Neddy came in to say Good-bye. At the last moment he shyly placed a little box in my hand. In it was a pretty gilt Lorraine cross. He had walked all the way into Gondrecourt to get it. He would have bought me a chain too, he explained with a flush, only he was “pecuniarily embarrassed.” Dear little Neddy! If he only knew how much better I liked it without the chain. My luggage is all packed and Bill has strapped it up for me. I have said adieu to the Curé and the Colonel. Madame the Caretaker has kissed me on both cheeks and dropped a tear over me. Now I am waiting for the A. R. jitney to come and take me to the station. A horrid thought has just occurred to me. The captain’s cognac must be still in the corner of the store-room shelf. What _will_ the secretary think? CHAPTER VII: VERDUN—THE FRENCH Paris, January 12. It is fortunate that the world looks tolerantly on a certain instability in the feminine mind. When I left Mauvages there was just one thought in my head,—to go straight home. I have been twenty-four hours in Paris; already my resolution is wavering. It’s all on account of what they said to me at the Headquarters office. Paris is truly a different city from the one I last saw in September on my way back from Saint Malo; the streets thronged with people, and brightly lighted at night, the shop windows gay and inviting, freed from their patterned lattices of paper strips which formerly protected the glass from the concussions caused by shells and bombs. In the Place de la Concorde the statue representing the City of Strasbourg, divested of the mourning wreaths which it has worn ever since 1870, now smiles triumphantly above a mass of flags and flowers; and, most thrilling of all, the crouched grey guns of Germany, like so many dumb impotent monsters, throng the Place de la Concorde, stretch in a double line along the Champs Elysées all the way to the Arc de Triomphe. Everywhere the shop windows display a picture; a woman’s form, heroic, bearing a great sword, with wide spread wings which are at the same time wings and American flags; before her the bent and cowering form of the Emperor; while beyond, a sea of khaki, illimitable hosts of warriors melting away in waves against the horizon; and underneath the words: “But what tremendous fleet could have brought hither such an army?” “The _Lusitania_.”