As the weeks passed the streets became more thronged, and the shops began to re-open, their business conducted for the most part by women and old people.  A great hostile army was entrenched less than sixty miles away.  A ceaseless battle, always threatening the roads to Paris, from Amiens and Soissons, Rheims and Vic-sur-Aisne, was raging night and day, month after month.  But for the moment when the enemy retreated to the Aisne, the fear which had been like a black pall over the spirit of Paris, lifted as though a great wind had blown it away, and the people revealed a sane, strong spirit of courage and confidence and patience, amazing to those who still believed in the frivolity and nervousness and unsteady emotionalism of the Parisian population.

Yet though normal life was outwardly resumed (inwardly all things had changed), it was impossible to forget the war or to thrust it away from one’s imagination for more than half an hour or so of forgetfulness.  Those crowds in the streets contained multitudes of soldiers of all regiments of France, coming and going between the base depots and the long lines of the front.  The streets were splashed with the colours of all those uniforms—­crimson of Zouaves, azure of chasseurs d’Afrique, the dark blue of gunners, marines.  Figures of romance walked down the boulevards and took the sun in the gardens of the Tuileries.  An Arab chief in his white burnous and flowing robes padded in soft shoes between the little crowds of cocottes who smiled into his grave face with its dark liquid eyes and pointed beard, like Othello the Moor.  Senegalese and Turcos with rolling eyes and wreathed smiles sat at the tables in the Cafe de la Paix, paying extravagantly for their fire-water, and exalted by this luxury of life after the muddy hell of the trenches and the humid climate which made them cough consumptively between their gusts of laughter.  Here and there a strange uniform of unusual gorgeousness made all men turn their heads with a “Qui est ca?” such as the full dress uniform of a dandy flight officer of cardinal red from head to foot, with a golden wing on his sleeve.  The airman of ordinary grade had no such magnificence, yet in his black leather jacket and blue breeches above long boots was the hero of the streets and might claim any woman’s eyes, because he belonged to a service which holds the great romance of the war, risking his life day after day on that miracle of flight which has not yet staled in the imagination of the crowd, and winging his way god-like above the enemy’s lines, in the roar of their pursuing shells.

Khaki came to Paris, too, and although it was worn by many who did not hold the King’s commission but swaggered it as something in the Red Cross—­God knows what!—­the drab of its colour gave a thrill to all those people of Paris who, at least in the first months of the war, were stirred with an immense sentiment of gratitude because England had come to the rescue in her hour of need, and had given her blood generously to France, and had cemented the Entente Cordiale with deathless ties of comradeship.  “Comme ils sont chics, ces braves anglais!” They did not soon tire of expressing their admiration for the “chic” style of our young officers, so neat and clean-cut and workmanlike, with their brown belts and brown boots, and khaki riding breeches.