“Laurier, the warrior!” he continued in a voice so sarcastic and strange that it seemed to be coming from somebody else. . . .  “Poor creature!”

She hesitated in her response, not wishing to exasperate Desnoyers any further.  But the truth was uppermost in her mind, and she said simply: 

“No . . . no, he didn’t look so bad.  Quite the contrary.  Perhaps it was the uniform, perhaps it was his sadness at going away alone, completely alone, without a single hand to clasp his.  I didn’t recognize him at first.  Seeing my brother, he started toward us; but then when he saw me, he went his own way . . .  Poor man!  I feel sorry for him!”

Her feminine instinct must have told her that she was talking too much, and she cut her chatter suddenly short.  The same instinct warned her that Julio’s countenance was growing more and more saturnine, and his mouth taking a very bitter curve.  She wanted to console him and added: 

“What luck that you are a foreigner and will not have to go to the war!  How horrible it would be for me to lose you!” . . .

She said it sincerely. . . .  A few moments before she had been envying men, admiring the gallantry with which they were exposing their lives, and now she was trembling before the idea that her lover might have been one of these.

This did not please his amorous egoism—­to be placed apart from the rest as a delicate and fragile being only fit for feminine adoration.  He preferred to inspire the envy that she had felt on beholding her brother decked out in his warlike accoutrement.  It seemed to him that something was coming between him and Marguerite that would never disappear, that would go on expanding, repelling them in contrary directions . . . far . . . very far, even to the point of not recognizing each other when their glances met.

He continued to be conscious of this impalpable obstacle in their following interviews.  Marguerite was extremely affectionate in her speech, and would look at him with moist and loving eyes.  But her caressing hands appeared more like those of a mother than a lover, and her tenderness was accompanied with a certain disinterestedness and extraordinary modesty.  She seemed to prefer remaining obstinately in the studio, declining to go into the other rooms.

“We are so comfortable here. . . .  I would rather not. . . .  It is not worth while.  I should feel remorse afterwards. . . .  Why think of such things in these anxious times!”

The world around her seemed saturated with love, but it was a new love—­a love for the man who is suffering, desire for abnegation, for sacrifice.  This love called forth visions of white caps, of tremulous hands healing shell-riddled and bleeding flesh.

Every advance on Julio’s part but aroused in Marguerite a vehement and modest protest as though they were meeting for the first time.

“It is impossible,” she protested.  “I keep thinking of my brother, and of so many that I know that may be dying at this very minute.”