The Armistice broke on the third week of this employment. The bureau became a negation of labour. Gurdy roamed contentedly about the feverish, foolish city with various friends--young officers, sergeant majors on agreeable posts. He was tall, still pallid from sunless convalescence. His uniform happened to fit a long, loosely moving body and he liked dancing. He equably observed male diversion with his dark blue eyes and was often diverted. This might be the collapse of known society, the beginning of a hygienic and hardworked future. This churning of illusions might bring something fresh. Men might turn to new programs of stupidity, exhausting the old. He danced and was courted. He wrote to Mark, choosing words: “There will be plays about this, I suppose. I do not think any one will believe it fifty years from now. It is an upheaval of cheap pleasure. I keep thinking how Carlson calls people hogs.” He hesitated, continued: “I do not know that there is an excuse for all of it. Some of the Americans make bigger hogs of themselves than is necessary.” Then he destroyed the letter. After all, Mark was your typical patriot. He took America seriously, the American soldier seriously, the American Red Cross had profited by his sentiment. There was no point in hurting Mark. Gurdy wrote a gay tale of driving through Paris in a vegetable cart with a drunken Australian colonel and went to dine at Luca’s. From Luca’s his party retired to the Opera Comique, stopped to drink champagne in the bar and stayed there until it wasn’t worth while to hear the last act. “And,” said a youth from San Francisco, “we can go to Ariana Joyce’s. She’s giving a party.” “But she’s dead,” Gurdy objected. “Damn healthy corpse! Come ahead and see if she’s dead!” They floated in a taxicab along Paris. The machine slipped from the lavender rush of some broad street up a slope and Gurdy stumbled into a brilliance of laughing people where his guide pushed him toward a green dais and hissed, “She won’t know you from Adam. Tell her you’re from Chicago.” Her rounded beauty had come to death under much fat. She lolled in a red chair waving a peacock fan. Gurdy’s friend kissed the arm she thrust out and told her, “You look awfully well, Miss Joyce.” The dancer nodded, beaming down at her painted feet in their sandals of blue leather. Through her nose she said, “Feelin’ fine,” then in throaty refinement, “Do get Choute Aurec to dance. She’s so difficult now she’s had a success. So very difficult--Rodin used to say--” Her empty and tired stare centred on Gurdy. With a vague dignity she asked, “Do I know you?” “Corporal Bernamer’s from Chicago,” the guide said. Miss Joyce planted a thumb under her chin and drawled, “De mon pays!” then her eyes rolled away. She reached for a silver cup on a table and forgot her guests. Looking back, Gurdy saw her famous head thrown back and, for a moment, comely as she drank.