almost possible to trace the slow transforming of young girls into
brides, and brides into mothers of broods.

Within the darkness of the interiors I could discern the stairs. But I
was held back from the stairs. I could get no further than the
parlours, though the interest of the upper floors must have been
surpassing.

So from house to house. I handled nothing. Were not the military
laws against looting of the most drastic character! And at last I
came to the end of the little street. There are many such streets in
Ypres. In fact, the majority of the streets were like that street. I did
not visit them, but I have no doubt that they were in the same
condition. I do not say that the inhabitants fled taking naught with
them. They must obviously have taken what they could, and what
was at once most precious and most portable. But they could have
taken very little. They departed breathless without vehicles, and
probably most of the adults had children to carry or to lead. At one
moment the houses were homes, functioning as such. An alarm,
infectious like the cholera, and at the next moment the deserted
houses became spiritless, degenerated into intolerable museums
for the amazement of a representative of the American and the
British Press! Where the scurrying families went to I never even
inquired. Useless to inquire. They just lost themselves on the face of
the earth, and were henceforth known to mankind by the generic
name of "refugees"--such of them as managed to get away alive.

After this the solitude of the suburbs, with their maimed and rusting
factories, their stagnant canals, their empty lots, their high, lusty
weeds, their abolished railway and tram stations, was a secondary