[Illustration: Placarded all over the walls at Namur] None of us in America have had our homes pillaged or destroyed, so it is hard to realize the heart-anguish of looking on, helpless, while the destruction of all one holds sacred is consummated; so these two lonely women passed many gloomy hours in the town house at Namur where they immediately installed a Red Cross hospital. The shells boomed night and day over the town; every hour my young friend passed through the whole building, with her servants, carrying water, wet blankets and sticks to beat out any possible fire; six or seven poor families from the neighbors had taken refuge in their great house, and one could not turn them away to face the fire and bullets in the streets, so they camped out in the kitchen and offices, hall-ways and cellars. The Louis XVI ballroom, with its magnificent frescoes and paneled walls, was turned into a temporary hospital, my young friend in charge. Fortunately, before the war, she had, like many women of rank in Belgium, taken a course in surgical nursing, and, having passed her examination, was fully qualified to take charge of the hospital. The wounded during the siege were brought in from the streets, their blood staining the marble steps of the grand escalier, and lying in pools on the inlaid floors of the ball room. A ghastly reminder for all time of that August, 1914! For four months they fed, sheltered and protected 36 people, not counting the wounded. The Red Cross flag over the great portes-cocheres did not prevent the German soldiers from firing at any imprudent person who might show themselves at the windows after dark. The health of the widow, never robust, gave away under these misfortunes, and early in December, 1914, the poor girl was left alone to face her difficulties. Her country destroyed, her mother dead, the town house a hospital, and German officers quartered in the two wings looking on the court. Not a safe or pleasant home for a defenseless girl. Friends of her parents advised her leaving for France, but still she hesitated to leave what little remained of her previous happiness to seek an unknown future in a strange land, and only a dangerous and unpleasant incident finally decided her to take this hazardous step.