Page:The Best continental short stories of and the yearbook of the continental short story 1924-25.pdf/68

 She is navigating her way more cautiously than a Hamburg pilot would do. Her skilled and diligent steering is finally rewarded. The vessel arrives in port without the least damage, bearing a full cargo. The husband who meets her takes the lunch-basket and sets it on the ground near by.

“Eat, don’t let it get cold.”

But the husband catches up the child and presses its cold little nose against his own face. As he holds it close, his eyes, bright with happiness, look before him into space. The sky is gray, the pavements wet, the vegetation leafless. The day is warm, for winter, winter is at the moment of snowless days, and the Christmas season has arrived.

The woman, looking at her child and husband, does not know which of the two she loves the more. She repeats, hesitating, “Eat, don’t let the food grow cold.”

This time, though, perhaps another woman is speaking, for, close beside our first group, there is another man who is clasping to his face another child, after having deposited, like the first man, a lunch-basket upon the ground. Still another meal is growing cold, and a third wife is looking on as a third husband presses a third child to his cheek. Like others, this woman also is at a loss to decide which one she loves the more dearly—her husband, or the child who is nipping his father’s ear with his little teeth.

“Eat, the child will keep for bye-and-bye.”

These three men were clad in furs, for they were accustomed to clasp and handle steel. They were all chauffeurs. They were gathered in the Square Vincelas, during the temperate period of the winter, and at Christmas time. They looked at each other with pride and joy, for each one—none more favored than another—was holding his child close to his face, each one’s wife was with him, and each one had a well-filled lunch-basket by his side. One cannot live unless he eats!

It isn’t always true, that. Some people prefer to leave the bread and butter and depend upon love. A fine and rare thing, love, the most powerful force in the world, and sometimes the only thing in the universe that counts. The love of lovers is sweet indeed. I know nothing about