CHAPTER XXXIII
THE ENDLESS DAY
Years seem to have passed.
Yet it is still Thursday morning, ten o'clock.
The horror darkens.
We know the worst now. Antwerp is doomed. Nothing can save her, poor, beautiful, stately city that has seemed to us all so utterly impregnable all these months.
The evacuation goes on desperately, but the crowds fleeing northwards are diminishing visibly, because some five hundred thousands have already gone.
The great avenues, with their autumn-yellow trees and white, tall, splendid houses, grow bare and deserted.
Over the city creeps a terrible look, an aspect so poignant, so pathetic, that it reminds me of a dying soldier passing away in the flower of his youth.