attered over the wide countries between
Charleroi and Erquelinnes, she would turn aside, indeed; but, then,
that was only to say a prayer for him; that was not loss to him, but
gain.

So she walked on until she reached the frontier of France. She began to
get a little giddy; she began to see the blue sky and the green level
always swirling round her as if some one were spinning them to frighten
her, but still she would not be afraid; she went on, and on, and on, till
she set her last step on the soil of Flanders.

Here a new, strange, terrible, incomprehensible obstacle opposed her: she
had no papers; they thrust her back and spoke to her as if she were a
criminal. She could not understand what they could mean. She had never
heard of these laws and rules. She vaguely comprehended that she must not
enter France, and stunned and heartbroken she dropped down under a tree,
and for the first time sobbed as if her very life would weep itself away.

She could see nothing, understand nothing. There were the same road, the
same hedges, the same fields, the same white cottages, and peasants in
blue shirts and dun-hued oxen in the wagons. She saw no mark, no
difference, ere they told her where she stood was Belgium, and where they
stood was France, and that she must not pass from one into the other.

The men took no notice of her. They went back into their guard-house,
and smoked and drank. A cat sunned herself under a scarlet bean. The
white clouds sailed on before a southerly sky. She might die here--he
there--and nothing seemed to care.

After a while an old hawker came up; he was travelling with wooden clocks
from the Black Forest. He stopped and looked at her, and asked her what
she ailed.

She knelt down at his feet in the dust.

"Oh, help me!" she cried to him. "Oh, pray, help me! I have walked all
the way from Brussels--that is my country--and now they will not let me
pass that house where the soldiers are. They say I have no papers. What
papers should I have? I do not know. When one has done no harm, and does
not owe a sou anywhere, and has walked all the way--Is it money that they
want? I have none; and they stole my silver clasps in Brussels; and if
I do not get to Paris I must die--die without seeing him again--ever
again, dear God!"

She dropped her head upon the dust and crouched and sobbed there, her
courage broken by this new barrier that she had never dreamed would come
between herself and Paris.

The o