The Renault loped on with its wolf-like
action, and she felt a spring of relief that she lived upon moving
ground; passing on down the rickety road she forgot the little man.
Ahead lay the terrible miles. She seemed to make no gain upon them, and
could not alter the face of the horizon, however fast she drove. Iron,
brown grass--brown grass and iron, spars of wood, girders, torn railway
lines and stones. Even the lorries travelling the road were few and far
between. A deep loneliness was settled upon the desert where nothing
grew. Yet, suddenly, from a ditch at the side of the road, a child of
five stared at her. It had its foot close by a stacked heap of hand
grenades; a shawl was wrapped round it and the thin hands held the ends
together. What child? Whose? How did it get here, when not a house stood
erect for miles and miles--when not a coil of smoke touched the horizon!
Yes, something oozed from the ground! Smoke, blue smoke! Was life
stirring like a bulb under this whiter ruin, this cemetery of
village bones?
She stopped the car. The child turned and ran quickly across a heap of
dust and iron and down into the ground behind a pillar. "It must have a
father or mother below--" The breath of the invisible hearth coiled up
into the air; the child was gone.
A man appeared behind the pillar and came towards the car.
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