“Your national _fête_ is but a few days away,” she said. “It is made a national _fête_ for us also—this fourth day of July. All Paris—all France will make it a day the like of which has not been seen. I hear this on all sides.... It is a pleasure to me to have American officers in this house. I am envied. I speak only the truth. Therefore I hope messieurs the American officers will procure for me flags of their country to hang from their windows. It will be an honor. Will messieurs see to this matter?” “Yes, indeed,” said Bert. “I’ll get them for you to-day.” “Many thanks,” she said, and returned to her sweeping. “Nice old lady,” said Bert. “They’re all nice. Cordial lot—these French people.... I wonder how we would act in America if we had a couple of millions of foreign soldiers planted down on us. Mostly we’re disagreeable to strangers.” Ken did not answer. He was staring straight before him and thinking, thinking, thinking. His thoughts were intolerant thoughts, uncharitable, narrow. It was of thoughts such as his, persisted in until they become habitual, that are born the hanging of witches and the burning of martyrs.... They were not natural to him, and they filled him with discomfort and restlessness. He had a vague sense that he was being not altogether fair, and that he was condemning the whole because of a fault in a part. All France must not necessarily be evil because Andree had proved to be faithless, but he was declaring it to be evil. There was no good in it; there was no good in anything except the ruthless bigotry which had taken possession of him. There was no God but Puritanism, and Narrowness was its prophet.... They reached the Élysées Palace Hotel in which were their offices. He had not enjoyed his walk; there had been none of that pleasure which always before he derived from the great open stretches and wide boulevards of Paris. Beauty had ceased to exist or to signify.... He had a sensation of being shriveled up and dried—of lifelessness, and his thoughts seemed to rub against one another like sand-paper.... He saw it all as the unpleasant process of a moral awakening; it was not that; it was the disgruntlement of a youth over a love-affair gone awry.... “Hope it wears off during the day,” said Bert. Ken only grunted, and turned up the stairs.