Produced by Suzanne Shell, Charlie Kirschner and the PG
Online Distributed Proofreading Team.
by
1920
Between the grey walls of its bath—so like its cradle and itscoffin—lay one of those small and lonely creatures which inhabit thesurface of the earth for seventy years.
As on every other evening the sun was sinking and the moon, unseen, wasrising.
The round head of flesh and bone floated upon the deep water of thebath.
"Why should I move?" rolled its thoughts, bewitched by solitude. "Theearth itself is moving.
"Summer and winter and winter and summer I have travelled in my head,saying—'All secrets, all wonders, lie within the breast!' But now thatis at an end, and to-morrow I go upon a journey.
"I have been accustomed to finding something in nothing—how do I knowif I am equipped for a larger horizon!…"
And suddenly the little creature chanted aloud:—
"The strange things of travel,
The East and the West,
The hill beyond the hill,—
They lie within the breast!"
The war had stopped.
The King of England was in Paris, and the President of the United Stateswas hourly expected.
Humbler guests poured each night from the termini into the overflowingcity, and sought anxiously for some bed, lounge-chair, or pillowedcorner, in which to rest until the morning. Stretched upon the table ina branch of the Y.W.C.A. lay a young woman from England whose clotheswere of brand-new khaki, and whose name was Fanny.
She had arrived that night at the Gare du Nord at eight o'clock, and thefollowing night at eight o'clock she left Paris by the Gare de l'Est.
Just as she entered the station a small boy with a basket of violets forsale held a bunch to her face.
"No, thank you."
He pursued her and held it against her chin.
"No, thank you."
"But I give it to you! I give it to you!"
As she had neither slept on the boat from Southampton nor on the tableof