“Have you begun to realize what it means?  I feel that I ought to weep because my husband is leaving me.  We have two little children.  But there are no tears higher than my heart.  It seems as though he were just going away for a week-end—­and yet he may never come back to us.  Perhaps to-morrow I shall weep.”

She did not weep even when the train was signalled to start and when the man put his arms about her and held her in a long embrace, whispering down to her.  Nor did I see any tears in other women’s eyes as they waved farewell.  It was only the pallor of their faces which showed some hidden agony.

17

Before the train started the carriage in which I had taken my seat was crowded with young men who, excepting one cavalry officer in the corner, seemed to belong to the poorest classes of Paris.  In the corner opposite the dragoon was a boy of eighteen or so in the working clothes of a terrassier or labourer.  No one had come to see him off to the war, and he was stupefied with drink.  Several times he staggered up and vomited out of the window with an awful violence of nausea, and then fell back with his head lolling sideways on the cushions of the first-class carriage.  None of the other men—­except the cavalry officer, who drew in his legs slightly—­took the slightest interest in this poor wretch—­a handsome lad with square-cut features and fair tousled hair, who had tried to get courage out of absinthe before leaving for the war.

18

In the corner opposite my own seat was a thin pallid young man, also a little drunk, but with an excited brain in which a multitude of strange and tragic thoughts chased each other.  He recognized me as an Englishman at once, and with a shout of “Camarade!” shook hands with me not once but scores of times during the first part of our journey.

He entered upon a monologue that seemed interminable, his voice rising into a shrill excitement and then sinking into a hoarse whisper.  He belonged to the “apache” type, and had come out of one of those foul lairs which lie hidden behind the white beauty of Paris—­yet he spoke with a terrible eloquence which kept me fascinated.  I remember some of his words, though I cannot give them his white heat of passion, nor the infinite pathos of his self-pity.

“I have left a wife behind, the woman who loves me and sees something more in me than vileness.  Shall I tell you how I left her, Monsieur?  Dying—­in a hospital at Charenton.  I shall never see her again.  I shall never again take her thin white face in my dirty hands and say, ’You and I have tasted the goodness of life, my little one, while we have starved together!’ For life is good, Monsieur, but in a little while I shall be dead in one place and my woman in another.  That is certain.  I left a child behind me—­a little girl.  What will happen to her when I am killed?  I left her with the concierge, who promised to take care of her—­not for money, you understand, because