Page:Women Wanted.djvu/159

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WAR JEWELRY
143

her to write her personal story. At first she shrank from it: "It would be presumption on the part of a girl. What would my commune think?" But finally she was prevailed upon, and for two months daily "Mes Mémoires" appeared on the front page of Le Petit Parisien with a double-column headline. Even more honours have come to Emilienne. Great Britain bestowed on her its order of St. John of Jerusalem and the King has sent her a personal invitation to visit Buckingham Palace as soon as the Channel crossing shall be safe.

With it all, you would think Emilienne, if you met her, quite a normal girl. You see, she is young enough to forget. And it is only occasionally that in the clear blue eyes you catch a glimpse of tragedy. Her smooth brown hair she is as interested in having in the latest mode as are you who to-day consulted the fashion-pages of a magazine for coiffures. I have seen her on the sands at Trouville with a group of girls at play at blind man's buff in the moonlight. And by her silvery laughter you would not know her from the rest as a heroine. The next day, when they were in bathing and the body of a drowned man was washed ashore, one of the other girls fainted. Afterward Emilienne said, and there was in her eyes a far-away look of old horrors as she spoke, "Marie, Marie, if your eyes had looked on what mine have, you would not faint so easily."

There is another French girl, the youngest war heroine I know who has been decorated by any government. And the case of Madeleine Danau is per-