any moment."

"If that is so," I said, "this lady cannot stay here!"

"I can't help that!" he shouted, starting off down the platform.

I caught the sleeve of a captain of gendarmerie who was running to
enter a first-class compartment.

"Eh--what do you want, monsieur?" he snapped, in surprise. Then, as I
made him a sign, he regarded me with amazement. I had given the
distress signal of the secret police.

"Try to make room for this lady in your compartment," I said.

"Willingly, monsieur. Hasten, madame; the train is already moving!"
and he tore open the compartment door and swung the Countess to the
car platform.

I suppose she thought I was to follow, for when the officer slammed
the compartment door she stepped to the window and tried to open it.

"Quick!" she cried to the guard, who had just locked the door; "help
that officer in! He is wounded--can't you see he is wounded?"

The train was gliding along the asphalt platform; I hobbled beside the
locked compartment, where she stood at the window.

"Will you unlock that door?" said the Countess to the guard. "I wish
to leave the train!"

The cars were rolling a little faster than I could move along.

The Countess leaned from the open window; through the driving rain her
face in the lamp-light was pitifully white. I made a last effort and
caught up with her car.

"A safe journey, madame," I stammered, catching at the hand she held
out and brushing the shabby-gloved fingers with my lips.

[Illustration: "SISTERS OF CHARITY WERE GIVING FIRST AID"]

"I shall never forgive this wanton self-sacrifice," she said,
unsteadily. Then the car rolled silently past me, swifter, swifter,
and her white face faded from my sight. Yet still I stood there,
bareheaded, in the rain, while the twin red lamps on the rear car grew
smaller and smaller, until they, too, were shut out in the closing
curtains of the fog.

As I turned away into the lighted station a hospital train from the
north glided into the yard and stopped. Soldiers immediately started
carrying out the wounded and placing them in rows on mattresses ranged
along the walls of the passenger depot; sisters of charity, hovering
over the mutilated creatures, were already giving first aid to the
injured; policemen kept the crowd from trampling the dead and dying;
gendarmes began to clear the platforms, calling out sharply, "No more
trains to-night! Move on! This platform is for government officials
only!"

Th