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without you, if necessary.” He picked up a newspaper.
    “If you are expecting—” Sheila began in alarm.
    “Hush, child. You worry too much. Either there will be a possible train, or there won’t be one. We needn’t wait long at the station. I’ll be back in time to see my guests.”
    Mr. Olszak had come over to the door, with the newspaper still in his hand, to say goodbye. “I hope we may meet again, some day, when all this trouble is over.” He looked as if he were expressing an impossible wish. “There is much we could talk about. Goodbye, and a safe journey.”
    Under the row of chestnut trees in the quiet little street, Sheila was still wondering about Mr. Olszak. Uncle Edward seemed to think that something Olszak had said had depressed her.
    “Don’t worry,” he said reassuringly. “This trouble may not last so long as Michal thinks. He is always rather too realistic, too gloomy. That’s why his newspaper sells so badly. He will write editorials which are both true and unpleasant. He says there are two kinds of journalist. One becomes rich and powerful, and cynical of the poor. Another remains poor, and cynical of the rich and powerful.”
    “I think I would like to meet Mr. Olszak again, some day,” said Sheila.
    “He was a great friend of your—” Uncle Edward halted abruptly. He was suddenly business-like. “There’s a taxi,” he said. He waved vehemently. They were standing outside the Church of the Holy Cross. Around them, on Main Street, there were tramcars and lighted restaurants and numerous cafés crowded with earnestly talking people. It seemed as if every open window concealed a wireless set turned fully on. In June, Sheila remembered, there had been music and laughter and smiling faces on the street. Now, the lights were darkening. People were leaving the cafés. People were walking urgently.
    * * *
    The taxi-driver justified Professor Korytowski’s extravagance. The cab reached Central Station as the last lights vanished, likethe flames of candles briefly snuffed out. Uncle Edward looked up and down the darkened street as they stood accustoming their eyes to the night. “I do believe,” he said as he stared at the buildings in their new austerity, “I do believe a blackout is an improvement.” And Sheila found herself almost smiling.
    Inside the large, modern station, the ghastly light from infrequent, blue-painted lamps was certainly no improvement. Masses of people stood patiently in crowded groups. Children had fallen asleep on benches against the walls; their exhausted bodies drooped pathetically. Professor Korytowski steered Sheila through the crowd of stolid faces. They were going home, these people. They belonged to the villages, and in this moment of crisis they wanted to return there, these older men and women and children. A war was threatened; the villages would have to be defended. Even years of city life had not eradicated that simple belief.
    “The foreigners will be over there,” Uncle Edward said, indicating the section where express trains usually left for abroad. He mixed force with polite phrases to ease a way through the crowds.
    Sheila heard them before she saw them, sitting on piles of luggage or elbowing each other round the notice boards. Worry hadn’t improved their tempers; their smart clothes were as jaded as their nerves.
    Voices of many nations were outshouting each other.
    “Ridiculous... I’m going back to the hotel.” It was an English voice, too.
    “And start this all over again, tomorrow?”
    “Ridiculous...a few extra trains and we would all get away.”
    “You’re darned right it’s ridiculous,” a third voice said. AnAmerican voice. “How do they expect to win a war if they don’t have organisation?”
    Sheila looked at them savagely, all the more savagely became Uncle Edward was pretending not to have heard them. How did they expect a war to be won if soldiers had to walk to the frontier so that a batch of foreigners