There is little to be said here about Joan's experiences in France. The story of those is better told in her own remarkable letters, which began shortly to appear in certain magazines; and in the book that followed.

Stefan Nikolai had found her shelter with a friend of his, Lady Arbuthnot, a clever old Englishwoman whose long horse-face and charming voice and odd combinations of tweed skirt and evening blouses were known and loved in every institution of mercy about Paris. Under Lady Arbuthnot's guidance Joan found use for not only her Red Cross training but for everything else she had, whether by gift or acquirement. Singing, story-telling, "play-acting," letter-writing, even dancing, all seemed as important a part of her equipment as the regulation sewing, bandage-making, and cookery. She tried an inexperienced hand at washing dishes and scrubbing floors. She also tried her hand at mending shattered nerves and even broken hearts; and at none of these things was she entirely unsuccessful. There was a certain power of concentration in Joan that made failure unlikely in whatever she undertook.

It was a wonderful time to her. She never got nearer the trenches than Paris; but there the trenches came to her, with all their horror, their sordid hideousness, their sheer, soul-stirring grandeur. She saw shattered men struggling back to life that they might offer it again, with eagerness; she saw philanthropists living in comfort on money that had been obtained to feed starving refugees; she saw girl-children, who had been forced to bear German babies, loving those babies with a passion of maternity piteously beyond their years. Priests labored side by side with panders; women of the great world, such as Lady Arbuthnot, shared bed and board and ceaseless effort with W. C. T. U. workers from Kansas, with missionaries out of China, with ex-courtesans from the Paris streets, with those most sheltered of all aristocrats, the women of the upper French bourgeoisie.

It was humanity with all barriers down, all contacts clean and clear. And Louisville, Kentucky, seemed as far away and negligible as the planet Earth may seem to possible dwellers on the moon.

Sometimes she had word from there—not often, for Ellen Neal was no letter-writer, and even Emily Carmichael's loyalty had been strained by Joan's unexplained desertion of her husband in his trouble. Once her cousin Miss Iphigenia Darcy wrote, and from her letter Joan gathered some impression of the effect of her sudden departure from Louisville.

In my day girls were taught that their first duty was to the Home, married or not. But I daresay this is a very old-fashioned notion, and with all those poor, unfortunate French needing help—Sister Euphie and Sister Virgie and I have frequently discussed offering our services. It is strange to have a war going on without any Darcys in it! (You haven't the name, you see, although a true Darcy in every other particular.) However, it does not seem the place for unmarried ladies just now, with so many men lying about in the hospitals not fully clothed, and those unfortunate Belgian victims (you know what I mean)! As I tell everybody, "Advanced young matrons like Joan are the ones really needed over there." But you know how narrow people are, my dear! I sometimes think our city is growing a little provincial.

Joan smiled and sighed over this communication; and then forgot it.

From Archie she had no word, except an occasional line or two with the money-order that came regularly on the first of each month, and was as regularly returned. The magazine connections Stefan Nikolai had made for her provided what money she needed, and she had not yet sufficiently forgiven Archie to be willing to accept anything from him.

At first she wrote to him, not so much from any sense of duty, as from pity. She did not forget what had passed between them, she made no attempt to ignore the fact that he had failed her utterly in every way. But she no longer had time to brood upon her own affairs. In the vortex of life where she now found herself, personal troubles seemed somehow to disappear into the common whole. Constant association with others' sorrow developed her quality of sympathy to an almost painful extent; and though she knew that Ellen Neal was making Archie comfortable enough in the old rooms on Poplar Street, his loneliness, his humble acquiescence in disgrace, hurt like a bruise on her heart. So she wrote to him, impersonally but kindly.

Since he so rarely replied, however, her letters gradually ceased. Evidently Archie, like many others, found it difficult to forgive where he had wronged. Joan shrugged—a little gesture she had learned from Nikolai—and dismissed her husband as much as possible from her mind.

There was much else to occupy it: not only in the way of work but of pleasure. Paris, even in her grief, did not forget the human necessity for pleasure, nor did Stefan Nikolai. She saw rather less of him than she had expected to, for he was frequently absent for weeks at a time on unexplained journeys, about which Joan had learned to ask no questions. But whether he was near her or not, she was always conscious of his enveloping care, his devoted watchfulness. He gave her, too, many friends besides Lady Arbuthnot.

