It is now half-past one, and I am back at the hotel.
At least, my watch says it is half-past one.
But all the many great gold-faced clocks in Antwerp have stopped the day before, and their hands point mockingly to a dozen different times.
One knows that only some ghastly happening could have terrified them into such wild mistakes.
Heart-breaking it is, as well as appalling, to see those distracted timepieces, and their ignorance of the fatal hour.
Half-past one!
And the clocks point pathetically to eleven, or eight, or five.
Inside the great dim restaurant a pretence of lunch is going on between the little handful of people left.
Everybody sits at one table, the chauffeur, Henri, the refugees from Lierre, their maidservant, Jeanette, the proprietor, and his old sister, and his two little grandchildren, and their father, the porter, and a couple of very ugly old Belgians, who seem to belong to nobody in particular, and have sprung from nobody knows where.
We have some stewed meat with potatoes, a rough, ill-cooked dish.