knowing smile. He, however, looked at me rather oddly.

"That was not the one!' he exclaimed at last, with abrupt contempt.

He turned away and began to prepare for the next stage in operations by making soapsuds with a tuft of raffia in a big copper bowl. I watched him with an access of curiosity which would make it appear that one may, after all, take one's bathman seriously. Perhaps he felt the intensity of my silent questioning. Perhaps the accident of my having seen him before, of my having been a witness of that moment in his life, made a sort of bond between us. Perhaps the smouldering in him had never found vent. At all events he suddenly dropped his raffia and turned back to me.

'What is it, effendim,' he broke out, 'that a woman does to a man? The world is full of them. Why will not one do as well as another? Why —'

He stopped. And from the way he looked at me I knew he did not see me. Presently he went on, in another tone.

'You know, my effendim, what it is to be young. After I ran away that night I was ashamed. I heard men talk, they told me things, they laughed, they would not let me forget. How should I know anything? I was only sixteen. I had always lived in my village, in Anatolia. I had never thought of women or seen them. And suddenly to see them like that, with bare faces, bare arms, in clothes made to fit them, of silk and velvet- not such bags as our women wear! And the lights, and the music! I did n't know there were such things in the world. It was like the palace under the lake in my country. So I went back. I went back to the same place, to show them I was not afraid. I sat down at a table and I ordered raki. The girl who had spoken to me before was there, sitting in a corner with a sailor. She remem

bered me and she laughed. "There is my little Anatolian!" she said. "Come here, little Anatolian!"

He stopped again and pulled up the copper bowl, as if uncertain whether to go on with his story or to shampoo my head. I waited for his decision with a curious suspense.

'Just then another girl came and sat down beside me,' he finally said. 'Effendim, she was the princess under the lake in my country. Her hair was like gold, as I had never seen hair before, and her eyes were so blue they frightened me. We say, you know, that people like that have the Evil Eye. I was frightened and my heart began to beat as if I had run from St. Sophia to the Taxim. At first she only looked at me and smiled, in such a way that I was both less frightened and more frightened. Then she began to talk to me. "Why did you order that raki?" she asked. "It is bad. Don't drink it." When she spoke I began to tremble. I always trembled when I heard her voice to the last time.' He paused an instant. 'I could not say anything. I did not know what to say. She saw it and she went on talking to me. As my mother never spoke to me, effendim, she spoke to me. She told me I must n't go again to such places. She asked me where I lived, what work I did, when I was going to my country. And at last she sent me away.'

I almost smiled again, remembering my own attitude on a certain occasion. But I could tell myself that I had no Evil Eye, and that in me the voice of intervention would never have made him tremble! It was curious, though, what a power he had, with so little of a story, to move me so much a second time. It was partly the intensity of his tone and of his sombre look. It was also the curiosities within curiosities he set alight about the world he lived in, about his strange lost princess. I

and

'When she sent me away that night,' he went on, 'she thought it was finished. But it only began. Every night I went back and watched in the street until I found her again. And after that, for three years, I saw her nearly every day; but not as you think. She never would let me come to her house. I always saw her in wineshops, in coffeehouses, in the street. She made me go to school, too, and she paid for it. I can read, effendim, because of her. She could read too, and she could write, and she could sing, and she could play

your piano, our lute. She knew everything. But she did n't know how to keep me from becoming mad. I thought of nothing else but her. I wanted to take her away from Galata. In the three years, you see, I became a man. But she would not listen. She said she was too old, she said she was too bad, she said she loved me too much, she said she could never live in Anatolia or I in Europe. How do I know what she said,' he broke off, 'or where she is now? Akh, Lisa! Akh!'

My eye followed his to the inscription pricked on his arm. It became more and more evident that the story, such as it was, was one which you have to tell yourself. There was enough obvious interplay in it of East and West,

'She wrote it there,' he said. 'She always told me I did n't know how to say anything else! She wrote it there the last time I saw her the first time I went to her house. At last I made her open the door to me. And I begged her as I had never begged her to go away with me. "Akh, Lisa!" I said. “Akh, I can't go on like this. I can't work in the day. I can't sleep at night. All the time I see your eyes. They make a fire in my heart." She smiled a little, as she knew how to smile, then wrote this on my arm with a needle. And then

Another bathman came into the alcove, followed by an old gentleman who sat down opposite me. My bathman stirred his copper bowl again and then put me past all power of sight or speech by pouring soapsuds over my head. Across the vaulted room the bather in the Byzantine alcove was singing his melancholy old love-song of Asia. 'Aman! Aman!' he sang, making strange reverberations quiver up into the dome.

