ttle English Mademoiselle Marie B---- had picked up
from British soldiers lately billeted there, and with the small amount of
French I had stored away, we held quite a long conversation.

[Illustration: (C)_Famous Players--Lasky Corporation. Scene from the
Photo-Play_

THE VOICE OF THE TEMPTER.]

I should judge that she was about fifteen. She told me she was sixteen. She
was piquant and pretty in appearance, but her features were drawn and her
expression was sad. She had a questioning wistfulness in her eyes, but she
showed no fear of the many British soldiers round.

This young girl, little over a child, was all alone. She awaited in terror
the coming of her baby, and the fiends who had outraged her had brutally
cut off her right arm just a little above the elbow.

"How did this happen to you, Mademoiselle?" I asked in French.

"Ah, Monsieur," she replied, "_les Allemands_, they did--chop it off."

"Why, Mademoiselle, surely no German would do such a hideous thing as that
without some reason."

At that time I believed, as apparently do the majority of people in this
country to-day believe, that the Germans did not commit the atrocities that
were attributed to them. But it is all true.

"But, _oui_, Monsieur,... _les Allemands_, they have no reason. They kill
my two brothers ... my father I have not seen, my mother I have not seen
... no, not for five months. _Les Allemands_, they have taken them also ...
they are dead also, _peutetre_."

"And you?" I continued. "Where was your home?"

"Ah, but it is the long story. We live close by Liege. It is a small
village. The Uhlans come and we are sorely frightened. We hide in the
cellar, and do not go out at all. While there _les Allemands_ post a notice
in the village. It is that every person who has a gun, a pistol, a shell,
an explosive, must hand such over to the burgomaster. We do not know of
this, and do nothing. At last, Monsieur, the Uhlans come to our house to
search, and there they see a shotgun and some shot. It is such a gun as you
must know in the house of British, in the house of American. It is the
common gun. We did not know. But there is no pardon for ignorance in war.
My brothers were roughly pulled to the market place and shot dead." Little
Marie choked down a sob. "My mother and my father," she continued, "were
carried away. I refuse. I fight, I bite, I scratch, I scream with frenzy, I
tear. One of _les Allemands_ ... perhaps he was mad, Monsieur,