off and putting on one of her
stained yellow gloves. Now and again she would move up as far as the
posters outside the Hall, scrutinising them as if interested in the
future, then stroll back again. In her worn and discreet dark dress, and
her small hat, she had nothing about her to rouse suspicion, unless it
were the trail of violet powder she left on the moonlight.

For the moonlight this evening was almost solid, seeming with its cool
still vibration to replace the very air; in it the war-time precautions
against light seemed fantastic, like shading candles in a room still
full of daylight. What lights there were had the effect of strokes and
stipples of dim colour laid by a painter's brush on a background of
ghostly whitish blue. The dreamlike quality of the town was perhaps
enhanced for her eyes by the veil she was wearing--in daytime no longer
white. As the music died out of her, elation also ebbed. Somebody had
passed her, speaking German, and she was overwhelmed by a rush of
nostalgia. On this moonlight night by the banks of the Rhine--whence she
came--the orchards would be heavy with apples; there would be murmurs,
and sweet scents; the old castle would stand out clear, high over the
woods and the chalky-white river. There would be singing far away, and
the churning of a distant steamer's screw; and perhaps on the water a
log raft still drifting down in the blue light. There would be German
voices talking. And suddenly tears oozed up in her eyes, and crept down
through the powder on her cheeks. She raised her veil and dabbed at her
face with a little, not-too-clean handkerchief, screwed up in her
yellow-gloved hand. But the more she dabbed, the more those treacherous
tears ran. Then she became aware that a tall young man in khaki was also
standing before the shop-window, not looking at the titles of the books,
but eyeing her askance. His face was fresh and open, with a sort of
kindly eagerness in his blue eyes. Mechanically she drooped her wet
lashes, raised them obliquely, drooped them again, and uttered a little
sob....

This young man, Captain in a certain regiment, and discharged from
hospital at six o'clock that evening, had entered Queen's Hall at
half-past seven. Still rather brittle and sore from his wound, he had
treated himself to a seat in the Grand Circle, and there had sat, very
still and dreamy, the whole concert through. It had been like eating
after a long fast--something of the sensation Pola