urry. The thing, whatever it is, will be irresistible, and if I
don't go out to find it, it will find me.

* * * * *

Mrs. Torrence has gone, Heaven knows where. She has not been with the
others at the Palais des Fetes. Janet McNeil and Mrs. Lambert have been
working there for five hours, serving meals to the refugees. Ursula
Dearmer with extreme docility has been working all the afternoon with
the nurses.

It looks as if we were beginning to settle down.

Mrs. Torrence has come back. The red German pom-pom has gone from her
cap and she wears the badge of the Belgian Motor Cyclist Corps, black
wings on a white ground. Providence has rehabilitated himself. He has
abased our trained nurse and expert motorist in order to exalt her. He
fairly flung her in the path of the Colonel of (I think) the Belgian
Motor Cyclist Corps at a moment when the Colonel found himself in a
jibbing motor-car without a chauffeur. We gather that the Colonel was
becoming hectic with blasphemy when she appeared and settled the little
difficulty between him and his car. She seems to have followed it up by
driving him then and there straight up to the firing-line to look for
wounded.

End of the adventure--she volunteered her services as chauffeur to the
Colonel and was accepted.

The Commandant has received the news with imperturbable optimism.

As for her, she is appeased. She will realize her valorous dream of "the
greatest possible danger;" and she will get to her wounded.

The others have come back too. They have toiled for five hours among the
refugees.

[_5.30._]

It is my turn now at the Palais des Fetes.

It took ages to get in. The dining-hall is narrower than the
sleeping-hall, but it extends beyond it on one side where there is a
large door opening on the garden. But this door is closed to the public.
You can only reach the dining-hall by going through the straw among the
sleepers. And at this point the Commandant's optimism has broken down.
He won't let you go in through the straw, and the clerk who controls the
entry won't let you go in through the other door. You explain to the
clerk that the English Ambulance being quartered in a Military Hospital,
its rules are inviolable; it is not allowed to expose itself to the
horrors of the straw. The clerk is not interested in the English
Ambulance, he is not impressed by the fact that it has volunteered its
priceless services to the Refugee Commit