A novel about Paris that is not about the war requires even now, I am told, some word of explanation. Mine is brief:

This story was conceived before the war began. I came to the task of putting it into its final shape after nine months passed between the Western Front and a Paris war-torn and war-darkened, both physically and spiritually. Yet, though I had found the old familiar places, and the ever young and ever familiar people, wounded and sad, I did not long have to seek for the Parisian bravery in pain and the Parisian smile shining, rainbowlike, through the tears. Nothing can conquer France and nothing can lastingly hurt Paris. They are, as a famous wit said of our own so different Boston, a state of mind. Had the German succeeded in the Autumn of 1914 or the Spring of 1918, France would have remained, and Paris. What used to happen in the Land of Love and the City of Lights will happen there again and be always happening, so that my story is at once a retrospect and a prophecy.

Realizing these things, I have found it a pleasure to make this book. A book without problems and without horrors, its sole purpose is to give to the reader some of that pleasure which went to its making. Wars come and go; but for every man the Door Opposite stands open beside the Seine, the hurdy-gurdy plays “Annie Laurie” in the Street of the Valley of Grace and—a Lady of the Rose is waiting.

R.W.K.

Columbia, Penna.,
Christmas Day, 1918.