The
wooden floor in the neighborhood of the booth and pails was of a dark
colour, obviously owing to the continual overflow of their contents.
The right-hand long wall contained something like ten large windows, of
which the first was commanded by the somewhat primitive cabinet. There
were no other windows in the remaining walls; or they had been carefully
rendered useless. In spite of this fact, the inhabitants had contrived a
couple of peep-holes--one in the door-end and one in the left-hand long
wall; the former commanding the gate by which I had entered, the latter a
portion of the street by which I had reached the gate. The blocking of
all windows on three sides had an obvious significance: _les hommes_ were
not supposed to see anything which went on in the world without; _les
hommes_ might, however, look their fill on a little washing-shed, on a
corner of what seemed to be another wing of the building, and on a bleak
lifeless abject landscape of scrubby woods beyond--which constituted the
view from the ten windows on the right. The authorities had miscalculated
a little in one respect: a merest fraction of the barb-wire pen which
began at the corner of the above-mentioned building was visible from
these windows, which windows (I was told) were consequently thronged by
fighting men at the time of the girl's promenade.
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