“I had to dismiss my last few work-girls on Saturday,” said the dressmaker.  It was no longer possible to keep them.  “I had seventy, you know.  Now—­not one.  For a time we made considerably less than the rent.  Now we make nothing.  Nevertheless, some American clients have been very kind.”

Her glance went round the empty white salons with their mirrors in sculptured frames.  Naught of her stock was left except one or two fragile blouses and a few original drawings.

Said the husband: 

“We are eating our resources.  I will tell you what this war means to us.  It means that we shall have to work seven or eight years longer than we had the intention to work.  What would you?”

He lifted his arms and lowered the corners of his mouth.  Then he turned again to the military aspect of things, elaborating it.

The soldier in him finished: 

“It is necessary, all the same, to admire these cursed Germans.”

“Admire them!” said his wife sharply.  “I do not appreciate the necessity.  When I think of that day and that night we spent at home!” They live in the eastern suburbs of the city.  “When I think of that day and that night!  The cannon thundering at a distance of ten kilometres!”

“Thirty kilometres, almost thirty, my friend,” the husband corrected.

“Ten kilometres.  I am sure it was not more than ten kilometres, my friend.”

“But see, my little one.  It was at Meaux.  Forty kilometres to Meaux.  We are at thirteen.  That makes twenty-seven, at least.”

“It sounded like ten.”

“That is true.”

“It sounded like ten, my dear Arnold.  All day, and all night.  We could not go to bed.  Had one any desire to go to bed?  It was anguish.  The mere souvenir is anguish.”

She kissed her youngest boy, who had long hair.

“Come, come!” the soldier calmed her.

Lastly:  an interior dans le monde; a home illustrious in Paris for the richness of its collections—­bric-a-brac, fans, porcelain, furniture, modern pictures; the walls frescoed by Pierre Bonnard and his compeers; a black marble balcony with an incomparable view in the very middle of the city.  Here several worlds encountered each other:  authors, painters, musicians, dilettanti, administrators.  The hostess had good-naturedly invited a high official of the Foreign Office, whom I had not seen for many years; she did not say so, but her aim therein was to expedite the arrangements for my pilgrimages in the war-zone.  Sundry of my old friends were present.  It was wonderful how many had escaped active service, either because they were necessary to central administration, or because they were neutrals, or because they were too old, or because they had been declined on account of physical unfitness, reformes.  One or two who might have come failed to do so because they had perished.