“Why, you must be--you must be---- You are--the tall boy who used to grow out of his grey suits, and wrote mystical verse and read Tolstoy, and growled at civilisation and smoked black pipes and fell in love with elderly artists’ models. Wickham Brand!” “That’s right,” said Brand, ignoring the laughter of Fortune and myself. “Then I went to Germany and studied their damned philosophy, and then I became a briefless barrister, and after that took to writing unsuccessful novels. Here I am, after four years of war, ashamed to be alive when all my pals are dead.” He glanced at Fortune and me, and said, “Or most of ’em.” “It’s the same Wicky I remember,” said the girl, “and at the sight of you I feel I’ve gone back to myself as a tousled-haired thing in a short frock and long black stockings. The good old days before the war. Before other things and all kinds of things.” “Why on earth were you in Lille when the war began?” asked Brand. “It just happened. I taught painting here. Then I was caught with the others. We did not think They would come so soon.” She used the word They as we all did, meaning the grey men. “It must have been hell,” said Brand. “Mostly hell,” said Miss O’Connor brightly. “At least, one saw into the gulfs of hell, and devilishness was close at hand. But there were compensations, wee bits of heaven. On the whole I enjoyed myself.” “Enjoyed yourself?” Brand was startled by that phrase. “Oh, it was an adventure. I took risks--and came through. I lived all of it--every minute. It was a touch-and-go game with the devil and death, and I dodged them both. _Dieu soit merci!_” She laughed with a little throw-back of the head, showing a white full throat above the ragged bit of fur. A number of Frenchwomen pressed about her. Some of them patted her arms, fondled her hands. One woman bent down and kissed her shabby jacket. “_Elle était merveilleuse, la demoiselle_,” said an old Frenchman by my side. “She was marvellous, sir. All that she did for the wounded, for your prisoners, for many men who owe their lives to her, cannot be told in a little while. They tried to catch her. She was nearly caught. It is a miracle that she was not shot. A miracle, monsieur!” Other people in the crowd spoke to me about “_la demoiselle_.” They were mysterious. Even now they could not tell me all she had done. But she had risked death every day for four years. Every day. Truly it was a miracle she was not caught. Listening to them I missed some of Eileen O’Connor’s own words to Brand, and saw only the wave of her hand as she disappeared into the crowd. It was Brand who told me that he and I and Fortune had been invited to spend the evening with her, or an hour or so. I saw that Wicky, as we called him, was startled by the meeting with her, and was glad of it. “I knew her when we were kids,” he said. “Ten years ago--perhaps more. She used to pull my hair! Extraordinary, coming face to face with her in Lille, on this day of all days.”