d in the
mothers whose weak arms held them up. So they gazed and went on, and
made way for others like them, who gazed in their turn and went on
too. All day the crowd renewed itself, and it was always the same
crowd, intent and understanding and silent, who looked steadily at
the flag, and knew what its being there meant. That, in August, was
the look of Paris.

III

FEBRUARY

FEBRUARY dusk on the Seine. The boats are plying again, but they
stop at nightfall, and the river is inky-smooth, with the same long
weed-like reflections as in August. Only the reflections are fewer
and paler; bright lights are muffled everywhere. The line of the
quays is scarcely discernible, and the heights of the Trocadero are
lost in the blur of night, which presently effaces even the firm
tower-tops of Notre-Dame. Down the damp pavements only a few street
lamps throw their watery zigzags. The shops are shut, and the
windows above them thickly curtained. The faces of the houses are
all blind.

In the narrow streets of the Rive Gauche the darkness is even
deeper, and the few scattered lights in courts or "cites" create
effects of Piranesi-like mystery. The gleam of the chestnut-roaster's
brazier at a street corner deepens the sense of an old adventurous
Italy, and the darkness beyond seems full of cloaks and conspiracies.
I turn, on my way home, into an empty street between high garden
walls, with a single light showing far off at its farther end. Not a
soul is in sight between me and that light: my steps echo endlessly
in the silence. Presently a dim figure comes around the corner ahead
of me. Man or woman? Impossible to tell till I overtake it. The
February fog deepens the darkness, and the faces one passes are
indistinguishable. As for the numbers of the houses, no one thinks
of looking for them. If you know the quarter you count doors from
the corner, or try to puzzle out the familiar outline of a balcony
or a pediment; if you are in a strange street, you must ask at the
nearest tobacconist's--for, as for finding a policeman, a yard off
you couldn't tell him from your grandmother!

Such, after six months of war, are the nights of Paris; the days are
less remarkable and less romantic.

Almost all the early flush and shiver of romance is gone; or so at
least it seems to those who have watched the gradual revival of
life. It may appear otherwise to observers from other countries,
even from those involved in the war. After London,