There were the same road, the
same hedges, the same fields, the same white cottages, and peasants in
blue shirts and dun-hued oxen in the wagons. She saw no mark, no
difference, ere they told her where she stood was Belgium, and where they
stood was France, and that she must not pass from one into the other.
The men took no notice of her. They went back into their guard-house,
and smoked and drank. A cat sunned herself under a scarlet bean. The
white clouds sailed on before a southerly sky. She might die here--he
there--and nothing seemed to care.
After a while an old hawker came up; he was travelling with wooden clocks
from the Black Forest. He stopped and looked at her, and asked her what
she ailed.
She knelt down at his feet in the dust.
"Oh, help me!" she cried to him. "Oh, pray, help me! I have walked all
the way from Brussels--that is my country--and now they will not let me
pass that house where the soldiers are. They say I have no papers. What
papers should I have? I do not know. When one has done no harm, and does
not owe a sou anywhere, and has walked all the way--Is it money that they
want? I have none; and they stole my silver clasps in Brussels; and if
I do not get to Paris I must die--die without seeing him again--ever
again, dear God!"
She dropped her head upon the dust and crouched and sobbed there, her
courage broken by this new barrier that she had never dreamed would come
between herself and Paris.
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