B ETWEEN the grey hills of its bathβso like its cradle and its coffinβlay one of those small and lonely creatures which inhabit the surface of the earth for seventy years. As on every other evening the sun was sinking and the moon, unseen, was rising. The round head of flesh and bone floated upon the deep water of the bath. Humbler guests poured each night from the termini into the overflowing city, and sought anxiously for some bed, lounge-chair, or pillowed corner, in which to rest until the morning.
Stretched upon the table in a branch of the Y. She had arrived that night at the Gare du Nord at eight o'clock, and the following night at eight o'clock she left Paris by the Gare de l'Est. Just as she entered the station a small boy with a basket of violets for sale held a bunch to her face. I give it to you! But while she dragged her heavy kit-bag and her suit-case across the platform another boy of a different spirit ran beside her. Wait a minute. The war is over! At half-past two in the morning she reached the station of Bar-le-Duc.
The rain rattled down through the broken roof as she crossed the lines of the platform on the further side, where, vaguely expecting to be met she questioned civilians and military police. But the pall of death that hung over Bar stretched even to the station, where nobody knew anything, expected anything, cared anything, except to hurry out and away into the rain. She, too, followed at last, leaving her bag and box in the corner of a deserted office, and crossing the station yard tramped out in the thick mud on to a bridge.
The rain was falling in torrents, and crouching for a minute in a doorway she made her bundles faster and buttoned up her coat. Roofs jutted above her, pavements sounded under her feet, the clock struck three near by.
If there was an hotel anywhere there was no one to give information about it. The last train had emptied itself, the travellers had hurried off into the night, and not a foot rang upon the pavements. The rain ran in a stream down her cap and on to her face; down her sleeves and on to her hands.
