Page:War's dark frame (IA warsdarkframe00camp).pdf/34

16 different this trip was from any we had ever taken. We had a sensation of stealth, a personal share in the deception of Zeppelins. The rumbling of the train seemed discreet. When we glanced daringly beyond the edge of a blind we saw clouds banked against a pallid sky. A furnace glared redly. The landscape was sullen, a little frightening. The world was different and wrong.

The women looked as if for reassurance to the mere boys who served us. They had an appearance of going on tip-toe, of discouraging conversation. One of them answered a question.

"We're the only kind they can use. The men are doing their bit, sir."

Yet the arrival of the train at Euston conveyed little beyond the impression of quieter days. The shed was suficiently lighted, and one experienced, indeed, the remembered scramble to identify luggage at the vans, the pursuit of porters, the snaring of taxi-cabs.

Driving into the street, the alteration sprang upon us. It makes no difference how much you may have read or heard of darkened London, the reality reaches you with a sense of shock, not wholly unpleasant. It stirs your memory, and you can't guess why at first, because you have never seen anything like it. Then you understand as you rattle through the obscurity, as you catch