"I tell you, Macdougan, it was a great war.... Gosh, look at that girl in the garden there.... No, just coming out from under the arbor. Look at that throat ... Isn't she a pippin?" Fanshaw laughed. "You're incorrigible, Baldwin." "That's why I don't want to go home.... I'm afraid that if I go home they'll correct me." "I don't know ... They say things are very gay in the States ... Flappers and all that." "What's this about flappers?" came a cracked voice behind them. The voice broke into a wheezy laugh. "So this is how the publicity department does its work, is it?" "Just about," said Fanshaw, turning round to face a small greyfaced man with shaggy eyebrows. "Are you shutting up shop, Petrie?" "Yes, it's four minutes after five ... Look, does either of you men want to sail home from Palermo on the _Canada_ next week?" "Heavens, no, I'm staying on till they drive me away," shouted the Major. "I'd like to go," Fanshaw said quietly. "I've been away two years. It's time I went to see what the university has to say about my job." "Beginning to think of the girl I left behind me, are you?" asked the greyfaced man creakily. "Ha, ha! that's it." Fanshaw laughed loud and lifted his hand as if to slap his thigh. He found himself looking with constraint at his lifted hand and put it stiffly into his pocket. * * * * Le Capitaine Eustache de la Potinière had a red scar on his left cheek that stretched from the lower rim of his monocle to the tip of his distended nostril. As he sat beside Fanshaw in the joggling cab the medals clinked together on the breast of his tight-waisted khaki uniform. "The people on the street are looking at us as we drive by," he was saying. "They are telling each other: There go two of the bravest of our allies ... The Italians like that sort of thing: medals and people riding by in cabs ... Captain Macdougan, never forget that there is a brotherhood among the Latin peoples." Thereupon he sat up stiffly in the cab, blonde moustaches bristling, and clicked his hand up to a salute. An Italian officer in a long blue cloak saluted ferociously from the curb. Fanshaw found himself also stiffening to salute ... Funny feeling, the victorious allies riding about in cabs, saluting one another to a clink of medals. America had done all that, won the war, and he had done his bit himself; after all, relief work ... "Excuse me if I stop at this chemist's a moment," said the French captain. "There is something I must get before they close." And he poked the driver in the back with his cane, crying out: "Arretez ici, cré nom d'un chien!"