The delicate chill of morning was as nectar after the stench of the crowded night. By special mercy, just as dawn broke they drew up in a siding with fields to the right and left of them; neither William nor his friend was asleep when the train stopped, and, crawling over recumbent bodies on the floor of the van, they dropped down stiffly from their pen and stood breathing in the clean, cool wind. With their damp clothes sticking to their heated bodies, they sucked the air into their lungs—even William, blind with his misery, conscious of the calm loveliness of morning on stretches of green after the reek of the lantern-lit van. His companion, shuddering at the sight of her hands, went in search of water and discovered a tap on the platform; whereat William, in his turn, drank thirstily and soused hands and face before they settled down in a field at the side of the line. There, on the good green turf, they shared the last remnants of their package of food, some bread and an apple apiece. for all the hours they had spent on the train they had accomplished only some half of the distance to Paris; and as refreshment rooms—closed or cleared out by the troops—could no longer be counted on to supply the needs of the traveller, they had little prospect of further sustenance till they reached their journey’s end. They ate their small meal sitting as far as they deemed safe from the train and the crowd it had disgorged—ate it in silence, for William had not yet found speech. His world, for the time being, was formless and void, and, as such, incapable of expression. All day they travelled, as they had travelled on the day before: in jolted crowds, in squalor, in heat, to the sound of the misery of children. They ached, they wearied, they sweated, they thirsted—they halted and lurched on again; too wearied even for impatience, they endured without complaint until even the children were past crying. The sun was low on the horizon when William, drowsily stupid, raised his head from his knees as his friend touched him on the arm. He looked up stupidly—the train was plodding through forest; he had ceased to hope for the journey’s end and sat for the most part with his head on his knees in a dull, half-dozing resignation. "If we don’t stop again," she told him, "we ought to be in fairly soon. I think that’s Chantilly we’ve run through. We’re only half an hour from Paris—in ordinary times, that’s to say."