Over this back and over all that prostrate agony the enormous floriated bronze rings that carried the lights of the concert-hall hung from the ceiling in frightful, festive decoration.
Miss —— whispered: "One of them is dying. We can't save him."
She seemed to regard this one as a positive slur on their record. I thought: "Only one—among all that crowd!"
Mrs. Stobart came after us in some alarm as we ran down the garden.
"What are you doing with Miss ——? You're not going to carry her off?"
"No," I said, "we're not. She won't come."
But we have got off with Dr. ——.
Mrs. Stobart has refused the Commandant's offer of one of our best surgeons in exchange. He is a man. And this hospital is a Feminist Show.
We dined in a great hurry in a big restaurant in one of the main streets. The restaurant was nearly empty and funereal black cloths were hung over the windows to obscure the lights.
Mr. Davidson (this cheerful presence was with us in our dream-like career through Antwerp)—Mr. Davidson and I amused ourselves by planning how we will behave when we are taken prisoner by the Germans. He is safe, because he is an American citizen. The unfortunate thing about me is my passport, otherwise, by means of a well-simulated nasal twang I might get through as an American novelist. I've been mistaken for one often enough in my own country. But, as I don't mean to be taken prisoner, and perhaps murdered or have my hands chopped off, without a struggle, my plan is to deliver a speech in German, as follows: "Ich bin eine berühmte Schriftstellerin" (on these occasions you stick at nothing), "berühmt in England, aber viel berühmter in den Vereinigten Staaten, und mein Schicksal will den Presidenten Wilson nicht gleichgültig sein." I added by way of rhetorical flourish as the language went to my head: "Er will mein Tod zu vertheidigen gut wissen;" but I was aware that this was overdoing it.