The Azure Rose

A Novel

BY
REGINALD WRIGHT KAUFFMAN
Author of “Jim,” “The House of Bondage,”
“The Mark of The Beast,” “Our Navy at Work,” etc.

NEW YORK
THE MACAULAY COMPANY

Copyright, 1919
By The Macaulay Co.

“Oh!” she cried. “I had just come in and I thought—Ithought it was my room.”

For
My Friend and Secretary,
LANCE-CORPORAL ARNOLD ROBSON,
No. 10864, “C” Company, Sixth Battalion,
Yorkshire Regiment—“The Green Howards”—
Who, Leading His Squad, Died for His Country
At Suvla Bay, Gallipoli, 21st August, 1915,
Aged Twenty.

[Pg vii]

PREFACE

A novel about Paris that is not about the warrequires even now, I am told, some word ofexplanation. Mine is brief:

This story was conceived before the war began.I came to the task of putting it into its final shapeafter nine months passed between the WesternFront and a Paris war-torn and war-darkened,both physically and spiritually. Yet, though Ihad found the old familiar places, and the everyoung and ever familiar people, wounded and sad,I did not long have to seek for the Parisian braveryin pain and the Parisian smile shining, rainbowlike,through the tears. Nothing can conquerFrance and nothing can lastingly hurt Paris.They are, as a famous wit said of our own so differentBoston, a state of mind. Had the Germansucceeded in the Autumn of 1914 or the Spring of1918, France would have remained, and Paris.What used to happen in the Land of Love and[Pg viii]the City of Lights will happen there again and bealways happening, so that my story is at once aretrospect and a prophecy.

Realizing these things, I have found it a pleasureto make this book. A book without problemsand without horrors, its sole purpose is to give tothe reader some of that pleasure which went to itsmaking. Wars come and go; but for every manthe Door Opposite stands open beside the Seine,the hurdy-gurdy plays “Annie Laurie” in theStreet of the Valley of Grace and—a Lady of theRose is waiting.

R. W. K.

Columbia, Penna.,
Christmas Day, 1918.

[Pg ix]

CONTENTS