

Only then came to her the realization that as her companion had folded
the paper, she had seen its name, its title printed above the headlines.
The printed title remained before her eyes, imprinted against the mirror
and the figures opposite. "_La France Eternelle!_" It was Lon's and
Nicky's paper. It had been printed in the cellar of her own house! They
had indeed worked quickly.

Almost at once she was aware of an excitement and confusion all about
her, of German officers standing and the two or three French people who
were perhaps traitors or were, like herself, fighting on the other side.
That was something you could never really know until it was finished.
The band began to play "_Deutschland! Deutschland!_" She turned toward
the door as the Field Marshal came in.

She had seen many photographs of him in newspapers and always he had
seemed monstrous and unnatural, gross and false, jovial and sinister.
Now the reality surpassed anything she had imagined.

He stood for a moment in the doorway, surrounded by seven or eight young
men, most of them blond, like a bad, elderly actress making an
entrance. His immense grotesque body was covered by a uniform of pale
canary yellow. The great rubbery chest, with breasts like those of Erda,
was ornamented by dozens of decorations. As he stood there, he raised
one pudgy hand to his throat to adjust the decoration that hung there,
and she saw that the fingers were covered with rings, diamonds and
emeralds and rubies.

Then he moved forward as Albert, walking backward, bowed him toward the
empty table. Albert, like Lon, rather overdid the bowing so that the
whole scene seemed to go out of focus slightly and slipped over the
border into burlesque and mockery. Roxie felt a wild hysterical desire
to laugh.

As the Field Marshal moved forward the troupe of young officers
followed. They were good-looking and healthy and straight, yet there was
in their arrogant carriage a curious nervous self-consciousness. They
were clearly unhappy young men save for one with a boldly made-up face
who seemed brazen and gay.

In the midst of the scene she was aware suddenly of the tenseness of the
Major, standing there stiffly beside her. She turned toward him and saw
that his face was a deep, angry red. He had taken a fork from the table
and bent it double with the fingers of one hand. She thought, "How
extraordinary! He hates him!"

Then still watching the Field Marshal as he carefully placed the young
men at the table as an old dowager might have done it, she said softly,
"_Mais, c'est formidable!_" and with equal quietness her companion
answered her in a strangled half-voice. "Yes, it is true. He cannot make
love himself. He surrounds himself with those who can. _C'est un
voyeur._" And she was aware again that her companion hated the Field
Marshal with a cold passionate hatred. She thought, "So it is like that!
It is possible that among themselves they hate each other more than they
hate us."

Then the Field Marshal seated himself heavily on the red plush
_banquette_, his thinning, dyed, blond hair reflected in the mirror
behind him, and all the others in the restaurant seated themselves
again. Fascinated, she watched him as he asked Albert to pour the
champagne and Albert took the Jeroboam from the ice and in turn filled
the glasses, beginning first with a few drops in the glass of the Field
Marshal. Albert performed the operation with the same exaggerated air of
ceremony with which he had bowed in the Great One. The filling of each
glass before each young man became a delicate mockery, too subtle for
any German ever to understand. Albert, the most experienced and
impeccable of waiters, gave the performance of a vulgar _bistro garon_,
groveling before royalty. But the Germans liked it. It was obviously
their idea of how a waiter should perform his duties.

All at once she was aware with a kind of horror that the Field Marshal
was looking directly at her. She turned away but without seeing him knew
that he was still watching her and she still saw the smile with the wet
unnaturally red lips, the puffy cheeks and the cold blue eyes, opaque
with madness. The Major was saying something in a low voice. She did not
hear all of it, only that he said, "Pretend not to notice." And she
experienced for the first time a feeling of friendliness for him.

She occupied herself with the menu card, but in a moment she was aware
of someone standing by the table speaking to the Major in German.
Without looking up she heard him reply coldly in French as if to
reproach the newcomer, "Very well, then." And turning toward her he
said, "I would like to present Lieutenant Hessell."

Looking up she discovered one of the young men from the Field Marshal's
table--the bold, frivolous one who had made so gay an entrance. He
pulled out the table with an air of arrogance. The Major said, almost
with an air of apology, "We shall have to go over to him."

Aware that everyone in the room was staring at herself and the Major,
she crossed the room, her knees trembling. As they reached the table,
all the good-looking young men rose but the Field Marshal remained
seated. She saw, looking at him with fascination and repulsion, that he
was made up like a _cocotte_, heavily, even to the green-tinted shadows
on the eyelids. She thought, "He is exactly like a Madame--a wicked old
Madame, the kind who would beat the girls and steal from them." She was
aware of all the other cold blue eyes, that they did not look at her
with flattery and admiration as other men looked at her, but nakedly and
coldly without warmth or gallantry.

Aware deep inside her of the cold sexual hatred of a woman for a
perverse impotent man, she thought, "I will force him to kiss my hand."
And instead of bowing, she held her hand toward him across the table. He
understood the gesture and a glint of humor came into the eyes. Bending
a little, painfully, for he was tightly corseted, he put his lips to her
hand. As she withdrew it, she was aware that its whiteness had been
stained by the red of lipstick.

He said, in thick heavy French, "I am enchanted to make your
acquaintance, Mademoiselle." And to the Major, "You are very fortunate
to have found so charming a companion." Then in German he said something
more. The Major did not reply in German but in French. He said, "I beg
you, Monsieur le Marchal, to wait for another time. It would be
embarrassing and not very correct. In any case Mademoiselle is an
American."

For a second the eyes of the Field Marshal turned cold and he said, "You
are quite right, Major. I beg your pardon." The frivolous young
lieutenant tittered boldly, and the Field Marshal said, "Well, on some
other occasion." And turned to speak to the young man on his right.

"_Venez_," said the Major quickly, and bowing again they left the table.

The Major's face had taken on again the unnatural red color. As they sat
down he said, "He asked us to sit at his table. What he wanted of us was
unspeakable." He took up the menu card, placed a monocle in his eye and
said, "I should avoid all of them. They are not healthy."

Then Nicky was with her, very near he seemed and astonishingly real.
There was gaiety in him and abandon and tenderness. In these others
there was something dark and twisted and complex. The awareness of them,
the awareness of a concentrated, intricate lechery, became overwhelming.
It was as if the room were filled with a nauseous fog. She thought,
"Nicky! Oh, Nicky!"

The rest of the evening held for her the quality of a nightmare.

She had come, hoping to find a little of the old gaiety. She loved the
old Maxim's. She had been happy there and gay, in the fantastic years
between wars. She had loved the luxury, the good food, the brilliance of
a spectacle made up of senators and their aging mistresses, courtesans,
millionaires, dressmakers, ambassadors, actresses. There were times when
the ostentation seemed vulgar and melodramatic, when the luxury cloyed.
There had been a strange kind of insanity about it, as of people
feasting in the crater of a volcano. But it had never been like this.

A sense of doom, of complicated Gothic perversion, a curious blend of
animal vigor and utter decadence filled the mirrored room. It was as if
the tables were peopled by characters out of Felicien Rops, as if they
were caricatures with heads of animals. Opposite her the Field Marshal
was a caricature with the head of a pig, rouged and made up, even to
shadows beneath the puffy eyes. The long table was like a caricature,
laden with lobster and pheasant and magnums of champagne. Why was it,
she thought, that Germans always seemed to be caricatures of themselves?
She remembered them all, the fat tourist families in Cannes, the
sweating youth groups with knapsacks on their backs in the Salzkammergut
who should have been beautiful but were not, the pompous generals with
scarred faces and monocles in the Walterspiele in Munich, little ratlike
Goebbels and the Fhrer himself. All, all were caricatures, even the man
beside her for all his cold good looks. He was a caricature of a young
Prussian officer.

She saw that the young men at the table opposite were conscious of her
beauty and kept watching her. Even the Field Marshal himself leered at
Major von Wessellhoft as if to congratulate him on his conquest, and she
remembered what the Major had said, "_C'est un voyeur!_" And the
revelation of the newspaper with its streamer, "_L'Eunuque Arrive 
Paris_." And then out of the past there came the memory of a joke about
the birth of the Field Marshal's child, brought back long ago by
d'Abrizzi from Berlin before there was a war.... "If it is a boy, there
will be a twenty-one gun salute--if a girl, eighteen. If nothing at all,
they'll shoot the adjutant."

All the while the Major was being "correct." He ordered partridge and
champagne and salad and _pt de fois gras_. And as she ate, she thought
of the millions of people in Europe who had not enough to eat, of
children starving and old people dying of exposure, of the frightened
dark eyes of the refugees fed by Luigi, because of the men in this room.
And as she hungrily ate the pale pink _pt de fois gras_, watching the
grotesque table on the opposite side of the room, she thought that she
was beginning to understand something of the hatred that drove Nicky and
the little swarthy Levantine, d'Abrizzi.

The Major conducted the conversation rather in the manner of a cross
examination, asking her about New York in which he seemed to have a
great interest, and what it was like to live in a country where there
was no real law and citizens lived at the mercy of gangsters.

All the while she kept watching him, speculating as to what sort of man
he was, for she had never encountered any man like him. Out of
experience she knew from his manner that he found her attractive and
even desirable, yet the adventure of the evening was passing without any
advances from him, save for the burning, mad look in the blue eyes. She
might as well be having supper with an elderly virgin governess.

Presently she began to feel both bored and tired. It would, she decided,
have been more interesting if he had made violent and annoying love to
her. It was after one o'clock when at last she said that she must go
home. The party of the Field Marshal was becoming riotous and the
feeling of uneasiness and the sense of the sinister grew more
oppressive. She felt that if she did not escape she must scream.

The Major quietly paid the check and, rising, pushed back the table. She
knew that all the eyes in the room were again directed toward them. In
those eyes her companion had achieved what none of the others had
accomplished; he had made a great conquest in the midst of the sullen
resentful city.

He went with her back to the rue Washington in the gray bulletproof car
driven by an orderly. He still spoke to her in French. He didn't attempt
to touch her but he said presently, "You know, you are very beautiful."

"Thank you."

He went on: "I have enjoyed myself very much this evening. I hope you
have enjoyed yourself."

She answered politely, "Very much."

"I hope it is the first of many evenings like this. I hope you feel the
same way."

"Yes, of course."

She saw that they were taking a wrong turning and told him to correct
the driver. The rue Washington was neither a fashionable nor a notorious
street, only dull and obscure and difficult to find if you did not know
Paris.

They arrived presently, under her guidance, at the big door of the
house. He got down with her and said surprisingly, "Is it too late for
me to come in and have a glass of wine?" The "correctness" made her
want to laugh again. She was praying in her heart that Nicky had
returned and was waiting for her. So she said quickly, "It is very late.
Besides, it will be difficult with my servants. They are French. They
might not understand my bringing you, a German officer, into the house.
I cannot blame them. They have been with me for a long time."

Gravely he said, "I understand." Then he brought his heels together
bowed, kissed her hand and said, "You will not be offended if I come to
the theater tomorrow evening?"

"No."

She put the key into the lock and pushed open the door.

"Good night."

"Good night."

As she closed the door she heard the big gray car with bulletproof glass
roar away down the empty silent street.

Then as she locked the inner door someone switched on a light and her
heart stopped beating. From the hallway above Nicky appeared in pajamas
and the red dressing gown, coming down the steps three at a time. When
he took her in his arms she began to cry and suddenly he held her at
arm's length saying, "What is it? What happened? Who brought you home in
a car?"

Upstairs, over a bottle of champagne, she told him the whole story of
the evening, crying now and then from weariness and nerves. He listened,
sometimes laughing at her description of the behavior of her admirer and
the account of the rouged Field Marshal and his party at Maxim's.

"It was not funny," she said gravely. "It was like going into hell. I'll
never again go back to Maxim's until there isn't a German in Paris."

Again he took her into his arms and kissed her, and she thought how
different he was from the strange man with whom she had spent the
evening. Nicky was excited, tender, warm, humorous, lovable. She had
never loved him so much.

Excitedly, while she undressed, he told her of all he had been doing. He
had been to Toulouse and Marseilles. He had been led across the border
of the occupied region through copses and forests by a peasant.
Returning he had been hidden in a cart of hay. The trip had been
successful. He had acquired twenty recruits for the program of sabotage.

When he had made love to her, she said in the darkness, "I am afraid."

"Of what?" he asked.

"I don't know. Don't think I'm silly but I never met men like these
Germans."

"They are animals... very sad, depressing animals," he said.

In the darkness she wondered again about the question of hate and
dismissed it. She could not feel hate but only disgust. Then suddenly
she said, "Do you think d'Abrizzi is right in asking me to be agreeable
to them?"

He was silent for a moment. Then he said in a very reasonable voice.
"Yes. You may learn things from this sad Major, and if any of us should
be arrested you might be able to help us if you are clever enough."

"I am not very clever."

He laughed. "I think d'Abrizzi is right, so long as you don't fall a
victim to your correct admirer."

"It is nothing to laugh about," she said gravely. "I will be faithful to
you long after you have forgotten me."

"Oh, no. That never!"

Then she asked, "Do you think that business of finding the _France
Eternelle_ under the tablecloth meant anything? Do you think it was
arranged by them as a trap?"

"No. It was put there by one of us... a waiter or perhaps a scrubwoman.
There are many of us."

       *       *       *       *       *

When Major von Wessellhoft left her he went back to his apartment in the
Ritz. He undressed and went to bed but there was no sleep in him. He
lay awake, tormented, until the gray light came in between the brocade
curtains.

Because a strange thing had happened to him. For the first time in all
his existence a woman had become important to him and it was the wrong
kind of woman. It had happened quickly, coming upon him without warning,
as if all the pent-up, congested, unsatisfied desire had suddenly
flowered in this one evening. Somewhere in the dark reaches of his
tight, regimented mind, old shadows had risen out of the remote past to
confuse him. Among them was the figure of the Swabian girl by the name
of Lisa who had taught him as a child of five to read and write. For a
long time, unconsciously, he had judged all women by Lisa. Because she
had always come between him and any woman he had ever known, there was
something twisted and thwarted in his soul.

And then as he sat in the box at the Alhambra, Lisa had suddenly
appeared again, coming down a light high flight of stairs, naked save
for the gilded feathers of the eagle... the eagle... the eagle. The
Eagle was there too among the worshiped images of his spirit--the
eagle--symbol of pride and arrogance and conquest and victory, of all
that he had been taught since childhood. Now Lisa had come back into his
life as an eagle. It was like a wild dream in which symbols fell into
place to make a pattern of fantasy. _La Reine des Oiseaux_ had Lisa's
skin, her white ivory body, her carriage, her clear blue eyes, her soft
voice. But this woman who looked like Lisa was everything he had been
trained to deny... she was American, of a mongrel race. She was an
actress, possibly a harlot, at least a courtesan. It was evil of Lisa to
return thus, as if she were having her revenge for the humilities she
had borne as a Swabian in a Prussian family. Toward morning, sleepless,
he had begun to hate rather than love her. But there was no escaping
her.

       *       *       *       *       *

In the morning after Nicky had gone away she lay in bed with the pink
satin curtains still drawn across the windows, for a long time,
thinking. In the darkness, alone, things seemed cleared to her, but more
vivid too and more frightening. She had a great need for clarity because
her life had become confused and full of dread.

Lying there, she thought first of all, "It is because I don't know where
I am going. It is because I have never before been attached really to
anyone or anything. I am afraid now because in spite of anything I can
do I am entangled with other people and cannot escape and because I am
in love with Nicky. Always before I have been free to do what I wanted,
to quit and run away if I grew tired or bored or afraid. Now I cannot
run away."

All that was changed now, and gone, vanished as if it had never existed.
In her house, only a little way from her in the vaulted cellar, people
to whom she was tied by the terrible bonds of conspiracy were at work
printing the paper she had seen for an instant last night on the table
at Maxim's.

The first knowledge had come to her suddenly in the gray hours before
dawn after Nicky, with the simplicity of an animal, had fallen asleep.
She was aware dimly of a kind of wonder at what was happening to her,
what indeed had already happened to her. It was as if she were suddenly
growing a soul, a new kind of awareness, of many things she had never
understood nor even known. For one, the curious warm loyalty of Luigi
and his family to the frightened, despairing refugees abandoned by those
who had promised them sanctuary. She had discovered Lon's bitter,
stubborn determination of which she had never before had any suspicion,
and the change in Nicky, as if all his evil traits in the past had been
born of restlessness and despair and were now dissipated because he had
a purpose. She saw very clearly that what Lon had said was true--Nicky
was meant to be a bandit not a gigolo.

She was astonished too by the Major and the young officers in Maxim's,
not because she was innocent and inexperienced--in her world all sorts
of strange vices and perversion were common enough--but because the
quality of all these men was inhuman and alarming. She had met few
Germans in her life and no Prussians at all.

She felt a desire to talk with someone of all these things but she did
not know how to talk of them and could think of no one with whom she
might talk. Nicky would only dismiss them impatiently because he lived
by action and not by thought, and Lon would only say, "What did I tell
you?" And she was not at all certain that she could talk of them because
she was accustomed to talk in slang only of trivial things or the things
associated directly with her own ego and her own career. She felt
ignorant and very humble before these revelations, as if until now she
had never really understood anything, even the simplest things.

The sudden growth of soul, of depth, of understanding is not a simple,
easy thing. It comes sometimes to people late in life, and the later it
comes the more painful and bewildering the experience can be. It was
happening now to Roxie. It had been happening since the moment when she
had turned away from the window in Claridge's because she could not look
at the spectacle of German soldiers coming up the Champs Elyses. She
was growing a soul and the process bewildered and hurt her, because
never before had anything ever touched her, even in her relations to
other people. Something was happening even to the quality of her feeling
for Nicky, which made all that happened before seem trivial and fleshly
and shaming.

A little before noon, she rang for coffee and it was brought after a
very long time by the man Nicky had provided as _matre d'htel_. He
came in dressed in a striped waistcoat and shirtsleeves as if he had
been doing the house when she rang. He showed no sign of being anything
but a servant. He performed his duties to perfection with an air of
experience and detachment.

He asked her if everything was as she liked it and instead of answering
him she looked at him directly and said, "I understand. You do not need
to pretend."

He looked at her with a perfectly empty expression in his black eyes.
"Pretend what, Madame?" he asked.

"We are all together," she said. "You do not have to pretend to be a
_matre d'htel_."

"But I am a _matre d'htel_, Madame," he said. "Monsieur d'Abrizzi
engaged me." Then he smiled a little and added, "But we _are_ all
together, Madame. We are all citizens or friends of the Republic."

She felt a sudden affection for the little man. It was extraordinary how
intelligent the French always were, even the little people like this
man. For her it was not a new thought and yet it was always new, and a
little astonishing.

