"And drinking?"

"Nothing, till the second day. One could not move. But in the end we
arrived. I was broken with fatigue. I was very ill. But I was home. The
Boches drank everything in the cafe, everything; but the building
was spared--it stood away from the firing. How long do you think the
war will last?"

"I'm beginning to think it will last a long time."

"So they say," she murmured, glancing through the window at the
prospect of roofs and chimney-cowls. "Provided that it finishes
well..."

Except by the look in her eyes, and by the destruction of her once
good complexion, it was impossible to divine that this woman's
habits had ever been disturbed in the slightest detail. But the gaze
and the complexion told the tale.

Next: the Boulevard St. Germain. A majestic flat, heavily and
sombrely furnished. The great drawing-room is shut and sheeted
with holland. It has been shut for twenty years. The mistress of this
home is an aged widow of inflexible will and astounding activity. She
gets up at five a.m., and no cook has ever yet satisfied her. The
master is her son, a bachelor of fifty. He is paralysed, and always
perfectly dressed in the English taste, he passes his life in a
wheeled chair. The home is centred in his study, full of books,
engravings, a large safe, telephone, theatrophone, newspapers,
cigarettes, easy-chairs. When I go in, an old friend, a stockbroker, is