"Go to him and tell him that a shell has just fallen on the Bank of Anvers. Tell him to rise and come out at once. He is a Bank Official and he must come and help to save the papers before the bank is burned down! Tell him Monsieur M., the Manager, came for him." Swing, and the Bank Manager has gone through the door again out into that black and red shrieking night. Swing again, and three people hurry in, three Belgians, father, mother and a little fair-haired girlie, whom they hold by each hand, while the father cradles a big box of hard cash under one arm. "The shells are falling all around our home!" they say. The porter points to the restaurant door. "Merci bien," and "Je vous remerci beaucoup," murmur father and mother. They vanish into the dark, unlit restaurant with its white table-cloths making pale points athward the stygian blackness of the huge room. Then an Englishman comes down the stairs behind me, flapping his Burberry rainproof overcoat. He is a War-Correspondent. "What a smell!" he says to the porter. "Is gas escaping somewhere?" "No, sir," says the porter, pulling his black moustache. He is very distrait and hardly gives the famous War-Correspondent a thought. "It _is_ gas!" persists the War-Correspondent. "There must be a leakage somewhere." He opens the door. A horrible whiff of burning petroleum and smoke blows in, and a Belgian soldier enters also. "What's the smell?" asks the War-Correspondent. "The Germans are dropping explosives on the city, trying to set fire to it," answers the Belgian. "Good lor, I must have a look!" says the War-Correspondent. He goes out. Two wounded officers come down the stairs behind me. "Bill, please, porter. How much? We must be off now to the forts!" "Don't know the bill," says the porter. "I'm new, the other man ran away. He didn't like shells. You can pay some other time, Messieurs!" "Bien!" says the officers. They swing their dark cloaks across their shoulders and pass out. They come back no more, no, never any more. Then an old, old man limps in on the arm of a young, ever-young Sister of Mercy. "He is deaf and dumb," she says, "I found him and brought him here. He will be killed in the streets." Her smile makes sunshine all over the blackness of that haunted hall; the mercy of it, the sweetness of it, the holiness are something one can never forget as, guiding the old man, she leads him into the dark restaurant and tends him through the night. Then again the door swings open. "The petroleum tanks have been set on fire by the Belgians themselves!" says a big man with a big moustache. "This is the end." He is the proprietor himself. And here up from the stairs behind us that lead down into the cellars, comes his wife, wrapped in furs. "Henri, I heard your voice. I am going. I cannot stand it. I shall flee to Holland with little Marie. Put me into the motor car. My legs will not carry me. I fear for the child so much!"