But I was feeling uneasy as I looked about, for I was separated from my _carnet rouge_,[8] which has been unnecessarily reft from me by a too-zealous station individual. Miss Mitchell had met us, smiling and waving, which ought to have been a patent of respectability, from the other side of a bayonet, the side we wanted to be on; but the man had a dullish eye and didn’t see that we were birds of a feather, and, anyway, had just been put in authority and was enjoying his full powers, after the usual manner of the unaccustomed. So I departed, and got sopping wet in my only suit (am traveling lighter even than the first time), and my garments were furthermore ravaged by falling pollen from a linden-tree under which I had confidingly stood during the downpour. I was a sight, but I _had_ to get that _carnet rouge_. Any one who has been in _la zone des armées_ and has been separated from it will understand the orphaned and anxious feeling that possessed me. _Later._ A pale brightening of the western sky after the heavy rain. Two _avions de chasse_ passing swiftly to the northeast. I wandered out of the garden, past some modern houses (this part of Châlons, for some reason, is called Madagascar), taking the little raised earth-walk by the Marne. The river, always slow-flowing, has an almost imperceptible movement in front of our house, and there are many grasses and reeds; the banks are weedy and little green boats are made fast to them, and nature is a bit motley and untidy. A soldier is fishing on the opposite side near the station. An officer and a black-robed woman pass. Farther down, the banks are thickly wooded and the trees glisten after the rain; even the great railway station is a-shine, where tens of thousands of men pass daily, together with millions of francs of war material, and it all looks like some not very sharp wood-cut of the sixties—the kind you wouldn’t buy if you were looking over a lot; but, somehow, lived in, it is charming. Then I found myself on a path by the river, with a lush border of trees, poplar, willow, white birch, ash, hawthorn, and clematis-twined, wild-grape-vined bushes. On the other side were ripe wheat-fields. Near a sycamore a man and a woman were locked in an embrace, whether of greeting or farewell I know not. Neither was very young—this much I saw before I turned my eyes and went on; but when I passed there again they were as before, their eyes still closed; and I suddenly knew them for true lovers, who count not moments, but were lost in some infinity; and for all I know they may be there yet, and if not they, then others, for the spaces of love are never empty. To some it may be nonsense that I am talking, but there are those who will know. All the while there was a dull boom of cannon, and other men who could love women were giving up their lives; and I seemed to understand little or nothing, but did not