The news from the Russian front was his favorite, but obliged him to remain in suspense every time that he tried to find on the map the obscure names of the places where the admired Cossacks were exhibiting their wonderful exploits.

Meanwhile Julio was continuing the course of his own reflections.  Marguerite! . . .  She had come back at last, and yet each time seemed to be drifting further away from him. . . .

In the first days of the mobilization, he had haunted her neighborhood, trying to appease his longing by this illusory proximity.  Marguerite had written to him, urging patience.  How fortunate it was that he was a foreigner and would not have to endure the hardship of war!  Her brother, an officer in the artillery Reserves, was going at almost any minute.  Her mother, who made her home with this bachelor son, had kept an astonishing serenity up to the last minute, although she had wept much while the war was still but a possibility.  She herself had prepared the soldier’s outfit so that the small valise might contain all that was indispensable for campaign life.  But Marguerite had divined her poor mother’s secret struggles not to reveal her despair, in moist eyes and trembling hands.  It was impossible to leave her alone at such a time. . . .  Then had come the farewell.  “God be with you, my son!  Do your duty, but be prudent.”  Not a tear nor a sign of weakness.  All her family had advised her not to accompany her son to the railway station, so his sister had gone with him.  And upon returning home, Marguerite had found her mother rigid in her arm chair, with a set face, avoiding all mention of her son, speaking of the friends who also had sent their boys to the war, as if they only could comprehend her torture.  “Poor Mama!  I ought to be with her now more than ever. . . .  To-morrow, if I can, I shall come to see you.”

When at last she returned to the rue de la Pompe, her first care was to explain to Julio the conservatism of her tailored suit, the absence of jewels in the adornment of her person.  “The war, my dear!  Now it is the chic thing to adapt oneself to the depressing conditions, to be frugal and inconspicuous like soldiers.  Who knows what we may expect!” Her infatuation with dress still accompanied her in every moment of her life.

Julio noticed a persistent absent-mindedness about her.  It seemed as though her spirit, abandoning her body, was wandering to far-away places.  Her eyes were looking at him, but she seldom saw him.  She would speak very slowly, as though wishing to weigh every word, fearful of betraying some secret.  This spiritual alienation did not, however, prevent her slipping bodily along the smooth path of custom, although afterwards she would seem to feel a vague remorse.  “I wonder if it is right to do this! . . .  Is it not wrong to live like this when so many sorrows are falling on the world?” Julio hushed her scruples with: 

“But if we are going to marry as soon as possible! . . .  If we are already the same as husband and wife!”