It had seemed a perfectly simple event, something almost usual, at the junction of these four streets of the little town. A deed done; the pattering of dispersing feet; silence! And this simple act, repeated hundreds of thousands of times at this same hour, was the most tragic alarm-cry in the history of man, reverberating at the same moment of time over all the terrestrial globe. Little noise, almost no words, and all these men, raising their hats to pronounce a word suddenly become sacred, had made the sacrifice of their lives. Imagination loses itself in picturing the multitude of points upon this earth on which a like gift of self had just been made. For if the man who goes hopes to be spared, he who learns that he is called to go, for the moment gives himself, body and soul. Almost instantaneously the church-bells had broken out with the tocsin, as if the town had been on fire. Every church; then, on the hills, throughout the countryside, the same signal of distress spread like an epidemic. It had been too recent to be utterly terrifying; many heard it and did not think. No one realized the tragedy to which these humble little bells were sorrowfully calling the world. It is the salvation of men that they always limit their thoughts to the most immediate duty. The thought of a pair of shoes, of the place where one's _livret_ is hidden, of saying good-by to this one or that one, checks the vertigo which the enormity of the event might well produce. At first Odette had felt oppressed and wept like a nervous child who hears a sudden alarm. She had been unable, for her tears, to see the letter-box into which she dropped that letter to Jean which no longer signified anything and would doubtless never reach him to whom it was addressed. And all around her, at the doors, in the streets, on the beach, at the hotel, women had been weeping. Odette had gone up to her room. She had said to her maid: "What about you, Amelia?" "Me? Mine must join on the second day. I thought of asking Madame if I might take this evening's train; to-morrow there will be no room for civilians. That way I might kiss him good-by----" "Go, Amelia." She had seated herself at the window that looked out upon the flower-garden, the deserted tennis-courts, the sea. She was alone. There was nothing for her to do but think and wait. Everything around her had seemed stunned, congealed. It was as if there was no longer any one anywhere. The smoke of three great transatlantics in the Havre roadstead--sole perceptible movement--was rising straight up in the motionless air. A few fair-weather clouds on the horizon were turning a fleecy rose color. One or two fishing-smacks, all sails spread, were idling as on a lake. In ordinary times one would have said: "What a glorious sunset we shall have!" And Odette thought: "The men in those boats, at this moment, _do not know_!"