("If hotel it
is!" she thought, in the brief passage of a panic while the old man
stooped to the bolts of the door.)
"I've got rooms enough," he said, "rooms enough. Now _they've_ gone.
Follow me."
She followed his candle flame and he threw open a door upon the ground
floor.
"I've no light to give you."
"Yet I must have a light."
Grumbling, he produced half an inch of wax candle.
"Hurry into bed and that will last you. It's all I have."
The bed wore a coloured rug, bare and thin, an eiderdown, damp and
musty. Spreading her wet mackintosh on the top she rolled herself up as
well as she could, and developing a sort of warmth towards morning,
slept an hour or two. The daylight showed her nothing to wash in, no
jug, no basin, no bell to pull.
As no one would come to her, as there was nothing to be gained by
waiting, she got up, and going into the hall, entered a dark
coffee-room in which breakfast was served at its lowest ebb, black
coffee, sugarless, and two pieces of dry bread.
Yet, having eaten, she was able to think: "I am a soldier of five sous.
I am here to drive for the French Army." And her thoughts pleased her so
well that, at the moment when her circumstances were in their state of
least perfection, she exclaimed: "How right I was to come!" and set off
down the street to find her companions.
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