And Maude ... she had advanced a trifle farther than Ken, perhaps. Ken had attracted her from the first, and, peculiarly enough, the rather open mystery of his affair with Andree had made him a more striking figure, if not more desirable. It had accented him.... She had never confessed to herself that she wanted to establish proprietary rights in Ken, but she did realize that he was of some importance to her. He was the one individual in Paris that she had been anxious to see. When she had been ordered to Paris her first thought had been that she would see Ken. These things were only indicative. They proved nothing to her.... But when she heard Ken baldly admit that he loved Andree she was close to proof. Undoubtedly it had been a shock and an unpleasant shock. Ken was more important to her than she had supposed. She was glad that the waiter appeared at that moment with the _viande_, for it gave her an excuse for silence and attention to her plate. She wondered if this feeling were jealousy.... Then she repeated to herself, “He loves this girl,” and refused to believe it, and then was doubtful, and then was afraid.... Other aspects of the affair did not present themselves to her then—only the fact that this man, who might have been, whom she wanted to be, something to her, was in love with another woman, an alien, a Frenchwoman. Then she asserted to herself, “It’s only an affair....” There was some comfort and promise in this. She looked up suddenly. “What are you going to do, Ken?” she asked. “Are you going to marry her?” He stammered, hesitated. This was very disquieting. She had no right to ask such a question. “I—I’ve never thought about marriage—in connection with Andree,” he said. He was almost honest in his statement. They two had been living in the present, had eaten of the lotus, and the future was only a vague time that might have to be faced when it arrived. He had been living in a world which was not a world of reality. It had been a species of imaginary world into which practical matters like marriage do not obtrude. “You don’t think of—of settling in France? I hear some of the men say they want to.” “No.” He was certain of that. America was his home, and the homing instinct was strong in him. He was a citizen of the United States, and it seemed unnatural and impossible for him to give up that citizenship. To do so appeared to him to be in the same category as divorcing a wife, a thing which seemed incredible to him. But to leave America permanently, to become a citizen of some other country, seemed more impossible than divorce. It was simply an act so absurd as to be beyond consideration. This was not patriotism, but a habit of mind. He was an American, and it was a natural impossibility to become anything else—that was it. “Then, if you married her, you would take her home?”