Page:Women Wanted.djvu/140

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128
WOMEN WANTED

guiberry, of which she spoke most often. The Viscountess D'Azy's one theme is her boy. Before the war he was her little son. Now he is a tall and handsome officer in uniform, at the age of nineteen, Sub-lieutenant Charles Benoit D'Azy.

He wanted to enlist when she did. But she insisted that he remain at school until he had finished his examinations in the spring of 1915. He got into action in time" for the great push on the Somme. Here at the hospital in Les Champs Elysées the Viscountess shows me his photograph, snapshots that she has taken with her kodak. Last night she walked unattended and alone three miles through the streets of Paris at midnight after seeing him off at the Gare de l'Est. He had started again for the front after his furlough at home. Her one request to the war department is to be detailed to hospital duty where she may be near her boy's regiment. Her pride in the boy is beautiful. When she speaks his name that look of experience is gone for the moment, and in the eyes of Elizabeth D'Azy there is only the soft luminous mother-love, even as it may be reflected in your eyes that have never yet seen bloodshed.

"Up to the time of the war," the Viscountess said in her pretty broken English as she looked reminiscently out on the broad avenue of Paris, "I was doing nothing but going to fêtes all day and dancing most of the nights. But I think there is no reason why a woman who has danced well should not be able to do her duty as well as she did her pleasure. N'est-