A Woman's Experience in the Great War

when the train, which had been running along at a beaut

at last it became evident

elgian Captain, who had travelled up in the train with me from Ostend, inf

happened

sur la ligne!" was

course in those day, no one thought anything of a brown paper parcel; in fact it was quite the correct

m there, and run to Antwerp But it will not arrive at the ordinary station. It will go as far as the river,

aine looking after me, when, to my supreme disgust, my brown paper parcel burst open, and there fell out an evening shoe. And such a shoe! It was a brilliant blue and equally brilliant silver, with a very high heel, and a big silver buckle. It was a shoe I loved, and I h

efore we arrived at Antwerp that night. The crowded, suffocating train crawled along, and stopped half an hour indis

ols, and the Capitaine still clung to my suit-case, and at last we crossed the great blue Scheldt, and landed on the other side, where a row o

Terminus. I had eaten nothing since the morning. But the sleepy hotel night-porter told me it w

I had any call to complain or make a fuss, so I wearily took the l

lock in the morning, and a mos

can say, up there in my bedroom, for we w

day long, it seemed to me, I had been turned out of one tr

that I had been running away from all day long, between Ostend

quite

t," I thought. "This

wondered w

ormous, and it seemed to

fire of musketry-crack, crack, crack, a beautiful, clean noise, li

y I li

e how the Germans could have

ly I got o

my room seemed full of the roar of cannon, and I experienced a queer sensation

to myself, "or they will see where I a

consciousness of immense and utter content, to the wild outcry of those cannons and musket

as none, not any at

something curious

ke-believes of life, seized upon me, standing there in my nightgown in the pitch-black, airless ro

nute seemed nothing else but make-believe. For onl

to think, and then I began to mov

ainst the noise of the

the door, and I cou

into the darkness,

p, undisturbed content to the terrific fire tha

old of was the sh

ed back at

rn away, I must

y hand and turned up the light in a fit of de

d picked up my powder-puff, got to my bag, and fumbled for the keys, and opened my suit-case and dragged out

ters at all, and I quietly turned up the light aga

ooking-glass, I found myse

along the corridor reached me,

t les Allemands, n'est-ce-p

big aeronaut running by. "Ce n'est

so i

musketry were the onslaughts upon the monster by the Belgian soldiers, mad

with the noise of the cannons in the pitch-blackness of that stifling bedroom; down the

of tall, motionless green palms and white wicker chairs and scarlet

eaths from her cages as she sped along her craven way across the skies, but that crow

trembling pink feet peeped from the bla

sweetness, and charming toilettes had been making "sun

with her great, black eyes, still sparkling, and long red-black hair falli

daring aviator-never seen except in a remarkable pair of bright yellow bags of trousers. His lisp

they appear like this in their pyjamas; and a crowd of Belgian ladies and children, and all the maids and gar?ons, and the porters and the night-porters, and various strange old gentlemen in overcoats and bare legs, and strange old ladies with their heads tied, who will never be seen again (not to be recognised), and the cook from the lowest regions,

street-door away down the road, comes racing ba

enthusiastically, his young black eyes af

ruly Belge, I reall

m the Belgia