HUIRY-SUR-MARNE, September 8, 1914.

I HAD gone to bed early on the night of Friday, September 4, and passed an uneasy night. It was before four when I got up and opened my shutters. It was a lovely day. Perhaps I have told you that the weather all last week was simply perfect.

I went downstairs to get coffee for the picket, but when I got out to the gate there was no picket there. There was the barricade, but the road was empty. I ran up the road to Amélie's. She told me that they had marched away about an hour before. A bicyclist had evidently brought an order. As no one spoke English, no one understood what had really happened. Père had been to Couilly-they had all left there. So far as any one could discover there was not an English soldier, or any kind of a soldier, left anywhere in the commune.

This was Saturday morning, September 5, and one of the loveliest days I ever saw. The air was clear. The sun was shining. The birds were singing. But otherwise it was very still. I walked out on the lawn. Little lines of white smoke were rising from a few chimneys at Joncheroy and Voisins.

1 This is an authentic letter written by an American lady to a friend in this country. Earlier letters in the correspondence were published in the July and August numbers. - THE EDITORS.

The towns on the plain, from Montyon and Penchard on the horizon to Mareuil in the valley, stood out clear and distinct. But after three days of activity, three days with the soldiers about, it seemed, for the first time since I came here, lonely; and for the first time I realized that I was actually cut off from the outside world. All the bridges in front of me were gone, and the big bridge behind me. No communication possible with the north, and none with the south except by road over the hill to Lagny. Esbly evacuated, Couilly evacuated, Quincy evacuated. All the shops closed. No government, no postoffice, and absolutely no knowledge of what had happened since Wednesday. I had a horrible sense of isolation.

Right after breakfast I had the proof that I was right about the Germans. Evidently well informed of the movements of the English, they rode boldly into the open. Luckily they seemed disinclined to do any mischief. Perhaps the place looked too humble to be bothered with. They simply asked — one of them spoke French, and perhaps they all did - where they were, and were told, 'Huiry, commune of Quincy.' They looked it up on their maps, nodded, and asked if the bridges on the Marne had been destroyed, to which I replied that I did not know, I had not been down to the river. Half a truth and half a lie, but goodness knows that it was hard enough to have to be

polite. They thanked me civilly enough and rode down the hill, as they could not pass the barricade unless they had wished to give an exhibition of 'high school.' Wherever they had been they had not suffered. Their horses were fine animals, and both horses and men were well groomed and in prime condidition.

Luckily for me, part of the morning was killed by what might be called an incident, or a disaster, or a farce-just as you look at it. Just after the Germans were here I went down the road to call on my new French friends at the foot of the hill, to hear how they had passed the night, and incidentally to discover if there were any soldiers about. Just in the front of their house I found an English bicycle scout, leaning on his wheel and trying to make himself understood in a one-sided monosyllabic dialogue with the two girls standing in their window.

I asked him who he was. He showed his papers. They were all right, — an Irishman Ulster Royal Innisfall Fusiliers thirteen years in the service.

I asked him if there were any English soldiers left here. He said there was still a bicycle corps of scouts at the foot of the hill, at Couilly. I thought that funny, as Père had said the town was absolutely deserted. Still, I saw no reason to doubt his word, so when he asked me if I could give him his breakfast, I brought him back to the house, set the table in the arbor, and gave him his coffee and eggs. When he had finished he showed no inclination to go said he would rest a bit. As Amélie was in the house, I left him and went back to make the call that my encounter with him had interrupted. When I returned an hour later I found him fast asleep on the bench in the arbor, with the sun shining right on his head. His wheel, with his kit and gun on it, was leaning up against the house.

