It was at the end of a pleasant little luncheon—the sixth meal which the daughter of the house had graciously attended. The conversation had been enlightening, the atmosphere most congenial, the young lady more unostentatiously beautiful than ever. We reduced the audience to her coming humiliation as low as possible by softly dismissing the junior members, swallowed our throats, and began. Nothing, we assured her, had been more pleasant to us since our arrival in Germany than the privilege of having her as a guest at our simple mess. Nothing we could think of—short of being ordered home at once—would have pleased us more than to have her permanently grace our board. But ... fortunately our stiff uniform collars helped to keep our throats in place ... she had possibly heard of the new army order, a perfectly ridiculous ruling, to be sure, particularly under such circumstances as these, but an army order for all that—and no one could know better than she, the daughter and granddaughter of German high officers, that army orders are meant to be obeyed—wherein Pershing himself commanded us to have no more relations with the civilian population than were absolutely unavoidable. Wherefore we ... we ... we trusted she would understand that this was only the official requirement and in no way represented our own personal inclinations ... we were compelled to request that she confine herself thereafter to the upper floor of the house, as her presence on our floor might easily be misunderstood. Her maid no doubt could prepare her meals, or there was a hotel a few yards up the street.... The charming little smile of gratitude with which she had listened to the prelude had faded to a puzzled interest as the tone deepened, then to a well-mastered amazement at the effrontery of the climax. With a constrained, “Is that all?” she rose to her feet, and as we kicked our chairs from under us she passed out with a genuinely imperious carriage, an icy little bow, her beautiful face suffused with a crimson that would have made a mere poppy look colorless by comparison. We prided ourselves on having been extremely diplomatic in our handling of the matter, but no member of that mess ever again received anything better than the barest shadow of a frigid bow from the young lady, followed at a respectful distance by her maid, whom they so often met on her way to the hotel a few yards up the street.