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, and yet a third. I have pride. If I had seemed to forget it, still it was there. I left him, and went back to France. I tried to forget. I entered upon works of charity for the soldiers at a time when others were becoming tired. I spent a great part of my fortune upon establishing a hospital, and this child”—she threw her arm around Val Beverley—“worked with me night and day. I think I wanted to die. Often I tried to die. Did I not, dear?”

“You did, Madame,” said the girl in a very low voice.

“Twice I was arrested in the French lines, where I had crept dressed like a poilu, from where I shot down many a Prussian. Is it not so?”

“It is true,” answered the girl, nodding her head.

“They caught me and arrested me,” said Madame, with a sort of triumph. “If it had been the British”—she raised her hand in that Bernhardt gesture—“with me it would have gone hard. But in France a woman’s smile goes farther than in England. I had had my fun. They called me ‘good comrade!’ Perhaps I paid with a kiss. What does it matter? But they heard of me, those Prussian dogs. They knew and could not forgive. How often did they come over to bomb us, Val, dear?”

“Oh, many, many times,” said the girl, shudderingly.

“And at last they succeeded,” added Madame, bitterly. “God! the black villains! Let me not think of it.”

She clenched her hands and closed her eyes entirely, but presently resumed again:

“If they had killed me I should have been glad, but they only made of me a cripple. M. de Stämer had been killed a few weeks before this. I am sorry I forgot to mention it. I was a widow. And when after