When he returned he had the young man beside him.

"One moment," said Chatel, as they walked towards the car; "who asked
for me, the girl with the fair hair, or with the dark?"

"With the fair."

Moitriers was closed when they reached it, and they drove on to the only
other place where food could be bought past the hour of midnight--the
station buffet.

Pushing past the barriers at the entrance to the station they entered a
long corridor filled with heavy civilian life. Men and women lay, slept
and snored upon the stone ledges which lined the side of the tunnel,
their bags and packets stacked around them. Small children lay asleep
like cut corn, heads hanging and nodding in all directions, or propped
against each other in such an intricate combination that if one should
move the whole sheaf of tired heads slipped lower to the floor.

Further on, swing doors of glass led to a waiting-room, and here the
sleeping men and women were so packed upon the ground and around the
little tables that it was difficult to walk between them. Men sat in
groups of nine or ten around a table meant for four each with his head
sunk down between his hands upon the marble surface. On one table a
small child wrapped in shawls lay among the circle of heads, curled like
a snail, its toe in its father's ear. At each end of the room stood
soldiers with fixed bayonets.

Denis paused at the entrance. "Walk round here," he said, "there is a