for a time she recaptured a little of the joy that had escaped so quickly.
She played the things she knew would please Fergus, the music which he had loved in the days of the house in Sycamore Street and the flat in the Babylon Arms, music she had played for him alone at the moments when Clarence was not there to disturb her with the silent, unrelieved pleading of his dim eyes. She played the simple old March from The Ruins of Athens, and one or two Chopin waltzes and the Marche Funèbre, which to Hattie would always be McKinley's Funeral March and which to Fergus invoked memories of Shane's Castle and Ellen in shirtwaist and skirt wearing at her belt a jingling thing they called a chatelaine. And she wooed them with such success that, hypnotized by the spell, they did not hear the first screams of the sirens rushing through distant streets nor the faint popping of the guns far away on the summit of Montmartre.
It was not until she paused, her hands resting thoughtfully on the ivory keys, that Callendar stirred himself and murmured in French, "The Boches are here. . . . Listen. The siren!"
And from the street nearby—perhaps from the Place Passy—the shriek of a fire engine penetrated the room, even through the heavy brocade curtains that muffled the windows. There was one more scream and then another and another, and then the faint, distant popping of guns, like a barrage of tiny fire-crackers. Fergus stood up and glanced at his wrist.
"I must go," he said. "I'm late already."
"Not now," protested Ellen, turning abruptly. "Not now in the midst of a raid. You can spend the night here. . . . There is plenty of room." She trembled a little, as if in terror of losing him so soon.
Fergus smiled. "I can't," he said. "You see, I have a rendezvous . . . with a man from my escadrille. He is waiting for me now."
"He won't be expecting you . . . not now."
