Page:The Marne (Wharton 1918).djvu/73

Rh  the dreadful theatres  and the novels  and the Boulevards. Of course we mustn't be hard on the French, for they've never known Home Life, or the Family but we must show them  we must set the example. "

Troy, sickened by their blatancy, had kept to himself for the greater part of the trip; but during the last days he had been drawn into talk by a girl who reminded him of Miss Wicks, though she was in truth infinitely prettier. The evenings below decks were long, and he sat at her side in the saloon and listened to her.

Her name was Hinda Warlick, and she came from the Middle West. He gathered from her easy confidences that she was singing in a suburban church choir while waiting for a vaudeville engagement. Her studies had probably been curtailed by the task of preparing