Page:Women Wanted.djvu/29

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been validated.
GLIMPSING THE WORLD WAR
23

night in London," he said, "and the taxicabs are scarce. You must let me see that you reach your hotel in safety." And I felt as sure a reliance in him as if we'd made mud pies together or he'd carried my books to school. You see, you count on an American man like that.

But the cold line of steel! That you have to do alone, even as you go each soul singly to the judgment gate of heaven. I grip my passport hard. It has been removed from its usual place of secure safety. Chamois bags are the eternal bother of being a woman abroad in war time. Men have pockets, easy ones to get at informally. I have among my "most important credentials"—they are in separate packages carefully labelled like that—a special "diplomatic letter" commending me officially by the Secretary of State to the protection of all United States embassies and consulates. When they handed it to me in Washington, I remember they told me significantly: "We have just picked out of prison over there, two American correspondents whose lives we were able to save by the narrowest chance. We don't want any international complications. Now, do be careful."

I'm going to be. The Tower of London and some modern Bastille on the banks of the Seine and divers other dark damp places of detention over here are at this minute clearly outlining themselves as moving pictures before my mind. I earnestly don't want to be in any of them.

We have reached the temporary wooden shack