a woman is capable.

She cursed us all. She called down diseases on every human being in the
world excepting only the men who were being bombarded. She demanded of
the folk in the laneway that they should march at least into the roadway
and prove that they were proud men and were not afraid of bullets. She
had been herself into the danger zone. Had stood herself in the track of
the guns, and had there cursed her fill for half an hour, and she
desired that the men should do at least what she had done.

This girl was quite young--about nineteen years of age--and was dressed
in the customary shawl and apron of her class. Her face was rather
pretty, or it had that pretty slenderness and softness of outline which
belong to youth. But every sentence she spoke contained half a dozen
indecent words. Alas, it was only that her vocabulary was not equal to
her emotions, and she did not know how to be emphatic without being
obscene--it is the cause of most of the meaningless swearing one hears
every day. She spoke to me for a minute, and her eyes were as soft as
those of a kitten and her language was as gentle as her eyes. She wanted
a match to light a cigarette, but I had none, and said that I also
wanted one. In a few minutes she brought me a match, and then she
recommenced her tireless weaving of six vile words into hundreds of
stupid sentences.

About five o'clock the guns eased off of Kelly's.

To inexperienced eyes they did not seem to have done very much damage,
but afterwards one found that although the walls were standing and
apparently solid there was no inside to the house. From roof to basement
the building was bare as a dog kennel. There were no floors inside,