The train went on.
It was dark, quite dark, when I got out of it ac last, and looked about me blinking.
This was right at the Front in Flanders, and a long cavalcade of French soldiers were alighting also.
Two handsome elderly Turcos with splendid eyes, black beards, and strange, hard, warrior-like faces, passed, looking immensely distinguished as they mounted their arab horses, and rode off into the night, swathed in their white head-dresses, with their flowing picturesque cloaks spread out over their horses' tails, their swords clanking at their sides, and their blazing eyes full of queer, bold pride.
Then, to my great surprise, I see coming out of the station two ladies wrapped in furs, a young lady and an old one.
"Delightful," I think to myself.
As I come up with them I hear them enquiring of a sentinel the way to the Hotel de Noble Rose, and with the swift friendliness of War time I stop and ask if I may walk along with them.
"Je suis Anglais!" I add.
"Avec beaucoup de plaisir!" they cry simultaneously.
"We are just arrived from Folkestone," the younger one explains in pretty broken English, as we grope our way along the pitch-black cobbled road. "Ah! But what a journey!"