A vision of transfigured beauty in the afternoon light. Its high promontory aglow, every window a-dazzle. Its ancient walls, its old château, its church, all seemingly made of something pink, unsubstantial, shining. At the foot of the town flows the Moselle and there is a second shining moiré ribbon—the great canal leading from the Marne to the Rhine. Toul. The gorgeous towers of the cathedral are a-shine, too, above the outline of the great barrack buildings. The vast station is a sea of blue-clad washing in and out of trains. At Pagny we pick up the Meuse, _la Meuse aux lignes nonchalantes_. At Sorcy, wide, shallow expanses of inundation, and reeds and trees grow out of shining spaces, and meadow-bounded flat horizons stretch away, and suddenly it seems Oriental, Japanese, in the pink light—what you will—anything but a historic river of the European war, flowing through the elegant and sorrowful Lorraine. And then we find ourselves at Gondrecourt in the tip of the acute angle, for still, to go the straight road between Nancy and Châlons, we would have to pass Commercy, daily bombarded by big German guns. At Gondrecourt, about a dozen American soldiers standing on the platform, several seeming to have just left their mothers’ knees. We wanted to speak to the nearest one, but feared we might represent _l’autre danger_. Great packing-boxes piled everywhere with “U.S. Army” stamped on them—and how fateful a destination is this little Lorraine town! At Demanges-aux-Eaux more Americans. An old church, quite mauve, rises up seemingly from bronze waters, the houses of the surrounding village, blue and gray. Americans are billeted in these wide-doored Lorraine peasant houses, or in big stables whose entrances are high enough for great hay-wagons to pass through.