nes!" he said.

There was much laughing and talking as the officers moved to the door.
The heavy velvet curtains were drawn. Some one near the door lighted a
candle.

"Where shall I go?" I asked.

Emil, unlike the officers, was evidently nervous.

"Madame is as safe here as anywhere," he said. "But if she wishes to
join the others in the cellar--"

I wanted to go to the cellar or to crawl into the office safe. But I
felt that, as the only woman and the only American about, I held the
reputation of America and of my sex in my hands. The waiters had gone
to the cellar. The officers had flocked to the cafe on the ground
floor underneath. The alarm bell was still ringing. Over the candle,
stuck in a saucer, Emil's face looked white and drawn.

"I shall stay here," I said. "And I shall have coffee."

The coffee was not bravado. I needed something hot.

The gun, which had ceased, began to fire again. And then suddenly, not
far away, a bomb exploded. Even through the closed and curtained
windows the noise was terrific. Emil placed my coffee before me with
shaking hands, and disappeared.

Another crash, and another, both very close!

There is nothing that I know of more hideous than an aerial
bombardment. It requires an entire mental readjustment. The sky, which
has always symbolised peace, suddenly spells death. Bombardment by the
big guns of an advancing army is not unexpected. There is time for
flight, a chance, too, for a reprisal. But against these raiders of
the sky there is nothing. One sits and waits. And no town is safe. One
moment there is a peaceful village with war twenty, fifty miles away.
The next minute hell breaks loose. Houses are destroyed. Sleeping
children die in their cradles. The streets echo and reecho with the
din of destruction. The reply of the anti-aircraft guns is feeble, and
at night futile. There is no bustle of escape. The streets are empty
and dead, and in each house people, family groups, noncombatants, folk
who ask only the right to work and love and live, sit and wait with
blanched faces.

More explosions, nearer still. They were trying for the _Mairie_,
which was round the corner.

In the corridor outside the dining room a candle was lighted, and the
English officer who had reassured me earlier in the evening came in.

"You need not be alarmed," he said cheerfully. "It is really nothing.
But out in the corridor it is quite safe and not so lonely."

I went out. Two or three B