"Marcel Duchesne thinks she will marry that rich American for his money, then persuade him afterward to live in Paris. That would be very clever of her-if she could do it."

I

So that was her point of view. weighed it, going home on the tram. I was also glad to know what Marcel thought-if he did think what he had told Suzanne. And I wondered if we, Mrs. Bradshaw's American friends, were a little blinded by our romantic ideas. Of course it would be very sensible of her to marry Mr. Gorman, if she could. That was just the point of conflict in us—that she seemed to be trying to capture him. But why shouldn't she? Having only one asset left-her personality-if she used it for all it was worth we ought to admire her.

But if she had to go to Fisherville, it was easy to imagine the courage, the gameness, with which she would carry it off. There would not be a farewell party-no, nothing so obvious as that. She might even disappear quietly, sending us wittily graceful notes from the outgoing ship.

23

When Mrs. Bradshaw's maid came round to me the next day with a note, asking if I could come in about half past four and have tea with her, I canceled another engagement. I think any of us would have canceled anything at a sign from her.

I was glad to find her alone. After our greeting she said: "I had another letter from Carrie this morning, and she says such an odd thing'You won't mind so much leaving Europe, dear Aunt, now that the brilliant society you have enjoyed no longer exists.' Whatever does the dear girl mean?"

She sat there looking at me; but her eyes were meditative. “When I was a little girl in Boston, they took me to hear Mr. Emerson lecture. And my father knew Thoreau. But I think 'plain living and high thinking' are quite as possible in Paris, and on the Riviera, as they were in Wordsworth's Dove Cottage, or even in Concord, Massachusetts."

I thought of de Clairmont's elegant poverty, and wondered if perhaps, after all, they were going to play Darby and Joan au sixième— somewhere in the old faubourg St.Germain.

I can see her now as she looked that afternoon, sitting there on the yellow sofa in her clinging lavender teagown, on the table before her a large bunch of violets, with her yellow glaze tea-set and the delicate silver. She seemed the gracious image of infinite leisure, of a hospitality which had become an art-form.

I did think of Ninon de Lenclos at that moment-Boston or no Boston. I told her so.

As she handed me my cup of tea, she said with an affectionate smile: "Thanks for the praise of my battered personality. That seems to be the only thing I've managed to preserve through all these years.'

"That is certainly an achievement," I laughed, "in this mechanical age of stereotyped humanity."

"Do you know, my dear," her eyes grew large, "it was only in going back over the years, just recently, that I asked myself what my life would have been if I had never crossed the Atlantic. Carrie's husband wrote me the other day that I had made a grave mistake in so losing touch with my own country-with America."

I looked up, startled. Was she preparing me for Fisherville or Kansas City?

"I think myself," I said, "that Americans who live over here should go home now and then for a visit should keep in touch."

"Of course," she assented; "but I never thought of that until the crash came, never until I found myself, at sixty, appalled at the very thought of a rushing new young civilization which had left me a thousand years behind it."

I pondered that a moment.

"Some people would say, Mrs. Bradshaw, that you had left it a thousand years behind."

She shook her head.

"My relations don't think so. It seems I've been turning the pages of history backward, not forward. It's a charming thing to do, of course; but they seem to think it should be only a preparation for that other kind of life their kind-while I have made it the purpose of life.”

Her eyes grew reminiscent. "Thirty-five years! Do you realize what that means? When as a girl I last saw New York, there were horse-cars on Broadway. There were few telephones, no automobiles. There was no subway. Washington was like a village-except for the Government buildings when last I saw Wash

ington. Yesterday I was telling Mr. Gorman about it."

With perfect nonchalance she mentioned him.

"He was tremendously impressed with the children's party. Princesse Murcie sent her little granddaughter, and the child sat for a long time on Mr. Gorman's knee. All the children adored him."

My heart actually fluttered. My face must have shown my concern, for she reached over and took my hand-held it close. And again I had the same impression I had when bidding her good-by at her Sunday reception, that she was trying to meet my own mood.

"I never knew, my dear," she said, "until this thing happened, how much my friends have loved me. De Clairmont broke down and cried like a baby last night when I told him what I've done. And the Marquiseand Sudbury Dayton—and that dear Suzanne-oh, everybody has been so kind to me!"

At that moment I heard footsteps running along the hall, and Millie Gorman burst into the room.

"Oh, Mrs. Bradshaw!" she cried, "what's the French for comb my hair?"

Very charmingly, very gently, Mrs. Bradshaw drew the child's attention to my presence; then, when the forms of greeting had been rather sketchily performed by Millie, her hostess told her how to ask the maid to comb her hair.

"S'il vous plaît," she added. "Don't forget to say s'il vous plaît— if you please."

"Yes, ma'am, I won't forget."

And Millie left the room, murmuring French words to herself.

"This evening," Mrs. Bradshaw smiled whimsically, "I shall have to impress gently upon that plastic consciousness the strange new fact that little girls do not burst into drawingrooms when guests are present-or at other times."

"Is she staying with you, then?" "Yes, she's staying with me. Her grandfather went to London this morning."

"He's gone?"

"Yes, back to America."

She raised the bunch of violets to her face, breathing their fragrance. Over the flowers those ageless black eyes were looking straight at me, under the long black brows and the white hair. A peculiar look.

Then she replaced the violets on the table beside the yellow glaze cups -rearranging the stems which had fallen a little apart.

"I had to let the grandfather see what I could do for the child, so that when I mentioned a salary of six thousand dollars a year-'

"Salary!" I gasped. Six thousand! Precisely the income she had lost.

"Yes. Millie will remain with me for ten years, to be educated-so Mr. Gorman says-like a princess."

