"I am sorry I am late," he groaned, "but it was impossible, impossible."
"You needn't worry about me, Henri," I whispered to him reassuringly. "I'm not going to try to get out of Antwerp for several hours. In fact, I am going to wait to see the Germans come in!"
Henri showed no surprise. There was no surprise left in him to show.
"Bon!" he said. "Because, to tell you the truth, Madame, I wouldn't go out of the city again just now. I couldn't do it. Getting to Holland, indeed," he went on, between gasps as he drank off one cup of coffee after another, "it's like trying to get through hell to get to Paradise ... I've been seven hours driving about four miles there and back. It was horrible, it ... was unbelievable ... the roads are blocked so thick that there are no roads left. A million people are out there, struggling, fighting, and trying to get onwards, lying down on the earth fainting, dying."
And he suddenly sat down upon a chair, and fell fast asleep.
The sharp crack, crack of rifle fire woke him about five minutes later, and we all rushed to the door to see what was happening.
Oh, nerve-racking sight!
Across the grey square, through the grey-black morning, dogs were rushing, their tongues out.
The gendarmes pursuing them were shooting them down to save them the worse horrors of starvation that might befall them if they were left alive in the deserted city at the mercy of the Germans.
Madame X, a sad, distinguished-looking woman, a refugee from Lierre, whose house had been shelled, and who was destined to play a strange part in my story later on, now came over to us, and implored Henri to take her old mother in his car round to the hospital.