So I roused Ben as best I could—which was not very much. He didn’t pay any attention to my shaking and pulling and commanding. But when the Madame began slapping his face and jerking his head back and forth, he opened his eyes and began to come to life. The Madame dropped out of sight and I had no difficulty in getting him out of the place. We walked around for ten or fifteen minutes, Ben’s head clearing a little with every step, and I finally decided that he was presentable again, so we returned to the apartment ... and found the door locked, and there was no answer to my knocking. Ben was all for breaking down the heavy old door, but I dissuaded him and finally got him out and into a rat-trap of a taxi that must have been one of those that helped save Paris a couple of years before. As we bounced away toward the barracks, I asked him what had happened and “Are you satisfied now?” For answer he called me seven different kinds of an unmentionable progeny. So I asked him again, and added, “What became of the major and where did the maid go to?” “The maple leaf only stayed a few minutes, him an’ his broad.” “And the maid?” “She came in and said she was supposed to meet some guy named Keith an’ the boss told her to bring us some champagne before she went.” “And then what happened?” For an innocent girl my curiosity about such situations was unspeakable. “Why—she gave me a big goblet o’ champagne an’ I downs it at a gulp.... It tasted damn funny but she had me all worked up so I couldn’t think straight anyway, the little b——!” “What you kicking about?” I asked in surprise. It didn’t seem to me that a man should talk that way about a woman after she’s been good to him. “Kickin’ about?” he demanded. “An’ you bouncin’ in about two minutes later! That’s what I’m kickin’ about!” “You’re crazy,” I told him. “I stayed away almost an hour. What were you doing all that time?” “Oh—fer Christ’s sake!” He was mad—at me, I assumed, but I was wrong. “What a dumb b—— I am!” So I didn’t know yet what had happened. —12— This affair was ended, in so far as I was concerned. The General came out of the hospital finally, full of pep and ambition and said he wanted to leave Paris next morning. “We’ve had a good rest and now we’ll get back to the business of winning the war,” he told me. “There’s much to do right around here, but I want to get away from the city for a while, so we’ll drop down to Le Mans and Orléans and then come back here in a week or so.”