After they had gone, I stole away and left Angele alone with him. They sat in the open doorway, her cheek against his arm, her hand in his. She was not sad, there was a happy, busy note in her voice as she chatted to him. Before he climbed the stairs to bed, he sought me. I was smoking and thinking, on a little bench beneath the trees. Louis sat beside me and laid his hand on my knee. "Well, my friend, I leave before you. For a little while we part, is it not so?--then, God willing, we meet again." I tried to tell him what my visit had meant to me. What a place France and her people would for ever more occupy in my heart. All those things I struggled to say, but when it comes to expressing that which lies close to our heart, I find we are a halting, tongue-tied nation! Then I spoke of Angele. I wanted him to know before he left how much I cared for her. I was afraid he might be displeased, but, instead, he pumped my hand with joy. "This is American fashion," he laughed, then he leaned over and kissed my cheek. "Since you love a French girl you will have to get used to her brother's greeting," he said. I told him I had not spoken to Angele. I had not dared to. I could not hope she would care for me. "But you must speak to-night, before I go," he shouted. "Let me prepare her first. Oh, but this is of a great happiness to me!" And before I could stop him, he hurried away. After a long silence, while my heart thumped against my ribs and I felt myself growing hot and cold by turns, his voice sounded through the darkness. "Come here, my friend, and see what you can do to make this child change her mind." I ran toward him. I saw the flash of Angele's white gown, but when I reached her side, Louis had gone. She awaited me. Somehow she looked like the poppies at twilight, when their petals are folded. . . . We were there together so long, that at length Louis' voice broke in upon us and startled us. He shouted that he must leave in six hours--that a brother returning to the Front had some claim upon his sister's time. Angele flew to his side, begging him to forgive her selfishness, but he pinched her cheek and laughed at her, brimming over with happiness at the romance for which he claimed he was responsible. "But you must not take her away until after the war," he pleaded. "I want her here to greet me when I come home. I am a selfish brute, I know, but I would have nothing to return to if my little sister were gone." I promised him. I would have promised anything that night I was so happy. It did not seem, as I stood in that quiet, leafy garden, with Angele's hand in mine, that there could be pain and anguish in the world--that cannons could be roaring and star shells bursting less than a hundred miles away! Louis left at daybreak. We drove to Paris with him and to the station. It was a gay morning with a red sun rolling up from the east.