ed
exclusiveness reminds me only of our own social groups balancing on
the very tip of the pyramid and clutching one another lest some
intruder topple them off, or cast the faintest shadow on their
hard-won prestige, are working in small groups composed of their own
friends, I could not meet one of them if I pitched my tent under her
windows.

Madame Lyon gave me a naive explanation of her audacity when we
finally did meet. "I am a Jewess," she said, "and therefore not so
bound down by conventions. You see, we of the Jewish race were
suppressed so long that now we have our freedom reaction makes us
almost adventurous."

Besides hastening to tell me of her race she promptly, as if it were a
matter of honor, informed me that she was sixty years old! She looked
about forty, her complexion was white and smooth, her nose little and
straight, her eyes brilliant. She dressed in the smartest possible
mourning, and with that white ruff across her placid brow--Oh la la!

She has one son, who was wounded so terribly in the first year of the
war, and was so long getting to a hospital where he could receive
proper attention, that he was gangrened. In consequence his recovery
was very slow, and he was not permitted to go again to the trenches,
but was, after his recovery, sent up north to act as interpreter
between the British and French troops. He stood this for a few months,
and Madame Lyon breathed freely, but there came a time when M. Lyon,
although a lawyer in times of peace, could not stand the tame life of
interpreter. He might be still delicate, but, he argued, there were
officers at the front who had only one arm. At the present moment he
is in the stiffest fighting on the Somme.

I saw a great deal of Madame Lyon and enjoyed no one more, she was so
independent, so lively of mind, and so ready for anything. She went
with me on two of my trips in the War Zone, being only too glad of
mental distraction; for like all the mothers of France she dreads the
ring of the door-bell. She told me that several times the ladies who
worked in her ouvroir would come down with beaming faces and read
extracts from letters just received from their sons at the Front, then
go home and find a telegram announcing death or shattered limbs.

Madame Lyon has a hotel on the Boulevard Berthier and before her
husband's death was famous for her political breakfasts, which were
also graced by men and women distinguishing themselves in the arts.
The