"No, thank you."

"But I give it to you! I _give_ it to you!"

As she had neither slept on the boat from Southampton nor on the table
of the Y.W.C.A., tears of pleasure came into her eyes as she took them.
But while she dragged her heavy kitbag and her suitcase across the
platform another boy of a different spirit ran beside her.

"Mademoiselle! Mademoiselle! Wait a minute..." he panted.

"Well?"

"Haven't you heard ... haven't you heard! The war is over!"

She continued to drag the weighty sack behind her over the platform.
"She didn't know!" howled the wicked boy. "No one had told her!"

And in the train which carried her towards the dead of night the taunt
and the violets accompanied her.

At half-past two in the morning she reached the station of Bar-le-Duc.
The rain rattled down through the broken roof as she crossed the lines
of the platform on the further side, where, vaguely expecting to be met
she questioned civilians and military police. But the pall of death that
hung over Bar stretched even to the station, where nobody knew anything,
expected anything, cared anything, except to hurry out and away into
the rain.