She gave me a quick, arch lookyes, I had to believe my eyes—a witty look.

"And that, my dear, you must admit, will be as Mr. Gorman himself might say a man-size job." Her eyes actually twinkled at me. I was quite unable-so amazed I was to twinkle back.

"I had to do something, you know, and this seemed to me to promise the most-well, amusement."

She was still watching me, stunned and speechless before her. “At my age, you know, one really needs amusement."

There was a little pause. I could not speak.

"Do you know," she said, "I suppose it was stupid of me to ask only six thousand dollars a year. I might as easily have got ten-the man is rich. It's really amazing how easy money is to get."

Then, as if she were giving me a new piece of information, she said, "I don't know whether you realize it, but if this hadn't come along I should have had no money at all."

It was as if the fact were just striking her. She was almost serious!

Well! After all our tragic councils, our fears for her, while she-but then, where were our wits? Had we known her all these years for nothing?

I thought of Sudbury Dayton's solemn face on Sunday while he talked of her suppressions and a possible breaking point-of Suzanne's dramatic tears in the garden. I thought of that "good acting," which was not acting at all. Her play with Mr. Gorman. With what ease, what finesse, what-I saw it now-characteristic humor, she had crossed that chasm which seemed to us so dark and perilous, on a rope spun firmly of her own indestructible charm!

That was the quality in her which made her what she was. She had arranged the loosened filaments of her life as gracefully, as effortlessly, as a moment ago she had rearranged that bunch of violets which had fallen apart.

T

HE 'peace movement' has found a slogan, a crusading call that can inspire to action, a shibboleth of victory. It is going to "outlaw war." It has long been felt that the lack of any appealing symbol of this kind was one of the chief reasons for the failure of the movement to enlist any but that small fraction in any nation which lives for and in ideals. To the mass of humanity there is something weak and colorless in the word peace. It has no suggestion of pageantry, no splendor of parade. Compared with the great adventure of war, it has seemed to most men the mere dull and commonplace routine, so lacking in vitality as to yield in crises to the sterner forces of events. So much has this been the case that the phrase "international peace" has only in our own day begun to overcome a certain suggestion of cant and hypocrisy or at least of futile idealism. It is the strangest paradox in the civilization which calls itself Christian, that there should have been reproach attached to the word pacifist. But the blame for this lay largely within the peace movement itself, for its pacifism had been both futile and extreme. It had never adjusted itself to the practical politics of a developing world, but, on the contrary, tended to erect for

itself, like St. Augustine of old, a City of God on earth where perfect harmony should reign instead of the discordant and incomplete but vaster symphony of the historic civilization of to-day.

The World War has largely liberated us from this unreal phase of the peace movement because it has brought into action definite programs and practical aims. Moreover, now at last the peace movement has its own bands playing, and it feels the gathering strength of those increasing crowds who rally to the standard of a confident cause. This much at least has been brought to light in these last months since M. Briand, on April 6, 1927, gave his historic challenge to the conscience of America when he asked if it were ready to join with France in a movement to renounce war as an instrument of national policy.

The text of M. Briand's offer contained an American phrase which has since then, and mainly because of M. Briand's use of it, made the circuit of the world. It was the phrase "to outlaw war." "France," said M. Briand, "would be willing to subscribe publicly with the United States to any mutual agreement tending to outlaw war, to use an American expression, as between

these two countries. The renunciation of war as an instrument of national policy is a conception already familiar to the signatories of the Covenant of the League of Nations and the Treaties of Locarno." This was not the first time that a European statesman had discussed the project of war outlawry, but never before had it been made the center and heart of a proposal for an international treaty. The two sentences of M. Briand's statement will demand close study, for in the second one he stated what he meant by the "American expression 'to outlaw war."" There is the emphatic statement that this ideal is nothing new to France. The proposal, in the mind of M. Briand, was to offer to America, or to accept from it, an agreement which would merely extend across the Atlantic the principle of the pacific settlement of disputes which underlay the great peace settlements of Europe.

The subsequent offers and letters of M. Briand show clearly that this was what he had in mind. He saw a great international peace structure taking shape between the European nations, or at least primarily in Europe, a structure of practical politics, but based upon new concepts in morals as well. If the United States were to subscribe to these moral principles, that fact alone would strengthen their operation in the world generally. This could be done without bringing the United States within the structure of actual coöperation for the enforcement of peace, but rather leaving it as a supporting buttress alongside the steadily growing edifice of the League. There was, of course, no thought of giving up the existing

safeguards of peace, but only of securing something more. Important as the coöperation of the United States might be, it could not compare for a moment in the eyes of Continental statesmen with their own coöperation in the League.

The chief concern of French commentators, therefore, throughout this whole discussion has been to make absolutely certain that the proposal which came back to them from Mr. Kellogg should not in any way weaken their existing international machinery. But this anxiety to preserve and strengthen the League is not limited to Continental statesmen; its strongest expression comes from the British Dominions and in the unofficial comment in Japan. There would be no surer way to wreck the proposal to outlaw war than to make it the expression of an American movement to break down the existing world organization, in favor of something new.

Fortunately, Mr. Kellogg has been very careful to avoid this rock of disaster, and Senator Borah, whose advocacy of outlawry far antedates that of Mr. Kellogg, has been equally careful to reassure the League members that the United States is not engaged in any League-wrecking enterprise, but, on the contrary, is confident that it is at present offering the League an opportunity to secure American coöperation in the legitimate furtherance of the League's great principle of international peace. But there remains a doubt upon this point in spite of all these formal assurances, because of the past meaning and history of the movement to outlaw war. A glance at that history will show why this impression should