"You are right, my friend," she said, and found that, without any
conscious sense of will, she had held out her hand to him. He took it
without hesitation as if the situation in which they found themselves
wiped out all differences between them. It was a curious, simple gesture
direct and friendly, and for her it had a profound meaning. It was as if
she had become one of them, _really_, for the first time, as if she had
accepted at least in a small way the entanglement which she could not
escape.

When he had gone away, she experienced a curious feeling of completeness
and satisfaction as if she had come suddenly to life, as if the numbness
of mind and spirit were gone. She was no longer alone as she had been
all her life.

       *       *       *       *       *

When she had dressed she went down into the big lower hallway and turned
the latch of the door leading into the cellar. The latch moved but the
door did not open and she thought, indignant, "After all it is _my_
house." Then she knocked twice, and three times, each time a little
harder. After the third knock a voice asked, "Who is it?"

"It is Mademoiselle Dawn. I want to come down."

She heard the sound of bars being lifted and in a moment the door opened
and the _matre d'htel_ stood there, "I'm sorry, Mademoiselle. It was
Monsieur d'Abrizzi's orders to keep the door bolted while we were
working."

"Of course."

He stood aside while she descended the worn stone steps into the cellar.

It was no longer dusty and empty. There were seven people in it and the
rubbishy furniture had been piled at one side near the door leading into
the wine cellar. One person was the _matre d'htel_, another was the
cook. A third, surprisingly, was Filomena. She had her little dog with
her and carried a big black string bag filled with vegetables. The other
four she had never seen before.

At sight of her, Filomena grinned, delighted with the surprise. They
greeted each other and Roxie picked up the little dog which yapped with
pleasure and excitement.

Then the _matre d'htel_ said, "We all belong here, Mademoiselle. This
is Monsieur Dubois, Madame Vladek, Mademoiselle Malkowska and Monsieur
Lopez."

They shook hands all around. She was certain that none of the names were
real names, but that did not matter. Lopez was obviously French--the
plump, blue-eyed blond type of French workingman. The others might be
French or might not be. Behind them stood the hand printing press. They
had been operating it and there was a smell of ink in the musty air.

She said to Filomena, "How did you get in here... not by the front
door?"

Filomena laughed and the _matre d'htel_ said, "No, Mademoiselle. They
came in from the rue de Berri--all but the cook and myself. As servants
we use the proper entrance."

"But how?"

Monsieur Lopez grinned and stepped to a cheap, battered old wardrobe.
With very little effort he pulled it out from the wall.

"See!" he said. "It leads to the garage in the rue de Berri."

It was very interesting. They had knocked a part of the built-up wall
inward, into a vaulted passage long ago bricked up, like the passage
that led to the wine cellar.

"But what if someone came through it you didn't expect?"

Monsieur Dubois answered her. "We always have a guard stationed at the
garage end. If anyone came we could escape from here by the front of the
house or the garden."

It was all melodramatic and yet singularly clever. Lon must have
explored all the possibilities before he settled on this cellar. Even
Nicky had never told her.

Monsieur Dubois pushed back the wardrobe and the woman called Madame
Vladek and the man called Monsieur Lopez went back to the press and
started it moving. The papers fell off, damp and odorous, printed on one
side. It was an old-fashioned press which printed only one side of the
paper. It had to be run through twice. A pile of neatly folded copies
lay on a broken table salvaged from among the old furniture.

She picked one from the top. It was the same edition which had lain
beneath the soiled tablecloth at Maxim's.

Filomena said in her deep voice, "It's beautiful, isn't it? _'L'Eunuque
Arrive  Paris.' Quel salaud!_"

"I met the eunuch last night," said Roxie.

"Really," said Filomena with passionate interest. "Tell me about it."

But Roxie could not tell them about it. The unpleasantness was too
great. The others came closer to her, all save the two who worked the
press. Above the noise they had not heard her remarkable statement.

"It was nothing," she said. "A fat man covered with decorations. But one
of these papers was under the tablecloth at the table where we sat."

"Who was _we_?" asked Filomena impudently.

"I went to Maxim's with a major."

"A German?"

"Naturally."

"_Tiens!_" said Filomena. "That's certainly interesting news. Did you
discover anything?"

"Nothing... nothing at all."

The others listened without speaking. It was as if they wished to remain
as anonymous, as shadowy as possible. But Filomena was an old friend.

"When are you coming to our place?"

"I don't know. When I can. Now the revue is open it's impossible to come
except early in the evening."

The heavy old press went on clanking in the background. The _matre
d'htel_ was holding out a card toward her. "Have you seen these,
Mademoiselle?"

She took the card from him and read it. In simple type, in English, it
read only, "_With the compliments of the British Secret Service_." She
looked at him for an explanation.

"We slip them under the doors of rooms occupied by the Boches, sometimes
into the pockets of their coats and inside their caps. It is easily done
and very effective. The Germans are naturally a morbid people. It upsets
them more than the average people. We are constantly thinking up new
things." He smiled modestly but with pride.

"Beautiful, isn't it?" said Filomena. "Well, I must get back."

She picked up the string bag filled with packages and a sprinkling of
unwrapped carrots and potatoes and a long loaf of bread wrapped in
paper. These she emptied onto the table. Picking up the bread, she
removed the paper and broke the loaf in half. Then she took up a score
of the freshly printed copies of "_France Eternelle_" and rolled them
into a tight roll no bigger than the circumference of the loaf. Laying
this end to end with one of the half loaves she wrapped the whole in
paper and tied it with string. She repeated the operation with the other
half loaf and when she had finished there appeared to be two
paper-wrapped loaves of bread lying side by side. Then she picked them
up and thrust them into the string bag, the end containing the
newspapers first. At last she piled on top of them more packages and a
sprinkling of carrots and potatoes.

Looking at Roxie, she said, grinning, "You see? Simple, isn't it?"

She took the little dog from Roxie, set it on the floor, fastened the
leash to her big wrist, adjusted the rusty black crocheted shawl over
her massive shoulders and picked up the string bag.

The _matre d'htel_ pushed back the wardrobe and Filomena, turning to
Roxie, said, in her rolling nioise accent, "_Au revoir, Mademoiselle! A
bientt et vive la France!_"

Then with the comical exaggerated gait of a concierge she went through
the opening into the passage leading to the garage. It was a clown's
performance but magnificent. When she came out of the garage into the
rue de Berri, no one could possibly suspect that she was a carrier of
the awful "_France Eternelle_." She would simply be a concierge who had
been out to do the marketing with her little dog and stopped in at the
garage to speak to her cousin who worked there, washing the cars of
German officers.

When she had gone and the wardrobe was once more in place, Roxie said,
"We'll open wine and celebrate. I'll fetch the keys."

The _matre d'htel_ went with her as she unlocked the two doors which
in turn shut off the wine cellar. This part of the cellar he had never
seen and as she unlocked the steel door that shut off the damp cold wine
cellar itself, he exclaimed, "What a place! What a tomb! And in the very
heart of Paris!"

She let him choose the wine and he selected a bottle of _Vin d'Anjou_, a
simple good wine.

"Better take two bottles," she said.

"_Merci, Mademoiselle._"

He carried out the bottles and she relocked the doors.

After they had all drunk a toast to "_La France Eternelle_," she left
them and went upstairs once more, slowly and thoughtfully.

No, it was impossible to defeat a people like that. You couldn't say
properly that they were a _people_. Only three of them, she suspected,
were French--the "cook," the "_matre d'htel_" and "Monsieur Lopez."
The Vladek woman was probably Czech or Jugoslav and Dubois Spanish. Her
thoughts ran on--and Nicky was Georgian, like Stalin himself, Lon a
Levantine, a God-knows-what, and she American while Luigi and Filomena
were really Italians. And of course there were all those people with
the burning, sad eyes, whom Luigi fed.... It was as if the Germans had
raised the whole world against themselves.

       *       *       *       *       *

Lon came in about five o'clock with his dispatch case. He seemed
cheerful, almost gay, because the revue was obviously a success. All
that hodgepodge of spectacles and tableaux and old worn-out blackouts
having to do with husband and wife and lover, all the old scenery and
costumes dug out from other shows, had delighted the Germans.

He said, "As a race, they are real hicks. They think it's all very
wicked and gay and French... even the officers who should know better."
He had been a little worried for fear some of them, like Major von
Wessellhoft, would see through what he had done.

His pupilless black eyes sparkled in the ugly face. He was gay, thought
Roxie, almost too gay. It might bring bad luck.

"And they went for the girls too. Eleven of them wanted to meet girls."
He cocked his bald head thoughtfully on one side. "They are different
about women too. They want women the way you take a physic or a liver
pill and then when they're bedded they lie there and cry about Gretchen
and the children at home in Posen." He slapped his knee. "They are the
God-damnest people. They never seem to get anything straight. Everything
they do is cockeyed. It's been so all through their history."

There didn't seem to be any hate in Lon just now. With that light of
intelligence which often came into his black eyes, he was being
scientific, studying these Germans as strange animals.

"What girls did they select?"

"They didn't select them, I did... to make sure they got the right
ones."

"Did they?"

"Yes."

He laughed. "It's a new kind of pimping. I've never done political
pimping before."

"What if one of them falls in love?"

"That's unlikely. I chose the old experienced ones. They understand
the difference between love and business.... There was Yvonne and
Flice and... you know them all."

She nodded.

"And eight or nine others. They know the difference too between love and
patriotism. It's wonderful how whores can love their own country." He
lighted a cigar and said, "And your deluxe job? How did it go?"

She told him quietly, describing the strange evening in great detail.
Suddenly she could talk about it, because Lon's approach was different.
He made the whole thing seem objective and scientific. She saw it now,
suddenly, in the same light and that made it easy.

In the middle of the story he laughed and smacked his knee again.
"_L'Eunuque Arrive  Paris._ I wrote that one. So he's a peeper, is he?
That's a new one." He leaned a little toward her. "He got a copy of the
paper too. We found a way of getting it to him. It was lying in his
bathtub when he got up this morning."

"I don't know whether I can go on with it," she said. "I don't know
whether I can take it."

He took the cigar out of his mouth. Usually he talked with it hanging
from one corner. He only removed it when he sought to invest what he was
saying with an air of importance. "You take the wrong attitude. Your
psychology is wrong. Look on the whole thing as an adventure, as an
experiment. It will teach you a great deal."

"Maybe I don't know how to do it that way."

"You'll learn." He put the cigar back in his mouth. "This guy... this
Major... is he attractive?"

"I don't know. I didn't have any feeling one way or another about him.
It was like being out all evening with a ghost."

"He's a good-looking guy."

"I suppose so. I really didn't have any feeling about that either, and I
ought to know."

"You certainly should." His eyes narrowed shrewdly. "Nicky wouldn't be
getting in the way, would he? He wouldn't be falling in love with you?"

She felt the color coming into her face. It was something which had not
happened in many years. "What did you think it was between us?"

"I didn't think it was love, exactly... up to now." He leaned forward
and this time instead of slapping his own knee he patted hers. "Listen,
Roxie. I've never had any woman love me. I've had some who've respected
my smartness and some who respected my money. But I've had to buy it all
in the long run. So I've got a special interest in love. I'm not talking
about _l'amour_ now but love. The thing I'm talking about is something
special, something you can't buy or win or invent. It's something that
just happens. I'm no fool. When you and Nicky first got together it was
fine--two good-looking people who had a yen for each other--a couple of
wise guys who knew all the answers and weren't playing the wrong numbers
and didn't expect any more than they got. But it didn't turn out like
that, did it? I mean, not lately."

She didn't answer him and he repeated, "Did it?"

"Leave me alone. It's none of your business."

He leaned back in the chair again. "Okay," he said, "I just wanted to be
sure."

"I want to know about the people in the cellar," she said.

He told her. As she supposed, they were not all French, but all of them
had lived a large part of their lives in Paris. They were only a part of
the whole band, a very small part. Their particular job was the printing
press. None of the others knew where it was located. The others received
the material and distributed it. The others were everywhere, in hotels
and cafs, in apartment houses, in railway stations, in the Mtro. Few
of them knew each other or that they were working together. Only he
himself and Nicky knew who all of them were. In that way there could be
no betrayal--even if one of them was arrested and tortured and shot. You
could not betray what you did not know. Among them were two or three
former communists, two daughters of a former cabinet minister, a
countess, a banker, a dozen chorus girls, women in brothels, a
Protestant pastor, an ex-member of the Croix de Feu and three Roman
Catholic priests. They had one thing in common, regardless of
nationality or of station in life. Each one loved Paris and each one
would go on until there was no longer a German in the city or he himself
was shot. The band had a name. It was called, "_Les Costauds_" which
translated out of Montmartre slang meant "The Mugs" or "The Tough Ones"
or "The Strong Arm Squad."

She smiled, "So I am a _costaude_."

He grinned, "Yes. Whether you choose or not."

"I must say I slipped into it."

"And now?"

"And now I don't know. I guess I don't hate enough."

"You will," said Lon. He stood up. "What about going to eat?"

"All right."

They went to Luigi's. None of the refugees were there since it was too
early for them to risk coming out of their hiding places. La Biche with
her plumes and jewelry was in her corner. There were three girls from
the revue. That was all besides themselves.

They had only begun to eat when the door opened and the German officer
with the little French policeman came in to go over everyone's papers.
He bowed stiffly to Lon and Roxie and ignored La Biche. But the three
girls he had not seen before and he crossed the room straight toward
them to examine their papers.

"They are all in my revue, Herr Lieutenant," said Lon in German, but
the officer did not answer him, nor even give any sign of having heard
him speak. In a low voice, Lon said, "They are not so correct. Their
correctness is breaking."

As the officer examined the papers of the girls, Roxie observed that
Luigi was standing very close to him, apparently absorbed by interest in
the procedure. She thought, "He is up to something." And as she watched
she saw Luigi take a card from his pocket and deftly, quickly slip it
into the pocket of the German officer's uniform. She felt a wild desire
to laugh at the comic slyness with which Luigi achieved the maneuver.
She knew what was printed on the card. "With the compliments of the
British Secret Service."

The officer was satisfied with the papers and when he had finished went
out, saluting them on his way. When he had gone, Roxie said to Luigi, "I
thought they always came later, at the same hour."

Luigi grinned, "No, they've changed all that. They come at a different
hour every evening, hoping to catch us."

Then Filomena came in the door with her little dog.

       *       *       *       *       *

When Roxie came down the great stairway on the second night there was
no fear in her heart. The panic of that first night was gone and from
step to step with the professional gestures and undulations which long
ago had become formalized she moved downward toward the music and the
glow of light. In her descent there was the old assurance, the curious
provocative air of detachment, the indifference that had set her apart
from the others from the very beginning. _La Reine des Oiseaux_, as Lon
said, did not ogle the audience. She moved with a curious air of pride
in the beauty of her own body and face. Tonight, it was the old Roxie,
experienced, cool, almost cold, who seemed to say "Here it is, boys!" as
the beautiful body, clad in a few golden feathers, moved toward the
front of the stage. "Here it is! So what? You dopes!"

In every curve of the breasts, the hips, the thighs, in every
undulation, there was contempt. On this night there was contempt not
only for nearly all men but special contempt for the men who sat there
beyond the lights, row upon row of them, in gray-green uniforms with
closely cropped heads. Through the hazy rose and amber of the lights
from the spots, the heads were like rows of figures in a shooting
gallery.

Then as she paraded from one end of the stage to the other while the
commre sang, "_Les Oiseaux! Les Oiseaux!_" in her brittle, piercing
music hall voice, she discovered that the Major was there again in the
same box and casually she thought, "So, you're catnip, Roxie! So you're
the cheese in the mousetrap!" For it was clear that he had come only to
see her. The same hungry, almost haggard look was there in the opaque
blue eyes.

After the _entr'acte_, Lon came into the dressing room. He brought a
card--the Major's card with a note written on the back. Lon had read it
already.

He said, "It's not just accident. He wants you to go out with him again
tonight."

She put the card on the dressing table. "Tonight I want to spend with
Nicky."

"Nicky's gone to Bourges."

"Why didn't he tell me?"

"He hadn't time."

She was silent for a moment and then said, "I wish he wouldn't run
around like that. What if they checked up on him. He's supposed to be
here every night at the theater."

Lon put both hands on her shoulders. "Listen, honey, you can't keep
Nicky in a cage. A falcon won't live in a cage. You're happy and he's
happy for the first time. Am I right?"

"Yes."

"You wouldn't give it up?"

"No."

"He's happy because he's found a job he likes, for the first time. If
you take that away everything would go to pieces."

"Knowing that doesn't make it any easier."

"No, I suppose it doesn't. But what Nicky is doing is the breath of life
to him. Take it away from him and he's finished for good."

She did not answer him directly. "What do you want me to do?"

"Be nice to the Major and his friends."

"I'm no good at finding out things."

"Don't try to find out anything. If you don't try he's much more likely
to tell you of his own account. Just listen. Don't forget anything he
says."

"I don't like him. I don't like any of them."

He looked at her sharply. "You don't hate them?"

She considered the question and after a time answered, "No. No. It isn't
hate. It's boredom and contempt."

"Okay. Then go ahead and do your job."

"All right. Give me your pen."

She took the pen and over the name of Major Freiherr Kurt von
Wessellhoft she wrote, "_Avec plaisir. Je vous attends._"

It was the beginning now of something which might go on and on. When the
door had closed behind Lon she thought, "I should have stopped it now.
I should have refused." But she only sat there staring at herself in the
mirror, as if she were hypnotized by her own reflection.

       *       *       *       *       *

They did not go to Maxim's that night nor the next nor ever again. The
Major proposed it because it seemed the thing to do. It was where all
high-ranking German officers went. It was the favorite restaurant of the
Field Marshal. It was the correct thing to do. But when he proposed
going there, she said, "No, please. I don't like it there."

It seemed to be the only place he knew, so she said, "I know a place
where it is quiet... a place on the Champs Elyses."

"Very well. It is for your pleasure."

So she directed the driver, through the Major, to a night club called
Tout Paris. It was a dark place and since the Germans came, no longer
fashionable. Very likely she would see no one she knew. In the darkness
it was difficult to recognize anyone.

She had not been there for a long time, not since the days after Vienna
fell. Then for a time it had been a Viennese caf. The musicians, the
performers, even some of the waiters were Austrian, all refugees who had
fled before the Germans. She had happy memories of the place. For a time
it had been gay in the Viennese way, with waltzes and sentimental songs,
with now and then a refugee singer or a dancer from among the patrons of
the place performing. There among the Viennese she had seen the last
burst of hysterical gaiety before the curtain came down. She had come
here many times with Nicky. Once long ago it had been owned by Stavisky.
That was how Nicky had come to bring her there. For a little time he had
operated the place himself. All that story too was bad melodrama, before
the end of the world.

