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By Root 8775 0

the gigantic surf of the guns in continuous barrage on the crumpling front. The office was ful of crazy rumors: the British Fifth army had turned and run, the Canadians had mutinied and seized Amiens, spies were disabling al the American planes, the Austrians were breaking through in Italy again. Three times the Red Cross office had or-ders to pack up their records and be ready to move out of Paris. In the face of al that it was hard for the publicity department to keep up the proper cheerful attitude in their releases, but Paris kept on fil ing up reassuringly with American faces, American M.P.s, Sam Browne belts and canned goods; and in July Major Moorehouse, who had just arrived back from the States, came into the office with a firsthand account of Château Thierry and announced that the war would be over in a year. The same evening he asked Eveline to dine with him at the Café de la Paix and to do it she broke a date she had with Jerry Burnham who had gotten back from the Near East and the Balkans and was ful of stories of cholera and calamity. J.W. ordered a magnificent dinner, he said Eleanor had told him to see if Eveline didn't need a little cheering up. He talked about the gigantic era of expansion that would dawn for America after the war. America the good samaritan healing the wounds of war-torn Europe. It was as if he was rehearsing a speech, when he got to the end of it he looked at Eveline with a funny deprecatory smile and said, "And the joke of it is, it's true," and Eveline laughed and suddenly found that she liked J.W. very much indeed.

She had on a new dress she'd bought at Paquin's with some money her father had sent her for her birthday, and it was a relief after the uniform. They were through eating before they had real y gotten started talking. Eveline wanted to try to get him to talk about himself.

-226-After dinner they went to Maxim's, but that was ful up with brawling drunken aviators, and the rumpus seemed to scare J.W. so that Eveline suggested to him that they go down to her place and have a glass of wine. When they got to the quai de la Tournel e, just as they were stepping out of J.W.'s staffcar she caught sight of Don Stevens walking down the street. For a second she hoped he

wouldn't see them, but he turned around and ran back. He had a young fel ow with him in a private's uniform whose name was Johnson. They al went up and sat

around glumly in her parlor. She and J.W. couldn't seem to talk about anything but Eleanor, and the other two sat glumly in their chairs looking embarrassed until J.W. got to his feet, went down to his staffcar, and left.

"God damn it, if there's anything I hate it's a Cross Red Major," broke out Don as soon as the door closed behind J.W.

Eveline was angry. "Wel , it's no worse than being a fake Quaker," she said icily.

"You must forgive our intruding, Miss Hutchins," mumbled the doughboy who had a blonde Swedish look.

"We wanted to get you to come out to a café or some-thing, but it's too late now," started Don crossly. The doughboy interrupted him, "I hope, Miss Hutchins, you don't mind our intruding, I mean my intruding . . . I begged Don to bring me along. He's talked so much about you and it's a year since I've seen a real nice Amer-ican girl." He had a deferential way of talking and a whiny Min-nesota accent that Eveline hated at first, but by the time he excused himself and left she liked him and stood up for him when Don said, "He's an awful sweet guy but there's something sappy about him. I was afraid you wouldn't like him." She wouldn't let Don spend the night with her as he'd expected and he went away looking very sul en.

-227-In October Eleanor came back with a lot of antique Italian painted panels she'd picked up for a song. In the Red Cross office there were more people than were needed for the work and she and Eleanor and J.W. took a tour of the Red Cross canteens in the east of France in a staffcar. It was a wonderful trip, the weather was good for a won-der, almost like American October, they had lunch and dinner at regimental headquarters