the damage?" he says again in pleasant Manhattan English. I hesitate only for an instant. "It's sixteen francs I need."
He promptly pulls out his bank-roll. I ask for his card, of course, to return the loan the next day with many thanks for his courtesy. He, however, has no security that I will. As he puts me in my taxicab and lifts his hat beneath the faint war-dimmed light of the street lamps in the dark Rue Vivienne, he only knows that I am his countrywoman. And he is an American man. The Lord seems to send them when you need them most.
Three days later the awful silence in which I am suffering all the fears there are for a journalist in war-time, is broken by a reply from London: "Material only delayed. Sailed steamship New York instead of St. Louis." After another two weeks of fitful nights in which I dream of men in khaki who confiscate journalistic data, there comes the message from New York that is like hearing from Heaven: "Your consignment of material safely arrived." Meanwhile, before I may be permitted to take a line out of this country, Maison de la Presse must pass on my French data. I am feverishly editing it for their approval when there is a knock at my door. The maid is there with more letters than the little brass mail-box will hold. I eagerly open my American mail to find it filled with holiday greetings. So, it can still be Christmas somewhere in the world! I am standing at the window with a Christmas card in my hand, thinking pleasant thoughts of the far-
