One of the nuns, a young woman who had been touching the girl’s head, smoothing back her tousled close-cropped hair, sprang up as though she had touched an evil thing, and shrank back. Another nun spoke to the Reverend Mother. “This house would be defiled if we took in a creature like that. God forbid, Reverend Mother----” The old Superior turned to Brand, and I saw how her breast was heaving with emotion. “It would have been better, sir, if you had left this wretched woman to the people. The voice of the people is sometimes the voice of God. If they knew her guilt their punishment was just. Reflect what it means to us--to all our womanhood. Husbands, fathers, brothers were being killed by these Germans. Our dear France was bleeding to death. Was there any greater crime than that a Frenchwoman should show any weakness, any favour, to one of those men who were helping to cause the agony of France, the martyrdom of our youth?” Brand stammered out a few words. I remember only two: “Christian charity!” The American doctor and I stood by silently. Dr. Small was listening with the deepest attention, as though some new truth about human nature were being revealed to him. It was then that a new voice was raised in that whitewashed corridor. It was Eileen O’Connor’s Irish contralto, and it vibrated with extraordinary passion, as she spoke in French. “Reverend Mother!... I am dismayed by the words you have spoken. I do not believe, though my ears have heard them. No, they are unbelievable! I have seen your holiness, your charity, every day for four years, nursing German prisoners, and English, with equal tenderness, with a great pity. Not shrinking from any horror or the daily sight of death, but offering it all as a sacrifice to God. And now, after our liberation, when we ought to be uplifted by the Divine favour that has come to us, you would turn away that poor child who lies bleeding at our feet, another victim of war’s cruelty. Was it not war that struck her down? This war which has been declared against souls as well as bodies! This war on women, as well as on fighting-men who had less need of courage than some of us! What did our Lord say to a woman who was taken by the mob? ‘He that is without sin among you, let him cast the first stone!’ It was Mary Magdalen who kissed His feet, and wiped them with her hair. This girl has lost her hair, but perhaps Christ has taken it as a precious napkin for His wounds. We who have been lucky in escape from evil--shall we cast her out of the house which has a cross above its roof? I have been lucky above most women in Lille. If all things were known, I might be lying there in that girl’s place, bleeding and senseless, without this hair of mine. Reverend Mother--_remember Franz von Kreuzenach_!”