They drove on past the Cathedral into the open square of the Place du Theâtre. Half the old French theatre had been set aside as offices for the Automobile Service, and now the officers of the service, who had waited for them with curiosity, greeted them on the steps.
"You must be tired, you must be hungry! Leave the ambulance where it is and come now, as you are, to dine with us!"
In the uncertain light from the lamp on the theatre steps the French tried to see the English faces, the women glanced at the men, and they walked together to the oak-panelled Mess Room in a house on the other side of the empty square. A long table was spread with a white cloth, with silver, with flowers, as though they were expected. Soldiers waited behind the chairs.
"Vauclin! That foie gras you brought back from Paris yesterday… where is it, out with it? What, you only brought two jars! Arrelles, there's a jar left from yours."
"Mademoiselle, sit here by Captain Vauclin. He will amuse you. And you, mademoiselle, by me. You all talk French?"
"And fancy, I never met an Englishwoman before. Never! Your responsibility is terrible. How tired you must be!… What a journey! For to-night we have found you billets. We billet you on Germans. It is more comfortable; they do more for you. What, you have met no Germans yet? They exist, yes, they exist."
"Arrelles, you are not talking French! You should talk English. You can't? Nor I either…."
"But these ladies talk French marvellously…."
Some one in another house was playing an ancient instrument. Its music stole across the open square. Soldiers passed singing in the street.
A hundred miles … a hundred years away … lay Bar-le-Duc, liquid in mud, soaked in eternal rain. "What was I?" thought Fanny in amazement. "To what had I come, in that black hut!" And she thought that she had run down to the bottom of living, lain on that hard floor where the poor lie, known what it was to live as the poor live, in a hole, without generosity, beauty, or privacy—in a hole, dirty and cold, plain and coarse.