“Merci, merci, m’sieur.” I laughed at him as I ran beneath the sign and into the café. Then I stopped, for there behind the bar was Lisa herself: a little older looking, fatter and perhaps harder faced, but I knew her at once. I started to yell across the room to her, but noticed that there were a few French and American soldiers at the tables, so I walked smilingly up to the bar. I stopped in front of her and waited for her to say something. But she just stared at me, as if I were any other soldier wanting a drink. “Lisa,” I cried out finally. “Don’t you know me?” Apparently she didn’t. She had seen too many American soldiers to take much stock in any of them. I removed my cap and leaned across the bar. “Lisa, don’t you remember Leon Canwick?” Her eyes gleamed at that and she smiled, but you could see that she couldn’t believe me, coming upon her so unexpectedly. Finally her grin broadened and she said, “C’est impossible! Mon petit diable! Leon! Non, non....” But a good survey seemed to persuade her, for she led me then, amid a continual stream of happy chattering, into a back room which opened off the main room at the end of the little bar. Then she looked me over again, as if she couldn’t possibly believe what she was seeing. “Non ... non ... impossible!” I laughed and told her that she was right. “It is not Leon at all.” This was too much for her. She had to sit down—while she grumbled and gave out little explosive phrases of disparagement of these foolish Americans who play tricks on hard-working people. She spluttered and fussed and stared at me until I added, “This is Leona Canwick.” Then she just stared open-mouthed at me as if I were some kind of specter. “What foolishness!” she finally managed to exclaim. “This is more worse yet! You joke: you are Leon!... You should not joke an old woman, M’sieur Leon.” “But I’m not Leon,” I insisted. “I am Leona.” Well, she refused to be convinced. We argued and I laughed until the tears came in my eyes. I’d never had so much real fun since I’d been in the army. She was just too funny, running out to wait on her customers and coming back to declare again and again that she had no time for any jokes. When I was too weak from laughter to argue further, I proved to her my identity in the only way in which it could be proved. She was too dumfounded to speak, so while she sat silently gaping at me, I tried to explain how I had come here. Finally she understood and believed me. Not until then did she really welcome me, with an abundance of hugs and kisses and much jolly laughter. We talked over the happy days at St. Malo and I told her about Leon and Aunt Elinor. Altogether, I must have spent an hour there, with her running in and out from the bar to entertain me.