"... in the month of July of that year 1914 a strange oppression came over the earth. I felt it, and the children felt it too. When we were on the terrace overlooking the city of Paris, the children were often silent and subdued. Huge black clouds gathered in the sky. An uncanny pause seemed to hang over the land. I sensed it, and it seemed to me that the movements of the babe I bore were weaker, not so decided as those of the others had been.
I suppose I was all very tired from the effort I had made to change grief and mourning into new life, and as the month of July advanced L. suggested that he should send the school to England to spend the vacation at his house in Devonshire. So one morning they all trooped in, two by two, to say goodbye to me. They were to spend August by the sea and return in September. When they had all gone, the house seemed strangely empty, and in spite of all my struggles, I fell prey to a deep depression. I was very tired, and would sit for long hours on the terrace overlooking Paris, and it seemed to me more and more some danger loomed from the East." (218)
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