The shadows raced over the room from comer to corner. Lost,
and they could not find it. They hurried desperately in those last
few moments. Great shadows searching for some little thing. In the
smallest nook they sought for it. Then the last candle died. As the
flame went up with the smoke from the fallen wick all the great
shadows turned and mournfully trailed away.

The Homes Of Arras

As you come to Arras by the western road, by the red ramparts and the
Spanish gate, Arras looks like a king. With such a dignity as clings
to the ancient gateway so might a king be crowned; with such a sweep
of dull red as the old ramparts show, so might he be robed; but a
dead king with crowned skull. For the ways of Arras are empty but for
brown soldiers, and her houses are bare as bones.

Arras sleeps profoundly, roofless, windowless, carpetless; Arras
sleeps as a skeleton sleeps, with all the dignity of former days
about it, but the life that stirs in its streets is not the old
city's life, the old city is murdered. I came to Arras and went down
a street, and saw back gardens glinting through the bare ribs of the
houses. Garden after garden shone, so far as it could, though it was
in October and after four years of war; but what was left of those
gardens shining there in the sun was like sad faces trying to smile
after many disasters.

I came to a great wall that no shell had breached. A cascade of
scarlet creeper poured over it, as though on the other side some
serene garden grew, where no disaster came, tended by girls who had
never heard of war, walking untrodden paths. It was not so. But one's
fancy, weary of ruin, readily turns to such scenes wherever facts are
hidden, though but by a tottering wall, led by a few bright leaves or
the glimpse of a flower.

But not for any fancy of mine must you picture ruin any more as
something graced with splendour, or as it were an argosy reaching the
shores of our day laden with grandeur and dignity out of antiquity.
Ruin to-day is not covered with ivy, and has no curious architecture
or strange secrets of history, and is not beautiful or romantic at
all. It has no tale to tell of old civilizations, not otherwise
known, told of by few grey stones. Ruin to-day is destruction and
sorrow and debt and loss, come down untidily upon modern homes and
cutting off ordinary generations, smashing the implements of familiar
trades and making common avocations obsolete. It is no longer the