“Will you unlock that door?” said the Countess to the guard. “I wish to leave the train!”
The cars were rolling a little faster than I could move along.
The Countess leaned from the open window; through the driving rain her face in the lamp-light was pitifully white. I made a last effort and caught up with her car.
“A safe journey, madame,” I stammered, catching at the hand she held out and brushing the shabby-gloved fingers with my lips.
“SISTERS OF CHARITY WERE GIVING FIRST AID”
“I shall never forgive this wanton self-sacrifice,” she said, unsteadily. Then the car rolled silently past me, swifter, swifter, and her white face faded from my sight. Yet still I stood there, bareheaded, in the rain, while the twin red lamps on the rear car grew smaller and smaller, until they, too, were shut out in the closing curtains of the fog.
As I turned away into the lighted station a hospital train from the north glided into the yard and stopped. Soldiers immediately started carrying out the wounded and placing them in rows on mattresses ranged along the walls of the passenger depot; sisters of charity, hovering over the mutilated creatures, were already giving first aid to the injured; policemen kept the crowd from trampling the dead and dying; gendarmes began to clear the platforms, calling out sharply, “No more trains to-night! Move on! This platform is for government officials only!”