The cellar of the Café de la Victoire was so snug and warm and Brent so healthily tired after his first long day in Beaucourt that he slept till nine o’clock, twelve sound wholesome hours.
Someone was moving about overhead in the kitchen. A box was overturned, and the clatter woke Brent. He sat up and listened to a sound that was surprising and singular because of its unexpectedness, an unexpectedness that was not without pathos. Brent sat very still, cursing the wire bed because it creaked even when he breathed and creaked most self-assertively. He could hear a woman weeping up above there, weeping her heart out with a passion that broke into little exclamations of anguish and despair: “O my little house!—what a tragedy!—What a ruin! Nothing left, not even a door.”
And Brent understood
