up all night in the hall outside my door
polishing his boots and cleaning his uniform, I was always alone in
that part of the hotel.

At my London hotel I had been lodged on the top floor, and twice in
the night the hall porter had telephoned me to say that German
Zeppelins were on their way to London. So I took care to find that in
the Hotel des Arcades there were two stories and two layers of Belgian
and French officers overhead.

I felt very comfortable--until the air raid. The two stories seemed
absurd, inadequate. I would not have felt safe in the subcellar of the
Woolworth Building.

There were no women in the hotel at that time, with the exception of a
hysterical lady manager, who sat in a boxlike office on the lower
floor, and two chambermaids. A boy made my bed and brought me hot
water. For several weeks at intervals he knocked at the door twice a
day and said: "Et wat." I always thought it was Flemish for "May I
come in?" At last I discovered that he considered this the English for
"hot water." The waiters in the cafe were too old to be sent to war,
but I think the cook had gone. There was no cook. Some one put the
food on the fire, but he was not a cook.

Dunkirk had been bombarded several times, I learned.

"They come in the morning," said my informant. "Every one is ordered
off the streets. But they do little damage. One or two machines come
and drop a bomb or two. That is all. Very few are killed."

I protested. I felt rather bitter about it. I expected trouble along
the lines, I explained. I knew I would be quite calm when I was
actually at the front, and when I had my nervous system prepared for
trouble. But in Dunkirk I expected to rest and relax. I needed sleep
after La Panne. I thought something should be done about it.

My informant shrugged his shoulders. He was English, and entirely
fair.

"Dunkirk is a fortified town," he explained. "It is quite legitimate.
But you may sleep to-night. The raids are always daylight ones."

So I commenced dinner calmly. I do not remember anything about that
dinner. The memory of it has gone. I do recall looking about the
dining room, and feeling a little odd and lonely, being the only
woman. Then a gun boomed somewhere outside, and an alarm bell
commenced to ring rapidly almost overhead. Instantly the officers in
the room were on their feet, and every light went out.

The _maitre d'hotel_, Emil, groped his way to my table and struck a
match.

"Aeropla