Page:Bat Wing 1921.djvu/60

52 “Yes. Poor Madame. The hospital of which she was in charge was bombed and the shock left her as you see her. I was there, too, but I luckily escaped without injury.”

“What, you were there?”

“Yes. That was where I first met Madame de Stämer. She used to be very wealthy, you see, and she established this hospital in France at her own expense, and I was one of her assistants for a time. She lost both her husband and her fortune in the war, and as if that were not bad enough, lost the use of her limbs, too.”

“Poor woman,” I said. “I had no idea her life had been so tragic. She has wonderful courage.”

“Courage!” exclaimed the girl, “if you knew all that I know about her.”

Her face grew sweetly animated as she bent toward me excitedly and confidentially.

“Really, she is simply wonderful. I learned to respect her in those days as I have never respected any other woman in the world; and when, after all her splendid work, she, so vital and active, was stricken down like that, I felt that I simply could not leave her, especially as she asked me to stay.”

“So you went with her to Nice?”

“Yes. Then the Colonel took this house, and we came here, but”

She hesitated, and glanced at me curiously.

“Perhaps you are not quite happy?”

“No,” she said, “I am not. You see it was different in France. I knew so many people. But here at Cray’s Folly it is so lonely, and Madame is”

Again she hesitated.

“Yes?”

“Well,” she laughed in an embarrassed fashion, “I am afraid of her at times.”