"Cover yourself well, well."
Gallant old women, toiling like ants upon the long stretches of road, who, suddenly finding themselves projected through the air at a pace they had never experienced in their lives before, would say not a word, though the colour be whipped to their cheeks and their eyes rained tears until, clinging to the arm of the driver: "Stop here, mademoiselle!" they would whisper, expecting the car to rear and stop dead at their own doorstep; and finding themselves still carried on, and half believing themselves kidnapped: "Ah, mademoiselle, stop, stop…."
They slipped down into the pit of Briey where the houses cling to the sides of a circular hollow, and drew up by a white house which the Frenchman indicated.
The old woman searched, trembling and out of breath for her handkerchief, and wiped her streaming eyes; then, as she climbed out backwards, with feet feeling for the ground—"What do I owe you, mademoiselle?"
"Ah, nothing, nothing."
"Mais si! I am not at all poor!" and leaving a twopence-halfpenny piece on the seat, she hurried away.
Colonel Dellahousse came to the side of the car and thanked Fanny ceremoniously. "And if I do not see you again, mademoiselle," he said, "remember what I say and go back to your home before the pleasure of life is spoilt for you."
"Good-bye, good-bye," said the French lieutenant.
Soon after she had left Briey snow began to fall. A river circled at the foot of a hill, and she followed its windings on a road which ran just above it. Night wiped out the colours on the hills around her, until the moon rose and they glowed again, half trees, half light. She climbed slowly up to a plateau not a dozen miles from Metz.
* * * * *