“Just be here,” he repeated after her. “Just be here....” And in a flash as of lightning he saw what her just being here would mean to those men.... He saw what a lofty height they would set her upon, and how they would worship her beauty, and how they would delight in her every word.... It would be good for them, good for them as soldiers and good for them as men!... What a war it was that produced this!... “Look!” she said, and laughed aloud. Kendall turned. The doorway was closed by a rapidly augmenting crowd of boys in khaki, curious, eager, delighted, grinning. “How do you do?” Maude said, with perfect calm. She walked toward them and extended her hand, which boy after boy seized bashfully. “I’m Miss Knox—and if you ever expect to get any hot chocolate, somebody’s got to put up the stove. It isn’t much of a stove.” “Say, miss,” blurted out a sergeant, “if you’ll—er—git out of here a spell we’ll fix things up.... Say, was you calc’latin’ on stayin’?” “I’m a permanent improvement,” she said. From that instant Kendall had no doubts, conjured up no violated proprieties. Maude Knox was _right_ to be there; there was no other spot in the world where it was so right for her to be.... “I’ll clear out,” she said, and, pausing as she passed through the door, “I could use some sort of a counter....” “You bet, miss.” “There,” said Maude to Kendall, presently. “I see,” he said, soberly. “I’m seeing lots of things.” “That weren’t visible in Detroit,” she added for him. Then, after a pause, “And so am I.... There’s something in the air—here—in Paris—wherever one goes in this country. It _gets_ you.... I could do things. Yes, I could.... You have a feeling that nothing you do as an individual counts—nothing matters. Everything we’ve ever been used to seems so far away and insignificant. Don’t you feel that way?” “Yes.” “As if you could be very good or very, very bad—and it wouldn’t make a cent’s worth of difference to anybody?” “Yes.” “Other girls are feeling it. I think they are all feeling it. There are plenty of signs.... _C’est la guerre._ I suppose that’s it.... No, it can’t be explained by a phrase of the streets; it’s deeper than that.... With one half of the world trying to slaughter the other half.... Every little while I have a feeling that right and wrong have grown to be too big to apply to individuals—they’re for _nations_. Does that express what I mean? And then I’ve thought more than once that this is the end of the world—the end of the old world and the starting-place of a new one.... Temporarily we’re without a set of rules because the old ones won’t do any more, and we’ve got to build up an altogether new code.” “I’ve felt something like that, but I didn’t have a philosopher for a father, so I didn’t know just what I was feeling or how to say it.”