Page:A Leaf in the Storm.djvu/176

, and they were not at fault—in the commencement, at least.

When the strife and carnage had ceased, I felt very strange. I felt as men do who have been long in the great roar of a cataract, and who come suddenly again where all is quiet. The calm seems to daze them. So the stillness bewildered me.

I began to think that it had all been a dream, a nightmare; only I remembered so well the look of his eyes into mine when my steel was at his throat, and if I dropped asleep a while I always awoke muttering, "Afterwards! afterwards!"

At this time I often went and looked at the house where I had dwelt with her in Paris.

A shell had laid open the little rose-and-white room under the roof; the front and back walls had been torn away; I saw the day through them; some of the gilding of the mirror still clung there.

Another shell had struck the little gay theatre where I had played for the first and last time in Paris: it was now a blank and smoking ruin. And it had been such a little while ago!—Great Heaven!

At such times I asked myself why I had spared him.

I was dull and silent, and lived wholly to my self: all the people I had known were slain or had perished of want.