Lest they should hear that their comrades in the Boulevard Leopold had been moved, the lay sister—­the English lady—­and I withdrew to the operating-room, closed the door, and in that curious retreat talked over the situation.  No orders had come to leave; in fact, they had been told to stay.  They did have a man now in the shape of the Belgian gentleman, and from the same source an able-bodied servant, but how long these would stay, where food was to be found in that desolate city, when the bombardment would cease, and what the Germans would do with them—­well, it was not a pleasant situation for a handful of women.  But it was not of themselves she was thinking, but of their wounded and of Belgium, and of what both had suffered already and of what might yet be in store.  It was of that this frail little sister talked that hopeless afternoon, while the smoke in the west spread farther up the sky, and she would now and then pause in the middle of a syllable while a shell sang overhead, then take it up again.

Meanwhile the light was going, and before it became quite dark and my hotel deserted, perhaps, as the rest of Antwerp, it seemed best to be getting across town.  I could not believe that the Germans could treat such a place and people with anything but consideration and told the little nurse so.  She came to the edge of the glass-covered court, laughingly saying I had best run across it, and wondering where we, who had met twice now under such curious circumstances, would meet again.  Then she turned back to the ward—­to wait with that roomful of more or less panicky men for the tramp of German soldiers and the knock on the door which meant that they were prisoners.

Hurrying across town, I passed, not far from the Hotel St. Antoine, a blazing four-story building.  The cathedral was not touched, and indeed, in spite of the noise and terror, the material damage was comparatively slight.  Soldiers were clearing the quay and setting a guard directly in front of our hotel—­one of the few places in Antwerp that night where one could get so much as a crust of bread—­and behind drawn curtains we made what cheer we could.  There were two American photographers and a correspondent who had spent the night before in the cellar of a house, the upper story of which had been wrecked by a shell; a British intelligence officer, with the most bewildering way of hopping back and forth between a brown civilian suit and a spick-and-span new uniform; and several Belgian families hoping to get a boat down-stream in the morning.

We sat round the great fire in the hall, above which the architect, building for happier times, had had the bad grace to place a skylight, and discussed the time and means of getting away.  The intelligence officer, not wishing to be made a prisoner, was for getting a boat of some sort at the first crack of dawn, and the photographers, who had had the roof blown off over their heads, heartily agreed with him.  I did not like to leave without at least a glimpse of those spiked helmets nor to desert my friends in the Rue Nerviens, and yet there was the likelihood, if one remained, of being marooned indefinitely in the midst of the conquering army.