"But think of the little one," I pleaded. "She is only a girl of five, and you cannot endanger her life like this." For a long time she was silent, and a tear crept down her cheek as she tried to decide. "I will go, monsieur," she said at last, "for the sake of the little one." And that night she set off into the unknown, fearful to look back at her little home lest her courage should desert her. She was dressed in her best clothes--for why leave anything of value for the Germans, should they ever come?--and she wheeled her few household treasures before her in the perambulator, while her little daughter ran beside her. But next morning I saw her again coming back up the street to her cottage. This time she was alone, and she still trundled the perambulator in front of her. I went out, and knocked at her door. "So you have come back," I said. "And where have you left the little one?" She gazed at me dully for a minute, and a great fear gripped me, for I saw that her best clothes were torn and dust stained. "It was near the big hospital on the Poperinghe road," she said in a horribly even voice. "The little one had lingered behind to pick up some bits of coloured glass on the roadside when the shell came. It was a big shell ... and I could find nothing but this," and she held up part of a little torn dress, bloody and terrible. I tried to utter a few words of comfort, but my horror was too great. "It is the will of God," she said, as she began to unpack the treasures in the perambulator, but, as I closed the door, I heard her burst into the most awful fit of weeping I have ever known. * * * * * And, day by day as the war goes on, the tragedy of Ypres grows greater. Each shell wrecks a little more of what was once a home, each crash and falling of bricks brings a little more pain to a breaking heart. The ruins of Ypres are glorious and noble, and we are proud to defend them, but the quiet, simple people of Ypres cannot even find one brick on another of their homes. Somewhere in England, they tell me, is a little old lady who was once a great figure in Brussels society. She is nearly eighty now, and alone, but she clings on tenaciously to life till the day shall come when she can go back to her Chateau at Ypres, where she has lived for forty years. One can picture her--feeble, wizened, and small, her eyes bright with the determination to live until she has seen her home again. I, who have seen her Chateau, pray that death may come to close those bright eyes, so that they may never look upon the destruction of her home, for it is a desolate sight, even though the sky was blue and the leaves glistened in the sun on the morning when, two years ago, I tramped up the winding drive.