A couple of tables from me was a handsome officer in a French uniform, but plainly, from his cast of features and his mannerisms, not a Frenchman. He wore the ribbon of the Legion of Honor on his tunic, and he was, perhaps for this reason, saluted by many of the officers who passed on the boulevard. Many glances of admiration were thrown in his direction by civilians. Some of the officers stopped for a moment and chatted with him. I watched him for some time, my curiosity increasing. He was sitting alone at the moment when I got up to leave, and I made the excuse of asking him something about British hospitals. Apparently glad to hear his own tongue spoken he welcomed me, and we exchanged confidences for a few minutes, as strangers sometimes will when there is something in common between them. He was an Australian who had been in France when the war broke out, and he had not agreed with England's hesitation in entering the war by the side of Belgium and France; so he joined the French army. "Oh, yes, that is the Legion of Honor," he returned smilingly to my remark as to his decoration. "A very ordinary bit of work at the front brought it to me," he continued modestly, apparently not caring to give details. Though I was in Paris some time, I did not come across him again, nor have I ever met since this Australian lover of freedom. At that time the women of France were already doing much of the work usually performed by men. This was long before London had reached the stage that she has attained today, with women filling such a wide variety of occupations, so that it was very noticeable in France at that time. At the border my goods had been looked over by women customs inspectors; women guards in the train had examined my ticket; and in Paris women were everywhere, handling the motor buses, conducting on the tramways, collecting fares on the Metropolitan, or Underground, and filling the hundred and one other positions that, since the war, woman has proved herself so capable of filling. All the women of the world have proved themselves heroines in this war, but none more than the women of France. At the early stage of the war of which I am writing, they showed those characteristics of patience, loyalty, and nobility of mind which have distinguished them in the straining times that have come and gone since then. They seemed to have become resigned to all things. If one spoke to them petulantly of the raw, cold weather: