I put on my hat and gloves, and go out into the streets. Oh, God! What a golden day!
Unbearable is the glitter of this sunlight shining over the agony of a nation!
For the moment the bombardment has ceased entirely. These little pauses are almost quaint in their preciseness.
One can count on them quite confidently not to be broken by stray shells.
And in the pause I am rushing along the Avenue de Commerce, trying to get round to the hotel where all my belongings are, when I run into three Englishmen with their arms full of bags, and overcoats, and umbrellas, and for a moment or two we stand there at the corner opposite the Gare Central all talking together breathlessly.
It was only last night at seven o'clock that we all dined together at the Terminus; but since then a million years have rolled over us; we have been snatched into one of History's most terrific pages; and we all have a burning breathless Saga of our own hanging on our lips, crying to be told aloud before the world.
We all fling out disjointed remarks, and I hear of the awful night in that quarter of the city.
"And you, how are you going to get away?"
The tall, slight young man with the little dark moustache is Mr. Jeffries of the _Daily Mail_, who has been staying at the Hotel de l'Europe. With him is the popular Mr. Perry Robinson of the _Times_. The third is Mr. P. Phillips of the _Daily News_.
"I have just come from the État Majeur," Mr. Jeffries tells me hurriedly. "There is not a ghost of a hope now! Everyone has gone. We must get away at once."
"I am not going," I say. For suddenly the knowledge has come to me that I cannot leave the greatest of my dramas before the curtain rolls up in the last scene. In vain they argue, tell me I am mad. I am not going.
It is Friday morning. All hope is over. The Germans are coming in at half-past one.
"Well," Says Mr. Lucien Arthur Jones at last, at the end of a long discussion between him and Mr. Frank Fox and myself, "if you have really decided to stay, I'm going to give you this key! It belongs to the house of some wealthy Belgians who have fled to England. There is plenty of food and stores of all kind in the house. If need be, you might take shelter there!"
And he gave me the key and the address, and I,--luckily for myself,--I remembered it afterwards.