WORLD'S END

"Well, it's probably due to dancing all night, not to going hungry. I don't go into the smart restaurants, but I pass them and see they're crowded all night with bemedaled men and half-naked women."

"That's because Paris is so full of strangers. People sit packed at the tables so that they haven't room to move their elbows."

"Well, they manage to get the food. But the people I know haven't tasted a morsel of sugar in four years, and now they stand in the rain and snow for hours for a loaf of bread or a basket of fuel. Is it any more wicked to kill a cynical old politician than to starve a million women and children so that they die of anemia or pneumonia?"

IV

Jesse Blackless went on in this strain until he saw that he was hurting his sister without helping his cause. Then he remembered that he had come to advise her on the subject of the exhibition of her late husband's paintings. He calmed down, and said that he had been thinking the matter over, and it would be better to wait until peace had been signed, when the newspapers would have more space to devote to painting. June would be a good month; the elderly vultures could hardly take that long to pick the bones of the German carcass. When Beauty answered that she couldn't stay away from Baby Marceline, Jesse advised her to go home and come back. When she said she wanted to be with Lanny, her brother said that her problems were too complicated for any man to solve.

He arose to take his departure, signing to Lanny to follow him. In the passage he said: "My comrades have got the habit of coming to me for funds, and I don't know what to tell them. Is your friend coming again?" What a sensation Lanny could have made if he had said that the friend had been in the adjoining room!

Having seen his uncle out of the building, Lanny went back and found Kurt talking to his mother. Kurt had heard the conversation, and made up his mind that he was no longer going to impose upon Beauty's too great kindness. "You try to hide your fears," he said; "but I know what a scandal it would make if the police were to arrest me here. I'm ashamed of myself for having stayed so long."

"You may be going to your death," protested Beauty.

"The worst of the storm has blown over. And anyhow it's wartime, and I'm a soldier."

There was another reason, which Lanny could guess. Kurt had written a letter to Switzerland and Lanny had mailed it for him. Now it was time for a reply to be at poste restante, and there was no keeping Kurt from going for it. "The letter will tell me a new place to report," said he, "and no one else must take the risk of getting it."

He thanked his two friends, and it was the old Kurt speaking, the man of conscience and exalted feelings. "I told you, Lanny, that life is a dedication; but neither of us knew how soon we'd have to prove it."

There were tears in Beauty's eyes. The poor soul was sending another man away to death! She was living again the partings with Marcel; and the fact that Kurt was fighting on the other side made no difference whatever. "Oh, God!" she exclaimed. "Will there never come a time on this earth when men stop killing one another?"

She tried to keep Lanny in the apartment, and he knew what that meant. The police might be waiting in the lobby of the hotel, and would get both of them! Lanny said: "I won't go very far; just escort him outside and make it respectable!"

What Lanny wanted was to deliver his uncle's message to Kurt; also to follow him at a safe distance and make sure of what happened at the post office. He watched his friend receive a letter and put it into his pocket and walk away. Lanny went to a telephone and told his mother that all was well. Then he returned to his safe job of trying to stop the fourteen little wars and one big one.

V

The Supreme Council decided to go ahead and complete the treaty with Germany, and ordered all the various commissions to deliver their reports and recommendations within a few days. That meant rush times for geographers, and also for secretaries and translators. Professor Alston's French was now equal to all demands, and Lanny's geography had improved to such an extent that he could pretty nearly substitute for his chief. There was work enough for both, and they hurried from place to place with briefcases and portfolios. A fascinating game they were playing, or rather a whole series of games - like the chess exhibitions in which some expert keeps a dozen contests in his head at the same time. In this case the chessboards were provinces and the pawns were national minorities comprising millions of human beings. Some games you were winning and some you were losing, and each was a series of surprises. At lunchtime and at dinner you compared notes with your colleagues; a busy chatter was poured out with the coffee, and human hopes were burned up with the cigarettes.