"If I had been younger," he went on, "I should have fought. My son would have fought. But as it is we can make toys--and we shall say to the Prussians across the sea, 'You have killed our mother--your people are no longer our people, nor your God our God.'" Ulrich took Emily home. She carried with her a Noah's Ark, and a precious pot of cyclamen. She had chosen the cyclamen out of all the rest. "It is such a cheerful thing blooming in my shop." "There are other cheerful things in your shop," he told her. As she met his smiling eyes, she smiled back, "Do you mean that I am a cheerful thing?" "A rose, mein Fraeulein, when your cheeks are red, like this." Emily, alone at last in the Toy Shop, took off her hat in front of the mirror and saw her red cheeks. She set the cyclamen safely in a warm corner. The four elephants with their fragrant freight of violets made an exotic and incongruous addition to the Christmas scene in the window. Bruce McKenzie, coming in, asked, "Where did you get them?" "The elephants? Ulrich Stoelle brought them. Do you know him?" "Yes. But I didn't know that you did." "His father makes toys. I lent him my white elephant, and he made these--" She spoke without self-consciousness, and McKenzie's mind was on his own matters, so they swept away from the subject of Ulrich Stoelle. "Emily," Bruce said, "I have my orders. Tomorrow at twelve I must leave for France." She gazed at him stupidly. "Tomorrow--?" "Yes." "But--Jean--?" "I haven't told her. I don't know how to tell her." "You won't be here for the wedding--?" "No." "It will break her heart." "You needn't tell me that. Don't I know it?" His voice was sharp with the tension of suppressed emotion. He dropped into a chair, then jumped up and placed one for her. "Sit down, sit down," he said, "and don't make me forget my manners. Somehow this thing gets me as nothing has ever gotten me before. It isn't that I mind going--I mind hurting--Jean--" "You have always hated to hurt people," Emily said. "In some ways it's a sign of weakness." "Don't scold," he begged. "I know I'm not much of a fellow, but you'll be sorry for me a little, won't you, Emily?" She did not melt as he had expected to the appeal in his voice. "The thing we have to think of now," she said, "is not being sorry for you, but how we can get Jean married before twelve o'clock tomorrow--" "Oh, of course we can't." "Of course we can--if we make up our minds to it, and it's the only thing to do." "But nothing is ready." "Things can be made ready. They can stand up in the rose drawing-room at ten, and you can give her away." He looked at her admiringly. "I didn't know that you had so much initiative." She might have told him that it was a quality on which she rather prided herself, but that hitherto it had not seemed to attract him. "There are several things as yet undiscovered by you," she remarked casually, as she locked up her toys.