wayfarers. But up to midnight
there were little lights flashing for a second and then going out, along
the Street of the Three Pebbles and in the dark corners of side-streets.
They were carried by girls seeking to entice English officers on their
way to their billets, and they clustered like glowworms about the side
door of the Hotel du Rhin after nine o'clock, and outside the railings
of the public gardens. As one passed, the bright bull's-eye from a
pocket torch flashed in one's eyes, and in the radiance of it one saw
a girl's face, laughing, coming very close, while her fingers felt for
one's badge.

"How dark it is to-night, little captain! Are you not afraid of
darkness? I am full of fear. It is so sad, this war, so dismal! It is
comradeship that helps one now!... A little love... a little laughter,
and then--who knows?"

A little love... a little laughter--alluring words to boys out of one
battle, expecting another, hating it all, lonely in their souls because
of the thought of death, in exile from their own folk, in exile from
all womanhood and tender, feminine things, up there in the ditches
and shellcraters of the desert fields, or in the huts of headquarters
staffs, or in reserve camps behind the fighting-line. A little love, a
little laughter, and then--who knows? The sirens had whispered their own
thoughts. They had translated into pretty French the temptation of all
the little devils in their souls.

"Un peu d'amour-"

One flash-lamp was enough for two down a narrow street toward the
riverside, and then up a little dark stairway to a lamp-lit room...
Presently this poor boy would be stricken with disease and wish himself
dead.

VIII

In the Street of the Three Pebbles there was a small estaminet into
which I went one morning for a cup of coffee, while I read an Amiens
news-sheet made up mostly of extracts translated from the leading
articles of English papers. (There was never any news of French fighting
beyond the official communique and imaginary articles of a romantic kind
written by French journalists in Paris about episodes of war.) In one
corner of the estaminet was a group of bourgeois gentlemen talking
business for a time, and then listening to a monologue from the woman
behind the counter. I could not catch many words of the conversation,
owing to the general chatter, but when the man went out the woman and I
were left alone together, and she came over to me and put a photograph
do