Besides myself, I discover only one woman in the whole of Aerschot--a little fair-haired Fleming, with a lion's heart. She is the bravest woman in the world. I love the delightful way she drops her wee six-weeks-old baby into my arms, and goes off to serve a hundred hungry Belgians with black bread and coffee, confident that her little treasure will be quite safe in the lap of the "Anglaise." Smiling and running about between the kitchen, the officers' mess, and the bar, this brave, good soul finds time to tell us how she remained all alone in Aerschot for three whole weeks, all the while the Germans were in possession of the town. "I knew that cooking they must have," she says, "and food and drink, and for that I knew I was safe. So I remained here, and kept the hotel of my little husband from being burned to the ground! But I slept always with my baby in my arms, and the revolver beside the pillow. In the night sometimes I heard them knocking at my door. Yes, they would knock, knock, knock! And I would lie there, the revolver ready, if needs be, for myself and the petite both! But they never forced that door. They would go away as stealthily as they had come! Ah! they knew that if they had got in they would have found a dead woman, not a live one!" And I quite believed her. CHAPTER VIII "YOU'LL NEVER GET THERE" As the weeks went on a strange thing happened to me. At first vaguely, faintly, and then with an ever-deepening intensity, there sprang to life within me a sense of irritation at having to depend on newspapers, or hearsay, for one's knowledge of the chief item in this War,--the Enemy. An overwhelming desire seized upon me to discover for myself what a certain darksome unknown quantity was like; that darksome, unknown quantity that we were always hearing about but never saw; that we were always moving away from if we heard it was anywhere near; that was making all the difference to everything; that was at the back of everything; that mattered so tremendously; and yet could never be visualized. The habit of a lifetime of groping for realities began to assert itself, and I found myself chafing at not being able to find things out for myself. In the descriptions I gleaned from men and newspapers I was gradually discovering many puzzling incongruities. There are thinkers whose conclusions one honours, and attends to: but these thinkers were not out here, looking at the War with their own eyes. Maeterlinck, for instance, whose deductions would have been invaluable, was in France. Tolstoi was dead. Mr. Wells was in England writing. To believe what people tell you, you must first believe in the people. If you can find one person to believe in in a lifetime, and that one person is yourself, you are lucky! One day, towards the end of September, I heard an old professor from Liège University talking to a young Bruxellois with a black moustache and piercing black eyes, who had arrived that day at our hotel.