Yet a Christian soul may pity those poor butterflies of life who had been broken on the wheels of war.  I pitied them, unashamed of this emotion, when I saw some of them flitting through the streets of Paris on that September eve when the city was very quiet, expecting capture, and afterwards through the long, weary weeks of war.  They had a scared look, like pretty beasts caught in a trap.  They had hungry eyes, filled with an enormous wistfulness.  Their faces were blanched, because rouge was dear when food had to be bought without an income, and their lips had lost their carmine flush.  Outside the Taverne Royale one day two of them spoke to me—­I sat scribbling an article for the censor to cut out.  They had no cajoleries, none of the little tricks of their trade.  They spoke quite quietly and gravely.

“Are you an Englishman?”

“Yes.”

“But not a soldier?”

“No.  You see my clothes!”

“Have you come to Paris for pleasure?  That is strange, for now there is nothing doing in that way.”

“Non, c’est vrai.  Il n’y a rien a faire dans ce genre.”

I asked them how they lived in war time.

One of the girls—­she had a pretty delicate face and a serious way of speech—­smiled, with a sigh that seemed to come from her little high-heeled boots.

“It is difficult to live.  I was a singing girl at Montmartre.  My lover is at the war.  There is no one left.  It is the same with all of us.  In a little while we shall starve to death.  Mais, pourquoi pas?  A singing girl’s death does not matter to France, and will not spoil the joy of her victory!”

She lifted a glass of amer picon—­for the privilege of hearing the truth she could tell me I was pleased to pay for it—­and said in a kind of whisper, “Vive la France!” and then, touching her glass with her lips:  “Vive l’Angleterre!”

The other girl leaned forward and spoke with polite and earnest inquiry.

“Monsieur would like a little love?”

I shook my head.

“Ca ne marche pas.  Je suis un homme serieux.”  “It is very cheap to-day,” said the girl.  “Ca ne coute pas cher, en temps de guerre.”

7

After the battle of the Marne the old vitality of Paris was gradually restored.  The people who had fled by hundreds of thousands dribbled back steadily from England and provincial towns where they had hated their exile and had been ashamed of their flight.  They came back to their small flats or attic room rejoicing to find all safe under a layer of dust—­shedding tears, some of them, when they saw the children’s toys, which had been left in a litter on the floor, and the open piano with a song on the music-rack, which a girl had left as she rose in the middle of a bar, wavering off into a cry of fear, and all the domestic treasures which had been gathered through a life of toil and abandoned—­for ever it seemed—­when the enemy was reported within twenty miles of Paris in irresistible strength.  The city had been saved.  The Germans were in full retreat.  The great shadow of fear had been lifted and the joy of a great hope thrilled through the soul of Paris, in spite of all that death la-bas, where so many young men were making sacrifices of their lives for France.