I was impatient to see the school’s masterpiece, the royal scarf, and it was now brought from the safe and held before us by three young women, as the directress led us from point to point in the airy mesh spun between its rose garlands and medallions. On either side of the center medallion, the arms of Belgium, were two others, in which human figures symbolized cities the war has made immortal. For Nieuport a fisher-maiden stood on the shore with her basket, and about her the net took up a cockleshell motif; Poperinghe had the graceful hop-vine as its device; for Furnes there was a dairy-maid with her churn in the midst of blossoming butter flowers; while Ypres was represented by a beautiful Flamande sitting before a lace cushion heaped with bobbins—countless stitches, occupying 12,000 hours, and the entire weight 125 grammes! And yet, at the end, Stéphanie tilted her dear old head and said: “Nevertheless, Madame, for the Queen, I should have made the mesh yet finer.” This Trade Union is in a sense a professional school, since it teaches design, but there is the weak spot in an otherwise remarkable achievement. The designs executed by Dr. Rubbens and the school are often the kind that have led foreign lace-buyers to order through Paris, which could furnish the drawings, rather than direct from Belgium. They lack the lightness and grace that lace designs should unfailingly possess, just the qualities which the Friends of Lace have done so much to encourage and cultivate. If Dr. Rubbens can see his way to follow their suggestions, or to employing a French teacher, there seems no limit to what he may accomplish. He is now attempting to establish a true needle-lace Normal School, which will offer courses in commerce, English, history, and all the branches necessary to a complete lace education. This will supplement the instruction of the Bruges bobbin-lace Normal, already well under way. He holds that the teaching of the fine needle points is more tedious and difficult than the teaching of the bobbin points, and that it takes more years to become expert in needle laces than in others. On the way home, Stéphanie asked what she might do for me. “You may pray for me, if you wish, Stéphanie.” She was silent a moment. “But, Madame, should I not make a pilgrimage to Lourdes for you? On one of my trips in the wagon, I saw the sea, and for three years after that the sea was every day just before my eyes. And to-day will remain until I die just in front of my eyes. Madame, should I not go to Lourdes for you?” APPENDIX [Illustration: Map showing important lace areas in 1919, especially prepared for this volume by the Brussels Lace Committee. The size of the circles indicates the approximate geographical extent of lace-making activity, and has no reference to the quality produced.