when the train, which had been running along at a beaut
at last it became evident
elgian Captain, who had travelled up in the train with me from Ostend, inf
happened
sur la ligne!" was
course in those day, no one thought anything of a brown paper parcel; in fact it was quite the correct
m there, and run to Antwerp But it will not arrive at the ordinary station. It will go as far as the river,
aine looking after me, when, to my supreme disgust, my brown paper parcel burst open, and there fell out an evening shoe. And such a shoe! It was a brilliant blue and equally brilliant silver, with a very high heel, and a big silver buckle. It was a shoe I loved, and I h
efore we arrived at Antwerp that night. The crowded, suffocating train crawled along, and stopped half an hour indis
ols, and the Capitaine still clung to my suit-case, and at last we crossed the great blue Scheldt, and landed on the other side, where a row o
Terminus. I had eaten nothing since the morning. But the sleepy hotel night-porter told me it w
I had any call to complain or make a fuss, so I wearily took the l
lock in the morning, and a mos
can say, up there in my bedroom, for we w
day long, it seemed to me, I had been turned out of one tr
that I had been running away from all day long, between Ostend
quite
t," I thought. "This
wondered w
ormous, and it seemed to
fire of musketry-crack, crack, crack, a beautiful, clean noise, li
y I li
e how the Germans could have
ly I got o
my room seemed full of the roar of cannon, and I experienced a queer sensation
to myself, "or they will see where I a
consciousness of immense and utter content, to the wild outcry of those cannons and musket
as none, not any at
something curious
ke-believes of life, seized upon me, standing there in my nightgown in the pitch-black, airless ro
nute seemed nothing else but make-believe. For onl
to think, and then I began to mov
ainst the noise of the
the door, and I cou
into the darkness,
p, undisturbed content to the terrific fire tha
old of was the sh
ed back at
rn away, I must
y hand and turned up the light in a fit of de
d picked up my powder-puff, got to my bag, and fumbled for the keys, and opened my suit-case and dragged out
ters at all, and I quietly turned up the light aga
ooking-glass, I found myse
along the corridor reached me,
t les Allemands, n'est-ce-p
big aeronaut running by. "Ce n'est
so i
musketry were the onslaughts upon the monster by the Belgian soldiers, mad
with the noise of the cannons in the pitch-blackness of that stifling bedroom; down the
of tall, motionless green palms and white wicker chairs and scarlet
eaths from her cages as she sped along her craven way across the skies, but that crow
trembling pink feet peeped from the bla
sweetness, and charming toilettes had been making "sun
with her great, black eyes, still sparkling, and long red-black hair falli
daring aviator-never seen except in a remarkable pair of bright yellow bags of trousers. His lisp
they appear like this in their pyjamas; and a crowd of Belgian ladies and children, and all the maids and gar?ons, and the porters and the night-porters, and various strange old gentlemen in overcoats and bare legs, and strange old ladies with their heads tied, who will never be seen again (not to be recognised), and the cook from the lowest regions,
street-door away down the road, comes racing ba
enthusiastically, his young black eyes af
ruly Belge, I reall
m the Belgia