Then the old woman put her arm through one of his arms, and the girl put her arm through the other. As he turned to go where they would take him, I saw that he was blind; the wound had healed, but it was as if his eyes were closed. He very carefully let go the basket with one hand, and with the other hand, the girl's rather impatient touch on his elbow, he made a salute to where he thought the woman of the push-cart was standing, and then the old woman and the girl led him away with the basket.
The wards of "our" floor get always all the light there is. When there is sunlight it all comes in and picks the dust motes up and sets them dancing, down steep slants and ladders. When there is wind it sobs and sings along the wards and corridors. The rain makes wide sweeps of the great windows, and mists press very close against them and get into the wards and drift there. When there was snow, in these few days the rooms were all full of its whiteness. Almost it was as if its silence were there, and its peace.
The night was full of great bells booming, Verdun, Verdun, Verdun. And yet there were no bells.
I never saw a darker morning come to Paris. The darkness came into the room, thick and wet and cold.
The crows are back already in the garden; the bare black treetops were full of them this dark morning, and not one of them stirred or made a sound.
The lamps of the trams were lighted, and the lamps of the streets and quays and bridges.
The river is very high, the trees of the margins stand drowning.
The snow of these last days has stayed on in places, as yellow as fog and smoke.
In the old great beautiful courtyards of the hospital the snow is quite deep, on the roofs and ledges of red brick and grey stone, and on the huge square old cobbles, and on the black tracery of trees and bushes and of the vines along the walls.
The buds, that were soft and green last week, are black now; I was afraid to go and touch them and find them frozen hard.
The blackbird was singing. He has been back for nine days. It was dreadful in the dark and cold to hear him singing. How terrible all lovely things are become!
In the half dark I came home along the canal. In these nights, coming home from the hospital, I have learned always more and more that the canal is beautiful, curving down between its old poor black tumbling houses, under its black bridges.