-

It was nearly noon by this time, and hot, and I was afraid he would get a sunstroke; so I waked him and told him that if it was a rest he needed, and he was free to take it, he could go into the room at the head of the stairs, where he would find a couch and lie down comfortably. But his sleepiness seemed suddenly to have disappeared, so he asked for the chance to wash and shave; and half an hour later he came down all slicked up and spruce, with a very visible intention of paying court to the lady of the house. Irish, you see,

white hairs no obstacle. I could not help laughing. 'Hoity toity,' I said to myself, 'I am getting all kinds of impressions of the military.'

While I was, with amusement, putting up fences, the gardener next door came down the hill in great excitement to tell me that the Germans were on the road above, and were riding down across Père's farm into a piece of land called 'la terre blanche,' where Père has recently been digging out great rocks, making it an ideal place to hide. He knew that there was an English scout in my house and thought I ought to know. I suppose he expected the boy in khaki to grab his gun and capture them all. I thanked him and sent him away. I must say my Irishman did not seem a bit interested in the Germans. His belt and pistol lay on the salon table, where he put them when he came downstairs. He made himself comfortable in an easy chair, and continued to give me another dose of his blarney. I suppose I was getting needlessly nervous. It was really none of my business what he was doing here. Still he was a bit too sans gêne.

Finally he began to ask questions. 'Was I afraid?' I was not. 'Did I live alone?' I did. As soon as I had said it I thought it was stupid of me, especially as he at once said,

'If you are, yer know, I'll come back

don't

I thought it wise to remind him right here that if his corps was at the foot of the hill, it was wise for him to let his commanding officer know that the Germans for whom two regiments had been hunting for three days had come out of hiding. I fancy if I had not taken that tack he'd have settled for the day.

'Put that thing on,' I said, pointing to his pistol, 'get your wheel out of the barn, and I'll take a look up the road and see that it's clear. I don't care to see you attacked under my eyes.'

I knew that there was not the slightest danger of that, but it sounded businesslike. I am afraid he found it so, because he said at once, 'Could you give me a drink before I go?'

'Water?' I said. 'No, not that.'

I was going to say 'no,' when it occurred to me that Amélie had told me that she had put a bottle of cider in the buffet, and well, he was Irish, and I wanted to get rid of him. So I said he could have a glass of cider, and I got the bottle, and a small, deep champagne glass. He uncorked the bottle, drank it off, and thanked me more earnestly than cider would have seemed to warrant. While he got his wheel out, I went through the form of making sure the road was free. There was no one in sight. So I sent him away with directions for reaching Couilly without going over the part of the hill where the Uhlans had hidden, and drew a sigh of relief when he was off. Hardly fifteen minutes later some one came running up from Voisins to tell me that just around the corner he had slipped off his wheel, almost unconscious, evidently drunk. I was amazed. He had been absolutely all right when he left me. As no one understood a word he tried

away, and it was not until two days later that I discovered the truth of the matter.

Yesterday afternoon an exhausted soldier was in need of a stimulant, and one of his comrades, who was supporting him, asked me if I had anything. I had nothing but the bottle out of which the Irish scout had drunk. I rushed for it and poured some into the tin cup held out to me. Just as the poor fellow was about to drink, his comrade pulled the cup away, smelt it, and exclaimed, 'Don't drink that here, put some water in it. That's not cider. It's eaude-vie des prunes.'

a

I can tell you I was startled. I had never tasted eau-de-vie des prunes, native brew, stronger than brandy, and far more dangerous, and my Irishman had pulled off a full champagne glass at a gulp, and never winked. No wonder he fell off his wheel. The wonder is that he did not die on the spot. I was humiliated. Still, he was Irish and perhaps he did n't care. I hope he did n't. But only think, he will never know that I did not do it on purpose. He was probably gloriously drunk. Anyway, it prevented his coming back to make that visit he threatened me with.

All this excitement kept me from listening too much to the cannon, which had been booming ever since nine o'clock. Amélie had been busy running between her house and mine, but she has, among other big qualities, the blessed habit of taking no notice. I wish it were contagious. She went about her work as if nothing were hanging over us. I don't believe she shirked a thing. It seemed to me absurd to care whether the dusting was done or not, whether or not the writing-table was in