“Come on, Claude!  This is too absurd.  You don’t even have to dress, thanks to your uniform,—­and you don’t have to talk, since you’re not supposed to know the language.  I thought you’d like coming here.  These people have had an awfully rough time; can’t you admire their pluck?”

“Oh, yes, I do!  It’s awkward for me, though.”  Claude pulled off his coat and began to brush his hair vigorously.  “I guess I’ve always been more afraid of the French than of the Germans.  It takes courage to stay, you understand.  I want to run.”

“But why?  What makes you want to?”

“Oh, I don’t know!  Something in the house, in the atmosphere.”

“Something disagreeable?”

“No.  Something agreeable.”

David laughed.  “Oh, you’ll get over that!”

They had tea in the garden, English fashion—­English tea, too,
Mlle. Claire informed them, left by the English officers.

At dinner a third member of the family was introduced, a little boy with a cropped head and big black eyes.  He sat on Claude’s left, quiet and shy in his velvet jacket, though he followed the conversation eagerly, especially when it touched upon his brother Rene, killed at Verdun in the second winter of the war.  The mother and sister talked about him as if he were living, about his letters and his plans, and his friends at the Conservatoire and in the Army.  Mlle. Claire told Gerhardt news of all the girl students he had known in Paris:  how this one was singing for the soldiers; another, when she was nursing in a hospital which was bombed in an air raid, had carried twenty wounded men out of the burning building, one after another, on her back, like sacks of flour.  Alice, the dancer, had gone into the English Red Cross and learned English.  Odette had married a New Zealander, an officer who was said to be a cannibal; it was well known that his tribe had eaten two Auvergnat missionaries.  There was a great deal more that Claude could not understand, but he got enough to see that for these women the war was France, the war was life, and everything that went into it.  To be alive, to be conscious and have one’s faculties, was to be in the war.

After dinner, when they went into the salon, Madame Fleury asked David whether he would like to see Rene’s violin again, and nodded to the little boy.  He slipped away and returned carrying the case, which he placed on the table.  He opened it carefully and took off the velvet cloth, as if this was his peculiar office, then handed the instrument to Gerhardt.

David turned it over under the candles, telling Madame Fleury that he would have known it anywhere, Rene’s wonderful Amati, almost too exquisite in tone for the concert hall, like a woman who is too beautiful for the stage.  The family stood round and listened to his praise with evident satisfaction.  Madame Fleury told him that Lucien was tres serieux with his music, that his master was well pleased with him, and when his hand was a little larger he would be allowed to play upon Rene’s violin.  Claude watched the little boy as he stood looking at the instrument in David’s hands; in each of his big black eyes a candle flame was reflected, as if some steady fire were actually burning there.