Suddenly its ticking ceased. It had become again a piece of lifeless mechanism. The hands pointed to six minutes past. Joan took off her hat and laid it aside. “Oh, don’t come the kid,” advised Flossie. “If you don’t mind being talked about yourself, you might think of him. If Carleton gets hold of it, he’s done for.”!

Suddenly he broke off. “What a fool I’m making of myself,” he said. “I always was a dreamer.” It consoled him, later, that he was not the only victim. The Daily Dispatch became famous for its piquant interviews; especially with elderly celebrities of the masculine gender.

“Why must you preach?” she asked. “It doesn’t seem to pay you.” There was a curious smile about the girl’s lips as she caught Joan’s eye. “I want your love,” she said to him one day. “It helps me. I used to think it was selfish of me to take it, knowing I could never return it—not that love. But I no longer feel that now. Your love seems to me a fountain from which I can drink without hurting you.” 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.