"Don't talk to the _Wattmann_," said the notices in the tramcar crossly
to her in German as she slipped and slid upon its straining seats.
"Don't spit, don't smoke ... don't...." But she had her revenge, for
across all the notices _her_ side of the war had written coldly: "You
are begged, in the measure possible to you, to talk only French."
When they got into the narrow town the tramcar, mysteriously swelling,
seemed to chip the shop windows and bump the front doors, and people
upon the pavement scrambled between the glass of the tram and the glass
of the big drapery shop.
They met, as it were, in the very centre of a conversation. "I never
know where you are," he complained, as though this trouble was so in his
thoughts that he must speak of it at once, "or when I shall see you
again." She smiled radiantly, busier with greeting, less absorbed
than he.
"You may go away and never come back. You go so far."
She went away often and far. But that was his trouble, not hers. He, at
least, remained stationary in Metz. She was full of another thought--the
vagueness, the precariousness of the chance that even in Metz had
brought them together.
"How lucky...."
"How lucky what?"
How lucky? How lucky? He begged, implored, frowned, tried to peer. He
would not let her rest. "Why should you hide what you think? I don't
like it.
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