The door of the court-yard stands open. Our boots make a great clatter. The house door opens, a chink of light shines through and a woman cries out in a scared voice. "Ssh, ssh! camerade--bon ami--" we say, and show our packages protestingly. The other two are now on the scene, the door opens wide and the light floods over us. They recognize us and all three burst into laughter at our appearance. They rock and sway in the doorway, they laugh so much. How supple their movements are! "Un moment--" They disappear and throw us bits of clothing which we gladly wrap round ourselves. Then we venture in. A small lamp burns in the room, which is warm and smells a little of perfume. We unwrap our parcels and hand them over to the women. Their eyes shine, it is obvious that they are hungry. Then we all become rather embarrassed. Leer makes the gestures of eating, and then they come to life again and bring out plates and knives and fall to on the food, and they hold up every slice of liver-sausage and admire it before they eat it, and we sit proudly by. They overwhelm us with their chatter;--we understand very little of it, but we listen and the words sound friendly. No doubt we all look very young. The little brunette strokes my hair and says what all the French women say: "La guerre--grand malheur--pauvres garçons----" I hold her arm tightly and press my lips into the palm of her hand. Her fingers close round my face. Close above me are her bewildering eyes, the soft brown of her skin and her red lips. Her mouth speaks words I do not understand. Nor do I fully understand her eyes; they seem to say more than we anticipated when we came here. There are other rooms adjoining. In passing I see Leer, he has made a great hit with the blonde. And he knows it, too. But I--I am lost in remoteness, in weakness, and in a passion to which I yield myself trustingly. My desires are strangely compounded of yearning and misery. I feel giddy, there is nothing here that a man can hold on to. We have left our boots at the door, they have given us slippers instead, and now nothing remains to recall for me the assurance and self-confidence of the soldier: no rifle, no belt, no tunic, no cap. I let myself drop into the unknown, come what may--yet, in spite of all, I feel somewhat afraid. The little brunette contracts her brows when she is thinking; but when she talks they are still. And often the sound does not quite become a word but suffocates or floats away over me half-finished; an arch, a pathway, a comet. What have I known of it--what do I know of it?--The words of this foreign tongue, that I hardly understand, they caress me to a quietness, in which the room grows dim, and dissolves in the half light, and only the face above me lives and is clear.