to obey the R.T.O.
and to go by his train to Brie that left in the morning, and that
question settled, there remained only food and sleep.

Down in the basement of the big house with a roof there was a
kitchen, in fact there was everything that a house should have; and
the more that one saw of simple household things, tables, chairs, the
fire in the kitchen, pieces of carpet, floors, ceilings, and even
windows, the more one wondered; it did not seem natural in Peronne.

Picture to yourself a fine drawing-room with high ornamental walls
and all the air about it of dignity, peace and ease, that were so
recently gone; only just, as it might have been, stepped through the
double doorway; skirts, as it were, of ladies only just trailed out
of sight; and then turn in fancy to that great town streaming with
moonlight, full of the mystery that moonlight always brings, but
without the light of it; all black, dark as caverns of earth where no
light ever came, blacker for the moonlight than if no moon were
there; sombre, mourning and accursed, each house in the great streets
sheltering darkness amongst its windowless walls; as though it nursed
disaster, having no other children left, and would not let the moon
peer in on its grief or see the monstrous orphan that it fondled.

In the old drawing-room with twenty others, the wandering officer lay
down to sleep on the floor, and thought of old wars that came to the
cities of France a long while ago. To just such houses as this, he
thought, men must have come before and gone on next day to fight in
other centuries; it seemed to him that it must have been more
romantic then. Who knows?

He had a bit of carpet to lie on. A few more officers came in in the
early part of the night, and talked a little and lay down. A few
candles were stuck on tables here and there. Midnight would have
struck from the towers had any clock been left to strike in Peronne.
Still talk went on in low voices here and there. The candles burned
low and were fewer. Big shadows floated along those old high walls.
Then the talk ceased and everyone was still: nothing stirred but the
shadows. An officer muttered in sleep of things far thence, and was
silent. Far away shells thumped faintly. The shadows, left to
themselves, went round and round the room, searching in every corner
for something that was lost. Over walls and ceiling they went and
could not find it. The last candle was failing. It flared and
guttered.