Then, when that trance of peace had given them the light sadness which fulfilled beauty brings, they found it good to hasten down the deserted street to the cafés and thronging friendly people. They knew how to live and take their pleasure, those people of Ghent. No sullen silence and hasty gorging for them. They practised a leisurely dining and an eager talk, a zest in the flying moment. Their streets were blocked to the curb with little round occupied tables. Inner rooms were bright with lights and friendly with voices. From the silver strainer of the "filtered coffee" the hot drops fell through to the glass, one by one, black and potent. Good coffee, and a gay race.
But those lively people knew in their hearts that a doom was on its way, so their evenings had the merit of a vanishing pleasure, a benefit not to be renewed with the seasons. Time for the people of Ghent carried the grace of last days, when everything that is pleasant and care-free is almost over, and every greeting of a comrade is touched with Vale. It is the little things that are to be lost, so to the little things the time remaining is given. It is then one learns that little things are the dearest, the light-hearted supper in the pleasant café with the friend whose talk satisfies, the walk down street past familiar windows, the look of roofs and steeples dim in the evening light.
"It's different, isn't it?" said the banker thoughtfully.
"Yes," agreed Hilda; "it isn't much like Chicago."
"Think of destroying places like this!" went on Hinchcliffe. "Why, they can't rebuild them."
"No," laughed Hilda; "this sort of ancestral thing isn't quite in our line."
"How foolish of them to go to war!" continued the banker. When his mind once gripped an idea, it carried it through to the terminal station. Hilda turned on him vigorously.
"You realize, don't you," she said, "that Belgium didn't bring on this war? You remember that it was some one else that came pouncing down upon her. It seems almost a pity, doesn't it, to smash this beauty and hunt these nice people?"
"It's all wrong," he said; "it's all wrong."