ess departed by the train, so the sister-in-law
departed in a pony-cart, with a son and a grandmother in the pony-
cart, together with such goods as the cart would hold; and, through
staggering adventures, reached safety at Troyes.

"And how did you yourself get on?" I asked the spinster-sempstress.

She answered:

"It was terrible. Ordinarily it is a journey of three or four hours. But
that time it lasted three days and two nights. The train was crammed
with refugees and with wounded. One was obliged to stand up. One
could not move."

"But where did you sleep?"

"I did not sleep. Do I not tell you one was obliged to stand up? I
stood up all the first night. The floor was thirty centimetres deep in
filth. The second night one had settled down somewhat. I could sit."

"But about eating?"

"I had a little food that I brought with me."

"And drinking?"

"Nothing, till the second day. One could not move. But in the end we
arrived. I was broken with fatigue. I was very ill. But I was home. The
Boches drank everything in the cafe, everything; but the building
was spared--it stood away from the firing. How long do you think the
war will last?"

"I'm beginning to think it will last a long time."

"So they say," she murmured, glancing through the window at the
prospect of roofs and chimney-cowls. "Provided that it finishes
well..."

Except by the look in her eyes, and by the destruction of her once
good complexion, it was impossible to divine that this woman's
habits had ever been disturbed in the slightest detail. But the gaze
and the complexion told the tale.

Next: the Boulevard St. Germain. A majestic flat, heavily and
sombrely furnished. The great drawing-room is shut and sheeted
with holland. It has been shut for twenty years. The mistress of this
home is an aged widow of inflexible will and astounding activity. She
gets up at five a.m., and no cook has ever yet satisfied her. The
master is her son, a bachelor of fifty. He is paralysed, and always
perfectly dressed in the English taste, he passes his life in a
wheeled chair. The home is centred in his study, full of books,
engravings, a large safe, telephone, theatrophone, newspapers,
cigarettes, easy-chairs. When I go in, an old friend, a stockbroker, is
there, and "thees" and "thous" abound in the conversation, which
runs on investments, the new English loan, banking accounts in
London, the rent moratorium in Paris, and the war. It is said that
every G