Her strength was gone and she could only wait. More soldiers had come up and were using their fists freely, and gradually the crowd retired, still snarling; and they lifted him up and brought him to her. To reject it would be to dishonour it.!

It did not suggest any overwhelming impatience. “Yes,” she answered. “In case you haven’t married yourself, and forgotten all about me.” She had written to Folk. No female nurses were supposed to be allowed within the battle zone; but under pressure of shortage the French staff were relaxing the rule, and Folk had pledged himself to her discretion. “I am not doing you any kindness,” he had written. “You will have to share the common hardships and privations, and the danger is real. If I didn’t feel instinctively that underneath your mask of sweet reasonableness you are one of the most obstinate young women God ever made, and that without me you would probably get yourself into a still worse hole, I’d have refused.” And then followed a list of the things she was to be sure to take with her, including a pound or two of Keating’s insect powder, and a hint that it might save her trouble, if she had her hair cut short.

“Good man,” said Mrs. Denton. “I’m quite serious. You tell him from me that the next revolution has got to be against the Press. And it will be the stiffest fight Democracy has ever had.” She ran to him and, seizing his listless arms, put them round her. “Not Liverpool?” he suggested.