“All France needs,” said Bert, quoting some epigrammatic American friend, “is open plumbing to make it the greatest country in the world.” On the broad stairs of that huge hotel which the United States Expeditionary Force has taken over for its headquarters in Paris Bert stopped suddenly. “I can’t help you move in to-night,” he said. “But there isn’t much to do. Get a taxi to take up our boxes and bedding-rolls. I’m going to be busy.” “So am I,” said Kendall, Andree recalled to his mind after she had been absent from it since morning. “Huh!” grunted Bert. “Same one you were with last night?” “Go chase yourself,” said Kendall. “If it is,” Bert continued, “we might make a mixed quartet of it. Dinner and then _promenade avec_. Eh?” Kendall hesitated. It sounded pleasant, but he was not sure Andree would like it—and he was not sure about the sort of girl Bert might have chosen for a companion. Andree, he had made up his mind, was not the sort of girl who would take up with anybody. “Nothing doing,” he said. “Why?” “Who’s your girl?” Kendall countered. “Girl I’ve known quite awhile. Cashier in a shop.... Say, what you getting at, anyhow? Madeleine’s a darn nice girl, I’m here to tell the world. Looks it, too. I’d just as soon take her over to the Y. M. C. A. and introduce her to the head guy—and she’d get past, too.” “I don’t know.... I don’t know Andree very well. She might not like it.” “Rats!” Bert said, scornfully. “They might as well get acquainted one time as another.” Kendall wasn’t so sure of that. He saw no reason why the girls should ever get acquainted. In short, he didn’t follow Bert’s reasoning nor comprehend the point he made. “We can move in to-morrow,” Kendall said, and there was an end of it. It was a long afternoon for Capt. Kendall Ware, but at last he found his day’s work at an end and himself in the street. He went into a café for a hurried meal and then took the Metro to the Place St.-Michel, arriving there a good half-hour ahead of the appointed time. He took a seat at a sidewalk table in a café from which he could watch the fountain, and ordered a glass of coffee into which he squirted _saccharin_ from a bottle with a nozzle like those used by American barbers to put bay rum on one’s hair. At ten minutes past seven he was fearful Andree did not mean to keep her appointment. At a quarter past he was sure of it.... And she was not due until half past. He was to learn that she was one of those persons who are never ahead of time, who never hurry, but who may always be depended upon to arrive eventually.