Well, that was just the beginning of an interesting evening. Madame was, I guessed, a special friend of this M. Dagnier, for she seemed to have carte blanche possession of the place. There were only two servants in the house, and only one of these was a house servant, but we had a very complete dinner, minus the service. And M. Dagnier’s wine cellar certainly suffered from the repeated assaults made upon it.... Altogether it was a very jolly time and everyone enjoyed it to the extent of their capacity. Off and on during the evening, I found myself alone with the hostess and I did my duty—in so far as it was possible to do it. I suppose she wondered why I made no serious advances to her: I’m sure she thought I was infatuated, and the combination of the two things had obviously aroused her interest, for she made no bones about liking me.... It seemed awfully funny. Now and then I felt like some kind of an unworthy thing: I mean, she really was so nice, so generous and so utterly sincere to me, that it didn’t seem honest or right for me to deceive her this way. I think she was telling the truth when she said I was a tremendous relief from the men she had had to play with. But she was an enemy and her operations might be taking the lives of countless thousands of American boys and men, so, of course, when I remembered this point, I had no compunction about deceiving her. We got back to Paris about midnight. Everyone was feeling happy and I expected the Madame to invite them all in for a few good night drinks, but she didn’t.... I was dropped at the barracks door, without having had a chance to report my discovery to the Captain. —6— Captain Winstead sent an orderly over in the morning to tell me that he would meet me at one o’clock and take me out to see General Backett, so I told Ben I had to take an officer out to see the General and that he did not need bother about going out unless he wanted to. “I guess the Gen’ll get along just as well without my good wishes,” was his reply, so at one I met the Captain and we talked as we rode along across the city. He listened intently to my account of the conversation which I overheard yesterday afternoon, and when I had finished he said, “I don’t recall ever seeing any chaplain with her, but he might very easily see her every week or every few days without arousing any suspicions. However, we’ll manage somehow to keep track of the Madame all day Tuesday and see if any chaplain shows up.... As far as that German goes, it only serves to strengthen our suspicions: we can’t take her on suspicion, because that would definitely sacrifice the chance of getting the other party and tracing the line of information—and, after all, that’s what we want. The Madame is just one cog in a machine, and we want to wreck the machine itself....” “I’ll keep at it,” I assured him.