“Oh, very much.... We shall be very happy, monsieur, in this America of the North. I am too little to be married now, is it not? But it will not be long.... My grandmother says I grow very fast.” “I have seen it myself.” She sighed. “I am glad. I had fear that you might grow tired of waiting....” “I would wait for you forever, _mignonne_.” Again she smiled. “I shall sing for monsieur. One should stand up to sing ... but grandmother says I must not stand up to-day.” “Will it harm her?” Kendall asked, quickly, of the nurse. “Nothing will harm her,” she repeated. “Then sing, dear ... sing ‘Madelon.’” The birdlike lips opened and the song came forth, faint as a morning breeze, that song of the little barmaid who stands to the _poilu_ for the wife or sweetheart at home, the little barmaid whom he kisses in his loneliness, and in kissing her feels that he is touching the lips of one far away.... It was a song which, to Middle-Western ears, sounded strangely on the lips of a dying child, but it did not offend Kendall.... It sprang from the soul of France. There ceased to be any semblance of an air to the song; it became a faint whisper, halting, coming now a word at a time. Arlette’s eyes were closed.... Now her lips moved, but there was no sound.... Presently the lips ceased to move.... Kendall turned to the nurse, who nodded. He arose suddenly, looked down upon the child and then rushed from the room ... and as he traversed the corridor he found himself repeating again and again: “With a song on her lips.... With a song on her lips....” For two months experiences had been jostling one another to enter Kendall Ware’s life. It seemed as if there was a conspiracy among events to modify him, to change the fiber of him, and to break down the structure that had been himself when he landed in France. As compared with these past sixty days the previous ten thousand days of his life had been colorless and without life.... It had required twenty-seven years of personal existence and more than one generation of predecessors to make him what he was—and now a mere fraction of time, a handful of minutes, were striving to undo all that had been accomplished and to create a new being. The question to be answered was: Can the present overcome the past? Can events master the fiber growth of heredity? It seemed an experiment to determine if individuality is a fixed quantity or if it is subject to revolution.... So far it might be asserted that Kendall had been modified—but no more.