walked together to the oak-panelled Mess Room in a house on the other
side of the empty square. A long table was spread with a white cloth,
with silver, with flowers, as though they were expected. Soldiers waited
behind the chairs.

"Vauclin! That _foie gras_ you brought back from Paris yesterday...
where is it, out with it? What, you only brought two jars! Arrelles,
there's a jar left from yours."

"Mademoiselle, sit here by Captain Vauclin. He will amuse you. And you,
mademoiselle, by me. You all talk French?"

"And fancy, I never met an Englishwoman before. Never! Your
responsibility is terrible. How tired you must be!... What a journey!
For to-night we have found you billets. We billet you on Germans. It is
more comfortable; they do more for you. What, you have met no Germans
yet? They exist, yes, they exist."

"Arrelles, you are not talking French! You should talk English. You
can't? Nor I either...."

"But these ladies talk French marvellously...."

Some one in another house was playing an ancient instrument. Its music
stole across the open square. Soldiers passed singing in the street.

A hundred miles ... a hundred years away ... lay Bar-le-Duc, liquid in
mud, soaked in eternal rain. "What was I?" thought Fanny in amazement.
"To what had I come, in that black hut!" And she thought that she had
run down to the bottom of living, lain on that hard floor where the poor