h. Long trains of carriages packed tight
with packages, with, enormous bundles; human heads appearing, here and
there, above the swollen curves of the bundles; human bodies emerging in
the struggle to bring forth the bundles through the narrow doors.

For the first few weeks the War meant to Dorothea, not bleeding wounds
and death, but just these train-loads of refugees--just this one
incredible spectacle of Belgium pouring itself into Cannon Street
Station. Her clear hard mind tried and failed to grasp the sequences of
which the final act was the daily unloading of tons of men, women and
children on Cannon Street platform. Yesterday they were staggering under
those bundles along their straight, flat roads between the everlasting
rows of poplars; their towns and villages flamed and smoked behind them;
some of them, goaded like tired cattle, had felt German bayonets at
their backs--yesterday. And this morning they were here, brave and gay,
smiling at Dorothea as she carried their sick on her stretcher and their
small children in her arms.

And they were still proud of themselves.

A little girl tripped along the platform, carrying in one hand a large
pasteboard box covered with black oilcloth, and in the other a cage with
a goldfinch in it. She looked back at Dorothea and smiled, proud of
herself because she had saved her goldfinch. A Belgium boy carried a
paralyzed old man on his shoulders. He grinned at Dorothea, proud of
himself because he had saved his grandfather. A young Flemish peasant
woman pushed back the shawl that covered her baby's face to show her how
pretty he was; she laughed because she had borne him and saved him.

And there were terrible things significant of yesterday. Women and girls
idiotic with outrage and grief. A young man lamed in trying to throw
himself into a moving train because he thought his lost mother was in
it. The ring screening the agony of a woman giving birth to her child on
the platform. A death in the train; stiff, upturned feet at the end of a
stretcher that the police-ambulance carried away.

And as Dorothea drove her car-loads of refugees day after day in perfect
safety, she sickened with impatience and disgust. Safety was hard and
bitter to her. Her hidden self was unsatisfied; it had a monstrous
longing. It wanted to go where the guns sounded and the shells burst,
and the villages flamed and smoked; to go along the straight, flat roads
between the poplars where the refugees