“Espion? Pauvre Mademoiselle. Espion? Oh, la, la, la.” She wrings her hands. The Bourgmestre beckons me to follow him. My sympathiser slips away. I am led towards the town-hall by the Commandant, followed by a large crowd. We enter and go upstairs to the Bourgmestre’s private rooms. Someone brings in my suit-case. The contents are turned out on the floor. The Bourgmestre and his companion rummage through them. They secure much treasure-trove in the way of papers, including the telegram. The Bourgmestre’s wife, a fine-looking, fair-haired woman, takes me to an inner room. I am searched. “Es ist unsere pflicht,” she says calmly when I protest. She finds my jewellery, some visiting cards and a letter and takes them to her husband in an inner room. The jewellery is returned to me before I leave. “Sie schreiben furchtbar viel, Fräulein” (You write a fearful lot), says the Bourgmestre, when I am brought back. He wishes he understood English. So do I. Perhaps if he did he would let me free. The Commandant understands a “leetle English.” Neither he nor the Bourgmestre seem very shocked at my “incriminating documents.” The editorial wire and some journalistic notes are fluttered in my face. I explain away what I can and confess the rest! I do not confess that, though no spy, I have a diary about the war concealed in my hair. Thank goodness they have not found that yet. Two more inquisitors arrive. If there exist such beings as Military Governors of this German town they are “it.” Their close-cropped hair, fierce mustachios and fiercer questions play havoc with my fortitude. The third degree torture of America is child’s play by comparison. They frown at me. They shout, jeer and yell. They thrust their fists in my face and cry “Sie lügen, sie lügen” whenever I make some (as I consider) specially apposite rejoinder. They question me for dreary donkey’s hours, until question and answer seem to jig in my brain to the tune of the soldiers’ feet as they march by outside. “Where were you born?” “I can’t remember.” (For the life of me I can’t.) I am caught in a grey mist with the cannon booming in my ears again. I feel faint. I am silent. Presently words detach themselves. I can still answer my tormentors. “Do you write?” they ask me maliciously. “Yes.” What else can I say with that damning pile of foolscap before me. “Why do you write?” I try to evade a question which my conscience, my kinsfolk and even some editors have often asked me. “Have you a mother?” snaps one. “Yes.” “Why aren’t you with her?” With this “have-you-left-off-beating-your-wife” kind of question I am quite incompetent to deal. A holiday visit to a country inn is a form of enjoyment no German could be made to understand. The inquisitors fiercely smoothe out a map in front of me. “Show us!” I pass a trembling hand over that network of lines and names. To my accusers, the second’s indecision spells conclusive guilt. “La Roche. Here,” I say gently.