of danse macabre on the deck; rolling his trouser leg high above his
artificial shin, he walked, leaped, danced, and ran. "Can you beat
that?" he asked with pardonable pride. "Think what these will mean to
the soldiers." Meanwhile, with slow care, the Virginian explained the
ingenious mechanism.

Strange tatters of conversation rose from the deck. "Poor child, she
lost her husband at the beginning of the war"--"Third shipment of
hosses"--"I was talking with a feller from the Atlas Steel
Company"--"Edouard is somewhere near Arras"; there were disputes about
the outcome of the war, and arguments over profits. A voluble French
woman, whose husband was a pastry cook in a New York hotel before he
joined the forces, told me how she had wandered from one war movie to
another hoping to catch a glimpse of her husband, and had finally seen
"some one who resembled him strongly" on the screen in Harlem. She had a
picture of him, a thin, moody fellow with great, saber whiskers like
Rostand's and a high, narrow forehead curving in on the sides between
the eyebrows and the hair. "He is a Chasseur alpin," she said with a
good deal of pride, "and they are holding his place for him at the
hotel. He was wounded last month in the shoulder. I am going to the
hospital at Lyons to see him." The day's sunset was at its end, and a
great mass of black clouds surged over the eastern horizon, turning the
seas ahead to a leaden somberness that lowered in menacing contrast to
the golden streaks of dying day. The air freshened, salvos of rain fell
hissing into the dark waters, and violet cords of lightning leaped
between sea and sky. Echoing thunder rolled long through unseen abysses.
In the deserted salon I found the young Frenchman with the star-shaped
scar reading an old copy of "La Revue." He had been an officer in the
Chasseurs-à-pied until a fearful wound had incapacitated him for further
service, and had then joined the staff of a great, conservative Parisian