tridity, of the million living plague-stricken, of the million dead lying unburied.
For there was War.
Of year or day or hour I knew nothing. It was always the same blackness as of night; the same horror of sound, of scent, of cold; the same misery; the same torture. I suppose that the sun was quenched, that the birds were dumb, that the winds were stilled for ever—that all the world was dead: I do not know. They called it the Siege of Paris. I suppose that they meant the Revolt of Hell.
Yet Lili lived, and I: in that dread darkness we had lost René—we saw his face no more. Yet he could not be in his grave, I knew, for Lili, clasping my barren branches to her breast, would murmur, "Whilst he still lives I will live—yes, yes, yes!"
And she did live—so long, so long!—on a few draughts of water and a few husks of grain.
I knew that it was long, for full a hundred times she muttered aloud, "Another day! O God!—how long? how long?"
At last in the darkness a human hand was stretched to her, close beside me.
A foul and fierce light, the light of flame, was some where on the air above us, and at that moment glowed through the horrid gloom we dwelt in in the bowels of the earth. I saw the hand and what it held to