As they walked down the red-carpeted stairs into the baroque room she
knew how much the place had changed. The difference was something you
could smell. Although the lighting was the same, it seemed even darker
than it had always been. In the old days when you walked down the stairs
you heard laughter coming toward you and the sound of gaiety, even above
the music. Now there was music but over it no sound of gaiety. Nearly
every table was filled and there was champagne everywhere--Germans were
utterly convinced that if you drank champagne you were gay--but it was a
dead room. The Austrians had fled--the Germans were in possession. It
was like crossing the frontier from Bavaria into the Salzkammergut in
the old days.

She wished suddenly that she had not come here at all but she thought
too, "It is as good as any place. They are probably all the same now." A
German had only to appear and everything changed. Was it because they
were something sinister or because at their approach other people
chilled with dislike and contempt?

There was a table in an alcove, very dark and a little apart from the
others. She chose the alcove because she did not want to be seen, not
knowing that the darkness was sought too by her companion.

When they were seated and she had ordered supper he told the waiter to
bring champagne. But she protested. "No, if you please, I should like a
small bottle of Chteau Margaux."

"Of course... with your supper," he said. "I only thought champagne was
gayer." She looked at him with sudden surprise. He had been in
embassies. He had been out in the world but he seemed no different from
the others. Champagne! Always champagne. It seemed to be the only wine
they had ever heard of. Or perhaps it was because champagne was the
symbol of what they had expected to find in Paris and had not.

Tonight he seemed less stiff, less _correct_. While they ate he even
attempted one or two feeble jokes and when the last of the food had
been taken away he said, suddenly, "Tell me about yourself. Where were
you born?"

She said, "Evanston, Indiana." And suddenly the whole thing seemed silly
to her and desperately unreal, that she should be sitting here with this
Prussian officer. What could he know of a place like Evanston, Indiana?
What could the wrong side of the railroad tracks mean to him? What could
America itself mean to a man like this?

She asked, "Have you ever been to America?"

"No."

"Then it's very hard to make you understand it." She understood now why
the strangeness between them was so agonizing and so profound, why there
was really no basis for intimacy or understanding. The barrier was
something that neither she nor he would ever be able to destroy. It
would be far easier to explain America to a Chinese or even a Hottentot.

"I have heard of your gangsters and politicians, your millionaires and
movie stars."

"But that isn't America," she said quickly.

"What is?"

"Never mind. It is much too long a story."

"I should like to hear it."

"No." There would be no use in trying to explain because he was already
certain that he knew better than she did herself. She was discovering
slowly that that too was a German trait.

"Then tell me about yourself."

She divined that her story would be of very little interest to him
because it was not in the realm of the spectacular. It was simply a
story of things happening to her, filled largely with humble people. She
was perfectly aware that he was trying to establish some basis of
intimacy between them. It was something which, despite Lon's
admonitions, she did not want to risk. Quickly she thought, "I will make
up a story--the kind he'd like to hear." And she found herself inventing
for him a preposterous yarn out of whole cloth, as fantastic and
unbelievable as publicity men invent for picture stars. If it was bad
enough he would perhaps divine that she was mocking him and leave her in
peace.

"My father," she heard herself saying, "was a distinguished professor,
very well known. Unfortunately he died when I was nine years old and
left my mother and myself without any money. She was the daughter of the
Governor of Illinois, of a very distinguished family. When I was ten I
was sent to a convent and my mother went back to the concert stage which
she had left to marry my father."

She told the story coldly and dispassionately, entertained by her own
ingenuity. She went on and on, inventing triumphs which had never
occurred in the whole commonplace, sordid, record of her existence.

"In New York," she heard herself saying, "I was a great star when I was
eighteen. Then I came to Paris to the Ambassadeurs...."

Then all at once she found herself growing bored with the narration. If
he did not know by now that she was mocking him he would never know. But
when she looked at him she saw with astonishment, that he was believing
her tale, word for word. He was enchanted, like a small child hearing a
fairy story. There was a softness in his eyes she had not seen there
before.

"That's all there is to it," she said. "It's a very simple story...
really."

"It is very interesting," he said. Instead of refilling their glasses
himself from the bottles which stood on the table he sent each time for
the waiter to perform the service. It was only then that she saw he had
drunk a whole bottle of champagne himself. He ordered another bottle and
said, "What blood are you?"

"You mean..." Then she understood. She felt a sudden desire to continue
the mockery and to say, "Really I am Jewish," but she knew that to say
that would very likely destroy at once her usefulness to the plans of
Lon and Nicky. So she said, "I am very nearly pure English with a
little Scotch blood."

"That explains it," he said.

"Explains what?"

"The look of race. Your perfect hands and small feet and the Grecian
quality of your figure."

She felt a sudden desire to use some violent obscene expression. She
knew little enough of her ancestry but she knew that she had in her
veins Polish and Italian and Irish blood.

"There is very little pure race in America," he was saying. "It is
really a bastard race. The French are a bastard race too."

The waiter had returned with the champagne. That, she knew, was good,
especially since he had ordered it himself without being urged. It would
loosen his tongue. Already he seemed relaxed and more human.

When the waiter had gone she said, "I wish you would tell me about
Germany. I know so little about it. I have only been to Munich twice."

"Munich is not Germany. It is Catholic. It is soft. The Bavarians are
not really Nordics and they are a mixed race. Most of them--especially
the people--are Alpines. Race is a very interesting thing."

"Yes, I suppose so." She thought suddenly of Lon and the odd mess of
ancestors who had gone into the making of his ugly little body and his
shrewd mind. She had never thought much about race one way or another
and the discussion was beginning to bore her.

She saw that, as the champagne began to take possession of him, he had
taken to watching her with the same look in his eyes she had seen as he
sat in the theater box. There was something disturbing in the fixity of
his stare. If he became drunk enough she might ask him indiscreet
questions and receive indiscreet answers. And then she remembered Lon's
admonition, "Ask him nothing. Let him tell you. It is much better that
way." She divined too that the look in his eyes was one of bitter
unhappiness.

"I want to be a friend," he said out of the soft darkness. "What has
happened is unfortunate but it need not affect the relations between us,
especially as you're an American."

"No, I suppose not."

"The French are being very unfriendly. We have tried to meet them more
than halfway but they are pigheaded."

She scarcely heard his last remark, for it had occurred to her with a
start of surprise that she did not feel American any longer. She did not
feel that she was French either or anything at all. She was simply one
of those many who found the Germans strange and unpleasant, who were
unwilling to accept them, even as friends. This, she found, was a
startling discovery.

He went on talking. "What we are trying to do is to put the world in
order, to make it a more decent and orderly place. If people would only
understand that we are trying to help them, for their own good."

She did not answer him. She was thinking of the people in the cellar, of
Luigi and his family, of Lon and Nicky and the tarts on the bar stools
in Maxim's, and the daughters of the cabinet minister... they were of
all nationalities, of all kinds, but they were all against Germany. She,
who had never thought very profoundly, was beginning to think about a
great many things. She took out her compact and lipstick and began
making up her face. It was extraordinary that the Germans who had always
made a mess of everything, should think they could teach others.

He said, "But you're not listening."

"Yes, I'm listening but I don't quite believe what you say."

He sat up more erect, chilling a little. "Then you are like all the
others. You detest us."

"No. That's not quite true. I just don't believe as you do."

"That's the trouble. None of you believe in anything. Only Germans have
faith nowadays."

"I know what I believe."

"What?"

"That people should be permitted to work out their own salvation in
peace."

He laughed. "A fine world that would be! Quarreling, swindling, misery,
confusion, no order, nothing correct."

"Still it is better than your way," she answered stubbornly. He said
nothing and presently she put away the lipstick and added, "Let's talk
of something else. You haven't told me what _your_ life has been like or
where you come from."

He poured himself another glass of champagne and said, "It's a very
different world I come from."

"I'm sure it is."

She was still not really listening, because she had begun to think about
Nicky, wondering where he was, what fresh danger he was encountering,
wondering why of all people in the world she had chosen him. But, of
course, she had not chosen him. It had nothing to do with choosing. It
had simply happened.

She thought too, "My friend the Major is inhuman. If somehow he cannot
become human I can't go on with this, no matter what Lon wants."

She heard him saying, "It was a big white house, wide and high with
small windows because in winter Silesia can be very cold. It had
belonged to my family since it was built and the land for a long time
before that. When the house was built my family owned the people as
well... all the people who tilled the fields and lived in the dark pine
forests." His voice grew soft suddenly. "The forests... they are
wonderful... black and dark even at noonday. I played in them as a boy.
All my ancestors were soldiers till my father. He was born lame. He
became a judge. He hated being a judge. He hated being lame. He did not
love any of us much--not even my mother. Being lame and not being a
soldier poisoned all his existence."

She was aware now that he was a little drunk, not gaily drunk as
champagne was supposed to make you, according to German belief, but
morosely drunk. He was telling her things that only a tipsy man would
tell her.

"My mother was unhappy all her life. We were all unhappy. I was eight
years old when I heard that we had lost the war. We didn't lose it
fairly. We Germans, we soldiers did not lose it." Bitterness crept into
his voice. "We were betrayed by the socialists, the communists, the
Jews, the people outside who promised us things." (She thought, "It is
the same old thing.") "I was very unhappy. We were all unhappy and then
we were very poor and my mother had to sell the big white house and all
the land and forests and we went to Berlin to live in a tiny flat. We
had to send Lisa away. And after we had been in Berlin for a little time
we had a letter that told us Lisa was dead. I think that was the worst
of all. It was worse even than seeing my mother go out each morning with
a piece of jewelry or old silver to trade for a few potatoes so that we
could eat. It was even worse than losing the land that had always
belonged to us since the beginning of time. Lisa was something special
to my sister and me. Lisa...."

Suddenly Roxie asked, "Who was Lisa?"

He looked at her with a tipsy blank look of astonishment. "Lisa? But of
course you know who Lisa was?"

"I never heard of Lisa. You had better not have any more champagne."

He still stared at her in a curious, fixed, unhappy fashion, "Lisa--"
Then he shook his head. "Lisa. Of course Lisa was our governess. She
looked exactly like you... even her body... it was like yours. My
sister and I used to share a room with her. We used to sleep in the same
big bed with her. I used to watch her dress and undress."

She was aware as she listened of that same wave of distaste she had felt
in Maxim's when the Field Marshal's young men had crowded about her. It
was more, even, than distaste; it was a sense almost of sexual
hostility, not like that she had felt at times for other women, or even
for men who did not like women. This was a new emotion, instinctive,
but puzzling. It astonished her a little that there should be anything
new in the range of her experience. Perhaps this was that complex,
tortured German thing which Nicky and Lon talked about, which came out
of brutality and sentimentality and at the same time gave birth to them,
the thing which made Prussians different from other people.

"Lisa," he was saying, "was the only bright thing in our lives. Silesia
is not a soft country. It is hard and dark." He was becoming eloquent,
forgetting the policy of "correctness." "The forests were dark and the
climate hard. My father hated us and my mother was dutiful--a good
mother but Spartan and without warmth. But Lisa..." His face softened.
The blue eyes went soft. "Lisa was everything to my sister and me. She
came from the south. She was Swabian... really German but with some
mixed blood. She knew songs and games. My mother kissed us good night
and Lisa kissed us good night, but it was not the same. Lisa's kisses
were warm." He stared at his glass. "I saw you the first time three
years ago, before the war. When you came on the stage I felt sick
because you were Lisa... even with no clothes on you were Lisa... and
I knew Lisa was dead. I went back again not once but many times only to
see you. I tried not to go but I had to. I wanted desperately then to
send you my card, to ask for a meeting, but I dared not. I was with the
Embassy then. It would not have been correct. But now it is different.
This is war and Paris is a conquered city and I am important."

"But still not important enough for me, you bastard," thought Roxie.
There was something nauseating in the story which revolted her.

"And all the time I hated Lisa and loved Lisa... just as I hated and
loved the great white house and the black pine forests. I loved her for
being gay and beautiful and making us happy, and I hated her for dying
and leaving us. I don't know today whether I hate or love her most. I
only know that I cannot escape her. I only know that she is always there
between me and any woman I have ever known... beautiful and smiling and
kind... but dead." He poured out another glass of champagne and Roxie,
glancing at him, saw that he was crying.

Then suddenly he did a strange thing. He leaned toward her and rubbed
his head against her breast. There was in the gesture something
puppy-like but at the same time repulsive.

"So you see," he said in a low soft voice, "why it meant so much to me
to meet you, to have supper with you."

Roxie picked up her bag and drew the coat about her shoulders. "I
think," she said, "you had better ask for the check. It is very late and
I have a singing lesson tomorrow."

"You have been very good to me. You are very beautiful... in character
too... very beautiful, _Schn und sss_."

Roxie called the waiter and herself paid the check. The Major, lost in a
fog of memories, did not seem to notice. The tears were still in his
eyes and he was staring into the glass of champagne that was supposed to
make one gay.

       *       *       *       *       *

At the Ritz Major von Wessellhoft had a bad night. Three times his cries
wakened the orderly who slept on the sofa in the sitting room outside
the door of the bedroom. Three times the orderly went into the Major's
bedroom filled with terror lest some violence for which he would perhaps
be shot had come to the Major. But in the light that shone in the
doorway he saw that the young Major in his pale green silk pajamas was
alone and apparently asleep. The third time, the light wakened the Major
and he cried out, "Who is there? What is it?" and the terrified orderly
said softly, "It is only me, Herr Major.... Private Heinrich. You
remember me, Private Heinrich?"

"Yes... of course."

"You cried out in your sleep. I was afraid of harm."

The Major sat up rubbing his eyes which were red and swollen. "I was
dreaming. I had a nightmare. I thought I was a little boy again in
Silesia and was being chased by a wild boar in the dark forest."

"I know, Herr Major," said the orderly, "I too have nightmares. It is
this terrible wicked place. It is homesickness. We do not belong here."

"We belong where we are sent. We are soldiers, Heinrich."

"All the same," said the orderly, "I would like to go back. I would
rather fight."

The Major lay down again. "If I cry out again," he said sleepily, "wake
me. It is better to be awake."

The orderly closed the door softly again, leaving the room in darkness,
and after a long time the Major fell asleep once more. He did not cry
out again, and a little before ten he wakened.

Private Heinrich had gone away and in his place was the lieutenant who
also served as secretary. He was the pink, plump, almost beardless young
man with thick gold-rimmed glasses, whose poor eyes made him useless at
the front. He came in and said, "There is a message from the Military
Governor. He wishes to see you at eleven-thirty."

"Very good, Lieutenant."

       *       *       *       *       *

The Military Governor lived in a great house with a garden off the
Avenue Gabriel which had belonged to a Rothschild. It was an imposing
house, very beautiful architecturally, and filled with wonderful
pictures and furniture. Piece by piece the Governor was sending the
things back to his house in Pomerania, quietly without ostentation. Each
day the house grew a little more bare. The Germans had produced no great
painters since the Middle Ages and the Governor's wife had a taste for
French paintings and French furniture. Each time she came to Paris she
pasted little stickers on the things she wished to have, and a little
later they were sent to her.

A little before eleven-thirty, Major von Wessellhoft entered the great
hallway where another aide to the Governor, a thickset man of middle age
called Hueffner, told him that the General was engaged and that he would
have to wait. Sulkily the Major seated himself and looked about him. He
felt dull and sick and inwardly cursed the champagne, and he hated
Hueffner who always behaved as if he were closer to the General than the
other aides. Hueffner was an upstart, the son of a common rich
industrial. Quietly as he watched Hueffner rustling papers on the big
Louis Quinze table, he marked him down. Hueffner would have to go one of
these days.

The hall, he noticed, was barer than it had been the day before. The
space where the Claude Lorrain had hung was bare and the Gobelin on the
far wall had disappeared. These things too he marked down in his mind to
put in his report when he returned to the Ritz, the report which he kept
beneath the mattress of his bed.

He was watching Hueffner once more when the door of the room which the
Governor had turned into an office opened and a woman came out. She was
an extraordinary woman, elderly and very fat but of a commanding
appearance, with an enormous bosom. She was dressed in a commonplace
rather shabby fashion and looked like the cashier of a _bistro_. She
carried a dispatch case and had a professional manner, rather like a
midwife or a female attendant at a public bath. Hueffner rose and went
with her as far as the door. When he returned to enter the Governor's
office, Major von Wessellhoft asked, "Who is that woman?"

Hueffner looked at him for a moment without answering, haughtily, as if
he regarded the question as an impertinence. Then he said, "Her name is
Madame de Thonars," and disappeared into the office of the Military
Governor. He spoke the name as if it were one which the Major should
know, without explanation, and the name echoed for a moment in the
Major's brain. He was aware that he had heard it somewhere at some time.
Lazily he tried to discover where and how.

Then Hueffner came out again and said, as if conferring a favor, "The
General will see you, Major."

"_Besten Dank._" It was a rude abrupt reply, full of contempt. That
Hueffner! With his airs...

The General sat at a huge mahogany table, his back to the light of the
huge window. The papers on the desk were in disorder and very unmilitary
in appearance. The General looked sallow and tired, as if he had not
slept.

"Sit down, Major," he said amicably. Then with a shadow of humor he
said, "Has Hueffner been annoying you?"

The Major flushed. "No more than usual."

"He can be very officious at times. He confuses money with authority.
Authority you must acquire with good reason." He fumbled with the
papers, seeming only to add to their confusion. Then he asked, "And how
are things going in your department?"

"Well enough. It is very difficult--trying to keep order and still
create the appearance of normal life as if nothing at all had happened."

"I can understand that."

"It is growing more difficult."

The Governor sighed. "I am afraid it is only the beginning."

The Major's jaw hardened. "Oh, we shall manage it. These people don't
seem to realize they have been defeated. A few, of course, are willing
to co-operate."

The Governor smiled. "I wouldn't trust the few. A man who sells out once
will sell out again and many times. I don't believe the Fhrer himself
is taken in by them." He pushed a gilt inkwell away from him. It was a
heavy gesture accompanied by a deep sigh as if he sought by that simple
movement of the hand to divest himself of all the duties and
responsibilities and doubts which weighed him down.

"There was nothing special you had to suggest?" he asked.

"No."

There was a little pause and the Governor turned in his chair to look
out of one of the windows. Then suddenly he asked, "Do you believe in
astrology, Major?"

"I don't believe or disbelieve. I know nothing about it, Herr General."

"You saw the woman who went out of here?"

"Yes."

"She is an astrologer... a very famous one--Madame de Thonars."

