第69章 CHAPTER II NEW LIFE(6)

He had asked for the dangerous post of lookout, slipping as near as possible to the enemy's lines in order to verify the exactitude of the artillery discharge, rectifying it by telephone. A German shell had demolished the house on the roof of which he was concealed, and Laurier, on crawling out unhurt from the ruins, had readjusted his telephone and gone tranquilly on, continuing the same work in the shelter of a nearby grove. His battery, picked out by the enemy's aeroplanes, had received the concentrated fire of the artillery opposite. In a few minutes all the force were rolling on the ground--the captain and many soldiers dead, officers wounded and almost all the gunners. There only remained as chief, Laurier, the Impassive (as his comrades nicknamed him), and aided by the few artillerymen still on their feet, he continued firing under a rain of iron and fire, so as to cover the retreat of a battalion.

"He has been mentioned twice in dispatches," Marguerite continued reading. "I do not believe that it will be long before they give him the cross. He is valiant in every way. Who would have supposed all this a few weeks ago?" . . .

She did not share the general astonishment. Living with Laurier had many times shown her the intrepidity of his character, the fearlessness concealed under that placid exterior. On that account, her instincts had warned her against rousing her husband's wrath in the first days of her infidelity. She still remembered the way he looked the night he surprised her leaving Julio's home. His was the passion that kills, and, nevertheless, he had not attempted the least violence with her. . . . The memory of his consideration was awakening in Marguerite a sentiment of gratitude. Perhaps he had loved her as no other man had.

Her eyes, with an irresistible desire for comparison, sought Julio's, admiring his youthful grace and distinction. The image of Laurier, heavy and ordinary, came into her mind as a consolation.

Certainly the officer whom she had seen at the station when saying good-bye to her brother, did not seem to her like her old husband.

But Marguerite wished to forget the pallid lieutenant with the sad countenance who had passed before her eyes, preferring to remember him only as the manufacturer preoccupied with profits and incapable of comprehending what she was accustomed to call "the delicate refinements of a chic woman." Decidedly Julio was the more fascinating. She did not repent of her past. She did not wish to repent of it.

And her loving selfishness made her repeat once more the same old exclamation--"How fortunate that you are a foreigner! . . . What a relief to know that you are safe from the dangers of war!"

Julio felt the usual exasperation at hearing this. He came very near to closing his beloved's mouth with his hand. Was she trying to make fun of him? . . . It was fairly insulting to place him apart from other men.

Meanwhile, with blind irrelevance, she persisted in talking about Laurier, commenting upon his achievements.

"I do not love him, I never have loved him. Do not look so cross!

How could the poor man ever be compared with you? You must admit, though, that his new existence is rather interesting. I rejoice in his brave deeds as though an old friend had done them, a family visitor whom I had not seen for a long time. . . . The poor man deserved a better fate. He ought to have married some other woman, some companion more on a level with his ideals. . . . I tell you that I really pity him!"

And this pity was so intense that her eyes filled with tears, awakening the tortures of jealousy in her lover. After these interviews, Desnoyers was more ill-tempered and despondent than ever.

"I am beginning to realize that we are in a false position," he said one morning to Argensola. "Life is going to become increasingly painful. It is difficult to remain tranquil, continuing the same old existence in the midst of a people at war."

His companion had about come to the same conclusion. He, too, was beginning to feel that the life of a young foreigner in Paris was insufferable, now that it was so upset by war.