ould
only see her for a minute. But she is in Paris, and he will be dead
before the morning comes... I have written a letter for him, and he
kissed it before I wrote his wife's address. He keeps calling out her
name."

The scullery was warm and cosy, in spite of all the draughts. Sitting
back in a wooden chair, I nearly fell asleep, because I had had a long
day in the fields and fatigue threatened to overwhelm me. But I
wakened with a start when a door opened, letting in a sudden blast of
cold air and the noise of the beating rain, and then banged with
violence. I seemed to hear footsteps coming across the kitchen floor,
and, with an eerie feeling of some new presence in the convent, I
strode out of the scullery. A queer little figure startled me. It was
a girl in man's clothes, except for a white cap on her head,
tight-fitting above her eyes. She was dripping wet and caked in
slimy mud, and she faltered forward a little and spoke in French.

"I am very wet. And so tired and hungry! If I could sleep here, on the
floor, and dry myself a little-----"

"Who are you?" I asked. There seemed something uncanny in this
little figure coming out of the wild night.

It appeared that she was one of two Belgian girls who since the
beginning of the war had acted as infirmieres with the Belgian troops,
giving the first aid in the trenches, carrying hot soup to them, and
living with them under fire. She seemed hardly more than a child, and
spoke childishly in a pitiful way, while she twisted the corner of her
jacket so that water came out and made a pool about her on the
boards. She dried herself in front of the fire and ate--ravenously--
some food which had been left on a side-table, and then lay down in
a corner of the refectory, falling into the deepest sleep as soon as her
head had touched the mattress. She did not wake next morning,
though fifty-five people made a clatter at the breakfast-table, and at
four in the afternoon she was still sleeping, like a sick child, with her
head drooping over the mattress.

20

That day, owing to the heavy rain in the night, the roads were slimy
with mud, so that the cars skidded almost over the brim of the dykes.
There was more movement among the troops, less sitting about for
orders. Officers were riding up and down the roads, and wheeling into
little groups for quick discussion. Something was happening--
something more than the ding-dong slam of the guns. A regiment of
Belgian inf