"No, _now_," she insisted, with a little frown of displeasure. "I won't have you thinking meanly of Jimmy! It's too absurdly unfair! I'm ashamed of you, Ambo." How she idealized him! How she had always idealized that normal, likable, essentially commonplace Irish boy--pouring out, wasting for him treasures of unswerving loyalty! It was damnable. But these things were the final mysteries of life, these instinctive bonds, yielding no clue to reason. One could only accept them, bitterly, with a curse or a groan withheld. Accept them--since one must.... "Well, dear," broke from me with a touch, almost, of impatience, "I confess I'm more interested in your health than in Jimmy's psychology! But I see you won't sleep a wink if you don't tell me!" "I've never known you to be so horrid," she said faintly, all the weariness of body and soul returning upon her for a moment, till she fought it back. She did so, to my amazement, with an entirely unexpected chuckle, a true sharp, clear Birch Street gleam. "You don't deserve it, Ambo, but I'm going to make you smile a little, whether you feel like it or not! The reason Jimmy didn't tell us was because--after Jeanne-Marie got well--he spent weeks trying to persuade her that a marriage made exclusively for eternity oughtn't to be considered binding on this side! She had been entirely certain, he kept pointing out to her, that she ought not to marry him in this world, and she had only done so when she thought she was being taken from it." Susan chuckled again. "Can't you hear him, Ambo--and her? Jimmy, feeling he had won something precious through an unfair advantage and so refusing his good fortune--or trying to; and practical Jeanne-Marie simply nonplussed by his sudden lack of all common sense! Besides which, wasn't marriage a sacrament, and wasn't M'sieu Jee-mee a good Catholic? Was he going back on his faith--or asking her to trifle with hers? And, anyway, they were married--that was the end of it! And of course, Ambo, it was--really. There! I knew sooner or later you'd have to smile!" "Did he give in gracefully?" I asked. "Oh, things soon settled themselves, I imagine, when Jeanne-Marie was well enough to leave. Naturally, she had to as soon as she could. A soldier's wife can't live with him at the Front, you know--even to keep house for his _esquadrille_. She's living here now, in Paris, with a distant cousin, an old lady who runs a tiny shop near St.-Sulpice--sells pious pamphlets and pink-and-blue plaster Virgins--you know the sort of thing, Ambo. You must call on her at once in due form, dear. You must. I'm so eager to--when I can." She paused on a breath, then added slowly, her eyes closing, "The baby's expected in February--Jimmy's baby." The look on her face had puzzled me as I left her; a look of quiet happiness, I must have said--if I had not known. And my vision at Evian----?