You must go back for your things for the night and then as quickly as
you can to the Hotel de l'Europe. I don't know how many days you'll be,
but here is an order for fifty litres of petrol and a can of oil, and
Pichot is getting you two spare tubes...."
She stared at him in horror a moment longer, then took the pink order
and disappeared through the dark garage door. Her mind was in a frenzy
of protestation. She saw the waiting cars which might have gone instead,
the drivers polishing a patch of brass for want of something to do, and
accident, pure accident, had lighted on _her_, to sweep _her_ out of
Metz, away from that luminous personality which brooded over the city
like a sunset, out into the nondescript world, the cold _Anywhere_.
White frills and yards of bleached calico lying at the dressmaker's
cried out to her to stay, to make some protest, to say something,
anything--that she was ill--and stay.
She splashed petrol wastefully into the tank, holding the small blue
tin with firm hands high in the air above the leather strainer and
the funnel.
"And if I said--(it is mad)--if I said, 'I am in love. _I can't go_.
Send some one who is not in love!'" She glanced down from her perch on
the footboard at the olive profile bent over the next car. The driver
was sitting on his step with his open hand outstretched to hold a dozen
bright washers which he was stirring with his forefinger.
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