Once Sacha, always left on guard over Joan during these absences of Nikolai's, betrayed the fact that his master had gone into Russia. Joan taxed him with it when he returned.

"Russia is not safe for you, Stefan!—you told me so yourself."

"Surely you would not have me at such a time seek only places of safety?" he smiled.

"Why can't you stick to the hospital work you came over for, instead of gallivanting about all over the place?" she demanded, with a petulance that concealed anxiety.

"One goes where one is useful," he replied quietly. "There are many who know more about medicine than I, but few who know more about Russia—except in Germany, perhaps! My countrymen are very susceptible to the spoken word."

It was his only explanation of his frequent disappearances; but Joan, understanding that wars must be won not only on the battlefield, uttered no more protests, and made the most of her friend when she had him.

For the first time in her life, she came near to the innermost meaning of the word happiness. It was not the placid content of her "pasture-time," nor the feverish, half-guilty ecstasy which had come to her for a brief hour through the unworthy medium of Eduard Desmond. It wrapped her round warmly like the consciousness of some beloved presence—which indeed it was, though Joan for once did not quite dare to analyze the sensation. She only knew that here, among strangers speaking a strange tongue, she was for the first time in her experience utterly at home. And she was curiously at the top of her powers. In that atmosphere, nothing seemed impossible of accomplishment. There was a sense of personal possession and being possessed—"By Paris," she told herself; but in her heart another name echoed.

Unaware, the great experience, the thing for which she had blindly groped, had come upon her; not with a sudden leap to which her nature leaped in response, but with a slow, quiet, irresistibly gathering force, like a great stream that bore her upon its breast, without volition, without struggle, toward some bourne of which she had no knowledge. And no fear.

Joan might have said with Browning:

It is always the body that suggests shame; and the body had ever been a negligible part of Joan's make-up. She felt as independent of it now as if she were already spirit, floating about in space—always with this certainty of meeting there another spirit, however, and mingling with it.

This spiritual mingling was a matter she never discussed with Nikolai—the only thing in the universe, perhaps, which they did not discuss. Theirs was an understanding too close for words, and beyond words.... But sometimes, when Joan remembered that she had once feared love, believing it one of those things that are better done without, she smiled to herself; an inner, brooding smile that gave the final touch of the chisel to her features, and made her much sought by painters.

Paris seemed more than usual that year the rendezvous for people who had won distinction in the arts and sciences, and who came to render their patron city in her hour of need what assistance was in their power. Among these people Nikolai was made welcome with an eagerness, and even a deference, which delighted Joan, and a little surprised her; for his simplicity made it easy to forget that he belonged among famous folk as a matter of right.

On his account, perhaps a little on her own as well, Joan also was welcomed by them. She was not at all abashed by the company of greatness, having inherited from Richard Darcy the naÏve conviction that the best was good enough for her; and moreover she found among them the keen power of enjoyment that invariably accompanies high mental development. She had long since suspected, and now proved, that only thinking people know how to play.

It was a great relief to her, just then, to be with strangers who accepted her entirely at face-value, with neither curiosity nor demand. An unquestioning, simple freedom prevailed in these upper reaches which Joan fancied might be dangerous enough (unless it had the effect of putting people, as it were, on honor). Nobody enquired whether she had a husband, for instance, or where he was. It seemed quite sufficient that she was the young friend of Stefan Nikolai; "Spiritosa e simpatica," as a certain great Italian tragedienne pronounced her. Their relations were taken as a matter of course. The two were always included together in whatever plans were afoot, and Joan noticed other such companionships among them which passed equally unquestioned. She was nominally under the care of Lady Arbuthnot; but that widely experienced noblewoman displayed a carelessness of chaperonage that would have caused hair to rise on the head of, say, Mrs. Carmichael.

Joan was at perfect liberty to spend with her friend every hour that either could spare from the day's duties, and did so. "Why not?" appeared to be the attitude of a company which concerns itself more with matters of the spirit than of the flesh....

In Louisville speculation was once more rife and lurid, sharing interest only with the war headlines and with Joan Blair's latest letter to the magazines.

"We appear to have been nourishing Genius in our bosom unawares!" remarked the Jabberwocks to each other; not altogether pleased, as is the immemorial way of friendship.

"I don't know why you were unaware," commented Emily Carmichael, quietly. "She has always shown every earmark of genius, even to neglecting the best husband that ever lived!"

The Jabberwocks exchanged surprised and meaningful glances.