I sat up awhile longer, trying to fix my mind on my book, trying not to
look round constantly at my pretty green interior, at all my books,
looking so ornamental against the walls of my study, at all the
portraits of the friends of my life of active service above the shelves,
and the old sixteenth-century Buddha, which Oda Neilson sent me on my
last birthday, looking so stoically down from his perch to remind me how
little all these things counted. I could not help remembering at the
end that my friends at Voulangis had gone--that they were at that very
moment on their way to Marseilles, that almost every one else I knew on
this side of the water was either at Havre waiting to sail, or in
London, or shut up in Holland or Denmark; that except for the friends I
had at the front I was alone with my beloved France and her Allies.
Through it all there ran a thought that made me laugh at last--how all
through August I had felt so outside of things, only suddenly to find it
right at my door. In the back of my mind--pushed back as hard as I
could--stood the question--what was to become of all this?
Yet, do you know, I went to bed, and what is more I slept well.
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