"Good Lord, Gratia! Where in the world did you come from!" The girl put both her pretty hands out. "I _can_ shake hands with you, David, now that you're in civies. I don't like that green and yellow ribbon in your buttonhole though. I'm a pacifist, you know, and I've got to tell you where I stand before we can talk." "All right," Lindsay accepted cheerfully. "You're a darn pretty pacifist, Gratia. Of course you don't know what you're talking about. But as long as you talk about anything, I'll listen." Gratia had cut her hair short, but she had introduced a style of hair-dressing new even to Greenwich Village. She combed its sleek abundance straight back to her neck and left it. There, following its own devices, it turned up in the most delightful curls. Her large dark eyes were set in a skin of pale amber and in the midst of a piquant assortment of features. She had a way, just before speaking, of lifting her sleek head high on the top of her slim neck. And then she was like a beautiful young seal emerging from the water. "Oh, I'm perfectly serious!" the pretty pacifist asserted. "You know I never have believed in war. Dora says you've come back loving the French. How you can admire a people who--" After a while she paused to take breath and then, with the characteristic lift of her head, "Belgians--the Congo--Algeciras--Morocco-- And as for England--Ireland--India--Egypt--" The glib, conventional patter dripped readily from her soft lips. Lindsay listened, apparently entranced. "Gratia, you're too pretty for any use!" he asserted indulgently after the next pause in which she dove under the water and reappeared sleek-haired as ever. "I'm not going to argue with you. I'm going to tell you one thing that will be a shock to you, though. The French don't like war either. And the reason is--now prepare yourself--they know more about the horrors of war in _one_ minute than you will in a thousand years. What are you doing with yourself, these days, Gratia?" "Oh, running a shop; making smocks, working on batiks, painting, writing _vers libre_," Gratia admitted. "I mean, what do you do with your leisure?" Lindsay demanded, after prolonged meditation. Gratia ignored this persiflage. "I'm thinking of taking up psycho-analysis," she confided. "It interests me enormously. I think I ought to do rather well with it." "I offer myself as your first victim. Why, you'll make millions! Every man in New York will want to be psyched. What's the news, Gratia? I'm dying for gossip." Gratia did her best to feed this appetite. Declining dinner, she sipped the tall cool green drink which Lindsay ordered for her. She poured out a flood of talk; but all the time her eyes were flitting from table to table. And often she interrupted her comments on the absent with remarks about the present.