“I’m afraid I’m an awful nuisance to you,” he said. “I get these moods at times. You’re not angry with me?” “Quick,” said the doctor. He pushed her in front of him, and she almost fell down a flight of mud-covered steps that led into the earth. She found herself in a long, low gallery, lighted by a dim oil lamp, suspended from the blackened roof. A shelf ran along one side of it, covered with straw. Three men lay there. The straw was soaked with their blood. They had been brought in the night before by the stretcher-bearers. A young surgeon was rearranging their splints and bandages, and redressing their wounds. They would lie there for another hour or so, and then start for their twenty kilometre drive over shell-ridden roads to one or another of the great hospitals at the base. While she was there, two more cases were brought in. The doctor gave but a glance at the first one and then made a sign; and the bearers passed on with him to the further end of the gallery. He seemed to understand, for he gave a low, despairing cry and the tears sprang to his eyes. He was but a boy. The other had a foot torn off. One of the orderlies gave him two round pieces of wood to hold in his hands while the young surgeon cut away the hanging flesh and bound up the stump.!

“She’s the most beautiful body in all the world,” he said. “Though merely seeing her you mightn’t know it.” “It comes to the same thing, doesn’t it, dear?” she answered. “They are there, anyhow. And that is how He knows those who are willing to serve Him: by their being pitiful.”

The child turned her head as they walked and looked at her. Joan felt herself smarting under that look, but persisted. “Poor dear lady,” he said, “all those years! And poor Jack Allway.” He seemed to be talking to himself. Suddenly he turned to her. “How is the dear fellow?” he asked. “Oh yes there is,” said Madge. “Love has lent him gilded armour. From his helmet waves her crest,” she quoted. “Most men look fine in that costume. Pity they can’t always wear it.”