Then the Major remembered. He had read the name in the newspapers.

"She has made some remarkable predictions in her time," continued the
General. "She predicted the assassination of the Archduke Ferdinand and
Alexander of Yugoslavia and the rise of the Fhrer himself. She has told
me some remarkable things."

The Major felt an impulse to ask, "Why do you meddle around with such
nonsense?" but was aware that this was an impossible thing to say to a
general. So he only asked, "Good things, Herr General?"

The General did not answer him at once. He was still seeing Madame de
Thonars sitting opposite him with her charts spread out on the table--a
square, heavy, solid figure with very bright eyes behind the gold-rimmed
pince-nez. He was hearing her say, "Do you want to hear what is in the
stars, Excellency, or do you want to hear what you would like to hear?
What is in the charts is not pleasant. It may displease you. But please
understand that I am not afraid of your displeasure. I am an old woman
and I have already seen too much. What happens to me is of no
consequence." And he had answered, "I want to hear what is in the
stars," thinking, "I too am old and what happens to me is of no
consequence. I too have already seen too much."

She had begun by saying, "It is very black. It is the ruin of Europe,
the end of Germany and the rise of Russia." But even that had not
startled him, because, as he was aware suddenly, he had known that all
along, since the very beginning.

And now, looking at the man opposite him, whom he did not trust as a
good army man, who might even now be spying on him, he said, "No. Bad
things. A few good things at first but in the end only black things,
blackness... blackness." His voice trailed away wearily into silence.

"Probably it was rubbish. She is French. She doubtless was trying to
undermine our morale."

The Governor shook his great sheep-dog head. "Perhaps. There is only one
thing which worries me."

"What is that?"

"That we have all the world against us, even the defeated, even our
allies. Somehow we are always hated."

"The master race is always hated."

The General did not answer him. He stared at the table for a long time
as if he were hypnotized or had fallen into a trance. The Major's cold
eyes watched him, thinking, "He is an old, tired, sick man. In spite of
all his decorations, all his fame, he is finished and useless."

Then as if he had pulled himself together suddenly, the General sat up
stiffly and said, "There is one more thing." He spoke very slowly almost
with difficulty.

"Yes?"

"I understand that you have taken a mistress." The Major felt the color
rising in his face, "No, Herr General."

"Who is this dancer?"

"She is a performer at the Alhambra... very well known. She is not my
mistress."

"Would you like her to be?" asked the General, and then added, "Forgive
me for asking you intimate questions. It is only because these things
affect the efficiency of my administration."

"Yes," said the Major.

The General smiled. "I take it that she is being difficult."

"No." He hesitated for a moment. "It isn't that exactly. I can't quite
explain it. She is not French, you know. She is American. American women
are strange and difficult."

"I have heard they are spoiled. I myself have had no experience," said
the Governor. "Please don't misunderstand me. I was merely going to
suggest that mistresses are sometimes dangerous."

The Major interrupted him. "She is not dangerous. She is rather stupid
and vain."

"And you still find her attractive?" There was a twinkle now in the eyes
of the older man.

For a moment the Major was floored. He could not tell the long story of
Lisa to the General. After a little time he said, "One does not choose
a mistress for her brains, Herr General."

"Well, that is a question. Fashions change. I only wanted to suggest
that it is better in time of war to take it where you can find it rather
than become attached to one woman. They tell me she is handsome."

"Yes, Herr General. That is true."

The General stood up and rang a bell at his side. "Well, good luck to
you. I shall be interested to know how it comes out."

The Major thought savagely, "You won't be here to know how it comes
out." He saluted and went out. In the doorway he passed Hueffner who
looked at him arrogantly, smiling. He might just as well have spoken the
words, "So you have had your backside smacked."

The Major brushed past him thinking, "And you too, you pig! You and your
factories! You too are going! Go on, grin! Grin and remember Thyssen who
simply disappeared. The time is almost ripe."

All the way back to the Ritz he felt furious and depressed. He thought,
"It's that damned champagne. I talked to her too much last night. I
don't even remember what I said to her. Maybe the old man is right.
Maybe I ought not to see her again. But he can't be right. She is
American. She's a dancer. She's stupid. What does she care what becomes
of these bloody French."

In his own room he locked the door and took the report file from beneath
the mattress of his bed. It was a file bound in brown cardboard and tied
with a brown string. He laid it on the table and was about to untie the
string when his hands ceased to function. It happened without his
knowing it for his thoughts actually were elsewhere, on the Governor and
his doddering nonsense about the astrologer. His finger tips had divined
that there was something strange about the knot. They were aware that it
wasn't the same knot they had tied a few hours before when he had hidden
the file away beneath the mattress.

He looked down at the file. His fingers had been right in their
discovery. It was a different knot from the one which he always used.
Long ago in the dark forest old Herman, the forester, had taught him a
special knot, very difficult to accomplish, which since then he had
always used. The knot which had alarmed the tips of his fingers was a
simple affair, amateurish.

Someone had opened the file. And the same someone had not been able to
tie again that special knot.

He stood for a long time staring at the bit of string. The discovery
might mean many things--that a chambermaid had been satisfying her
curiosity, that someone French had been spying on him, or, what was
worse, that one of his own people had opened the file and read it. He
had been sent to Paris to spy upon the army and now perhaps someone was
spying on him.

He unlocked the door and called his aide. The young man with the thick
glasses came in.

"Yes, Herr Major."

"Has anyone been here since I left?"

"No, Herr Major. Absolutely no one." He shrugged his narrow shoulders.
"Only two chambermaids who came to do the room. Why, sir? Is anything
wrong?"

"Someone has been tampering with my affairs."

"I doubt that it was the chambermaids, sir. The door was open. I keep an
eye on them. One cannot be too careful."

"You swear it could not have been the chambermaids?"

"I swear it, sir."

The Major looked at him coldly. "Have you ever seen this file before?
Look at it."

The Lieutenant looked at it and then at the Major. The eyes behind the
thick glasses were honest. He could not lie. He was too stupid.

"No, sir," he said, "I have never seen it before. I see only what you
give me to do. I swear I have never seen it before."

"Very good. Thank you."

He closed and locked the door again and opened the file. Inside
everything was in order, in too good order, exactly as he had left it.
This he did not like. If the file had been only the victim of a
chambermaid's curiosity, the papers inside would have been put back
hastily and carelessly. There would have been some evidence of
tampering. But there was none--save only the knot which the intruder had
been unable to duplicate. Someone who knew his business had gone through
the papers and replaced them skillfully.

He sat down and set to work on a new sheet of paper. At the top he wrote
"Report on His Excellency, General Albert von Heinrath, Military
Governor of Paris." The report did not come easily. He had
unfortunately, a fondness for the old man, for his frankness, for his
occasional fatherly interest in himself, for his weary dignity. But
these things he did not allow to get in the way of his duty. The old
Governor did not understand what this war was about. He did not
understand nor support the hard beautiful ruthlessness of the Party. In
his own special way he represented something of that lost softness which
had to be exterminated, cut out like a cancer, from the character of
the German people. He was like many other officers, past middle age
now, who had been in the last war. They were tired. In their hearts they
did not believe that triumph was worth all this suffering over again.
They did not really belong to the new Germany or the Party. No, the
General would have to go, either willingly into retirement to his
estates in Pomerania, or unwillingly, in an accident or by a sudden
mysterious illness. He was in the way, useless. He might be experienced
and wise, but wisdom was not always a virtue, not when it softened you.

Resolutely he went to work writing his report of the General's weariness
and illness, of his defeatist talk, of his consultations with the female
astrologer. All these things, he stated in the report, were directly
related to the growing resistance and disorders in Paris. The Parisians
had not chosen to co-operate; they had refused to see the peace, the
order, the efficiency which had been offered them. The policy of
"correctness," of co-operation, was not proving to be a success. A
strong man was needed, preferably a party man, a younger man. _The
general weaknesses of the policy of the Military Governor, he wrote, are
reflected in the members of his staff, notably in the case of Captain
Hueffner concerning whom a separate report, No. 487 M, is attached._

He looked at the last sentence and he saw suddenly Hueffner's round
arrogant face and the look of mockery in the bloodshot eyes.
Hueffner.... Did he know something about this file? Had Hueffner been
appointed to spy upon _him_? Was it Hueffner who had told the General
about Roxie Dawn? Was it the fingers of Hueffner or of one of his
subordinates who had untied the knot and been unable to retie it? Was
Hueffner on the _real_ inside, nearer to Borman than himself?

The knowledge caused a sudden chill along his spine and he thought, "No,
that is impossible. It couldn't be like that. I mustn't think like that.
It's going in circles. It's madness."

Yet the image of Hueffner's face would not go away, nor the knowledge
that inside the Party such things could happen. They did happen.

He returned the papers to the file, carefully pinning them together, top
and bottom. Then he closed the file and tied the string in the same
complicated knot old Herman had taught him long ago. This time he did
not put the file beneath the mattress. He placed it inside his military
trunk and locked it carefully.

All at once he felt tired and confused. His hand trembled and again he
cursed the champagne, thinking, "Whoever thought champagne made you
gay?" A drink at the bar would make him feel better.

He unlocked the door and went into the sitting room, carefully leaving
the door open. The Lieutenant was working over some papers, peering at
them through the thick glasses. He said, "Lieutenant, I am going out. I
shall return in a half hour."

The Lieutenant stood up respectfully. "Did you find any clue, sir, as to
who had been meddling with your papers?"

"No. It must have been the chambermaids. In any case, it was nothing
serious. However, I suggest you move your table over there, facing the
door to my room. Leave it open so you can see if anyone comes in."

"Very good, sir."

He was about to leave when he turned and asked the Lieutenant, "Do you
know anything about astrology?"

"Not much, sir."

"Do you believe in it?"

"I don't know, sir. My mother has always believed in it. She rarely does
anything important without an astrologer. And the Fhrer. He believes in
it. My mother believes his great success has come from consulting the
stars."

The Major considered this for a moment. "There is one more thing. Will
you look up in the telephone directory the address of a Madame de
Thonars?" He spelled it while the Lieutenant wrote down the name. "She
is an astrologer. Make an appointment for me--let me think--yes,
Thursday afternoon."

The Major started toward the outer door when he heard the Lieutenant's
voice behind him. "I beg pardon, sir. There is something I forgot."

He turned to see the Lieutenant coming toward him holding out a card. "I
found this under the door this morning when I came in. I am not familiar
with English. I can't quite make it out."

The Major took the card. On it was printed a single sentence which read,
"With the Compliments of the British Secret Service." He frowned,
crushed the card in his hand and said, "It is nothing important. Only a
bad joke," and went out the door.

Nevertheless the thing got on his nerves. Probably the card was no more
than a bad joke played by a servant of the hotel or even one of his
fellow officers. Then he thought suddenly, "Maybe it was an agent who
got into the file." The thought relieved him. There would be nothing in
it of value to a British agent. It was much better that the intruder was
a British agent than one of his own people. But that idea made no sense.
If a British agent had been in his room he wouldn't leave a card
tipping off the visit, because he would want to return. No, it couldn't
be that... Hueffner, that damned Hueffner.

The whole thing was beginning to be a nightmare. As he got out of the
lift he thought, "It's all crazy. And that girl is the craziest of all.
Maybe the General was right. I'll forget her. I won't see her again."

But that night he was back again in the box at the Alhambra.

       *       *       *       *       *

On Thursday in the afternoon the Major went on foot to the house of
Madame de Thonars in the Square Chause d'Antin. The elderly chambermaid
opened the door for him and showed him into the dusty room with the
naked light bulb which threw a hard, uncompromising light upon the face
of all Madame's visitors.

"I will tell Madame you are here," the chambermaid said, and withdrew
closing the door behind her.

Then he sat alone for a long time, troubled because he had come here at
all, ashamed because he half-believed such rubbish, telling himself that
he had only come because it was necessary to have a complete record of
the Military Governor's behavior. He found the room disturbing, with
the hard light falling on his face and hurting his eyes. The room, with
its mixture of dust and sloppiness and practicality (the businesslike
file) disturbed his sense of correctness. No German woman--even a
fortuneteller--would have a room as untidy as this.

Then he saw the dusty verdure tapestry move and from behind it emerged
the squat figure of Madame de Thonars. She nodded to him and asked,
"Major von Wessellhoft?"

He stood, "Yes, Madame."

"You speak French?"

"Yes, Madame."

"You understand it easily?"

"Yes, Madame."

She sat down, "You have come for a reading?"

"No, Madame, not exactly." He was ashamed because in his heart he _did_
want "a reading."

She looked at him directly, with frank surprise, and he explained, "I
have come on a very complicated mission. I will try to explain." He
coughed, as if a little uncertain how to go on. "I am an aide to General
von Heinrath, the Military Governor."

"Yes," she said, "I know that."

"It is about him. The General means a great deal to me. He is almost
like a father. I have been worried about his health... it is very
difficult to say exactly what I want to say. I have been warned not
only of his physical health but his mental health as well."

He was annoyed by the intensity of Madame de Thonars' gray eyes. She sat
opposite him, like himself in the full glare of the naked bulb. Her face
was old and fat, the sallow greasy skin shining in the brilliant cold
light, but the eyes were ageless and searching and bold. They did not
waver. It was as if they were seeing inside him, through him, absorbing
his vitality, draining his self-assurance, as if they explored the
depths where all the perversity, the cruelty, the torment, had been
thrust out of sight, even out of his own consciousness. His voice
faltered and he coughed again. He felt the blood coming slowly into his
face.

"I thought you might be able to tell me something of what he is
thinking... what he is worried about, why he sent for you. It would
perhaps help me in being of use to him. I want to do my best to serve
him."

She waited, still staring at him, as if she expected him to go on
explaining. At last he said, nervously, "I hope you understand why I
came."

Then, thoughtfully, after a long time she answered him. "I cannot tell
you those things. My own rule has always been never to betray the
confidence of people who come to me. I had thought you were coming to
consult me about yourself."

"I don't believe in such things."

"That is a mistake. They are still in the realm of the disputable but no
one has proven that prophecy, or clairvoyance or astrology is unsound.
No one has really explored these things scientifically. It is foolish to
mock at what we do not understand and have not investigated."

The chair creaked as she shifted the weight of her squat, heavy body,
and surprisingly she said, "I can tell you this much in confidence. You
need not worry about the Military Governor. He will be out of your way
within three months."

"How?"

"That I cannot tell you. He will no longer be Governor of Paris. He will
no longer be alive." She took the gold-rimmed pince-nez from the little
hook by which they were attached to her huge bosom. "I would let him
have peace. It is only for a little time."

       *       *       *       *       *

While she had listened to him she had been watching him as she always
watched a new client. She had been remarking the fact that he was well
built and possibly intelligent within the limits of his education and
that he was handsome in his peculiar Prussian way. She had had great
experience with all sorts of people but mostly with worried and
frightened and neurotic ones, and she divined almost at once that this
young man, despite the outward appearance of health, was troubled and
frightened and neurotic. That was typically German. The Germans were the
only people in whom neuroses did not betray themselves in outward
physical signs, perhaps because the whole nation was in a peculiar
fashion neurotic. Her own power of clairvoyance, her luck, whatever it
was, frequently astonished her but she was not without doubts, even of
herself. At this moment, however, she was not exercising the powers of a
seeress but those of a diagnostician. From her experience, her
observations, she was able to divine many things from the physical
aspects of her clients which aided her enormously in the field of
divination.

While she listened to him without much interest in what he was saying
she studied the face, analyzing it carefully, partly with her mind and
partly with the instinct and intuition which was her genius. She saw in
the rather large but tight, thin-lipped mouth the defect of a nature
that was sensual but baffled, twisted and defeated. There was cruelty
there too, a kind of mad cruelty, supplemented by the blank staring
quality of the eyes. And in the chin, rounded, with a faint cleft, there
was softness and weakness which, tormented, produced a kind of
desperate, mad and unpredictable action. The straight nose was too thin,
too overbred, denying the vigor of the outwardly healthy body and in the
eyes there was the look of one whose inner consciousness was obsessed by
hidden things, things which were frightening and so were thrust back
deep inside away from the light. They were in a way beautiful eyes,
clear blue, but the staring expression she had seen before many times in
the eyes of drug-takers and clients whose twisted, fearful lives led
downward into the most sordid parts of the Paris underworld.

Watching him while he talked with increasing uneasiness beneath her
steady gaze, she saw that inside the perfect erect young body there was
darkness and confusion and defeat. She was perfectly aware of the
treachery behind the hypocritical words he spoke. He had come to her for
information because he sought to destroy that sick old man who governed
Paris. The sick old man was bad enough. This apparently healthy young
one was far worse, far more evil, and quietly she thought, "This is the
ultimate Germany. This is everything German pushed to the limit of its
development. It is ruthless and treacherous and cruel. It is also so
neurotic and so obsessed by fear and by evil that the neurosis has been
transmuted into a positive characteristic and become a sense of
virtue." That perhaps was what Hitler had accomplished. That perhaps
was the Fhrer's greatest achievement--that he had persuaded the Germans
that evil was good, that their weaknesses were strength. It was a
curious inversion of moral values become fact and logical and in the
German mind justified.

And then into her crafty old mind came another thought, "I could destroy
him. I have the power. I could lead him to destroy himself." And she
felt a brilliant sense of satisfaction. "They will always destroy
themselves in the end. It is a race in love with violence and death and
somehow with them death and corruption are implicit in love and the very
process of procreation. German children commit suicide. Nowhere are
crimes of sex so morbid and intricate as in Germany."

Aloud she said, "I could tell you a little of what I told him. He wanted
to know about the future of Europe... about the future of his own
people." She waited for a moment and then said, "Of course what I found
in the stars may not interest you, since you think all of this is
rubbish."

He moved forward a little in his chair. His expression was now one of
great interest. She knew that in order to accomplish what she meant to
accomplish he must be curious. He must _want_ to hear what she meant to
tell him. If he _wanted_ to hear he would believe it despite his own
reason. And he must believe so that the festering doubts could be
planted in his deepest mind and spirit. For that, she knew, he would
only have to believe a little.

"No," he said, flushing a little, "I am only an agnostic. I don't say
flatly that it is rubbish. I simply don't know."

"The Governor wanted to know what I saw in the future of Europe. Would
you like to hear that? It is quite impersonal. It has nothing to do with
the life of the Governor or yourself."

He swallowed and stiffened his body a little as if his answer cost him a
great effort. "Yes, please."

"It is not very pleasant."

"Very little is pleasant nowadays."

"You understand I cannot change what is written. I cannot change what is
revealed."

"I understand that."

She leaned back in the swivel chair and closed her eyes. She did not
want to look at him while she spoke.

