at.

Besides our own escort--the lieutenant who had brought us from Nancy--we
had a captain and a lieutenant to guide us into the "calmness" of the
trenches (the captain and a lieutenant for Mr. Beckett and Brian, the
other lieutenant for me) and one would have thought that they had never
before seen a woman in or out of a helmet! Down in a deep cellar-like
hole, which they called "_l'anti-chambre_," all three officers coached
Father Beckett and me in trench manners. As for Brian, it was clear to
them that he was no stranger to trench life, and their treatment of him
was perfect. They made no fuss, as tactless folk do over blind men; but,
while feigning to regard him as one of themselves, they slily watched
and protected his movements as a proud mother might the first steps of a
child.

On we went from the _antichambre_ into a long mouldy passage dug deep
into the earth. It was the link between trenches; and now and then a
sentinel popped out from behind a queer barrier built up as a protection
against "_les eclats d'obus_." "This is the way the wounded come back,"
said one of the lieutenants, "when there _are_ any wounded. Just now (or
you would not be here, Mademoiselle) there is"--he finished in
English--"nothing doing."

I laughed. "Who taught you that?"

"You will see," he replied, making a nice little mystery. "You will see
who taught it to me--and _then_ some!"

That was a beautiful ending for the sentence, and his American accent
was perfect, even if the meaning of the poor man's quotation was a
little uncertain!

We turned several times, and I had begun to think of the Minotaur's
labyrinth, when the passage knotted itself into a low-roofed room, open
at both ends, save for bomb screens, with a trench leading dismally off
from an opposite doorway. "When is a door not a door?" was a conundrum
of my childhood, and I think the answer was: "When it's ajar." But
nowadays there is a better _replique_: A door is not a door when it's a
dug-out. It is then a hole, kept from falling in upon itself by a log
of wood or anything handy. This time, the "anything handy" seemed to be
part of an old wheelbarrow, and on top were some sandbags. In the room,
which was four times as long as it was broad, and twelve times longer
than high, a few vague soldier-forms crouched over a meal on the floor,
their tablecloth being a Paris newspaper. They scrambled to their feet,
but could not stand upright, and to see their stooping sal