At Destelbergen I went at once to the atelier of Mme. Coppens, to whom women of both France and Belgium send their old Applications and spider-web meshes, for restoration. Before the war she employed seventy expert lace-makers in her school, now she can depend on no more than twenty—tho there are some 100 less skilful ones in the village. On this particular January day the school was empty. As Mme. Coppens received me, she said, “I regret, Madame, but I am without coal, and without thread; I have been forced to close my work-room; however,” she hesitated an instant, “if Madame does not object to coming into the kitchen, she may yet see Stéphanie, the first lace-maker of the village, at work.” [Illustration: FAN IN NEEDLE-POINT Executed by three women in six weeks. “Shields of the Allies,” design drawn by M. Knoff for the Lace Committee] [Illustration: EIGHTEENTH CENTURY MARRIAGE VEIL IN NEEDLE-POINT, BELONGING TO COMTESSE ELIZABETH D’OULTREMONT It would take 40 workers about a half year to copy this veil] Remembering the glistening shelves and floors of other Flemish kitchens, I did not mind; happily not, for in the end Stéphanie was more to me than many villages. She was bending over an immaculate cushion, seventy-eight and unmarried, and all her person as scrupulously neat as her cushion, from her odd little peaked black crochet cap to the felt shoes she had made herself. She was weaving the flat surfaces of a dainty French bouquet, and as I stept toward her chair, looked up, delighted that some one was interested in what she was making. When I picked up a Bruges collar on the nearby table she tried in ejaculatory Flemish to make me understand, that even tho she had made parts of it, she disowned the whole as unworthy the name of lace, and she brought my eyes back to the delicate texture of the leaves and petals on her cushion.