She heard him saying, "I really would like to hear." He was like a
little boy now, wanting to be told a secret, or a frightened neurotic
woman hoping to be told something that would relax the agony of nerves.

Her voice came out, suddenly sharply, a different voice, deeper and more
mellow. It seemed to come from a great distance and to possess a
curious timbre of dignity and authority.

In this sibylline voice she said, "There is great darkness and
confusion. There is smoke and fire everywhere and destruction and war
everywhere between nations, between neighbors, between brothers. Death
rides in the skies. And out of the East under a red star come hordes of
men in machines bearing fire. And everywhere in every corner there are
men fleeing, from fire and from sword, from hanging and death and
mutilation. Everywhere they try to hide--in forests, in houses and in
caves. Everywhere they are dragged out and beaten and killed." She
pressed a fat hand against her eyes. Then she shuddered slightly, "The
ones who run, who cry out in terror are all dressed alike. They are in
gray... no in green... no it is a gray-green like the dead corn that
has been blighted in the field."

His voice broke in upon her: "You are lying! You are a saboteur! An old
witch! You lied to the General and you are lying to me! There is only
victory ahead for us!"

With her eyes still closed she went on, as if in the depth of a trance
she had not heard the hysterical outburst, "And there is a great
blackness... over everything. Everything dissolves in smoke. I can see
nothing beyond. The curtain has come down."

The heavy eyelids fluttered a little and then opened but the eyes were
rolled back in her head so that only the whites of the eyeballs
appeared. (It was an old trick learned as a child which could be at once
impressive and terrifying.) For a full moment she kept her face with the
sightless eyes turned toward him, aware of the horror of her appearance.
It was like being looked upon by death which is blind.

Then slowly she allowed the eyeballs to resume their normal position.
For a moment she appeared again to stare past the Major, through him, as
if he were not there at all. Yet she saw him, dimly out of focus; she
saw that he was sitting stiff and upright with an intense expression of
anger and terror on his face. She shuddered and then pressing her hands
against her eyes she leaned over the table.

"There is more," she said. "More is coming. It concerns yourself.
There is something you want... something you are afraid of, which
tortures you... something you try to put away from you. You must
not be afraid. You must be strong. You must throw off fear of yourself.
There is an obsession you must satisfy or it will destroy you. You must
kill it by yielding to it. You must put shame from you. You must realize yourself... your desire."

Then she groaned and said, "Oh... Oh! That is all. That is all!" The
sweat stood out suddenly on the tallow greasy skin. She leaned back in
her chair as if exhausted.

She heard him say, "Madame, you are a liar! You should be thrown into
prison. You are evil and dangerous." And she affected not to hear what
he said. She thought, "I have planted there what I wanted to plant. He
will never escape it now... he will never again be free of doubt. He
will never again have any peace." There was an obsession, she knew now
for certain. What it was she did not know. The Germans were peculiar and
their obsessions sometimes twisted and incredible. Of its existence she
was certain.

Then she opened her eyes and he said, looking at her, "Why did you tell
me all that?"

"I do not know what I told you."

"It is rubbish and you are lying."

"I warned you. I shall have to leave you now. Afterward I am always
exhausted."

He rose. "I am sorry," he said coldly, "that I troubled you... and
myself. I have wasted a good hour or two of valuable time."

She watched him go out the door. When he had gone she put her desk
briskly in order, switched off the naked bulb to save money and went in
to her supper. She was having a _poulet de Bresse_--a whole
_poulet_--all to herself, with a bottle of Chablis and some fresh pt.
You could live well even in conquered Paris if you knew where and how to
buy.

In the hallway as the chambermaid held open the door for the Major to
leave, she said, "It is the custom to leave something for Madame with
me."

Quickly he thrust a fifty-mark note into the outstretched hand. Outside
it was already dark and cold. An old woman passed him in the archway
leading from the square and although he did not know her, or had not
even seen her face, he cursed her, and all these people who got under
his skin, who would not be defeated, who did not understand that they
were already crushed, forever.

       *       *       *       *       *

The fog came down early that autumn as if Nature sought to hide the
suffering of the proud city. At night the streets and squares turned
chill as soon as darkness fell. "Paris Toujour Paris!" ran on and on
behind the blind darkened faade of the Alhambra.

Then late one afternoon about the hour the chill descended on the city,
Lon left his office early to go to the house in the rue Washington. He
had his own key and at the sound of the closing of the outer door, Roxie
appeared at the top of the stairs. At sight of him she said at once,
"What is it? What's happened?"

"Something bad. Give me time to get my breath."

"Something has happened to Nicky?"

"No, nothing has happened to Nicky."

In the sitting room he took off his coat. "It's Luigi. They've arrested
Luigi."

"When?"

"At noon today. They raided the coal cellar but found no one."

"How could they know about that?"

Lon shrugged his shoulders. "One of the refugees must have squealed."

"Which one?"

"How should I know that? He may have been an agent or a spy or he may
have been arrested and tortured. The Boches are capable of anything."

She had never seen Lon so serious. His face was a gray color like
putty. He had not shaved and the blue blackness of his beard stood out
against the gray.

"What does it mean? Do they know about this house--about Nicky?"

He took out a cigar and lighted it. His hand trembled a little. "I
don't know. I don't think they know anything about anything but Luigi
and the refugees. I saw Filomena. She swears Luigi knows nothing about
what is going on here. She swears she has never told him where she got
the papers and cards. I believe her."

"Then they can't force it out of him."

"There is one great rule in conspiracy," he repeated, "a man cannot
betray what he does not know."

"And Filomena? They didn't arrest her?"

"No. She saw the soldiers outside and went away and came straight to
me."

"And Maria?"

"They didn't bother her. They told her that if she wanted Luigi to be
all right she must keep the restaurant open as if nothing had happened.
They are probably hoping the refugees will return and they can pick them
up one by one. Filomena wanted to go to Maria but I forbade it. Filomena
_knows_ about this house. They could torture it out of her. They must
not pick her up. She is at the flat of my secretary."

"And what if Nicky goes to Luigi's?"

"He is safe. He has papers. He has his special permit. They won't be
suspicious of him. We must go there now as if nothing had happened, as
if we knew nothing about the refugees... as if we thought they were
simply customers." He knocked the ash off his cigar. "It is the only way
to play it... boldly. Don't forget we have every reason to go to
Luigi's. It's near the theater. We have dined there nearly every night
for years. There's nothing unusual about our going back. And if Nicky
comes back we shall be there."

"He'll come here first."

"Then we can leave a note."

"I'd rather wait here till show time."

"If we don't go to Luigi's it will arouse suspicion. That will be bad
for Nicky... for all of us."

She considered this for a moment. "Yes, that's true."

"There is only one thing to do. Behave as if nothing has happened.
Filomena has managed to warn some of the refugees. She knew where two or
three of them were hiding. La Biche will help too. They think she's
crazy and won't bother her. She's not so crazy about some things... a
lot less crazy than they think. Filomena and La Biche will stay near the
restaurant tonight and try to warn the others before they come in."

It didn't occur to her to say, "I knew this would happen. I knew I
should have forced Nicky to go back to America." She was long past all
that now. For the first time she felt a little of the excitement which
Nicky and Lon experienced.

"Where have they taken Luigi? We ought to help him if possible."

"I don't know. I doubt they have told Maria anything. If it is possible
I will ask her tonight if she knows anything." He stood up. "We had
better go at once. From our side everything must look as usual."

She wrote a note to Nicky. It said merely, "_Come straight to the
theater. If we are not there, wait for us. We are not going to
Luigi's._"

She put it in a large envelope and left it lying in the middle of the
Argentine's bed in the room with the pink satin curtains. Nicky would
come there to have a bath and change his clothes. He could not miss the
white envelope against the violent pink of the bed cover.

When she came out, Lon said, "There was one other thing. They killed
Filomena's little dog. It yapped at them and they kicked it to death."

       *       *       *       *       *

At Luigi's they walked in the door casually as they had done a hundred
times before. The room was empty save for a German officer and a
sergeant eating spaghetti and drinking a bottle of Chianti. The officer
was the one who had come regularly each night to inspect the papers of
everyone in the restaurant. He nodded to them without saluting and
scowled. The "correctness" was gone completely now. He knew now that
night after night the people in Luigi's had made a fool of him.

Lon said to Roxie, "Sit down." As he helped her off with her coat he
said, "Leave it to me."

They sat down and took up the menu cards written in purple ink. After
studying his card for a time Lon turned toward the kitchen door and
shouted, "Luigi! Luigi!" There was no response to his call and again he
shouted, "Luigi!" Still there was no answer and the German officer
turned and said, "Luigi is not here. He has been arrested."

"What for?" asked Lon.

"That is our business," said the German rudely.

"And his wife?"

"She is in the kitchen, I suppose."

Without saying anything more, Lon rose and went through the door into
the kitchen. Roxie knew that was what he wanted--a chance to speak to
Maria alone.

She continued to study the menu, aware that the German officer was
watching her. After a little time she heard his voice asking, "You come
here often, Mademoiselle?" To her surprise he spoke almost respectfully.

Looking up at him she said, "I have been dining here for ten years
every night before I go to the theater."

"It is a pity your friend Luigi is in trouble."

"What has he done?" she asked and this time the man gave an answer.

"He has been sheltering spies--communists and Jews."

Very quietly she said, "It is a pity he is in trouble. He is a good
man."

"There are many misguided people nowadays. You are very fortunate to be
an American and out of all this."

She gave him a sharp quick look to discover if he had any suspicion and
was mocking her. But there was no sign of anything but a casual
sincerity.

Then Lon returned and said to her, "We had better go somewhere else.
Maria asks us to."

Without answering she rose, put on her coat and they left. As they
passed the German officer Lon said, "_Bon appetit!_" and once the door
closed he added, "you son of a bitch!"

He did not speak until they were away from the door. Then he said, "She
does not know where they have taken him. She wanted us to go away.... I
don't know why."

"If we knew where he was," said Roxie, "we might be able to do
something."

They walked slowly for it was a moonless, overcast night and the
darkness was like velvet. He did not answer at once. Presently he said,
"I think you might be able to find out where they have taken him."

"Me?" said Roxie. "How could I discover?"

"Through your friend, the Major."

"It's too risky."

She heard Lon laugh, "It isn't risky at all. He knows all about you. He
knows you dine at Luigi's every night. He knows much more than we think.
All you need say is that Luigi is a friend, that you have known him for
years and would like to know where he is."

"How does he know that I dine at Luigi's?"

"Very likely you've told him for one thing. For another thing your
friend is a great deal more than he appears to be."

"How?"

"He isn't just an aide-de-camp to the General. That's only a cover for
other things."

"How do you know?"

"I don't know for sure, but I think I've made a very good guess. He's
working for the army only at second hand. His real job is with the
Party."

"I still don't see how you know."

"What one doesn't know, one can't betray," said Lon. "Otherwise I might
tell you."

She wished that she could see his face as he spoke. It was always
important to see Lon's face when he spoke. If you knew him well enough,
his face told you many things his mouth did not say. But it was dark.

They were near the end of the block now and as they turned a corner Lon
ran full into someone. He called out, "Hey! Look out!" and out of the
darkness came the hoarse laugh and voice of La Biche. "_Ah, c'est toi,
Lon!_"

She was at her post watching to warn any of the refugees who turned into
the alley. On the opposite corner in a doorway Filomena stood on guard,
alone, without the little dog. She and La Biche had planned their
technique: when anyone passed, they deliberately bumped into the
passer-by in the dark. If he was German they excused themselves: if it
was one of the refugees they were sent away. The officers and the
sergeant sat waiting all the evening in Luigi's for the mice to come
into the trap, but none came.

       *       *       *       *       *

He was there again in the box and after the performance he came again to
her dressing room, looking rather sallow and haggard, as if he had not
slept for a long time. Remembering what Lon had charged her to do, she
spoke with a kind of false intimacy, saying, "You look ill tonight. Is
there anything wrong?"

Her interest appeared to please him. He said, "No. Nothing. Only work
and responsibility. It gets worse all the time. Another of our men was
killed tonight. There will have to be violence and reprisals."

She thought at once of Nicky and said, "Violence is always foolish. That
kind of thing only makes everything worse." And she found a sudden
pleasure in the hypocrisy of the speech, just as she had found
unexpected pleasure in the prospect of danger. It occurred to her for
the first time that there might after all be some satisfaction in
playing Mata Hari, that she might even have a little talent for the
part.

He held her coat for her as he had done on the first night. "I am glad
to see that you are becoming reasonable."

Then for the first time he took her hand and gave it a sudden pressure
that was painful in its violence. "You are always the same... always
beautiful." And she was aware of a change in him, something that had
nothing to do with herself, her sudden friendliness and hypocrisy. He
smiled at her. It was, she thought, the first time she had ever seen him
really smile.

"Come," she said, "I'm hungry."

They went again to Tout Paris. It had become the fixed place since it
was as good as any other and dark and unfashionable. He now kept the
table in the alcove reserved each night until midnight.

He ordered champagne and when she said, "The last time it did not make
you gay," he replied, "It is to celebrate. I am going back to Berlin
tomorrow."

She felt a quick sense of relief.

"Are you sorry?" he asked.

"Yes." Again the excitement rose in her. "I am always sorry to say
good-by to a friend."

"I shall be coming back."

"When?"

"That I don't know. My sister is being married. I go back for the
wedding. There will be other business too. When it is finished I shall
come back."

She raised her glass, "To a good trip," she said and then thought, "I
must not overact."

She asked what his sister was like and whom she was marrying.

"She is very handsome," he said. "Tall and straight and blonde. And she
is making a very good match considering that she has no inheritance
whatever. She is marrying a colonel. He is older than herself but his
family is very good. He was a neighbor when we lived in the big white
house. His family had been in Silesia as long as our own. They have
known each other always. It is a very correct, a very solid match. She
is a quiet girl, very intellectual. She works with the educational
division teaching the new philosophy and religion. The Fhrer has
already honored her with a ribbon. In Breslau in 1938 she was chosen the
perfect German girl."

He talked for a long time about her, prideful and a little homesick, and
slowly Roxie began to see the young woman quite clearly--straight, tall,
rather stiff, with blonde hair braided tightly about her head.

As he talked of her he grew soft, with a curious softness that was very
near to hysteria. The very quality of his voice changed. It was the
first time she had ever seen him happy and a little relaxed, and it
occurred to her how terrible it must be to live always in a state of
exaggeration, of caricature, in which all one's emotions were distorted.

She watched now and listened, while he drank more and more champagne,
thinking, "When he has a little more I will ask him." Her own head was
strong and experience had taught her long ago to keep a clear head.
There was nothing more helpless, more defenseless than a tipsy woman.

He ordered a second bottle and she said impulsively, "There is something
you could do for me as a kind of going away gift."

"I have brought you that," he said quickly, and took from his pocket a
small box. He gave it to her and opening it, she found inside a ring, a
great aquamarine set in platinum. "I've had it for days," he continued,
"waiting for the opportunity to give it to you. One's mood has to be
right for such things." He grinned at her and it was a curious empty,
sheepish grin, somehow chilling in its quality. He laid one hand on hers
and she felt the trembling of the nerves in the long bony big-knuckled
fingers.

"It is very beautiful," she said.

"It goes well with your eyes," he said, with an air of pride. "I thought
of that. If the size is wrong, they will change it for you."

"It is very kind of you. I've done nothing to deserve it."

"You've been very kind to me. You've spent a great deal of time with
me." He was a little drunk now and again saying things that were
indiscreet. "I couldn't think why. It puzzled me." Then he looked at her
with directness. "Why did you?"

"I liked you," she said. "It was very simple. There are so few friends
in Paris now." She felt the thing slipping away from her. To get his
help to save Luigi the mood must be exactly right. She thought, "Perhaps
I had better say it now." She looked at the ring, hating it, and said,
"I have a friend who is in trouble with your people."

The blue eyes grew suddenly wary. "How in trouble?"

She told him about Luigi, saying that she had known him for many years
because she had dined in his restaurant night after night. "He is a good
man," she said. "If you could help him it would be more to me even than
the ring." She felt herself acting now, as if she had no control over
herself. She became wistful, thinking at the same time, "Perhaps after
all I am not so bad at my job."

"What is your friend accused of?" he asked.

She told him and he said, "That is very serious, but I will do what I
can. I have heard nothing of the case."

"It would be a help if I only knew where they had taken him. Even his
wife doesn't know."

He stiffly took from his pocket a small notebook and wrote in it Luigi's
name. Then he replaced it in his pocket. "I am going away in the morning
but I will leave orders for a report to be sent you as soon as
possible."

She turned the ring round and round on her finger. "That is very kind of
you. Could I have more champagne, please?"

He beckoned to the waiter to refill her glass and when the waiter went
away he said, "The ring wasn't all. When I come back I shan't be living
at the Ritz. I've taken a flat in the Avenue Foch. It is big and quite
splendid. It belonged to a rich American woman. You Americans have taste
in such things. It is much too big for me. I was wondering whether you
would share it with me?"

It was a courtship unlike anything she had known in all her rich
experience, puzzling because of its curious cold correctness and lack of
all intimacy or gaiety, its lack of any physical attack despite the
intensity of the desire which she had felt in the background since the
beginning. He was drinking champagne again in order to destroy the
barriers which shut him away from her.

And now it had come--the thing she had dreaded. She saw that in his mind
he had regarded her from the beginning as a woman of a certain class,
pigeonholed, ticketed. In his world there were no shadings, no gray
colors, but only black and white. She was aware now that she had become
an obsession with him, not because she was herself, but because slowly
she had become Lisa, the Swabian governess. And suddenly she was afraid
of him for the first time because it seemed to her that he was mad to be
obsessed by love for a woman who was dead. And he was drunk now and the
odd thing was that only when he was drunk did he seem normal and human.
Only then could she feel any warmth toward him.

"I don't know," she said, "I could not answer you now."

"I think it would be easier for us. It would be different that way. We
should never have to come to these depressing places. You are very
beautiful. Whatever happens to you, I shall never be able to forget
you... not until I die."

She knew that he was not talking to her but to the dead girl.

He put his hands suddenly to his face, pressing the eyeballs as if he
were in pain. "Yes, it will be much better that way."

"I am not altogether free," she said.

"Do you have a lover?" He looked at her.

"Yes."

"Where is he?"

She began to invent again, craftily, with a skill and ease which
astonished her, taking pleasure in the invention. It was better to lead
him away from the trail of Nicky.

"He is in Marseilles," she said. "He is a lawyer, older than I am. He is
married but unhappy. We have been together a long time. I do not know
what will happen now. He cannot return to Paris. He was compromised
with the Reynaud government."

