y," cried the Australian in a brisk voice.

The door opened and slammed again. Martin and the other girl stood on
the pavement facing each other. The Englishman collapsed on the
doorstep, and began to snore.

"Well, there's only you and me," she said.

"Oh, if you were only a person, instead of being a member of a
profession----" said Martin softly.

"Come," she said.

"No, dearie. I must go," said Martin.

"As you will. I'll take care of your friend." She yawned.

He kissed her and strode down the dark street, his nostrils full of the
smell of the rouge on her lips.

He walked a long while with his hat off, breathing deep of the sharp
night air. The streets were black and silent. Intemperate desires
prowled like cats in the darkness.

* * * * *

He woke up and stretched himself stiffly, smelling grass and damp earth.
A pearly lavender mist was all about him, through which loomed the
square towers of Notre Dame and the row of kings across the facade and
the sculpture about the darkness of the doorways. He had lain down on
his back on the little grass plot of the Parvis Notre Dame to look at
the stars, and had fallen asleep.

It must be nearly dawn. Words were droning importunately in his head.
"The poor beggar said 'Thank you' with a funny German accent and the
grenade blew him to hell." He remembered the man he had once helped to
pick up in whose pocket a grenade had exploded. Before that he had not
realised that torn flesh was such a black-red, like sausage meat.

"Get up, you can't lie there," cried a gendarme.

"Notre Dame is beautiful in the morning," said Martin, stepping across
the low rail on to the pavement.

"Ah, yes; it is beautiful."

Martin Howe sat on the rail of the bridge and looked. Before him, with
nothing distinct yet to be seen, were two square towers and the tracery
between them and the row of kings on the facade, and the long series of
flying buttresses of the flank, gleaming through the mist, and, barely
visible, the dark, slender spire soaring above the crossing. So had the
abbey in the forest gleamed tall in the misty moonlight; like mist, only
drab and dense, the dust had risen above the tall apse as the shells
tore it to pieces.

* * * * *

Amid a smell of new-roasted coffee he sat at a table and watched people
pass briskly through the ruddy sunlight. Waiters in shirt-sleeves were
rubbing off the other tables a