All this is sophistry, no doubt, but oh, it's beguiling sophistry! It's so perfectly disguised that I seldom recognize it except at night when I lie awake, and it sits on my bed, without its becoming mask.
Being the Becketts' adviser-in-chief, and having his lungs full of ozone every day should be enough to account for Brian's improvement. Yet--well, I can't help thinking that he takes a lot more trouble than he need for Dierdre O'Farrell. Oh, not that he's _in love_! Such an idea is ridiculous, but he's interested and sorry for the girl, because she goes about with a chip on her shoulder, defying the world to knock it off. He won't admit that it's the fault of her outlook on the world, and that the poor old world isn't to blame at all.
What if he knew the truth about that brother and sister? Naturally I can't tell him, of all people on earth, and they take advantage of my handicap. They've used their time well, in my absence, when they had Brian to themselves. He had his doubts of Julian, but the creature has sung himself into my blind brother's heart. From what I hear, the three have spent most of their time at the piano in the private _salon_ which the Becketts invited the O'Farrells to engage.
Now, as I write, we are making our headquarters in Compiègne, sleeping there, and sightseeing by day on what they call the "Noyon Front."
After Rheims and before Noyon we stopped three days in Paris instead of one, as we'd planned, for Mother Beckett was tired. She wouldn't confess it, but "Father" thought she looked pale. Strange if she had not, after such experiences and emotions! Sometimes, when I study the delicate old face, with blue hollows under kind, sweet eyes, I ask myself: "Will she be able to get through the task she's set herself?" But she is so quietly brave, not only in fatigue, but in danger, that I answer my own question: "Yes, she will do it somehow, on the reserve force that kept her up when Jim died."
The road from Paris, past Senlis, to Compiègne, was even more thrilling than the road to Nancy and beyond, for this was the way the Germans took in September, 1914, when they thought the capital was theirs to have and hold: "_la route de l'Allemagne_" it used to be called, but never will French lips give it that name again.