"Do you love him?"

"Yes... very much."

"That is a pity. Still you might change."

"Yes. I might change."

"I could give you a good deal. Not much in jewels but a great deal in
privileges and honor. You could even have a car of your own."

Again she knew he was thinking of her as pigeonholed, as a tart. Very
likely he had never known any German woman like herself, who had made
her own life, living like a man. Very likely there were none....

"Yes. It is very good of you. I understand all that." And again the
strangeness of the courtship startled her. In this man there was
obsession perhaps, and passion, but no love. She saw the vein in his
forehead throbbing. She, like Madame de Thonars, was in her way a
diagnostician. In a way, diagnosis had, by necessity, always been a part
of her business. It was a part of the necessary equipment of any woman
who on her own succeeded in the world.

"You will give it your consideration?" he said stiffly.

"It is not a thing to be turned down easily." And she wanted suddenly
to laugh, thinking this was the strangest of the many propositions she
had received, the coldest and at the same time, the most passionate and
tortured.

When they had finished the second bottle of champagne she said, "I think
I had better go now."

He was quite drunk now. He stared at her, smiling. "You are so very
beautiful," he said. "So very like Lisa."

She smiled back at him. "Have you ever thought," she asked, "that if
Lisa were alive she would be middle-aged and probably fat and very
dull?"

He seized her hand, the hand with the ring on it. "Don't say that! It's
not true. She could never change! It's not true!" There was a terrible
strength in the hand which grasped hers. The force of it drove the ring
into her flesh, bruising and cutting the skin. She cried out in pain and
he released her.

"I beg your pardon," he said, "I have hurt you. I beg your pardon." He
raised the bruised hand and kissed it. "Forgive me! Forgive me! I could
not help myself." Then he began to cry, the tears coming into his eyes.
"It is not my fault. Forgive me!"

"You are forgiven," she said. "And now I think I had better go home."

Again the champagne had not made him gay. Champagne, thought Roxie, is
a drink for Americans and French but not for Germans.

       *       *       *       *       *

Nicky had not come back. The sitting room was empty and the lonely
envelope still lay in the middle of the pink silk bedcover. She who
rarely knew weariness or depression was suddenly tired, more tired than
she had ever been in all her life. She thought, "It is only because of
what happened to Luigi and all the strain and the way the major behaved
tonight."

She looked down at the ring. It was a beautiful ring. Taking it off her
finger, she turned it from side to side and held it against the light,
watching the lovely cold blue and green lights, calculating that in the
old days it would have cost at least ten thousand francs. What he had
paid for it she did not know--perhaps nothing at all, at most a handful
of that useless paper with which Germans bought everything--perfumes and
silk stockings, pt-de-fois-gras and diamonds, champagne and sables,
all the things which in their minds were symbols of the luxury and
beauty of Paris.

Her impulse was to fling it from her, to throw it out of the window or
put it down the toilet, but experience said, "No. Keep it. Some day it
may be of use." Money meant less and less except these bits of paper
with which the Germans paid you, holding a pistol at your head, telling
you that the bits of paper were worth ten marks or fifty marks or a
hundred marks. That was "the new order." For such a system to work they
would have to conquer all the world. No, money soon would be worth
nothing, but you could always bribe with a clip or a ring or a bracelet.
You could buy food and shelter and loyalty or betrayal.

She crossed to the opposite side of the room and, pulling aside the pink
satin, opened a small wall safe and took out her jewel case. She put the
ring inside with the bracelets and clips, necklaces and brooches. Then
for a moment she sat on the edge of the bed looking down at the case,
thinking how wise she had been to put money into jewels now that money
was worth nothing at all. All the francs in the bank were shrinking hour
by hour, minute by minute. And she was glad too that when she had moved
she kept the jewels here in the house rather than at the bank. Now any
day, if things went wrong, she might have to disappear suddenly. It was
well to have them here.

Then she put them away and undressed and went to bed but she could not
sleep for worrying about Nicky. Somehow in the course of the evening,
she had come to identify him with the violence that was breaking out
everywhere in Paris, in the middle of the city, on the outskirts, in the
Mtro, in the _banlieues_. He would never tell her. Like Lon he
believed that what one does not know one cannot betray. It was her
knowledge of Nicky which made her know that somehow, in some way he was
associated with the violence and the killings. His recklessness would
never be satisfied with so simple a business as the printing press in
the cellar. Nor would his hatred be satisfied. To him, she knew well
enough, death did not mean very much, even his own death. That was
perhaps something that people like herself, brought up in a civilized
world, could not understand. That perhaps had been the weakness of the
French--that they could not believe in the reality of violence or the
efficacy of death. They were afraid of it because it was shocking and
put an end to pleasure. To be without fear of death one had perhaps to
have faced it many times, to have been wretched, to have suffered, to
have learned the ultimate sum of values.

Perhaps the lack of fear in Nicky more than any other thing stood
between them. Perhaps that was why he had been a scamp, a mocker,
cynical and jeering at all law. And now he had an honest excuse for
lawlessness, it had become justified. Making war upon existing law had
become a normal way of life in this grim, half-dead city in which they
lived.

It might easily be that he had not gone to Marseilles at all--that all
the time he had been here in Paris in hiding, coming out only after
darkness to attack and kill. Perhaps he was the one who, as leader of
_les costauds_, planned all the campaigns.

And in the darkness, for the first time in many years, she felt a sudden
desire to pray. It was a profound desire, as if she had become aware
that she no longer had any control over her existence, as if somehow she
must put it at last in the hands of God imploring Him to help and
preserve Nicky. For he had become slowly, she knew now almost with
bitterness, the beginning and end of her existence. She was no longer
free and alone, no longer possessed of the safety and strength which
comes with a lonely life. If you really loved no one, there was no one
you could lose. If you were alone you could not be hurt through another,
and that she knew now was the only hurt which could in the end be
enduring and of importance.

She thought, "I will go to mass again and confess and then perhaps God
will listen to me." But in her heart she knew that the determination was
born only of fear. Out of fear she had gone to see Madame de Thonars.
She knew now what it all meant--the things Madame de Thonars told her.
It was all clear enough.

Toward morning she knelt beside the bed and prayed as she had not prayed
since she was a small girl in Evanston. She had prayed then because she
was terrified of what the Irish priest had told her about hell. She did
not believe any longer in hell; she had not believed in hell for a very
long time, because it seemed to her a silly improbable place and because
she had seen worse things than hell all about her, in life. She did not
pray now in fear of hell, but for Nicky, for God to save him from his
own recklessness. In a curious way she had become a little girl again
with the simple faith of a little girl.

And she thought, "Some day all this will be over. Some day the nightmare
will be finished and we can be happy again and safe and can love each
other."

       *       *       *       *       *

In the morning Filomena came through the passage from the garage in the
rue de Berri into the cellar. She sent word that she would not come
upstairs and asked that Roxie come to the cellar to see her.

She was a changed Filomena. She had come with the basket to carry the
copies of "_La France Eternelle_" out into the city; but the old spirit
was not in her. She stood by the wooden wardrobe, big and grim, the
basket over her arm, alone without the little dog.

There was no news of Luigi. The Germans, she said, were there in the
restaurant all day and all night, sitting at a table playing skat and
drinking Chianti. But they had caught no one, because she and La Biche
had managed to stop the refugees and warn them. The word had been passed
on to others. Poor Maria wept all day, saying that she wanted to die,
terrified of what the Germans were doing to her good-natured Luigi.

At the end Filomena swore a great ornate, baroque Italian oath. "We will
kill them all, Mademoiselle, if it is necessary," she said, and then
lifting aside the vegetables in her basket she said, "Look!"

Beneath the vegetables lay a sharp new knife, long and newly polished,
the sort of knife used by the men in the slaughter houses for killing
steers.

"You see," said Filomena, "I have prepared myself. In the darkness it is
very easy to operate. Nowadays they only go in twos but I am a strong
woman." She flexed her right arm and patted the biceps. "I am a strong
woman. I can do for two at a time if the knife doesn't get stuck."

Her voice took on an edge like that of the knife itself. She said
passionately, "Why did they come here? No one wanted them. Why couldn't
they have left us alone in peace?"

Then quietly she unpacked the vegetables and went to work rolling up the
papers. In the bottom of the basket, when the vegetables had been
removed, Roxie saw the leash of the little dog.

While Filomena worked Roxie went to fetch wine. The lock on the outer
door was rusty and gave her trouble so that the little man called
Monsieur Lopez came to her aid. He went with her into the chill vaulted
passage which led to the wine cellar itself. The second door, made of
steel with the spring lock, opened easily. Monsieur Lopez went into the
wine cellar with her. The sight of so much fine wine moved Monsieur
Lopez. Tenderly, with deep respect, the pink-cheeked little man picked
up one bottle after another, taking out his spectacles to read the
stained and dusty labels. Then he looked about him and said, "What a
fine cellar! The old monks built well. You could be shut in here and no
one on earth would know you were here." He turned to the steel door and
tried the spring lock, saying, "It needs oil, Mademoiselle. I'll go over
it for you."

While the others drank to the defeat of the Boches, the little man set
to work with the loving care of a good mechanic to put the locks in
order. When he had finished he pulled aside the wardrobe and Filomena
went out alone, back again through the garage into the city with her
rolled up newspapers.

Roxie watched the departure, moved by the dignity of the big Italian
woman. There was in the Latin people a great capacity for emotion and
acting. The exit of Filomena was magnificent, dignified and tragic. It
was as if vengeance itself had left the cellar in a sortie upon the
city.

When the wardrobe was in place again, Roxie left the workers and went
slowly up the stairs. She wished with a sudden passion that she might
have peace, that all the misery, the violence, the dark conspiracy would
end, that there might be once more that lazy, quiet life which was the
Paris she had always known. Little Monsieur Lopez followed her and
closed and barred the door behind her.

Then as she climbed the great stairway leading to the second floor, she
knew all at once that Nicky had returned. It was a curious inexplicable
feeling as if in some way her whole body and spirit had grown sensitized
to his nearness. He was there in the house. She _knew_ it.

She began to run up the wide stairs and as she reached the top she
called out, "Nicky! Nicky!" and in a second she heard his voice
answering her.

He came out of the salon, hurrying toward her, and she saw at once that
something had happened to him. One hand was bandaged and the side of his
face was bruised and discolored and he limped--but it was more than
that. There was in the dark face something which had never been there
before.

She managed not to cry and said quietly, "What is it? What has happened
to you?"

He grinned, "They caught me... but only for a little while."

It happened, he said, at the border between the two zones. He had a
Spanish passport, not a very good passport for it was full of flaws, but
it had served on other trips. They had arrested him and questioned him
and when his answers did not suit them they had begun to beat him.

"It was pretty bad," he said. "I am still stiff. You should see my back.
There were four of them. I took it because I had to but I kept thinking,
'I must get out of this. I must get out of this,' and then the leader of
them stood up and came toward me and I saw my chance. I seized the chair
he was sitting on and swung it over my head." He grinned again. "It was
wonderful, cleaning up that room. I killed the leader--smashed his skull
and knocked out the others and then I jumped through the window. I am
strong... but I never felt so strong before. I was a giant, a terrific
fellow. I have not had a fight like that since I was a kid."

After that, he said, he had hidden in a haystack for a day and then a
farmer took him in and hid him until he felt able to make his way to
Paris.

"And now," he said, "I shall have to hide out here until my eye gets
better and my hand is mended. They'll be looking for me. They must have
known what they did to me."

She felt happiness stealing over her, like a slow pleasant glow of
warmth in a chill room. Now he would be hers for a time. Now he would be
safe. He could not escape her. As he talked she watched him, discovering
a strange new quality in him--that the beating, the torture, the anguish
had been nothing to him. He exulted in them as if somehow they
contributed to his strength. It was the battle itself which delighted
him. He described it all, his spirit rising, even to the sound the chair
made when it smashed the head of the German officer.

"That," she said, "is the Russian in him," and she remembered the story
of the child born on the edge of the battlefield while his father fought
and his mother hid in the forest near by. "That," she thought grimly,
"is not in me."

When he had finished she told him about Luigi and he said, "I'll find
out where he is. We might even be able to rescue him."

"No," she said, "you mustn't try that. I'm finding out where he is."

"How?"

She told him about the Major and his promise of a report, and as she
spoke she saw the pupils of his eyes contract and knew with a perverse
rush of satisfaction that he was jealous.

"And this Major," he said. "What has gone on between you two?"

"Absolutely nothing."

"Because that must not be... no matter what happens. Even if it was a
question of saving my life, it must not happen. If you were unfaithful
with a German, even to save me, I would kill you afterward."

She thought again, "He _is_ a savage." All this was something she had
heard of but never believed because all her experience argued against
its truth.

He came to her and put his arm about her. "You are to go away," he said.
"I've thought a lot about it. It is serious now. It is growing worse all
the time. It does not matter that you have been guilty of no particular
act. You have been a cover. You have been a front. If they caught you
they would treat you like all the others." His face seemed old and
serious suddenly. "No, you must go away while you are still safe." Then
he looked at her and she knew that at last somehow, in some way she
could not understand, the thing had happened. There was no more mockery,
no more barriers. The thing in which she had never been able to believe
had happened.

She thought, "I must not be a fool. I must not spoil it. I must not cry
because I am happy. I am a tramp. I deserve none of this. I have done
nothing to earn it. Thank you, God!"

She heard him saying with shyness, "I think it would be better if we
were married before you went away. It would make it more certain, more
legal. I would like it better. It would make me more certain of you.
Perhaps such things are _bourgeois_ but just the same I would feel
different."

Again she felt called upon to stiffen her body in order to exact control
of herself. After a moment she was able to speak. "It does not matter. I
cannot go away... not now."

"There is nothing to hold you."

"I cannot go away... I cannot... not now. Can't you see that? Can't
you?" It was all she could manage to say but her spirit cried out again,
"Oh, thank you, God! Thank you, God!"

       *       *       *       *       *

When Lon saw her in the dressing room he said, grinning, "You see. I
told you he would come back. He was in a tough spot but he is a tough
guy."

"Just the same...."

Lon's shrewd, pupilless eyes were very bright, glittering a little like
jet. He said, "I must say I never expected to see it happen to you."

"Do I look like that?" she asked.

"It's sticking out all over you." Then the brightness went out of the
eyes and they turned soft and he said, "Do you know the most beautiful
thing on earth?"

She divined what he meant to say but held her tongue, "No."

"It is a woman who is in love and happy and satisfied." The speech
finished with a faint uncontrollable sigh. He said quickly, "You'd
better get on with your undressing," and left her.

While the golden feathers were fastened on her naked body she thought,
"It is not right to be so happy," and superstition claimed her suddenly
and she was afraid, but when her call came the fear had gone out of her
and _la Reine des Oiseaux_ descended the stairs toward the glow of light
pridefully in a kind of triumph. The box where the Major always sat was
empty tonight, completely empty.

When the curtain came down at last and she returned to the dressing
room, the maid was waiting for her with an envelope bearing the stamp
of the Hotel Ritz. Opening it she found inside a bit of plain paper on
which a message was typewritten in German. She could read none of it but
among the intelligible words she saw a name, written with an official
air all in capitals--it was Luigi's name.

To the maid she said, "Go quickly and find the boss."

In a little while Lon came in. Without saying anything she handed him
the note and watched his face grow dark as he read.

Then he said, "The sons of bitches! Luigi is dead!"

The note was brief and simple. It read, _At the request of Major
Freiherr Kurt von Wessellhoft, I am sending you a report of the case of
Luigi Salvemini, proprietor of a restaurant at No. 4 Impasse Galate.
The prisoner in question was killed when he jumped from a window while
being questioned at the Military Barracks at Joinville._

                                        _Lieutenant Gottfried Hessell._

Lon said again, "The sons of bitches! It has only begun!"

He went with her to spend the night at the house in the rue Washington.
They were crossing the square before the theatre when out of the
darkness came the sudden murmur of voices penetrated by a sudden sharp
cry. Near them, quite close, was a crowd, shapeless and mysterious, in
the thick darkness. Then someone in the crowd switched on an electric
torch and the circle of light from the torch, directed at some object
lying on the ground, silhouetted the figures near by. Out of the dim
refracted light the figure of a French policeman appeared quite near
them and Lon asked, "What is it? What has happened?"

The light was switched off again and out of the darkness came the voice
of the policeman, "They have got two more of them... a lieutenant and a
sergeant. The lieutenant is dead. They were stabbed. _Nom de Dieu!_ It
is a dirty business!"

Then Roxie remembered Filomena saying, "I am a strong woman. I can
account for two!" This was the corner where she kept watch with La
Biche, alone now, without the company of the little dog.

Lon took her arm and dragged her into the thicker darkness toward the
entrance of the Mtro, away from the group crowding around the dead
lieutenant.

       *       *       *       *       *

After the attack on the lieutenant and the sergeant the Germans closed
Luigi's little restaurant and nailed up the door, and Maria went away,
back to her own country in the south. They would give her no papers but
Nicky helped her across the border between the two zones. He had many
friends along the border--peasants and priests and schoolteachers and
working men. Maria had to be sent back to her own country since, with
Luigi gone, she had made up her mind to die and it was only kind that
she should die among her own people. She grieved not only for Luigi who
was dead but for what they had done to him before he died. That she
could never really know. So Maria believed it easier to die than to go
on living.

Some of the refugees they were still able to help because Filomena and
La Biche had somehow kept in touch with them. But these too slowly, one
by one, disappeared--perhaps picked up by the German police, perhaps by
suicide. What became of them no one knew--the lonely homeless, weary
acrobats and professors, workingmen and physicians, singers and
politicians. Simply they disappeared.

       *       *       *       *       *

The spring came early in a sudden rush of green over the tops of the
chestnuts along the Champs Elyses and the poplars along the Seine, in a
green carpet wherever there was a garden or a patch of grass. It came
in the strutting and cooing of the pigeons which each day grew a little
fewer in number because for one day at least a hundred or so citizens of
Paris had meat. Spring came into the garden behind the house in the rue
Washington lighting the candles on the chestnut trees turning to purple
and white the plumes of the lilacs. Their perfume drifting in at the
windows in the early evening, made Roxie again see the grimy brown house
on the wrong side of the railroad tracks in Evanston. In the trodden,
soot-stained earth of the yard, a single lilac tree had flourished--a
miracle each time it bloomed to the hard, resourceful, sad-eyed little
girl she had been long ago. The scent of the lilacs involved no happy
memories save the glory of those white blossoms against the grimy
liver-colored clapboarding of the house. All the rest was better
forgotten. Whatever strength, whatever experience, whatever
resourcefulness she had learned in that far off childhood had cost too
much. She knew now, in the sudden discovery of so many things she had
never known before, that they had kept her from happiness she should
have known long ago but for her own hardness and self-reliance.

