R.A.M.C.  Honoria, racked with anxiety about her dear “Army,” and very sad as to Vivie’s disappearance, slaved at War work as much as her children’s demands on her permitted; or even put her children on one side to help the sick and wounded.  Vivie’s Suffrage friends forgot she had ever existed and turned their attention to propaganda, to recruiting for the Voluntary Army which our ministers still hoped might suffice to win the War, to the making of munitions, or aeroplane parts, to land work and to any other work which might help their country in its need.

And Bertie Adams?

When he realized that his beloved and revered Miss Warren was shut off from escape in Belgium, could not be heard of, could not be got at and rescued, he went nearly off his nut....  He reviewed during a succession of sleepless nights what course he might best pursue.  His age was about thirty-two.  He might of course enlist in the army.  But though very patriotic, his allegiance lay first at the feet of Vivie Warren.  If he entered the army, he might be sent anywhere but to the Belgian frontier; and even if he got near Belgium he could not dart off to rescue Vivie without becoming a deserter.  So he came speedily to the conclusion that the most promising career he could adopt, having regard to his position in life and lack of resources, was to volunteer for foreign service under the Y.M.C.A., and express the strongest possible wish to be employed as near Belgium as was practicable.  So that by the end of September, 1914, Bertie was serving out cocoa and biscuits, writing paper and cigarettes, hot coffee and sausages and cups of bovril to exhausted or resting soldiers in the huts of the Y.M.C.A., near Ypres.  Alternating with these services, he was, like other Y.M.C.A. men in the same district and at the same time, acting as stretcher bearer to bring in the wounded, as amateur chaplain with the dying, as amateur surgeon with the wounded, as secretary to some distraught officer in high command whose clerks had all been killed; and in any other capacity if called upon.  But always with the stedfast hope and purpose that he might somehow reach and rescue Vivie Warren.

CHAPTER XVII

THE GERMANS IN BRUSSELS:  1915-1916

In the early spring of 1915, Vivie, anxious not to see her mother in utter penury, and despairing of any effective assistance from the Americans (very much prejudiced against her for the reasons already mentioned), took her mother’s German and Belgian securities of a face value amounting to about L18,000 and sold them at her Belgian bank for a hundred thousand francs (L4,000) in Belgian or German bank notes.  She consulted no one, except her mother.  Who was there to consult?  She did not like to confide too much to Colonel von Giesselin, a little too prone in any case to “protect” them.  But as she argued with Mrs. Warren, what else were they to do in their cruel situation?  If the Allies