incere than mine.
Meanwhile the hand that is to lick us into shape hovers over us and does
not fall. We wait expectantly in the mess-room which is to contain us.

It was once the sitting-room of a fine suite. A diminutive vestibule
divides it from the corridor. You enter through double doors with muffed
glass panes in a wooden partition opposite the wide French windows
opening on the balcony. A pale blond light from the south fills the
room. Its walls are bare except for a map of Belgium, faced by a print
from one of the illustrated papers representing the King and Queen of
the Belgians. Of its original furnishings only a few cane chairs and a
settee remain. These are set back round the walls and in the window.
Long tables with marble tops, brought up from what was once the hotel
restaurant, enclose three sides of a hollow square, like this:

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Round these we group ourselves thus: the Commandant in the middle of the
top table in the window, between Mrs. Torrence and Ursula Dearmer; Dr.
Haynes and Dr. Bird, on the other side of Ursula Dearmer; the
chauffeurs, Tom and Bert, round the corner at the right-hand side table;
I am round the other corner at the left-hand side table, by Mrs.
Torrence, and Janet McNeil is on my right, and on hers are Mrs. Lambert
and Mr. Foster and the Chaplain. Mr. Riley sits alone on the inside
opposite Mrs. Torrence.

This rather quiet and very serious person interests me. He doesn't say
anything, and you wonder what sort of consciousness goes on under the
close-cropped, boyish, black velvet hair. Nature has left his features a
bit unfinished, the further to baffle you.

All these people are interesting, intensely interesting and baffling, as
men and women are bound to be who have come from heaven knows where to
face heaven knows what. Most of them are quite innocently unaware. They
do not know that they are interesting, or baffling either. They do not
know, and it has not occurred to them to wonder, how they are going to
affect each other or how they are going to behave. Nobody, you would
say, is going to affect the Commandant. When he is not dashing up and
down, driven by his mysterious energy, he stands apart in remote and
dreamy isolation. His eyes, when they are not darting b