"In that event, what plans have you, Miss Julie?"
"To remain in Chastel. We have an excellent hotel here at our service, and as we're behind the French army we're in perfect safety."
John opened his lips to speak, but changed his intention and did not say what was in his thought. He said instead:
"Antoine is looking unusually important. He is going to serve us wine. He has mineral water, too. Will you take a little of it with your wine? It's a white wine, and the water improves it for me."
"Yes, Mr. John, I'll take mine the same way."
Any dinner, although it may have a flavor which the food and drink themselves, no matter how good, cannot give, must draw to an end, and when the dessert had been served and eaten John looped back the heavy curtain still further and looked out at the white cataract.
"The snowfall will certainly continue the rest of the day," he said, "and perhaps all through the night. Suppose we go to the smoking-room. Antoine and Suzanne must eat also. It's their hour now."
"That is true, Mr. John. The smoking-room is a good place, but I'm afraid that you have no cigarette."
"I don't smoke, but we can talk there, of your brother Philip, of your mother, safe now, of Paris, delivered as if by a miracle from the German menace, and of other good events that have happened."
He held open the door of the dining-room and when she went out he followed her, leaving Picard and Suzanne to their hour.
John and Julie in the smoking-room were not lonely. They talked of many of the events he had suggested, and of more. Two of the windows looked out upon the town instead of the river, but they could see little there save the towering spire of the cathedral and the blank and ruined walls. The snow was already very deep, but the fall was not diminishing. The gray gloom of coming twilight, however, was beginning to show through it and once more John returned silent thanks that he had come into Chastel and found Julie. He was serving vicariously for Philip who undoubtedly had been held back by the snow.
"It will be night soon," he said. "It's likely that the snow will cease in the morning, and then I'm quite sure that Philip will come for you. It must have been his intention for you to help at the hospital camp below."