Page:Wounded Souls.djvu/67

 "The child has beautiful eyes and a most sweet grace. Irish history may not account for all."

"This German Kommandant" I asked, "what sort of a man was he?"

"For a German not altogether bad," said the Reverend Mother. "Severe and ruthless, like them all, but polite when there was no occasion to be violent. He was of good family, as far as there are such things in Germany. A man of sixty."

Eileen O'Connor, with German permission, continued her work as art-mistress at the École de Jeunes Filles. After six months she was permitted to receive private pupils in her two rooms on the ground floor of the Intelligence headquarters, in the same courtyard though not in the same building. Her pupils came with drawing-boards and paint-boxes. They were all girls with pig-tails and short frocks—not so young as they looked, because three or four at least, including the Baronne de Villers-Auxicourt, were older than schoolgirls. They played the part perfectly, and the sentries smiled at them and said "Guten Tag, schönes Fräulein," as each one passed. They were the committee of the Rescue Society:

Julienne de Quesnoy,

Marcelle Barbier,

Yvonne Marigny,

Marguérite Cléry, and Alice de Taffin, de Villers-Auxicourt.

Eileen O'Connor was the director and leading spirit. It seems to me astonishing that they should have arranged the cypher, practised it, written down military information gathered from German conversations and reported to them by servants and agents under the very noses of the German Intelligence officers, who could see into the sitting-room as they passed through French windows and saluted Eileen O'Connor and her young ladies