Long, slanting shadows from the sinking sun were streaking the wall of the whitewashed room with slender, forklike fingers. Jacques and the three men were knotted in talk beside the ruddy fire glow. Claire René braced herself with a sharp sigh. No soldier ever went into battle with a more self-made courage than hers. Unseen, unnoticed, noiselessly she made her pilgrimage across the room. In the dark closet, under the stairs, she reached for the wreaths. With quick, short breath she gathered them in her arms. One moment she lowered her head while her lips touched the faded crackling flowers. The compact was sealed; her sacrifice was ready. In that attitude she passed swiftly within the circle about the fireplace. She came like a spirit of Peace with the wreaths in her arms. Over and above the serenity in her face there dawned a joyous expectancy. Yes; she could trust les Américains! On each reverent, bowed head she placed her wreath; and when she had finished, without tremor in her voice she said: "My brothers!" FOOTNOTE: [17] Copyright, 1919, by The Curtis Publishing Company. Copyright, 1921, by Ethel Dodd Thomas. THE ROMAN BATH[18] #By# JOHN T. WHEELWRIGHT From _Scribner's Magazine_ Ralph Tuckerman had landed that day in Liverpool after a stormy winter voyage, his first across the Atlantic. The ship had slowly come up the Mersey in a fog, and the special boat train had dashed through the same dense atmosphere to the home of fogs and soot, London, and in the whole journey to his hotel the young American had seen nothing of the mother country but telegraph-poles scudding through opacity on the railway journey, and in London the loom of buildings and lights dimly red through the fog. Although he had no acquaintances among the millions of dwellers in the city, he did not feel lonely in the comfortable coffee room of his hotel, where a cannel-coal fire flickered. The air of the room was surcharged with pungent fumes of the coal smoke which had blackened the walls and ceilings, and had converted the once brilliant red of a Turkey carpet into a dingy brown, but the young American would not have had the air less laden with the characteristic odor of London, or the carpet and walls less dingy if he had had a magician's wand. The concept of a hotel in his native city of Chicago was a steel structure of many stories, brilliantly lighted and decorated, supplied with a lightning elevator service running through the polished marble halls which swooned in a tropical atmosphere of steam heat emanating from silvered radiators. So it was no wonder that the young man felt more at home in this inn in old London than he had ever felt in an American caravansary.