“Sprecken sie Deutsch?” he asked, and Medill answered, “Seemlich!” When it was apparent that two of us understood German he opened up.  He had to talk slowly, but he was willing to make any sacrifice to get conversation going.  He rambled along in a maudlin way, and finally picked up an illustrated paper containing an account of the Turin riots, which angered him, and then and there being, that Italian soldier told us in German the story of what he called der grosser rebellion!  To talk German in an allied country today is as much as one’s life is worth.  For a soldier to talk German is a crime; for a soldier to tell three foreigners about a riot in his country, which he, as a soldier behind machine guns had to suppress, killing hundreds, was mighty near to treason.  And we gasped.  We thought he might be testing us out as potential spies.  So we shut up.  But he ambled on, and slowly, as the liquor overcame him, he ran down and went sound asleep with the offending paper in his arms.  Perhaps he was one of those Germans wearing the Italian uniform who in the German drive three weeks later gave commands to the ignorant peasant regiments to lay down their arms and surrender!  At least it was reported in Europe that thousands of them abandoned their works under the command of German spies!

When we arrived at Milan we found there waiting for us a note from the Gilded Youth, whom we had met coming over on the boat from America.  And it brought back our everlasting love affair.  It is curious how that love affair kept projecting itself into the consciousness of two middle-aged men who reasonably may be supposed to have passed out of the zone of true romance.  But the memory of the hazel eyes of the Gilded Youth as he gazed at the pretty face of the young nurse there in the moonlight at Landrecourt, with such exaltation and joy, kept bobbing back into our minds as we saw other lovers in other lands, married and single, crossing our paths.  And there was the Young Doctor, diffident and reticent, who had his heart set on the girl, and the contest furnished us with a deathless theme for speculation.  And here at Milan came this letter—­just a note forwarded from Paris—­telling us that the Gilded Youth could “stand and wait” no longer; he was going to hit back.  He had quit the Ambulance service for aviation.  And he was in a training camp near Paris.  We wondered how many times during his training he would slip across the sky to Landrecourt to visit his true love.  The one-horse buggy had been the only lover’s chariot known to Henry and me, and we remembered how a red-wheeled cart used to lay out the neighbours in the heroic days of the nineties.  So in our meditative moments we considered what a paralysing spectacle it would be for the neighbours to see a young man come swooping down upon his lady love’s bower in an airplane and Henry, who was betting on the Gilded Youth as against the Doctor, began taking even money again!

[Illustration:  We thought he might be testing us out as potential spies]