But afterwards the rain did stop.
A girl and a limping soldier, ahead of us as we went to the Nord-Sud, were sopping wet. I suppose they had been standing for hours on the Esplanade. Her knitted cape and cotton blouse were quite soaked through. She had no hat, and she was laughing because her brown curls dripped into her eyes.
In the Place de la Concorde people had put down their umbrellas, and were telling one another that it was really better not to have the heat of sunshine.
We waited a little with the crowd in the Place, the friendly, orderly Paris crowd that used to come to fêtes so gaily, grave now, almost solemn. The crowd was full of wounded. The men flung back out of the war, broken, were come to watch their comrades pass between two battles. The crowd gave place to them, and they were proud in it.
Then Diane came, with Miss and the babies, both of them tremendously excited in their little mackintosh coats.
One of the club servants showed us to the small writing-room, where a window had been reserved for us. From the window we looked down on the wide grey stream of the street between banks of people. One way we could see the great Place kept clear also, in grey reaches, past islands of crowd, and the other way we could see a heap of people on the steps of the Madeleine.
The babies sat on the window-ledge and forgot everything at once because of another baby, down in the crowd on the opposite kerb, who wore a pink bonnet and pink shoes, and had a little flag in either hand.
"Oh, mummy, her mummy has put down a newspaper for her to stand on, so the wet won't hurt her shoes."
"Yes, Cricri darling. Don't wriggle so, child; Miss, do watch out for her."