To us this might be Babylon, after
the desert!"
"Babylon, the wicked city?"
"The gay, the light, beribboned city! What is the 'D.S.A.'?"
"A power which governs our actions. We are but the C.R.A.... the
regulating control. But they are the Direction. 'Direction Service
Automobile.' They draw up all traffic rules for the Army, dispose of
cars, withdraw them. On them you depend and I depend. But they are
well-disposed towards you."
"And the Commandant Dormans is the head?"
"The head of all transport. He is a great man. Very peculiar."
"The Capitaine Chatel?"
"His aide, his right hand, the nearest to his ear."
Dinner over, the young Jew, Reherrey, having sent for two cars from the
garage, drove the tired Englishwomen to their billets. As the cars
passed down the cobbled streets and over a great bridge, Fanny saw water
gleam in the gulf below.
"What river is that?"
"The Moselle."
A sentry challenged them on the far side of the bridge. "Now we are in
the outer town, the German quarter."
In a narrow street whose houses overhung the river each of the section
was put down at a different doorway, given a paper upon which was
inscribed her right to billets, and introduced in Reherry's rapid German
to her landlady.
Fanny in her turn, following the young man through a dark doorway, found
herself in a stone alley and climbed the windings of a stairway.
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