wn on the table before me, and, as though carrying on her previous
train of thought, said, in French, of course:

"Yes, that is what the war has done to me."

I could not guess her meaning. Looking at the photograph, I saw it was
of a young girl in evening dress with her hair coiled in an artistic way
and a little curl on each cheek. Madame's daughter, I thought, looking
up at the woman standing in front of me in a grubby bodice and tousled
hair. She looked a woman of about forty, with a wan face and beaten
eyes.

"A charming young lady," I said, glancing again at the portrait.

The woman repeated her last sentence, word for word.

"Yes... that is what the war has done to me."

I looked up at her again and saw that she had the face of the young girl
in the photograph, but coarsened, aged, raddled, by the passing years
and perhaps by tragedy.

"It is you?" I asked.

"Yes, in 1913, before the war. I have changed since then--n'est-ce pas,
Monsieur?"

"There is a change," I said. I tried not to express my thought of how
much change.

"You have suffered in the war--more than most people?"

"Ah, I have suffered!"

She told me her story, and word for word, if I could have written it
down then, it would have read like a little novel by Guy de Maupassant.
She was the daughter of people in Lille, well-to-do merchants, and
before the war married a young man of the same town, the son of other
manufacturers. They had two children and were very happy. Then the war
came. The enemy drove down through Belgium, and one day drew near and
threatened Lille. The parents of the young couple said: "We will stay.
We are too old to leave our home, and it is better to keep watch over
the factory. You must go, with the little ones, and there is no time to
lose."

There was no time to lose. The trains were crowded with fugitives and
soldiers--mostly soldiers. It was necessary to walk. Weeping, the young
husband and wife said farewell to their parents and set out on the long
trail, with the two babies in a perambulator, under a load of bread and
wine, and a little maid carrying some clothes in a bundle. For days they
tramped the roads until they were all dusty and bedraggled and footsore,
but glad to be getting farther away from that tide of field-gray men
which had now swamped over Lille. The young husband comforted his wife.
"Courage!" he said. "I have money enough to carry us through the war.
We will set up a little shop somewher