The girl paused and steadied herself for a moment against a field
gate. Her breath came fast in little sobbing pants. Her dainty shoes
were soiled with dust and there was a great tear in her skirt. Very
slowly, very fearfully, she turned her head. Her cheeks were the
colour of chalk, her eyes were filled with terror. If a cart were
coming, or those labourers in the field had heard, escape was
impossible.
The terror faded from her eyes. A faint gleam of returning colour gave
her at once a more natural appearance. So far as the eye could reach,
the white level road, with its fringe of elm-trees, was empty. Away
off in the fields the blue-smocked peasants bent still at their toil.
They had heard nothing, seen nothing. A few more minutes, and she was
safe.
Yet before she turned once more to resume her flight she schooled
herself with an effort to look where it had happened. A dark mass of
wreckage, over which hung a slight mist of vapour, lay half in the
ditch, half across the hedge, close under a tree from the trunk of
which the bark had been torn and stripped. A few yards further off
something grey, inert, was lying, a huddled-up heap of humanity
twisted into a strange unnatural shape. Again the chalky pallor spread
even to her lips, her eyes became lit with the old terror. She
withdrew her head with a little moan, and resumed her flight. Away up
on the hillside was the little country railway station. She fixed her
eyes upon it and ran, keeping always as far as possible in the shadow
of the hedge, gazing fearfully every now and then down along the
valley for the white smoke of the train.
She reached the station, and mingling with a crowd of excursionists
who had come from the river on the other side, took her place in the
train unnoticed. She leaned back in her seat and closed her eyes.
Until the last moment she was afraid.
Arrived in Paris she remembered that she had not the money for a
_fiacre_. She was in ill trim for walking, but somehow or other she
made her way as far as the Champs Elysees, and sank down upon an empty
seat.
She had not at first the power for concealment. Her nerves were
shattered, her senses dazed by this unexpected shock. She sat there, a
mark for boulevarders, the unconscious object of numberless wondering
glances. Paris was full, and it was by no means a retired spot which
she had found. Yet she never once thought of changing it. A person of
somewhat artificial graces and mannerisms, she was for once in her
life perfectly natural. Terror had laid a paralyzing hand upon her,
fear kept her almost unconscious of the curious glances which she was
continually attracting.