From there we went to the Depot des Isoles, an immense enclosure where men from shattered regiments are sent for a day or two until they can be returned to the front to fill gaps in other regiments.  Nowhere, not even in the War Zone, did war show to me a grimmer face than here.  As these men are in good health and tarry barely forty-eight hours, little is done for their comfort.  Soldiers in good condition are not encouraged to expect comforts in war time, and no doubt the discipline is good for them—­although, heaven knows, the French as a race know little about comfort at any time.

There were cots in some of the barracks, but there were also large spaces covered with straw, and here men had flung themselves down as they entered, without unstrapping the heavy loads they carried on their backs.  They were sleeping soundly.  Every bed was occupied by a sprawling figure in his stained, faded, muddy uniform.  I saw one superb and turbaned Algerian sitting upright in an attitude of extreme dignity, and as oblivious to war and angels of mercy as a dead man in the trenches.

Two English girls, the Miss Gracies, had opened a cantine at this depot.  Women have these cantines in all the eclope and isole stations where permission of the War Office can be obtained, and not only give freely of hot coffee and cocoa, bread, cakes and lemonade, to those weary men as they come in, but also have made their little sheds look gaily hospitable with flags and pictures.  The Miss Gracies had even induced some one to build an open air theater in the great barrack yard where the men could amuse themselves and one another if they felt inclined.  A more practical gift by Mrs. Allen was a bath house in which were six showers and soap and towels.

It was a dirty yard we stood in this time, handing out gifts, and when I saw Mrs. Allen buying a whole wheelbarrow-load of golden-looking doughnuts, brought by a woman of the village close by, I wondered with some apprehension if she were meaning to reward us for our excessive virtue.  But they were an impromptu treat for the soldiers standing in the yard—­some already lined up to march—­and the way they disappeared down those brown throats made me feel blasee and over-civilized.

I did not hand out during this little fete, my place being taken by Mrs. Thayer of Boston, so I was better able to appreciate the picture.  All the women were pretty, and I wondered if Madame Balli had chosen them as much for their esthetic appeal to the exacting French mind as for their willingness to help.  It was a strange sight, that line of charming women with kind bright eyes, and, although simply dressed, stamped with the world they moved in, while standing and lying about were the tired and dirty poilus—­even those that stood were slouching as if resting their backs while they could—­with their uniforms of horizon blue faded to an ugly gray, streaked and patched.  They had not seen a decent woman for months, possibly not a woman at all, and it was no wonder they followed every movement of these smiling benefactresses with wondering, adoring, or cynical eyes.