“I was stupid,” said the girl. “Not all the way to Paris, but to some town outside Lille. Any town. There are motor cars always passing through the streets. I thought if I could get a little place in one——”
“It is difficult,” I said. “As a matter of fact, it is forbidden for officers to take civilians except in case of saving them from danger—in shelled places.”
She came suddenly out of the shadow into the moonlight, and I saw that she was a girl with red hair and a face strangely white. I knew by the way she spoke—the accent—as well as by the neatness of her dress, that she was not a working-girl. She was trembling painfully, and took hold of my arm with both her hands.
“Monsieur, I beg of you to help me. I beseech you to think of some way in which I may get away from Lille to-night. It is a matter of extreme importance to me.”
A group of young men and women came up the street arm-in-arm, shouting, laughing, singing the “Marseillaise.” They were civilians, with two of our soldiers among them, wearing women’s hats.
Before I could answer the girl’s last words, she made a sudden retreat into the dark doorway, and I could see dimly that she was cowering back.
Dr. Small spoke to me. “That girl is scared of something. The poor child has got the jim-jams.”
I went closer to her and heard her breathing. It was quite loud. It was as though she were panting after hard running.
“Are you ill?” I asked.
She did not answer until the group of civilians had passed. They did not pass at once, but stood for a moment looking up at a light burning in an upper window. One of the men shouted something in a loud voice—some word in argot—which I did not understand, and the women screeched with laughter. Then they went on, dancing with linked arms, and our two soldiers in the women’s hats lurched along with them.