While Still We Live by Helen MacInnes

gloves—it was too warm for a coat—and hurried out of the apartment. “Before four o’clock,” he had said. She hadn’t much time. She ought to get to the British Embassy and let someone know she was staying in Warsaw. That was the right thing to do, she supposed. And if the Embassy wouldn’t arrange to get money for her from her uncle, then she would have to fall back on Mr. Hofmeyer’s generosity. In normal times, she wouldn’t have had the courage to accept his offer. But this was, as Uncle Edward had said last night, a state of emergency. And her Uncle Matthews would see to it that Mr. Hofmeyer was not left out of pocket.
    Her thoughts kept her company into the courtyard, past its clumps of lilac trees, through the vault-like gateway. In the street outside, Henryk, the porter, was airing a terrier.
    “Good day,” he said, and burst into a long sentence. Sheila, snatched away from her plans of campaign, stared blankly at him. He wouldn’t understand English, but he might be able to understand German. Many people in Poland could. “ Bitte ?” she asked politely.
    He looked at her with sudden sharpness. “Don’t speak German,” he said in a low voice, and turned his interest to the dog.
    Neatly snubbed, Sheila thought. She had better try no more German on strangers today, even out of politeness. But as she picked her way across the heavy cobbled surface of the street, trying to avoid twisting a high heel in one of the deep cracks, she suddenly began to wonder. What was it he had said? “I don’t speak German,” or “Don’t speak German”? But what did it matter anyway? Either a concierge couldn’t talk German, or he was advising her not to speak in German. What did matterwas the proclamation pasted across one of the pillars of the colonnade. She joined the small group of people round it.
    General mobilisation. Transport completely militarised. Horses, bicycles, cars to be commandeered. Every man on receipt of his mobilisation papers was to report at his district’s army headquarters within two hours. That was all. It ended with the date: “thirty-first of August, 1939.”
    There it was at last. There it was in the quiet, determined faces round her, in the men walking away to set their house and business in order before the two hours hung over them. Hofmeyer had said there was a “last train.” There must be a special one, then, for foreigners. But there was none for these people. Sheila felt her resolve tighten: all the arguments, for and against, why and why not, which had plagued her like a cloud of persistent mosquitoes ever since her sudden decision at the station last night, were swept away for good. She wanted to say to the strained face beside her, “Look, if you can stay here, so can I.” But she kept silent, edged her way out of the group, and walked towards Main Street. She wouldn’t have time to eat after all. She hadn’t time to ’phone Stevens again. She found a droshki, and drove to the British Embassy.
    When she arrived there, she felt helpless and unnecessary. Too many people were there. Too many men with urgent faces and decided steps were passing through the courtyard. They had serious business. She felt negligible. She hesitated for some minutes, and then entered the building. In the waiting room, there was a line of people, hurrying secretaries, busy men. This, she realised, was going to take hours. She looked at her watch and saw it was after half-past three. She left the building quickly, and no one even noticed her abrupt exit. She felt microscopic.After all, she told herself as she searched for another droshki, they would probably want to send her home. If they heard that she had practically no money left then they’d ship her off as a Distressed British Subject. Somehow, a D.B.S. didn’t sound so funny at this moment.
    A droshki, its horse too thin and old to be worried about his duty to the army, was coming along the avenue. Sheila left the railings, looked up at