Big things were in the wind. Everyone there in Paris had the spirit of victory now. No more pessimism. No more kicks and complaints and passing the buck. Allied hopes were running strong at last and it looked as if the Germans were on the run. The Allied armies were driving ahead relentlessly from the Rhine to the sea. It was just as if the proverbially slow grinding mills of the gods were at last beginning to grind into the promised and inevitable dust the selfish ambitions of that predatory Prussian gang.... All about us was activity and renewed enthusiasm. A new spirit seemed to permeate the atmosphere of the French capital, and even the General was moved to comment upon it. “It looks as if the fireworks would end without our getting even a glimpse of them!” he said regretfully. “God knows I want the business over, but I’m going to get up there where the action is just once, for at least one glimpse, if I die in the attempt!” I didn’t know what we could be doing up there, but I was just as curious to see it at first-hand as the General was. It wouldn’t make me mad if he managed to go up.... Which reminded me that Leon was up there somewhere. I hadn’t heard from him. Didn’t know where he was. Wouldn’t know if he were dead. If anything happened to him, I’d be in a beautiful mess, to be sure! Yet, somehow, for some unaccountable reason, I just couldn’t picture Leon getting himself killed. I couldn’t imagine him in any field of danger, regardless of the great change that had come over him. My memory of the old Leon was too keen to permit me to worry much about him throwing his life away. So I wasn’t reading the casualty lists very anxiously. I did wonder sometimes if he was in danger and if he’d found it possible to obey the admonition that was the motif of that marching song he so hated: I mean the one about “Keep Your Britches Dry.” I’d ceased to worry about him, though. What I wanted now was to get married—and how! The Captain was a changed man: honestly, I hardly knew him, he was so different. No more wild parties. No more women. No more anything, but me. He had managed to get the soldier part out of his head and now he thought of me only as a girl. He called me Canwick when Ben or anyone else was around, but the minute we were alone it was “Leona” this and “Leona” that. If he had called me Canwick or Sergeant then, I’d have passed out from the shock: I mean, if nobody was around. We sure were a funny Damon-Pythias combination, and I’ll bet there was more than one man in this man’s army making dirty cracks about us behind our backs.