be a taxi. I have sent the maid."

At the last moment, as she was hurrying him on to the staircase, she
grasped her handbag. They stumbled one after the other down the dark
stairs. He had now caught the infection of her tremendous anxiety. She
opened the front door. The glistening street was absolutely empty; the
rain pelted on the pavements and the roadway, each drop falling like
a missile and raising a separate splash, so that it seemed as if the
flood on the earth was leaping up to meet the flood from the sky.

"Come!" she said with hysterical impatience. "We cannot wait. There
will be a taxi in Piccadilly, I know."

Simultaneously a taxi swerved round the corner of Burlington Street.
Marthe stood on the step next to the driver. As the taxi halted she
jumped down. Her drenched white apron was over her head and she was
wet to the skin.

In the taxi, while the officer struck matches, Christine knelt and
fastened his leggings; he could not have performed the nice operation
for himself. And all the time she was doing something else--she
was pushing forward the whole taxi, till her muscles ached with the
effort. Then she sat back on the seat, smoothed her hair under the
hat, unclasped the bag, and patted her features delicately with the
powder-puff. Neither knew the exact time, and in vain they tried to
discern the faces of clocks that flew past them in the heavy rain.
Christine sighed and said:

"These tempests. This rain. They say it is because of the big
cannons--which break the clouds."

The officer, who had the air of being in a dream, suddenly bent
towards her and replied with a most strange solemnity:

"It is to wash away the blood!"

She had not thought of that. Of course it was! She sighed again.

As they neared Victoria the officer said:

"My kit-bag! It's at the hotel. Shall I have time to pay my bill and
get it? The Grosvenor's next to the station, you know."

She answered unhesitatingly: "You will go direct to the train. I will
try the hotel."

"Drive round to the Grosvenor entrance like hell," he instructed the
driver when the taxi stopped in the station yard.

In the hotel she would never have got the bag, owing to her
difficulties in explaining the situation in English to a haughty
reception-clerk, had not a French-Swiss waiter been standing by. She
flung imploring French sentences at the waiter like a stream from a
hydrant. The bill was produced in less than half a minute. She put
down m