The challenges run round, in subdued tones. Even suspicion seems lulled. In the truce of the night the mind even of the sentry is passive. The artificial atmosphere, that makes all but the known uniform an enemy, is forgotten for the moment. Back towards Paris, the city is shoulder-deep in white mist. Only the spires and towers emerge, grey and sleepy. The summit of the Eiffel Tower is lost again in a yet higher belt. As the grey light grows yellow and red with the coming sun, the towers are projected against it as if floating in mid air, a city of dreams. Can this be the town that is waiting half empty, garrisoned with soldiers, every public office a barrack or ambulance, for expected bombardment, almost certain siege? Yet only a few miles to the north--how few the citizens do not yet know--the advance patrols of the enemy are also resting, sleeping under the same bands of white mist. They are at Pontoise; some of them have been encountered even near the Seine in the glades of the Forest of St. Germain. And behind us, also hidden by the mist, the restless movement of our own troops continues. Trains are shunting and banging; there is the rattle of heavy wheels on the roads.... The yellow light widens; the mist lifts and grows thin. The sentries seem to shape themselves, and swing their cloaks. A general stir rustles out of the shelters. The clatter of cooking-pots and boots, even of voices, begins round us. The night has been warm, and a sultry feeling falls again at once with the opening of day. A cavalry patrol, visible already in its lighter blue uniforms, files past. The men move out to their work on the earthworks. There is the rattle of arms as the rifles are freed from their standing stooks. Strange sheaves these, in their threatening lines, by the edges of uncut cornfields. They begin to glitter as they are lifted in the early sunlight. The sound of a distant shot, unexplained, startles my little circle of view into alertness. The truce of night goes in an instant with the mist. Suspicion, the sharp tension of prospective attack, change in a second the atmosphere. Orders, loud voices, and movements tell the beginning of another inconsequent day in the unnatural war. Paris, as I return, is already awake: sharp outlined and stirring. Carts are moving in and out of one gate, which has opened early. Small parties of officers roll out noisily in motor-cars from their city quarters. It is time to get back to the suppressed, shepherded existence of a civilian in a town under military government, for whom rumour-fed ignorance is considered to be the only safe-guard against panic. Psychology of an elementary character might form a part of the training of the experts in war. Paris, Saturday midnight.