found himself hating the French.

He remembered that he had asked to have his sleepings engaged for the following night. But even if he managed to secure his son’s discharge, there could be no thought, now, of George’s leaving the country; and he stopped at the desk to cancel the order.

There was no one behind the desk: one would have 64said that confusion prevailed in the hall, if its emptiness had not made the word incongruous. At last a waiter with rumpled hair strayed out of the restaurant, and of him, imperiously, Campton demanded the concierge.

64

“The concierge? He’s gone.”

“To get my places for Naples?”

The waiter looked blank. “Gone: mobilised—to join his regiment. It’s the war.”

“But look here, some one must have attended to getting my places, I suppose,” cried Campton wrathfully. He invaded the inner office and challenged a secretary who was trying to deal with several unmanageable travellers, but who explained to him, patiently, that his sleepings had certainly not been engaged, as no trains were leaving Paris for the present. “Not for civilian travel,” he added, still more patiently.

Campton had a sudden sense of suffocation. No trains leaving Paris “for the present”? But then people like himself—people who had nothing on earth to do with the war—had been caught like rats in a trap! He reflected with a shiver that Mrs. Brant would not be able to return to Deauville, and would probably insist on his coming to see her every day. He asked: “How long is this preposterous state of things to last?”—but no one answered, and he stalked to the lift and had himself carried upstairs.

He was confident that George would be there waiting; 65but the sitting-room was empty. He felt as if he were on a desert island, with the last sail disappearing over the dark rim of the world.

65

After much vain ringing he got into communication with Fortin’s house, and heard a confused voice saying that the physician had already left Paris.

“Left—for where? For how long?”

And then the eternal answer: “The doctor is mobilised. It’s the war.”

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