Oh Madame! If you could only say a word to that Colonel with whom you are living ?" Mrs.Warren dared not translate this last sentence to Vivie, for fear her daughter forced her at all costs to leave the Hotel Imperial.

Where, if she did, were they to go?
The winter of 1914 had witnessed an appalling degree of frightfulness in eastern Belgium, the Wallon or French-speaking part of the country more especially.

The Germans seemed to bear a special grudge against this region, regarding it as doggedly opposed to absorption into a Greater Germany; whereas they hoped the Flemish half of the country would receive them as fellow Teutons and even as deliverers from their former French oppressors.

Thousands of old men and youths, of women and children in the provinces south of the Meuse had been shot in cold blood; village after village had been burnt.

Scenes of nearly equal horror had taken place between Brussels and Antwerp, especially around Malines.