ne doctor said to me in French, "I have seen your wonderful country. It
is amazing. I would like to see it again. I have been asked to lecture.
Perhaps, after the war--"

He broke off abruptly. In a flash the end of his life came up to me.
His work and ambitions, and then the cleavage in his career; the sharp
division in his life; the preparation of years, and then, instead of
fulfillment, an exile to a country where life was a struggle for the
bare necessities of the body--food and shelter. I looked at his
hands--thin and white and nervous. What hideous, despairing moments he
must know!

I asked him a question. His eyes blazed suddenly.

"Do not speak of these things! They are not to be spoken of, much less
to _you_." He looked as though he hated me. "I beg your pardon, I am
nervous. You must excuse me." He went away hurriedly.

"Poor chap!" Professor A---- said. "It is hard for us all in this heat.
And, yes, some of us have more imagination than others."

A man in uniform came into the garden. He walked to a tree in the
center, and stood in the shade, a long sheet of paper in his hand. There
was a stir among the Jews. Those lying down got up and approached him.
The women, with their children, dragged themselves nearer. Every one
stopped talking. The apathy and indifference gave place to a strained
attention. There was a kind of dreadful anxiety on every face--a
tightening of the muscles round the eyes and mouths, as though the same
horrible fear fixed the same mark there. I have never seen a crowd where
personality was so stamped out by a single overmastering emotion. The
gendarme began to read in a sing-song voice.

"What is he saying?" I whispered.

"The names of those who are to leave this afternoon," Mme. C----
replied.

The garden was absolutely still except for the monotonous voice and the
breathing of the crowd. Oh, yes, and the flies. It was not that I forgot
the flies, only their buzzing was the ceaseless accompaniment to
everything that happened in the camp.

"How horrible this is!" Mme. C---- observed. "They all know it must
come, but when it does, it is almost unbearable. It is truly a list of
death. Many of them here cannot survive another stage of the journey in
this heat. And yet they must be moved on to make place for those who are
pressing on from behind. In this very crowd were five old men who were
killed on the way here, by the soldiers, because they couldn't keep up
with the procession.