I was amazed at the pleasure that wrong-doing gives, and regretted my desperately strict past life!  Oh, the freedom of that day in the open air! the joy of seeing trees after looking at one wretched line of rails for nine months!  Lilacs were abloom in every garden, and buttercups made the fields look yellow.  The air was misty—­one could hardly have gone to Poperinghe except in a mist, as it was being so constantly shelled—­but in the mist the trees had a queer light on them which made the early green look a deeper and stronger colour than I have ever seen it.  There appeared to be a sort of glare under the mist, and the fresh wet landscape, with its top-heavy sky, radiated with some light of its own.  Oh, the intoxication of that damp, wet drive, with a fine rain in our faces, and the car bounding under us on the “pave”!  If I am interned till the end of the war I don’t care a bit!  I have had some fresh air, and I have been away for one whole day from the smell of soup and drains.

How describe it all?  The dear sense of guilt first, and then the still dearer British soldiers, all ready with some cheery, cheeky remark as they sat in carts under the wet trees.  They were our brethren—­blue-eyed and fair-haired, and with their old clumsy ways, which one seemed to be seeing plainly for the first time, or, rather, recognising for the first time.  It was all part of England, and a day out.  The officers were taking exercise, of course, with dogs, and in the rain.  We are never less than English!  To-morrow we may be killed, but to-day we will put on thick boots, and take the dogs for a run in the rain.

[Page Heading:  AT POPERINGHE]

Poperinghe was deserted, of course.  Its busy cobbled streets were quite empty except for a few strolling soldiers in khaki, and just here and there the same toothless old woman who is always the last to leave a doomed city.  At the typhoid hospital we gravely offered the cases of milk which we had brought with us as an earnest of our good conduct, but even the hospital was nearly empty.  However, a secretary offered us a cup of tea, and in the dining-room we found Madame van den Steen, who had just returned to take up her noble work again.  She was at Dinant, at her own chateau, when war broke out, and she was most interesting, and able to tell me things at first hand.  The German methods are pretty well known now, but she told me a great deal which only women talking together could discuss.  When a village or town was taken, the women inhabitants were quite at the mercy of the Germans.

Continuing, Madame van den Steen said that all the filthiness that could be thought of was committed—­the furniture, cupboards, flowerpots, and even bridge-tables, being sullied by these brutes.  Children had their hands cut off, and one woman, at least, at Dinant was crucified.  One’s pen won’t write more.  The horrors upset one too much.  All the babies born about that time died; their mothers had been so shocked and frightened....