BERTIE ADAMS

One day, early in April, 1917, Vivie was standing in a corridor of the Hopital de St. Pierre talking to Minna von Stachelberg.  She had just come from the railway station, where in common with the few British and Americans who remained in Brussels she had been to take a respectful and grateful farewell of the American Minister and his wife, who were leaving Belgium for Holland, prior to the American declaration of war.  American diplomacy had done little for her or her mother, but it had been the shield, the salvation, the only hope of Belgium.  Moreover, the break-off of diplomatic relations initiated the certain hope of a happier future.  American intervention in the war must lead to Peace and Freedom.  Germany must now be beaten and Belgium set free.

So she had contributed her mite to the fund which purchased spring flowers—­hothouse-grown, for this April was a villainous prolongation of winter—­with which to strew the approach to the station and fill the reserve compartment of the train.

As Vivie was nearing the end of her description—­and Minna was hoping it was the end, as she wanted to get back to her patients—­two German policemen marched up to Vivie, clicked their heels, saluted, and said in German, “Mademoiselle Varennes, nicht wahr?  Be good enough to accompany us to the Kommandantur.”

At this dread summons, Vivie turned pale, and Minna dismayed began to ask questions.  The Polizei answered that they had none to give....  Might she accompany her friend?  She might not.  Then followed a ride in a military motor, with the two silent policemen.

They arrived outside the Kommandantur....  More clanking, clicking, and gruff conversation in German.  She got out, in response to a tight pressure on her arm, a grip in fact, and accompanied her grim guide through halls and corridors, and at last entered a severely furnished office, a kind of magistrate’s court, and was confronted with—­Bertie Adams!  A whiskered, bearded, moustached, shabbily dressed (in a quasi-military uniform) Bertie Adams:  lean, and hollow-eyed, but with the love-light in his eyes.  He turned on her such a look of dog-like fealty, of happy recognition that although, by instinct and for his safety, she was about to deny all knowledge of him, she could not force her eyes or tongue to tell the lie.

“Oh miss, oh my dear Miss Warren! How I have hungered and thirsted for a sight of you all these months and years!  To see you once more is worth all and more I’ve gone through to get here.  They may shoot me now, if they’ve got the heart—­Not that I’ve done anything to deserve it—­I’ve simply had one object in view:  To come here and help you.”

He looked around as if instinctively to claim the sympathy of the policemen.  To say he met with none would be to make them out more inhuman than they were.  But as all this speech was in English they understood but little of what he had said.  They guessed he loved the woman to whom he spake, but he may have been pleading with her not to give him away, to palliate his acts of espionage.