So we were glad to summon the Eager Soul to dine with us, and we let her order a dinner so complicated that it tasted like a lexicon!  We learned much about the Eager Soul that night.  She told us of her two college degrees, her year’s teaching experience, her four years’ nursing, and her people in the old home town.  Bit by bit, we picked out her status from the things she dropped inadvertently.  And that night in our rooms we assembled the parts of the puzzle thus; one rambling Bedford limestone American castle in the Country Club district; two cars, with garage to match; a widowed mother, a lamented father who made all kinds of money, so naturally some of it was honest money; two brothers, a married sister; a love for Henry James, and Galsworthy; substantial familiarity with Ibsen, Hauptman, Bergsen, Wagner, Puccini, Brahms, Freud, Tschaikovsky, and Bernard Shaw; a whole-hearted admiration for Barrie; and a record as organizer in the suffrage campaign which won in her state three years ago, plus a habit of buying gloves by the dozen and candy in five pound boxes!  We could not prove it, but we agreed that she probably bossed her mother and that the brothers’ wives hated her and the sister’s husband loved her to death!  She was one of those socially assured persons in the Old Home Town who are never afraid of themselves out of it!  She confessed that she had seen more or less of the Gilded Youth, before he left for Verdun, and in a pyrotechnic display of dimples, she admitted that she had gone to the station to bid the Young Doctor good-bye.  She had been assigned to a hospital near the Verdun sector, and was going out the following day.  When we left her at the door of the Hotel Vouillemont, we plunged back into the encircling gloom of the French language with real regret.

As we went further into the life about us, we felt that all the men were in uniform and all the women in mourning.  The French mourn beautifully.  France today is the world’s tragedy queen whose suffering is all genuine, but all magnificently done.  In the shop windows of the Boulevards, and along the Avenue of the Opera are no bright colours—­excepting for men’s uniforms.  In the windows of the millinery shops, purple is the gayest colour—­purple and lavender and black prevail.  On every street are blind windows of departed shops.  Some bear signs notifying customers that they are closed for the duration of the war; others simply stare blankly and piteously at passersby who know the story without words.

Yet if it is not a gay Paris, it is anything but a sad Paris.  Rather it is a busy Paris; a Paris that stays indoors and works.  For an hour or two after twilight the crowds come out; Sunday also they throng the boulevards.  And the theatres are always well filled; and there the bright dress uniforms of the men overcome the sombre gowns of the women and the scenes in lobbies and foyers are not far from brilliant.  Bands and orchestras play in the theatres, but the music lacks fire.  It