but it does not, therefore,
cease to exist, and all good souls recognize it as the only rule of
life. A nation of madmen wishes to place might upon the pedestal that
others have raised to Right. Useless endeavor! The eternal hope
of mankind will ever be the increasing power of more liberty, more
brotherliness, more justice."

The Russian appeared to calm himself with this statement. He and
his friends spoke of the spectacle which Paris was presenting in its
preparation for war. Tchernoff bemoaned the great suffering produced by
the catastrophe, the thousands and thousands of domestic tragedies that
were unrolling at that moment. Apparently nothing had changed. In the
centre of the city and around the stations, there was unusual agitation,
but the rest of the immense city did not appear affected by the great
overthrow of its existence. The solitary street was presenting its usual
aspect, the breeze was gently moving the leaves. A solemn peace seemed
to be spreading itself through space. The houses appeared wrapped in
slumber, but behind the closed windows might be surmised the insomnia
of the reddened eyes, the sighs from hearts anguished by the threatened
danger, the tremulous agility of the hands preparing the war outfit,
perhaps the last loving greetings exchanged without pleasure, with
kisses ending in sobs.

Tchernoff thought of his neighbors, the husband and wife who occupied
the other interior apartment behind the studio. She was no longer
playing the piano. The Russian had overheard disputes, the banging of
doors locked with violence, and the footsteps of a man in the middle of
the night, fleeing from a woman's cries. There had begun to develop on
the other side of the wall a regulation drama--a repetition of hundreds
of others, all taking place at the same time.

"She is a German," volunteered the Russian. "Our concierge has ferreted
out her nationality. He must have gone by this time to join his
regiment. Last night I could hardly sleep. I heard the lamentations
through the thin wall partition, the steady, desperate weeping of an
abandoned child, and the voice of a man who was vainly trying to quiet
her! . . . Ah, what a rain of sorrows is now falling upon the world!"

That same evening, on leaving the house, he had met her by her door.
She appeared like another woman, with an old look as though in these
agonizing hours she had been suffering for fifteen years. In vain the
kindly Tchernoff had tried to chee