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Nor had death been overly stingy to the members of the Staff itself. We
gathered as much from chance remarks. And so, as it came to be eight
o'clock, I caught myself watching certain vacant chairs at our table and
at the two smaller tables in the next room with a strained curiosity.
One by one the vacant chairs filled up. At intervals the door behind me
would open and an officer would clank in, dusted over with the sift of
the French roads. He would bow ceremoniously to his chief and then to
the company generally, slip into an unoccupied chair, give an order over
his shoulder to a soldier-waiter, and at once begin to eat his dinner
with the air of a man who has earned it. After a while there was but
one place vacant at our table; it was next to me. I could not keep my
eyes away from it. It got on my nerves--that little gap in the circle;
that little space of white linen, bare of anything but two unfilled
glasses. To me it became as portentous as an unscrewed coffin lid. No
one else seemed to notice it.


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