SPARKLING WAVES OVER HIGH EXPLOSIVES

Was there ever a woman who did not very greatly desire for herself, at long moments, the doublet and hose of a man, perhaps also his sword, as well as his attitude in the viewing of life?  I think not.  To a very small number of those ladies of great curiosity it has been granted that they climb to those ramparts of the life of a man; but it was needful that they be stout of limb and sturdy of heart to sustain themselves upon that eminence and not be dashed below upon the rocks of a strange land.  I, Roberta, Marquise de Grez and Bye, have obtained glimpses into a far country and this is what I bring on returning, not as a spy, but, shall I say, laden with spices and forbidden fruit?

And for me it has been a very fine dash into the wilds of a land of strangeness, and I do not know that I have yet found myself completely returned unto my estate of a woman.

I first began to realize that I was set out upon a great journey when I stood at the rail of the very large ship and watched it plow its way through the waves which they told us with their splendor hid cruel mines.  I felt the future might be like unto those great waves, and it might be that it would break in sparkling crests over high explosives.  I found them!

I had seen a fear of those explosives of life come in my dying father’s eyes, and here I stood at his command out on the ocean in quest of a woman’s fate in a strange country.

“Get back to America, Bob, and go straight to your Uncle Robert at Hayesville in the Harpeth Valley.  He cut me loose because he didn’t understand, when I married your mother out of the French opera in Paris.  When I named you Roberta for him he returned the letter I sent but with a notice of a thousand dollars in Monroe and Company for you.  I didn’t tell him when your mother died.  God, I’ve been bitter!  But these German bullets have cut the life out of me and I see more plainly.  Get the money and take Nannette and the kiddie on the first boat.  There’s starvation and—­maybe worse in Paris for you.  Take—­the money—­and—­get—­to—­brother Robert.  God of America—­take—­them and—­guide—­”

And that was all.  I held him in my arms for a long time, while old Nannette and small Pierre wept beside me, and then I laid him upon his pillow and straightened the little tricolor that the good Sister of the old gray convent in which he lay had given me to place in his hand when he had begged for it.  My mother’s country had meant my mother to him and he had given his life for her and France in the trenches of the Vosges.  And thus at his bidding I was on the very high seas of adventure.  From this thought of him I was very suddenly recalled by old Nannette who came upon the deck from below.