Page:War's dark frame (IA warsdarkframe00camp).pdf/71

Rh if to hide from our eager eyes the claborate machinery of war.

At St. Lazarre we passed the last examination and scattered to our hotels.

Curiously, arriving at night as I did, my first impression was that Paris was more nearly normal than London. Almost at once I realised that this was due to the contrast between the few but unveiled street lamps, the unblanketed glow from buildings, and the darkened thoroughfares and the curtained windows of England. In addition there was the difference in the Anglo-Saxon temperament, after all, largely our own, and the admirable Gallic intensity of temporary appreciation which even this war has been powerless to destroy.

The terrasse cafés were crowded, and the many soldiers, wearing their graceful steel helmets, seemed undisturbed by what they had already survived and unappalled by that which awaited them at the close of their brief permissions.

By daylight the truer values obtruded themselves. Nearly every woman wore mourning Their white faces haunted one, because out of the eyes, in which there were no tears, stared a fierce pride that burned up grief.

I talked with one of these women at a simple tea. Her history had been rapidly sketched for