The movements of the people leaving the train were leisurely, promising a long wait. Most of the passengers were the English set free, strolling happily about in fur-coats and creased Burberrys. English voices took possession of the air. Filled it with the sense of the incorrigible English confidence. And upon a table beyond the counter stood rows and rows of steaming cups. Coffee. Café, mon dieu! Offered casually, the normal beverage of these happy continentals. The only visible official stood at ease beyond the table answering questions, making no move towards the ranged luggage. He looked very mild, had a little blue-black beard. She thought of long-forgotten Emmerich, the heavy responsible pimpled face of the German official who plunged great hands in amongst her belongings. Perhaps the customs’ officers were yet to appear. Fortified by coffee she strolled up and made her enquiry in French, but carefully in the slipshod English manner. For a moment her demand seemed to embarrass him. Then, very politely: “_Vous arrivez, madame?_” “_De Londres._” “_Et vous allez?_” “_À Oberland._” “_Vous n’avez qu’a monter dans le train_,” and hospitably he indicated the train that stood now emptied, and breathing through its open doors. Walking on down the platform she caught through a door ajar in the background a glimpse of a truckle bed with coverings thrown back. Here as they laboured forward through the darkness the douanier had been sleeping, his station ready-staged for their coming, a farcical half-dozen trunks laid out to represent the belongings of the trainful of passengers. Appearances thus kept up, he was enjoying his rôle of pleasant host. Tant mieux, tant very much mieux. One could enjoy the fun of being let out into the night. The solid air began to be intensely cold. But in its cold there was no bitterness and it attained only her face, whose shape it seemed to change. And all about the station were steep walls of starless darkness and overhead in a blue-black sky, stars oddly small and numerous; very sharp and near. When the train moved on night settled down once more. Once more there was dim gaslight and jolting shadows. But the air was clearer and only two passengers remained, two women, each in her corner and each in a heavy black cloak. Strangers to each other, with the length of the carriage between them, yet alike, indistinguishable; above each cloak a plump middle-aged face not long emerged from sleep: sheened with the sleep that had left the oily, glinting brown eyes. Presently they began to speak, with the freemasonry of women unobserved, socially off duty. Their voices frugal, dull and flat; the voices of those who have forgotten even the desire to find sympathy, to find anything turned their way with an offering.