She thought, "But for all that I would have had all these years some
other answer to living than 'Oh yeah!'" She had a different answer now.
She accepted and even welcomed a great many things, like loyalty and
devotion and even perhaps suffering.

The spring came quickly to Paris but it brought with it none of the
gaiety that had always been spring in Paris. Chairs and tables were set
out under the chestnut trees but Parisians did not sit at them--not real
Parisians who loved Paris to the death, but only nameless shabby
creatures who had betrayed her and felt no shame at sitting side by side
with their enemies. The blooming trees, the cooing pigeons, the sudden
carpets of green, brought no gaiety to the hearts of people who were in
prison. Misery is easier to endure in miserable surroundings than in gay
and brilliant ones, and spring this year was gay and warm and brilliant
as if nature herself were mocking man and saying to him, "Have your
wars! Kill each other! Destroy what you have built! I will carpet the
graves and the battlefields made by you fools, I will clothe the
shattered walls with green! Spring will return even when there are no
more men on earth!" There was about this spring in Paris something
derisive and triumphant and bitter.

In a strange fashion, Roxie in her own small happiness, was aware of all
this. There was no reason in her nor any power of putting things into
words even in her own mind, but the brilliance of the spring sometimes
frightened her, and the sight of the lilacs and chestnut trees in
blossom left her feeling sad with a dread that came over her from time
to time, suddenly, like a recurrent illness.

In the streets the poor people grew more sallow and thin despite the sun
which warmed the stone of the white and gray faades. There seemed for
each blossom, for each new leaf, some new sadness, some new tragedy.

And then four months after the Major had gone back for his sister's
wedding the tired old Governor who shipped the tapestries and pictures
back to Pomerania was sent in disgrace to his estates and a new Governor
arrived--the new kind of soldier, younger, with a hard narrow jaw, a
small receding chin and small cold blue eyes behind pince-nez. He was
the new sort; he resembled a shark. His name was simply Herrhauser. His
origin was obscure.

It was Nicky who came in with the news, baffled and angry.

"I know about him," Nicky said. "A killer! A sadist! A criminal! In
Hamburg he shot with his own hands three women in the water-front
quarter because they had spat on a Nazi poster. It is bad. It will be
like Prague before we are through."

She tried to calm his anger by saying, "Paris is not Prague. They would
not dare."

He looked at her quietly, fiercely. "It makes no difference to them. In
the end if they cannot hold Paris they will try to destroy it! They are
like rats. They will turn and die with their teeth bared because this
time they know there is no mercy for them anywhere in the world." He put
his hands on her shoulders. "You do not know. You still do not believe
me or Lon or Filomena or a million others. They are abominable. They
are not human. Until you hate them you will never understand. Until you
hate them they will lie to you and betray you and cheat and steal and
kill. Until you hate you are helpless as a child against them. Some day
you will know!"

"Don't say that! Don't say that!"

He walked toward the window and looked out into the garden, not
answering her, and as she watched him she felt a chilling sense of dread
taking possession of her body. It was a physical sensation beyond all
control. The black hate in him had shut him off from her again.

She thought, "If I could feel hate I would be one with him, with Lon
and Filomena. I am still outside."

He went away from her then without speaking and threw himself down on
the bed, burying his head in his arms. Quietly she sat down on the bed
beside him, running her hands through his thick dark hair, but he did
not speak again. He made no sign that he was aware of her nearness. It
was as if he were frozen. And in a little while, exhausted, he fell
asleep.

She left him only when she heard the voice of Lon, calling from the
salon.

He was there with his dispatch case and a newspaper, looking sober and
pale. He did not say anything. He only held the paper out to her and
when she took it she saw at once what it was that disturbed him. It was
one of the collaborationist papers which even in its headlines groveled
and licked the boots of its barbaric conquerors. It stated simply that
the new Military Governor had decided that the policy of conciliation
and "correctness" had been a failure. In order to cope with the plotting
and violence of Jews and communists, fifty hostages would be shot in
reparation for the death of every German soldier.

She asked quickly, "Does Nicky know this?"

"I don't know. I don't know what he will do."

And she was afraid again. But Lon distracted her fear by saying, "I was
right about your friend, the Major. He was even a bigger shot than I
believed. He got the old General sent away. He is responsible for the
new bastard who thought this up."

"How do you know?"

"I know all right. He is back in Paris."

"He hasn't been at the theater."

"No, but he is back. He has been back for three days. He no longer wears
a uniform. He dresses now in English clothes and has a flat in the
Avenue Foch."

"I know about that. He wanted me to share it when he came back."

He smiled grimly. "You haven't lost him, have you?"

"I wish I had." She remembered Lisa and knew that so long as the
obsession for Lisa endured she would never be free of him. She said,
"There is no triumph in it for me. It is not me he wants but a woman who
has been dead for more than twenty years."

And then she told him the story of Lisa. When she had finished Lon
said, "The dirty Boche! They are all nuts! That kind of thing happens
only to them." And for a moment she felt again the same cold hatred in
him that she had felt a little while before in Nicky.

"He will turn up again. He is crazy," she said.

At that moment Nicky came into the room looking tired and grim. She had
not the strength to give him the newspaper or to speak of what was in
it. He looked at them and at the paper, then picked it up and read what
they had read, slowly without speaking. When he put it down he said
wearily, "That changes everything. All the killing will have to stop.
It is not possible to be responsible for the slaughter of innocent
people." After a moment he added, "They are beyond anything."

"How will you stop it?" asked Lon.

"I shall have to see every man and woman and argue it out with them.
With people like Filomena it won't be easy to stop the killing. We shall
have to find something else--dynamiting bridges perhaps, blowing up
their trains, thinking up violence and death which appears to be
accidental. We shall have to go on fighting somehow. I shall have to go
away again." He turned to Roxie. "It will only be for three or four
days. It will have to be done at once."

"Don't go tonight, Nicky. Tomorrow." Just one more night together... it
was not much to ask. She could not tell him what it was she feared. He
looked at her. "They may kill more soldiers even tonight." His eyes were
kind and she thought, "He is mine again. He has not gone away."

"Just tonight. Tomorrow will be soon enough." She could not keep the
anguish out of her voice and for one horrible moment, watching his eyes,
she thought, "I have told him. He himself knows now."

Then he smiled at her and put his arms about her. "All right, I'll go
tomorrow."

When she turned to speak to Lon she discovered that he was not there.
The little man had gone away. She thought, "He must have seen what was
in my eyes," or it may have been that what had happened between herself
and Nicky was unbearable to him whom no woman had ever loved. It was
something which she would never know.

Nicky did not go with her to the theater. There would be work for him to
do. He would wait for her.

That night on the great stair, in her golden feathers, _la Reine des
Oiseaux_ was magnificent. There was a radiance about her which brought
cheers from the rows of green-gray uniforms. The theater was still
filled, night after night, but nowadays most of the tickets were no
longer paid for even with pieces of paper that had no value. Now Lon
received a daily order to reserve a great bloc of seats for the
entertainment and recreation of the ordinary soldier and for the
tourists who came upon "strength through joy" tours. It was a lumpish
audience but bedazzled by the lights and the gaudy, shabby scenery.

At the bottom of the stairs, _la Reine des Oiseaux_ moved toward the
glow of light and then quickly, more quickly than usual, toward the box
on the right side of the stage. The box had for her a terrible
attraction. Twice earlier she had gone to the peephole in the curtain to
survey the box and twice she had discovered it was empty. And now she
hoped that she would find that he had come in late and was sitting there
as usual. She had been almost happy while he was away but now she wanted
him back where she could see him, where she would know a little of what
he was doing. It was worse to know he was in Paris without seeing him.
The box was empty.

After the _entr'acte_ she met Lon in the wings. He said, "Two of the
girls didn't show up tonight."

"Were they with us?"

"Yes. Flice and Margot. They sent no word."

"What could have happened?"

"I don't know." He shook his head as if to clear it. "Something is going
on. I don't know what it is."

At the final curtain she found Nicky in the dressing room and at sight
of him she forgot Lon and Flice and Margot and all the other worries.

In the Mtro she thought that a small man in a green hat watched them
too closely, but at the Concorde station he stayed on the train when
they left and she thought, "It is only nerves. It is nothing. I'm
beginning to imagine things."

The evening was warm and the rooms of the house in the rue Washington
were filled with the scent of late summer. Roxie thought, "If I died
tomorrow, it would not matter now."

He left in the morning a little after daylight, saying, "I'll be back on
Friday. If I do not come back, then don't worry. Many things can happen
but I'll find a way out."

When he had gone she found the house unbearable so dressed herself and
went down into the cellar. They were all there, the little
people--working like moles below ground. She worked with them for a
while, doing small things which she was able to do. She folded and piled
fresh papers as they came off the creaking old press. She took a broom
and swept the thin paper cuttings into a pile near the heaps of broken
furniture. This was only the first morning and yet the waiting was
unbearable. It would grow worse and worse as Tuesday turned into
Wednesday and Wednesday into Thursday and Thursday into Friday.

"I must be reasonable about it," she thought as she swept. "I'm
thirty-two years old and should have some sense. He knows what he is
doing. He is bold. He is clever. He is filled with hate." But he might
be too bold. He might hate too much. He might take terrible risks.

Then she saw Monsieur Lopez push aside the wardrobe and unbolt the door
behind it and Filomena came in with her basket. It was the first time
Roxie had seen her in a fortnight and she was much changed, even to the
style of wearing her hair. She looked thinner and taller and there were
deep lines in her face. The black hair was drawn back severely from the
face and streaks of gray were in it. She had a new kind of beauty,
classic but almost cold and a little astonishing. At sight of Roxie she
smiled but there was no gaiety in the smile. In it was simply the
recognition of an old and tried friend.

She said at once, "I have seen your Nicky."

"When?" asked Roxie.

"Only just now. There is a strange man working in the garage. The others
say they know him but I don't like it."

Monsieur Lopez was listening, "Did he see you come here?"

"No. The others saw to that. All the same I do not like his looks."

Monsieur Lopez smiled. "You are losing your nerve."

She gave him a furious look out of the great black eyes, "I do not have
nerves."

Roxie went for the wine and Filomena with her basket came with her
through the two doors into the cold damp room where the wine was kept.
She said, "Your Nicky says I am not to kill any more."

"You agree?" asked Roxie.

"No," said Filomena. "I will kill and kill Germans even after the war is
over and there is peace. And not I alone but the Czechs and the
Jugoslavs and the Norwegians and even the Italians." The look in the
black eyes was quiet in its intensity.

"I have already attacked six," continued Filomena. "Four are dead. With
the first two who lived I was learning. Now I know how to do it." Under
the hard light of the naked bulb overhead the grim face had a special
beauty as if it were carved from marble. "I know now the trick. It
requires a great strength and a steady arm." She grinned suddenly. "Do
you know where I work now?"

"No."

"I am the femme de mnage in the house of a German colonel. I come in on
Thursdays to clean. The Colonel has been very ill lately. They cannot
find out what is the matter with him. This Thursday I will not return.
It won't be necessary. The job is finished." Then Filomena shivered
suddenly. "It is cold as a tomb in this wine cellar. Let's get out of
here. It is not healthy."

As Roxie closed the steel door and the lock clicked into place, Filomena
said, "But that's neat. It works so easily. Nobody could get through
that to steal your wine."

"It was an Argentine who thought of it. He owns the house. I bought the
wine when I rented the house."

In the cellar under the vaulted roof the printing press was stopped and
the moles raised their glasses, "_A bas les Boches_," said Filomena.

       *       *       *       *       *

Wednesday came and Thursday and Friday. In the garden the lilacs were
gone, the gay plumes brown and withered. Beneath the chestnut trees the
fallen petals lay in fading drifts of pink and white. In three short
days the carpet of grass changed from the lettuce green of early spring
to the deep emerald of summer. It was as if in three days the whole
world had changed... three long interminable days.

Roxie saw Filomena again but Filomena said little. She still did not
like the newcomer in the garage. Her hate had become, it seemed to
Roxie, an all-consuming passion, something for which she lived. She ate
and slept only to feed and restore her hatred. Roxie, watching her,
thought, "They have not only killed Luigi. They have killed Filomena as
well." For what was left of the Filomena calling out to them from the
darkness on the night Nicky returned? All that remained of that
boisterous, Rabelaisian Filomena was the great heavy body daily growing
more gaunt and ravaged.

Filomena went away and Friday came and the hours of Friday were each as
long as the days of the week had been, for Nicky did not return. In the
evening at the theater Lon said, "There's no need to worry. He always
comes back. He told you that himself."

She asked abruptly, "What about Flice and Margot? Have they come back?"

"No."

She waited for him to say more, to hint at least at what he thought had
happened to them, but he said nothing.

"Will they talk?"

Lon frowned. "There is nothing they could tell about anyone but me.
They don't know about any of the others."

"And if they come for you?"

Coldly he said, "I am prepared for that. They'll never be able to
question me."

She went into her dressing room without answering him. You could not
tell Lon that with Nicky it was different this time because of
something inside of you. To anyone as hard-boiled as Lon, it would mean
nothing. Then as she walked into the wings to climb the ladder to the
top of the stairs, the figure of Lon emerged from the darkness and he
said, "He is in the box again. He just came in."

She heard the voice of the _compre_, "_La Reine des Oiseaux_" and out
of the darkness she stepped into the glare of light. Her slippered feet
felt uncertainly for the steps. Her naked legs trembled. She thought, "I
mustn't fall. I must not faint... not now." Beyond that she was aware
of only one thing, that the Major had returned and was sitting in the
box. After all he might be useful now. Now, if anything had happened to
Nicky, she would need his help. She would do anything he asked her to
do. It did not matter what Nicky had said. It did not matter if he never
saw her again so long as he was saved.

Dimly she was aware that she had reached the bottom of the stairs. She
thought, "It may be in earnest now. It may be that I shall have to play
Tosca and Mata Hari whether I choose to or not." It was all melodrama,
bad melodrama. But somehow, without her wanting or knowing it, her daily
life had become like Lon's history of Europe for the past twenty years,
bad melodrama.

She heard the shrill brave voice of the _commre_ singing, "_Ah! Qu'elle
est belle! Qu'elle est brave! La Reine des Oiseaux! L'Aigle d'or!_"

The box was emerging now out of the rosy glare of the lights and in it
alone sat the Major. He was not in military clothes but in a suit of
brown tweed, well and loosely cut. That was what Lon had meant when he
said, "He is wearing English clothes." But they suited him less well
than a uniform. They looked strange and grotesque on him. His neck
seemed longer and thinner, the face narrower and sharper. He had an
awkward countrified look sitting there alone in the box. And then on an
instant she was no longer aware of anything but the eyes with the look
of madness and the hard line of the tightly compressed lips. The clothes
made the rest of him seem gawky and insignificant.

"_Oh, les Oiseaux!_" sang the _commre_, "_Les beaux Oiseaux!_"

It was all old stuff--this _oiseaux_ business. She was sick of the whole
thing, of the whole picture. It stank with dullness and falsity. And
suddenly she was aware that he was smiling at her, a curious smile with
a quality of artificiality and fixity. She pretended not to have noticed
the smile, and turned back toward the great stairs, thinking, "He is
certainly crazy--crazy as a bedbug!"

The curtain came down and she was back again in her dressing room
without remembering quite how she got there. The maid was pouring a
glass of brandy and saying, "You are shivering, Mademoiselle! Drink
this. It will make you feel better." And while Roxie drank the brandy
the maid went to work stripping off the golden feathers. As usual she
laid them in a cardboard box on the shelf and as Roxie watched her she
felt a sudden inexplicable impulse to say, "Don't bother saving them!
Throw them away! I'll never wear them again!"

She poured herself another drink of brandy and began to feel warm again.

Each time she went on until the end of the show, he was sitting there in
the brown tweeds. Each time she passed the box he smiled at her through
the yellow glare of the footlights. She thought, "He's damned pleased
with himself. He never smiled before."

At the end of the show she ignored the curtain calls and went back to
the dressing room. When she opened the door, Lon was standing there,
his back to the mirror, his swarthy face grave and the eyes very soft.
The moment she saw him she knew, with a curious feeling of having lived
through the whole scene before in some earlier existence, what was
coming. Before he said it, she heard him saying, "I have bad news," and
heard herself saying, "It's about Nicky...."

"They've arrested him."

She closed the door. "Where have they taken him?"

"I don't know."

"How much have they found out?"

"I don't know. Certainly he won't talk."

She sat down because she could no longer stand. "They may try to make
him talk. They'll do anything."

He put his hand on her shoulder. "You mustn't be hysterical. You've got
to keep your head now if you ever did in all your life. He's coming
backstage to see you. If he asks you to go out with him you must go.
He's much more powerful than we thought. I think he knows all about
Nicky."

"About Nicky and me?"

"I don't know. I should think it wasn't likely."

She pressed her hands against her eyes and heard him saying, "Tonight is
the time to use him if you can."

"He's not a man. He's not human. I'm afraid of him."

Lon did not answer her. He waited as if to give her time to think what
she must do. Presently she said, "There is one thing he wants of me."

"Yes?"

"If it were simple... what he wants, but what he wants is awful. It's
no simple thing he wants. It will be horrible. Nicky said he would kill
me... if he ever knew, he might do it."

"That is something you will have to decide. It is a small thing--nothing
at all--or it is a monstrous thing. It depends on the point of view."

"I haven't any choice... if it will help Nicky."

There was a knock at the door and when Lon opened it he was standing
there in the brown tweed suit looking awkward and insignificant. He
said, "Good evening. I have come back. May I come in?"

She was glad then of the brandy and she thought quickly, "I can only go
through this if I act... if I give a performance. I must act so that
he'll never know or even suspect what I am feeling."

She stood up and held out her hand for him to kiss. "I'm glad you've
come back," she said. "I thought you were never going to return to
Paris. It's been very dull without you...."

"You are looking very beautiful... more beautiful than when I went
away."

       *       *       *       *       *

They went as usual to Tout Paris to sit in the dark alcove. It seemed
the best thing to do--to behave as she had always done, as if she knew
nothing whatever. In the darkness he could not see her face too
distinctly. She herself asked for champagne and after they had drunk a
glass apiece she said, "I think I would like to dance."

He did not dance well. He was awkward and stiff like one who neither
understood dancing nor liked it, but he seemed pleased and excited, as
if the contact of their bodies brought a new vitality to him. She
thought again, "I must act! I must act! It is the only way I can go
through with it."

