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which meant making her a danger to France? Foreign investors had lent Germany close to five

billion dollars since the end of the war: why did they take such risks?

Lanny replied: "Well, if they hadn't, how would Germany have paid France any reparations

at all?"

"She would have paid if she had been made to," replied Denis. He didn't say how, and Lanny

knew better than to pin him down. The men who governed France hadn't learned much by

their invasion of the Ruhr and its failure; they still thought that you could produce goods by

force, that you could get money with bayonets. It was useless to argue with them; their fear of

Germany was an obsession. And maybe they were right—how could Lanny be sure? Certainly

there were plenty of men in Germany who believed in force and meant to use it if they could

get enough of it. Lanny had met them also.

Denis wanted to know what was going to be the effect of the Wall Street collapse upon

French affairs. The season was beginning, and many of the fashionable folk were not here.

Would the tourists fail to show up this summer? A question of urgency to the owner of a fleet of

taxicabs! Lanny said he was afraid that Paris would have to do what New York had done—draw

in its belt. When Denis asked what Robbie thought about the prospects, Lanny reported his

father's optimism, and Denis was pleased, having more respect for Robbie's judgment than for

Lanny's.

The Chateau de Bruyne was no great showplace like Balincourt and Les Forêts, but a simple

country home of red stone; its title was a tribute to its age, and the respect of the countryside

for an old family. It had been one of Lanny's homes, off and on, for some six years. The servants

knew him, the old dog knew him, he felt that even the fruit trees knew him. Denis, fils, had got

himself a wife of the right sort, and she was here, learning the duties of a chatelaine; they had a

baby boy, so the two young fathers could make jokes about a possible future union of the

families. Chariot, the younger brother, was studying to be an engineer, which meant that he

might travel to far parts of the earth; incidentally, he was interested in politics, belonging to one

of the groups of aggressive French patriots. Lanny didn't say much about his own ideas—he never

had, for it had been his privilege to be the lover of Denis's wife, but not the cor-rupter of his

sons. All that he could hope for was to moderate their vehemence by talking about toleration

and open-mindedness.

The two young men—one was twenty-four and the other a year younger—looked up to Lanny

as to an abnormally wise and brilliant person. They knew about his marriage, and thought it a

coronation. In this opinion their mother would have joined, for she had had a Frenchwoman's

thorough-going respect for property. The French, along with most other Europeans, were fond

of saying that the Americans worshiped the dollar; a remark upon which Zoltan Kertezsi had

commented in a pithy sentence: "The Americans worship the dollar and the French worship

the sou."

5

FROM THE VASTY DEEP

I

Friendship is a delightful thing when you have had the good judgment to choose the right

friends. Eric Vivian Pomeroy-Nielson had come in the course of the years to be the most

congenial of Lanny's friends. It could be doubted whether the younger man would have had

the courage to stick to so many unorthodox ideas if it hadn't been for Rick's support. The

baronet's son watched everything that went on in the world, analyzed the various tendencies,

and set forth his understanding of them in newspaper articles which Lanny would clip and

send to persons with whom he got into arguments. Not that he ever converted anybody, but

he kept his cause alive.

Rick was only about a year and a half the elder, but Lanny was in the habit of deferring to

him, which pleased Rick's wife and didn't altogether displease Rick. Whenever the Englishman

wrote another play, Lanny was sure it was bound to make the long-awaited "hit." When it didn't,

there was always a reason: that Rick persisted in dealing with social problems from a point of

view unpopular with those who bought the best seats in theaters. The young playwright was

fortunate in having parents who believed in him and gave him and his family a home while he

wrote the truth as he saw it.

Nearly thirteen years had passed since a very young English flier had crashed in battle, and

been found with a gashed forehead and a broken and badly infected knee. In the course of

time he had learned to live with his lameness. He could go bathing from the special landing-place

which Lanny had had made for him at Bienvenu; and now the carpenter of the Bessie Budd

bolted two handles onto the landing-stage of the yacht's gangway, so that a man with good

stout arms could lift himself out of the water without any help. He would unstrap his leg-brace,

slide in, and enjoy himself just as if humanity had never been cursed with a World War.

II

Nina was her usual kind and lovely self, and as for Little Alfy— he had to be called that on

account of his grandfather the baronet, but it hardly fitted him any more, for he had grown tall

and leggy for his almost thirteen years. He had dark hair and eyes like his father's, and was,

as you might have expected, extremely precocious; he knew a little about all the various

political movements, also the art movements, and would use their patter in a fashion which made

it hard for you to keep from smiling. He had thin, sensitive features and was serious-minded,

which made him the predestined victim of Marceline Detaze, the little flirt, the little minx.

Marceline didn't know anything about politics, but she knew some of the arts, including that of

coquetry. Half French and half American, she also had been brought up among older people, but

of a different sort. From the former Baroness de la Tourette, the hardware lady from

Cincinnati, she had learned the trick of saying outrageous things with a perfectly solemn face

and then bursting into laughter at a sober lad's look of bewilderment. Apparently Alfy never

would learn about it.

The families had planned a match for these two by cable as soon as they had appeared on the

scene. The parents made jokes about it, in the free and easy modern manner, and the children

had taken up the practice. "I'll never marry you if you don't learn to dance better," Marceline

would announce. Alfy, peeved, would respond: "You don't have to marry me if you don't

want to." He would never have the least idea what was coming next. One time her feelings

would be hurt, and the next time she would be relieved of a great burden; but whichever it

was, it would turn out to be teasing, and Alfy would be like a man pursuing a will-o'-the-wisp on

a dark night.

There had been dancing in Marceline's home ever since she was old enough to toddle about.

So-called "society" dancing, Dalcroze dancing, Isadora Duncan dancing, Provencal peasant

dancing, English and American country dancing—every sort that a child could pick up. Some

kind of music going most of the time, and a phonograph and a radio so that she could make it

to order. On the yacht, as soon as her lessons were finished, she would come running to where

Hansi and Bess were practicing; she would listen for a minute to get the swing of it, then her

feet would start moving and she would be dancing all over the saloon. She would hold out her