Outside are the birdcalls, insistent, strange, and true even in the midst of the human skirmish, like an older world calling to itself. Faint smoke rises; a wagon creaks its way up the road, toward the dark of the treeline. Few lights show in the town windows, though the mayor is awake, red-striped nightcap and close to the grate, busily writing a requisition for sundry supplies that he intends to present to the General later in the day, in the company of Mr. Franz, himself abroad in the darkness, trousers askew, back pressed to the freezing wall of the Alley while the girl in his grasp suffers his teeth and swears to herself that she will leave this place before the week is through. Down the street, at the Gaiety, the last of the actresses gathers her bent ostrich-plume hat, her traveling valise, stuffs her reticule with notes and coins not wholly hers; she too had promised herself to flee, and, unlike her unlucky sister in the Alley, will do so this very morning on the passing train.