When the music stopped and they returned to the table he seemed changed,
less dead, less stiff, less correct. He talked almost with excitement of
his visit to Berlin and his sister's wedding.

"My mother is very pleased," he said. "It was what she wanted."

He had been to the opera in Berlin. He was, he said, very fond of opera,
almost as fond of opera as of the theater. It was good to see her again,
he said. He had missed her very much. He had returned to Paris three
days before, but there were many things to do and so many
responsibilities he had been unable to come to the theater.

"I heard you were here," she said, without thinking.

He looked at her quickly. "How could you have known? No one knew I was
here... at least only one or two people."

She had to think very quickly. "I don't even remember," she said.
"Someone at the theater said, 'Your friend the Major is back.' I don't
even remember who it was. I suppose someone who saw us out together."

He poured himself another glass of champagne and said rather like a
sulky boy, "It is very strange."

"Would you like to dance again?" she asked.

"I am not a good dancer. Ordinarily I do not like dancing, but with you
it is different."

She smiled at him and said, "Thank you."

"I am only sorry I am not a better dancer."

"I think you do very well."

This time while they danced he seemed to come completely alive and he
said, "You know I am very much in love with you."

"Thank you. That is very pleasing for a woman to hear."

"And you... how do you feel?"

"I don't know," she sighed.

"Do you like me?"

She laughed. "Of course I like you. I wouldn't have risked being seen
with a German if I hadn't liked you."

"It was not for any other reason?"

"No. What other reason could there be?"

"It is wartime. There could be many other reasons."

She laughed again. "So you think I am a spy. I'm not clever enough for
that. In any case there would be no point in it. I am an American. This
is none of my affair."

Then for a while they danced in silence while she thought, "I must be
very skillful about it." And doubt answered, "But how?"

The music stopped again and when they returned to the table he said,
"You are not wearing my ring."

"I never wear jewelry when I go out alone. It isn't safe."

"I suppose that's true, although we do our best to make Paris a safe and
orderly place."

"It is a very beautiful ring. Everyone admires it."

He ordered another bottle of champagne and she noticed that the vein in
his forehead was swollen and throbbing. She thought, "He suspects me.
Perhaps he even knows everything. He really hates me but that crazy
thing about the governess will give him no peace."

They danced a third time and a fourth and had more champagne and she
thought, "It is getting late. I shall have to do it somehow quickly.
It's just possible that if I'm clever enough it can be done."

Abruptly he asked her if she was still of the same opinion about the
flat in the Avenue Foch.

"Yes. My situation hasn't changed."

He said, "It is a pity. It is a beautiful flat. We should be very
comfortable there--perhaps very happy too. It would be so easy for us to
go there directly tonight... so easy and convenient."

She was thinking all the time of Nicky. If only she could get him out of
her mind, if she could somehow, miraculously, forget him, it would be
easy. It astonished her a little that she put such value upon
faithfulness; but now it was not simply an idea, it was a reality, a
necessity, unless being unfaithful was the only way of saving him. She
was aware that the Major was becoming loathsome to her, beyond anything
she had felt about him until now. It was extraordinary that inside the
handsome body there was no soul at all, no warmth, nothing that any
woman could really love.

But Nicky would not leave her in peace. He was in prison. They might be
torturing him now, while she was sitting here trying to discover how she
was to do what she must do, trying to find a way...

She heard him saying, "You seem very preoccupied tonight."

"I thought I was being gay.... I'm sorry. Perhaps it's because I'm
tired. The show has begun to be a terrible bore. It's been going too
long and it's not really very good."

"No," he said, "it really isn't."

She thought, "Now is the time. I must do it now... now... not later."
And she said, "No, it's really not true that I'm tired. I am very
worried about a great friend of mine who is in trouble."

He grinned. "You seem to have a great many friends who get into
trouble."

"No more than anyone else. After all, nearly everyone is involved some
way or other in the whole thing. I have a great many friends in Paris."

A sly look came into the dull blue eyes. "Is it the _bourgeois_ lawyer?"

She had hoped that all the champagne would dull his mind and stimulate
his desire, but somehow it had failed to work as she had planned. She
said, "Oh, no. He is still in Marseilles. It is simply a great friend.
We grew up together."

"A woman."

"No. A man. His mother and mine were great friends." And almost at once
she saw that she had made a mistake. He would scarcely believe that her
mother who lived in Evanston, Indiana, was a great friend of a woman who
lived in Paris.

He said, "I was sorry about the other. It was too late to help him. He
had already committed suicide."

Somehow she had not thought of Luigi all the evening and now the mention
of him chilled her. She managed to say, "I suppose there was nothing you
could have done. I appreciate your sending me the report."

"What is the name of this friend... the man?" he asked.

Quickly she said, "Pierre Chastel. He worked at the theater as secretary
to the Manager. I'm sure there is some mistake. I'm sure he's guilty of
nothing whatever."

"What did you say his name was?" He was watching her now.

"Pierre Chastel."

"And he is French?"

"Yes. His mother was Russian." She tried desperately to piece the story
together, but somehow she seemed only able to make things worse. The
papers Nicky carried said that he was of French parentage, his father a
consul in Cairo.

"You are sure it is not the _bourgeois_ lawyer?"

"Absolutely. Why, don't you believe me?"

He did not answer her directly. He said, "I do remember the name. I
think he was picked up yesterday."

She kept thinking, "I must act. I must pretend I'm playing a part." And
she said, "Do you know what he is charged with?"

"Sabotage and suspicion of murder."

Quickly she said, "Would you be able to help him? Is there anything you
could do? It would make a great difference to me." She knew now that he
did not believe in the story of the lawyer and had never believed it.

"Perhaps. How great a difference would it make?"

She did not answer at once. She was certain of what was coming. She
thought, "The time is here. I must decide." It did not matter now what
Nicky felt or wanted. Nothing at all mattered but to find out where he
was and to save his life. It did not matter even if he killed her
afterward or never saw her again. It was all very clear. She said, "The
greatest difference in the world... the very greatest." She tried to
control her voice but she was not a very good actress. She had never
been and she knew that even while she was speaking she had told him
everything.

"You could do something for me too," he was saying, and she was aware
that his voice was trembling too.

"Yes... anything you wish. Anything at all... any bargain if you will
help me now."

"Your house is not far... only around the corner. We could go there to
arrange the terms of the bargain. It is not exactly correct to do it
here in a public restaurant. Does that suit you?"

"Yes... whatever you like."

He called for the check and they went out through the dancers and the
people at the tables as if nothing at all was happening. In the street
they walked in silence but in the silence there was a strange feeling of
sadness which she could not explain to herself, a sadness that was
profound and enormous, even greater than either of them, so great that
they were dwarfed and insignificant. Now that a decision had been
reached the sense of tension was abated.

He spoke only once. As they turned into the rue Washington he said, "It
is a beautiful night. See, the stars are shining."

The words hung in the night, repeating themselves over and over again in
the sad silence, "The stars are shining! The stars are shining!" And as
they reached her door, she remembered why the words haunted her. "The
stars are shining!" It was the aria from the last act of Tosca which
Mario sang before being shot.

Inside the door she switched on the light and looked at him quickly but
the face was blank. "Perhaps," she thought wildly, "it was only a
coincidence, an accident. Perhaps it means nothing." But she remembered
too what he had said of the opera a little while before.

       *       *       *       *       *

Upstairs in the sitting room, she threw off her coat and said, "If
you'll excuse me, I'll bring some champagne."

"Have you no servants?"

She remembered the lie she had told him long ago about the servants and
thought, "I must be careful. I was nearly caught again." Quickly she
said, "This is the night they spend at home."

"You are here alone? Aren't you afraid?"

"There are not many things I am afraid of."

The curious look of utter madness which sometimes came into his eyes was
there now and she thought, "Perhaps he means to kill me." But she still
was not afraid. On the contrary she experienced a quick sense of
exhilaration.

She went to fetch the keys to the wine cellar from the drawer of the
brass and marquetry table and as she reached the table she saw in the
circle of light from the lamp a plain white envelope addressed in Lon's
handwriting. It was unmistakable, the small precise handwriting of a
clever, calculating man. She thought, "There is something inside that
envelope that I must know at once."

He was watching her now with the look of obsession in his eyes, but he
appeared to attach no importance to the envelope. She picked it up and
walked out of the sitting room into the pink bedroom. There, closing the
door behind her, she tore open the envelope. Inside was a card
advertising the Alhambra Music Hall--"_Paris! Toujours Paris!_"

She turned it over. On the back was written the message. It read: _I
could not stay. Nicky is dead. You must get away tonight._

She stood there for a long time staring at the card, feeling nothing at
all. In the words written by Lon there was only an abstraction which at
first did not touch her.

Then she sat down on the bed and thought wildly, "He knew all the time
that Nicky was dead. That is why he came to the theater tonight. He knew
Nicky was my lover. He only wanted me really after Nicky was dead." And
again there swept over her the feeling of horror and disgust she had
felt the whole evening at Maxim's. They were horrible people, more
horrible, more perverse than Lon and Nicky had said... Nicky! Nicky!

She rose and crossed the room to the big mirror. She was thinking, "When
I return to the other room, I must look as if nothing had happened, as
if I knew nothing at all." She had to appear cool, for now there was
something to be done that must be done if she was to go on living.

In the mirror she did not look any different, save perhaps for the
expression in the eyes. There were no tears. What happened to her now
did not matter. She was not even thinking of Nicky now. She was thinking
of something else.

The first idea that occurred to her was the revolver beneath the pillow,
but this she rejected almost at once. She barely knew how to fire it; if
she missed him he would disarm her and then she would be lost along with
all the others. The revolver could serve only as a last resort. "No,"
she thought, "there must be some other way." Quietly she sat down at the
dressing table thinking how strange it was that she should be sitting
here, planning to kill. The project filled all her being. It was as if
she had become herself a weapon of vengeance and destruction, a steel
blade like the one Filomena carried or a phial of poison.

Quickly she tore the card with d'Abrizzi's writing into a thousand small
pieces. These she disposed of in the bathroom. Her heart cried out
suddenly, "Nicky! Oh, Nicky!" But she thought, "I must not think of that
now." She had a new strength she had never before known--the strength
that was in Lon and Nicky. And then as she opened the door into the
sitting room she knew what it was she meant to do. It was much cleverer
than merely shooting him. It was a plan worthy of himself, of all those
Germans at Maxim's. The sense of playing a role returned to her. Opening
the door, she made an entrance, like an actress coming onto the stage.
It was easier like that. It made the whole thing objective.

He was standing by the window holding in his hand one of the heavy gold
cords which tied back the brocade curtains. The sight puzzled her for a
moment until she saw that he had fashioned the heavy cord into a sort of
cat-o'-nine-tails. The pocketknife with which he had cut the cord was
still in his hand. In a flash of intuition she understood. "He means to
beat me," she thought, "because Lisa escaped him... because she was
older and died and he was never able to make love to her. He means to
punish her through me, to make me pay for all his suffering." It was as
if with these Germans death and love were always grimly near to each
other. She would have been frightened by the look in his eyes if she had
not, consciously, been playing a part as if she were on a stage.

She said, quietly, "Well, what is our bargain to be?"

He smiled but the eyes remained unsmiling, "The bargain is very simple.
You are to tell me everything you know. You are to do what I wish for
tonight. I will arrange it so that he will be let off and you yourself
will be able to escape. For the others of the band I can promise
nothing."

"The others," she repeated. "What others?"

"Who have worked with you to make Paris impossible for us... who have
worked at treason and sabotage and murder. There is a long account to
settle."

A voice inside her kept saying, "You must keep your head! Now, if ever,
you must keep your head!" So she went on acting.

"It is a filthy thing you're asking," she said.

"I am asking very little." He sat down on the arm of a chair, braiding
and unbraiding the gold whip as he spoke. "You thought I was a fool. You
meant to use me. As it turns out, it is I who am using you."

The voice inside kept saying, "Keep your head! Now you know what it is
to hate. Nicky is dead, but there are others to be warned and saved."
She leaned against the edge of a table and said quietly, "There is a
great deal you do not know but a bargain is a bargain. Do you know what
goes on in this house?"

He looked at her sharply. "What goes on?" he asked.

"You seem to know a great deal but do you know about the cellars beneath
this house?"

"No."

"Come. I will show you."

He looked at her sharply, suspecting a trick but she said, "There is no
one there. They have been warned and have gone away."

He asked suddenly, "Was that what was in the letter you picked up?"

"Yes."

"Where is it?"

"I destroyed it." And she told him what she had done with Lon's card.

She turned and took the keys of the wine cellar and the outer door of
the gallery from the drawer of the table. Very casually she said, "In
any case the champagne is down there. We cannot enjoy ourselves fully
without champagne. There is no ice any longer. The cellar is very cold."

Quietly he put down the whip of gold cord and took a revolver from his
pocket. "I do not mind shooting. It can easily be explained."

She smiled. "You talk like a bad melodrama."

For a moment she was afraid that he would not go into the cellar and she
thought, "I must get him there! I must! If I never again achieve
anything."

So she said, "Would you like to see the presses of '_France Eternelle_'?"

"'_France Eternelle_'?" he shouted. "Where are the presses of that
filthy paper?"

She smiled again. "In this house! If you don't believe me, I will show
you."

"Come," he said. "I think you are lying."

She led the way down the stairs and through the narrow door which led
into the cellars. Behind her she heard his heels click as they struck
the stone steps. In her wild guess, she had been right. The cellar was
empty and in darkness. They had all gone away, warned by Lon when he
left the note.

At the turn of the stairs she switched on the light and there beneath
the vaulted ceiling stood the hand press, the type rack, and near them a
pile of freshly printed copies of the terrible paper. At the bottom of
the stairs she said, "Now do you believe me?"

"Yes." He walked over to the stack of papers and picked one from the top
of the heap. For a long time he stared at it, and when he looked up, he
said, "I have been more of a fool than I believed!"

She went to the wooden door opening into the vaulted gallery that led to
the wine cellar with the steel door. As she put the key into the lock
she saw that he had not followed her but was still staring at the hand
press and the pile of papers. She thought, "He is suspicious." As she
unlocked the door she said casually, "I'm afraid you'll have to help me.
The champagne is in the high racks."

Then he turned and came toward her and she said, casually as a guide
lecturing tourists, "These cellars are very interesting. They were once
a part of a Benedictine Monastery. They run on and on under the garden
and into the hotel beyond. The people who worked here didn't come in by
the front door. They came through a passage from a garage in the rue de
Berri."

He was still apparently fascinated by the whole cellar. While she spoke
he stopped again and looked about him. After a moment he said, "That
explains everything. No one ever came in the door but the servants,
d'Abrizzi and your friend."

So now there were no more pretenses. He too was telling her everything,
that the house had been watched, that he knew all about Lon and Nicky.
She had a strange feeling of being at the end of the world, of utter
finality in which there were no more secrets, no more conspiracy.

She pushed back the door and at the sound of the heavy oak striking the
stone he turned again and followed her into the vaulted gallery as she
switched on the light. He was still carrying the revolver. The look of
madness was no longer in his eyes. He was alert now and curious, like a
detective. It was almost as if he felt admiration for her.

She said, "You must admit it was a good hiding place in the heart of
Paris?"

She came to the steel door and slipped the key into the lock little
Monsieur Lopez had oiled so carefully. The door swung back easily. She
switched on the light and said, "We might as well be gay about it. We'll
have the best Lanson of the best year. There's very little left of it in
the world."

He followed her in and she said, pointing, "There it is in the top rack.
You might as well bring two bottles. It will make it pleasanter."

He stepped past her and thrust the revolver into his pocket.

It was the matter of a second's timing. If she had not been a dancer she
might not have been quick enough to achieve her purpose. She moved with
the quickness of light, while he still stood on tiptoe reaching upward
for the bottles. The rest was the matter of a second. She was outside
and the steel door had swung shut. The lock clicked into place.

Then quickly, moved by anxiety, lest someone should enter the house
before she had finished, she went through the vaulted gallery, shivering
a little with the damp and chill, to the outer wooden door. She had gone
half the length of the gallery before: she heard the sound of kicking
against the metal door and the very faint sound of shouting. By the time
she reached the wooden door, the sounds were scarcely audible.

It all happened quickly, to the very end, as if she had planned it with
intricate care well in advance. She closed the wooden door and fastened
the lock and then stood listening with her ear pressed against the wood.
She could hear no sound whatever. It was silent as a tomb.

Quickly she crossed to the wardrobe of wood and bamboo that covered the
door opening into the passage which led to the rue de Berri. She managed
to tilt it on its side then up again, then on its side toward the door
leading to the wine cellar. With each step of the operation she gained a
few feet. She was strong and the wardrobe was less heavy than she had
imagined. At last she set it upright before the door, close against the
wall, and stepped back to survey the effect. The door was completely
hidden. Unless one moved the wardrobe, the existence of the door would
never be suspected.

But the task was not quite finished. Quickly she moved a great pile of
furniture around the wardrobe so that it would appear careless and
casual to any stranger coming into the cellar. After that she picked up
the broom and carefully obliterated all traces of her activity that
remained on the stone floor. When she had finished, she stood for a
moment looking at her handiwork and thought, "He will disappear. No one
will ever find him. He can shoot himself if he likes, after their
fashion--the way they do to their own prisoners--a cell and a revolver,
or he can drink himself to death. After all, there is all that wine."

As she turned away to climb the stairs she felt a faint pang of pity for
him, not because he had to die, for death no longer meant much to her
and perhaps very little to him, but for the sad thing he was, and what
he had been since the beginning--twisted, perverse, defeated and
inhuman. It passed quickly for they had left her no time or place for
pity. When she thought of Nicky and Luigi, the old Jewish doctor, the
sad-eyed refugees and Filomena's little dog.... No, there was no time
or place for pity.

       *       *       *       *       *

Upstairs on the table lay the whip he had fashioned out of the curtain
cord. She stood for a moment looking down at it and then, smiling
suddenly she pushed it to the floor. After that she went to her own
room, took out the jewel case and two fur coats and changed into street
clothes and put on a hat. Then with the fur coats over her arm and
carrying the jewel case, she turned out all the lights one by one and
went down the stairs. At the bottom of the stairs, she turned once and
looked back and her heart cried out, "Nicky! Oh, Nicky!" Then opening
the door she stepped into the street.

She was going underground now, like the others. There was a new strength
inside her, a deep, rugged strength born of all Nicky had seen--the dead
children, old women along the road, the murdered priests, the driven,
tortured Jews, the starving and dying from one end of Europe to the
other. She knew now what it was--that thing they talked about, deep
inside you, that never died but burned steadily and forever....

The night was black but overhead the stars were shining.


THE END






[End of Until the Day Break, by Louis Bromfield]
