so far as I can see, he would have to walk to his grave, dig it, and lie
down in it himself, and that would be a scandal, and I am positive it
would lead to a procès. The French love lawsuits, you know. No
respectable family is ever without one.

However, there has not been a case of illness in our little community
since we were cut off from the rest of the world.

Somehow, at times, in the silence, I get a strange sensation of
unreality--the sort of intense feeling of its all being a dream. I wish I
didn't. I wonder if that is not Nature's narcotic for all experiences
outside those we are to expect from Life, which, in its normal course,
has tragedies enough.

Then again, sometimes, in the night, I have a sensation as if I were
getting a special view of a really magnificent spectacle to which the
rest of "my set" had not been invited--as if I were seeing it at a risk,
but determined to see it through.

I can imagine you, wrinkling your brows at me and telling me that that
frame of mind comes of my theatre-going habit. Well, it is not worth
while arguing it out. I can't. There is a kind of veil over it.

Nor were the day's mental adventures over.

I was just back from my promenade when my little French friend from
the foot of the hill came to the door. I call her "my little friend,"
though she is taller than I am, because she is only half my age.
She came with the proposition that I should harness Ninette and go
with her out to the battlefield, where, she said, they were sadly in