He rose and looped back the heavy lace curtains from the windows which looked over the river.  But the snow was falling so fast that he could not see far into the dense, white cataract.  The stream was completely hidden, and so, of course, was the hospital camp beyond.  Yet through all the driving storm came a faint moan, a light pulsing of the air, which he knew to be the far throb of the great guns.

He turned impatiently away.  Why couldn’t they stop at such a time?  As for himself, he would think of Julie, and a very handsome, tanned young man looking into the glass over the dresser smiled, although it was not at his own reflection.  Then he bathed his face and hands, straightened out his hair with the small pocket comb and brush that he, like most other young officers, carried, and felt as if he had been made over.

He hung up his hat and heavy overcoat, and, resuming his place on the sofa, waited until Julie should announce her readiness.  But she took more than a half-hour.  He had not expected anything else.  Truly a girl in her position was entitled to at least an hour if she wanted it.  So he continued to wait with great patience.  Besides it was very comfortable there on the sofa, and the swish of the driving snow against the window-panes was soothing.  Now and then the low mutter of the guns came, but it did not disturb him.

“I’m ready if you are, Mr. John,” called a clear voice, and springing from the sofa he joined Julie in the hall.  She had smoothed her hair and her Red Cross dress, and the rest had restored all her brilliant color.  She was as calm, too, as if they were not alone under the cloud of war, and the hotel was full of real guests.  It was her courage as much as her beauty that appealed to John.  At no time in all the dangers through which they had gone had he seen her flinch.  He had heard much of the courage shown by the women in the great Civil War in his own country, and this maid of France was proving anew that a girl could be as brave as a man.

“May I take you down to dinner, Mademoiselle Lannes?” he asked.

“You may, Mr. Scott,” she replied, and they walked together down the hall and the stairway into the great dining-room.  Antoine, a napkin on his arm, ceremoniously held open the door for them and Suzanne showed them to opposite seats at a small table by the window.

“We have found an abundance, Mademoiselle,” she said, “and you shall be served as if you were real guests.”

The memory of that dinner will always be vivid in the mind of John Scott, though he live to be a hundred.  Julie and he were invincible youth that always blooms anew.  War and its horrors and dangers fell from them.  Their sportive fancy that they were guests in the hotel and nothing ailed the world just then held true.  As Antoine and his daughter served the excellent dinner that Suzanne had prepared these two found amusement in everything.  The barrier of race that had been becoming more slender all the time melted quite away, and they were boy and girl looking into each other’s eyes across a narrow table.