other people's children always in one's life."

"Is this a park?" Fanny asked a soldier in the next village, a village
whose four streets were filled with rows of lorries, touring cars and
ambulances. On every car the iron was frail with rust, the bonnets of
some were torn off, a wheel, two wheels, were missing, the side ripped
open disclosing the rusting bones.

"Pardon, madame?"

"What are you doing here?"

"We are left behind from the Fourth Army which has gone up to Germany. I
have no tools or I would make one car out of four. But my men are
discouraged and no one works. The war is over.

"Then this is a park?"

"No, madame, it is a cemetery."

Months went by, and there came a night, as wet and sad as any other,
when no premonitory star showed in the sky, and all that was bright in
Fanny's spirit toned itself to match the monotonous, shadowless pallor
about her.

She was upon her homeward journey. At the entrance to the hut she
paused; for such a light was burning in the sitting-room that it
travelled even the dark corridor and wandered out upon the step. By it
she could see the beaded moisture of the rain-mist upon the long hair
escaped from her cap.