asp.net web service question

[Wendy Elizabeth]

I wrote a visual Basic .net xml web service that returns xml information back
to a classic ASP page. When the classic ASP page receives the response, the
xml has been returned in a format that that is setup to be read in an HTML
format.
In other words the format should look like:
<tag /tag>.

Has been changed to the following format:

&lt &gt;

This occurs when the response is sent to the asp (classic vb script page)
in a soap packet.

The visual basic .net code is:

<webmethod()>
function string valdata (passdata as data1) as string
dim results as string
node as system.xml
results = node.innerxml
return results
end function

class data1

dim item1 as string
dim item2 as string

end class
Would you let me know what could have caused the format to change?

Thanks,

Wendy Elizabeth?