Bed, washstand, chair,
table, rustled with history. Soldiers resting from the battle out there
by Pont-a-Moussons, kissing the girl who lived in the back room, waking
in the morning as darkly as she, leaving the room to another. Soldiers,
new-fledged, coming up from Germany, trembling in the room as they heard
the thunder out at Pont-a-Moussons. An officer--that ugly, wooden boy
who stared at her from the wall above the mantelpiece. (What a mark he
had left on the household that they should frame him in velvet and keep
him staring at his own bed for ever!) She all but saw spirits--and
shivered at the procession of life. Outside in the street she heard a
cry, and her name called under the window. How like the cry that
afternoon a week ago which had sent her to Verdun! Standing in the
shadow of the curtain she peered cautiously out.
At sight of her, a voice cried up from the street: "There is a fancy
dress dance next Tuesday night! I'm warning every one; it's so hard to
get stuffs." The voice passed on to the house where Stewart lived.
("How nice of her!") This was a good day. ("What shall I wear at the
dance?") There, about the face of the clock, windless and steady, hung
the hours. Not yet time to start, not yet.
Through the lace of the curtain and the now closed window, the shadows
hurried by upon the pavement, heads bobbed below upon the street.
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