They took to having their meals out, Brand insisting always that I should join them, and we drove out to the Bois and had tea there in the _Chalet des Iles_. It was a beautiful afternoon in September, and the leaves were just turning to crinkled gold and the lake was as blue as the cloudless sky above. Across the ferry came boatloads of young Frenchmen with their girls, singing, laughing, on this day of peace. Some of the men limped as they came up the steps from the landing-stage. One walked on crutches. Another had an empty sleeve. Under the trees they made love to their girls and fed them with rose-tinted ices. “These people are happy,” said Elsa. “They have forgotten already the agony of war. Victory is healing. In Germany there is only misery.” A little later she talked about the peace. “If only the _Entente_ had been more generous in victory our despair would not be so great. Many of us, great multitudes, believed that the price of defeat would be worth paying because Germany would take a place among free nations and share in the creation of a nobler world. Now we are crushed by the militarism of nations who have used our downfall to increase their own power. The light of a new ideal which rose above the darkness has gone out.” Brand took his wife’s hand and stroked it in his big paw. “All this is temporary and the work of the old men steeped in the old traditions which led to war. We must wait for them to die. Then out of the agony of the world’s boyhood will come the new revelation.” Elsa clasped her hands and leaned forward, looking across the lake in the Bois de Boulogne. “I would like to live long enough to be sure of that,” she said, eagerly. “If we have children, my husband, perhaps they will listen to our tales of the war as Franz and I read about wolves and goblins in our fairy-tales. The fearfulness of them was not frightening, for we knew we were safe.” “God grant that,” said Brand, gravely. “But I am afraid!” said Elsa. She looked again across the lake, so blue under the sky, so golden in sunlight; and shivered a little. “You are cold!” said Brand. He put his arms about her as they sat side by side, and her head drooped upon his shoulder and she closed her eyes like a tired child. They went to the opera that night and I refused their invitation to join them, protesting that they would never learn to know each other if a third person were always present. I slipped away to see Pierre Nesle, and found him at an office in a street somewhere off the Rue du Louvre, which was filled with young men whose faces I seemed to have seen before under blue shrapnel helmets above blue tunics. They were typewriting as though serving machine-guns, and folding up papers while they whistled the tune of “_Madelon_.” Pierre was in his shirtsleeves, dictating letters to a _poilu_ in civil clothes. “Considerable activity on the western front, eh?” he said when he saw me. “Tell me all about it, Pierre.”