She did not reply for a moment, for his announcement brought her also face to face with a climax in her life. _He was going home!_ The _status quo_ which had been endurable, if difficult, was to be altered. While he was there and she was there their relations might go on as they were, somewhat anomalous, but requiring no immediate decisions or arrangements. They could drift and allow events to take care of themselves.... But now he was going, and she realized that she did not want him to go. She realized what she had repressed and concealed was now insisting upon recognition—that Kendall Ware was very important to her, that his presence was very important to her, and that for a time to which she was unable to set an exact limit she had been hoping that their relations would be determined in a manner satisfactory to herself.... She was bolder in facing the fact than Kendall had been. She faced it promptly and adjusted herself to it ... and the fact was that she loved him.... “Where shall we lunch?” she asked, and it would have been impossible to tell from her tone that in the brief pause that came before her question she had withstood a shock and mastered a crisis. “The Oasis is quiet and we can talk.” “But they’re so slow!” “That doesn’t matter to-day. There’s—there’s so much to say.” “To me?” He nodded. “I’ve got to talk it out with you ... because you are the only person who can do any good. The same things are behind both of us. We know the same sort of people back home.... Don’t you see?” “I think so. But, remember, I’ve been here as long as you have. I’m not the same. I’ve seen things, too.... I can’t judge anything the way I would have judged it back home. I’ll never be able to again.” They walked to the rue St.-Honoré and presently turned up the rue Boissy-d’Anglas to the quaint, quiet little English tea-room with its soft lights and absurdly carved fireplace and decorations. That fireplace, Bert had once said, looked like the life-work of a lazy man who loved to whittle. There they found a table—there were but three or four—and gave their orders to the thin, very serious Englishwoman who was the only member of the staff of the place who ever became visible. Nobody knew if she were the proprietress or merely a waitress—and nobody cared especially. “It’s rotten luck,” said Ken. “Yes.” “I’ll be stuck at some desk job in Washington. It wouldn’t have been so bad if they had given me a few months at the front—” “Or if they never had sent you to France at all.” He looked at her a moment, then shook his head. “No. I wouldn’t have missed these months over here. I’ve really lived; really appreciated being alive. No.... Whatever happens now, nobody can take this away from me....” “It has been wonderful,” she agreed. “Just to see it—Paris, the people, the war going on—would be wonderful.... But I believe I’ve done more than merely _see_. I’ve _felt_.” “You’ve seen and felt, Ken, but how much has it changed you?”