I do not think the cathedral was their objective for the
moment. We walked to and fro in the silence of the streets
and beneath the whirring wings overhead. Presently, a young
woman, keeping to the wall, crossed a corner. An old woman
opened a shutter (how it jarred!), and spoke to her. The
silence closed again, but it seemed to me that I heard a sound
of singing--the sort of chant one hears in nightmare-cities of
voices crying from underground.

IN THE CATHEDRAL

"Nonsense," said an officer. "Who should be singing here?"
We circled the cathedral again, and saw what pavement-stones
can do against their own city, when the shell jerks them
upward. But there _was_ singing after all--on the other side
of a little door in the flank of the cathedral. We looked in,
doubting, and saw at least a hundred folk, mostly women, who
knelt before the altar of an unwrecked chapel. We withdrew
quietly from that holy ground, and it was not only the eyes of
the French officers that filled with tears. Then there came
an old, old thing with a prayer-book in her hand, pattering
across the square, evidently late for service.

"And who are those women?" I asked.

"Some are caretakers; people who have still little shops here.
(There is one quarter where you can buy things.) There are
many old people, too, who will not go away. They are of the
place, you see."