thee again, brother, my brother!" cried Gigi, and a sob shook him.

"Gigi! Mon Gigi. Tu as done regu ma lettre?"

"Yesterday. O Ciccio, Ciccio, I shall die without thee!"

"But no, Gigi, frere. You won't die."

"Yes, Ciccio, I shall. I know I shall."

"I say _no_, brother," said Ciccio. But a spasm suddenly took him,
he pulled off his hat and put it over his face and sobbed into it.

"Adieu, ami! Adieu!" cried Gigi, clutching the other man's arm.
Ciccio took his hat from his tear-stained face and put it on his
head. Then the two men embraced.

"_Toujours a toi!_" said Geoffrey, with a strange, solemn salute in
front of Ciccio and Alvina. Then he turned on his heel and marched
rapidly out of the station, his soiled soldier's overcoat flapping
in the wind at the door. Ciccio watched him go. Then he turned and
looked with haunted eyes into the eyes of Alvina. And then they
hurried down the desolate platform in the darkness. Many people,
Italians, largely, were camped waiting there, while bits of snow
wavered down. Ciccio bought food and hired cushions. The train
backed in. There was a horrible fight for seats, men scrambling
through windows. Alvina got a place--but Ciccio had to stay in the
corridor.

Then the long night journey through France, slow and blind. The
train was now so hot that the iron plate on the floor burnt Alvina's
feet. Outside she saw glimpses of snow. A fat Italian hotel-keeper
put on a smoking cap, covered the light, and spread himself before
Alvina. In the next carriage a child was screaming. It screamed all
the night--all the way from Paris to Chambery it screamed. The train
came to sudden halts, and stood still in the snow. The hotel-keeper
snored. Alvina became almost comatose, in the burning heat of the
carriage. And again the train rumbled on. And again she saw glimpses
of stations, glimpses of snow, through the chinks in the curtained
windows. And again there was a jerk and a sudden halt, a drowsy
mutter from the sleepers, somebody uncovering the light, and
somebody covering it again, somebody looking out, somebody tramping
down the corridor, the child screaming.

The child belonged to two poor Italians--Milanese--a shred of a thin
little man, and a rather loose woman. They had five tiny children,
all boys: and the four who could stand on their feet all wore
scarlet caps. The fifth was a baby. Alvina had seen a French
official yelling at the poor shred of a young father on the
plat