The bell interrupted his moral reflections and he hurried to the door with that thrill of anticipation which Andree’s arrival always caused.... There she stood, very straight and still and grave, just as he knew she would be. She raised her eyes to his exactly as he knew she would raise them, and smiled appealingly. He drew her inside, into his arms. “I’ve been needing you, _mignonne_,” he said. “Everything goes wrong when you’re not with me.” “I am here,” she said, brightly. “Behol’! all is now well. I shall let nothing trouble you.” “Do you love me?” “Yes.... And you?” “You are very beautiful.” “That is well.... No, I am not beautiful, but it is well you theenk it is so. I am happy.” She regarded him solicitously. “You are ver’ tired. Have you work’ _beaucoup_? It is not that you have an illness?” “No.... No. Everything is all right now that you are here. You are the only person who is _right_ in the whole world.” “Oh!... Oh!... I am ver’ wonderful! I do not know thees till I meet you. I theenk I am only a yo’ng girl, but behol’! I have ver’ suddenly become—how do you say?—The _dictionnaire_—queek. The _dictionnaire_!” Laughing gaily, she searched with ludicrous haste for the word and could not find it. “Oh, it is terrible! W’at I am I cannot say. I am something that ees not in the _dictionnaire_. To be a thing that is not in the _dictionnaire_ is mos’ grand and étonnant—astonishing. I shall to be ver’ vain.” Her eyes were dancing with an impish light. She seemed very young, a child, endowed with some magical quality which reassured him, dispelled the heaviness which rested on him. “Have Monsieur Bert and Mademoiselle Madeleine yet arrive’?” “They’re in the _salon_.” “Come. We shall see them—now.” Again that quaint gesture of poking downward at the floor with a slender finger. “Thees minute.” The girls shook hands formally and lapsed into an amazing splutter of French. Ken looked from one to the other, from Andree, tiny, fragile, dark, elfin, to Madeleine, tall, slender, fair of hair, always laughing. Madeleine seemed nothing but embodied laughter; Andree seemed to him now as she always seemed to him, a mystery, incomprehensible—a being come to him out of a land of wonders. “Bert is going away,” he said. “For how long?” “Three weeks.” “Oh, it ees a lifetime. Mademoiselle will be ver’ sad.” “She says not,” Ken said. “It is not possible. She will be mos’ sad.” “Not Madeleine,” said Bert. “She’s going to find another American officer to keep her happy while I’m gone.” “But she could not—_non, non!_ You do not theenk!” Madeleine laughed gaily. “What would you do if I went away for three weeks?” Ken asked. “You do not go!... It ees not true.” Her eyes grew big and her lips parted as she waited for his answer. “No, I’m not going any place.... But if I should go, what would you do?” “I should be ver’ _solitaire_. Ver’ often I should weep. And I should work ver’ hard at all times—to make the days go more fast.”