A summer month of one of the previous years. She saw again the last days in her suburban home, just outside of Paris, the sloping garden and the vista through the leafage over far-distant hills, splendid and ethereal. Every one was getting ready for the summer holiday; some of the men were going to the training-camps. What a world of talk! What discussions with friends who had been invited to the country for an afternoon of farewells! They were a world by themselves--young, alert, fond of pleasure, and of all things beautiful and adventurous, care-free, and charming. The oldest of the men was M. de la Villaumer, whose hair was beginning to turn gray, but who enjoyed himself only among kindly faces. Several were artists--musicians or painters. They loved the beautiful things of life and that life of the intellect which easily adapts itself to the beautiful. Love was king in their circle, a love rather kindly than passionate, whose ravages they had learned how to conceal. Yet many admirable couples were found among them. Odette Jacquelin and her husband were always cited as the most enamoured pair of the group. After them came Clotilde and George Avvogade, who cooed like turtle-doves, but were lovers only "for a curtain-raiser," it used to be said. Rose Misson, whom they called "good Rose," Simone de Prans, Germaine Le Gault, were all women who adored their husbands and asked for no other happiness, having no idea of anything else than happiness. Why, they used to ask, was Jean Jacquelin an officer of reserves? What was the sense of that biennial war-game for a chap who had nothing military in him, whether by tradition, education, or belief? The old father had made a point of it, because he held to the ineradicable prejudices of his time. As for Jean himself, he made light of it; he was a young fellow well on the way to make a fortune and give Odette all the luxuries that in their circle were considered not superfluities, but things indispensable. It never occurred to him that any other purpose could seriously occupy a man's mind. Without entering into the thousand and one interests of certain of his more cultivated friends who were given to reasoning and theorizing, he simply found that the uniform of a sublieutenant was becoming, and that, when he was obliged to wear it, it was simply an opportunity to make himself fit; physical fatigue was nothing to him; he might be inclined to think the Grand Manœuvres a superannuated exercise; he might even smile at them and amuse himself by enumerating the blunders of such and such a commander; but something always kept him from ever making light of the thing itself. For that matter, being a reserve officer was perhaps one of the many whims of society, but it was what is called decent; in certain circles it was done. So he let them talk and harangue, opposing no arguments but continuing to be a reserve officer, carrying through his period of instruction when he was called.