The light of a briquet was not
precisely searching, and for the most part he had looked like more than
one war-worn British officer she had seen during her long residence in
Paris....It was something in the eyes...she could have vowed they were
hazel...their expression had altered; it was that of a somewhat ironic
man of the world, which had changed as she watched them to the piercing
alertness of a man of action...but after...was it perhaps an emanation of
the personality that had so impressed her angry young soul and refused to
be obliterated?
But what of it? He might be married. Love another woman. All officers and
soldiers during the war had looked about eagerly for love, when not already
supplied, and given themselves up to it, indifferent as they may have been
before....Life seemed shorter every time they went back to the front.
And if not why should he be attracted to her again! He had loved her for a
moment when she had been in the first flush of her exquisite youth. That
was twelve years ago. She was now thirty. True, thirty, to-day, was but
the beginning of a woman's third youth, and a few weeks in the California
sunshine and nourished by the California abundance would restore her looks,
no doubt of that. But she would look no better as long as she remained in
Paris....Nor did she wish to return to California...and beyond all question
he must have forgotten, lost all interest in her long since.
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