income as incompatible with fixed salaries as with war time, I cannot
imagine. Automatic Americanism, no doubt.

Mlle. Berty lost no time correcting me. "Oh, Hortense is not married,"
she merely remarked. "But she has a splendid son--twelve years old."

Being the only embarrassed member of the party, I hastened to assure
the girl that I had thought she was about eighteen and was astonished
to hear that she had a child of any age. But twelve! She turned to me
with a gentle and deprecatory smile.

"I loved very young," she explained.


VII


Chaptal and Villemin are only two of Madame Balli's hospitals. I
believe she visits others, carrying gifts to both the men and the
kitchens, but the only other of her works that I came into personal
contact with was an oeuvre she had organized to teach convalescent
soldiers, mutilated or otherwise, how to make bead necklaces. These
are really beautiful and are another of her own inventions.

Up in the front bedroom of her charming home in the Avenue Henri
Martin is a table covered with boxes filled with glass beads of every
color. Here Madame Balli, with a group of friends, sits during all her
spare hours and begins the necklaces which the soldiers come for and
take back to the hospital to finish. I sat in the background and
watched the men come in--many of them with the _Croix de Guerre,_ the