She took the cigarette from her lips and her voice trembled a little. The doctor himself was a broad-shouldered, bullet-headed man, clean shaven, with close-cropped, bristly hair. He had curiously square hands, with short, squat fingers. He had been head surgeon in one of the Paris hospitals, and had been assigned his present post because of his marvellous quickness with the knife. The hospital was the nearest to a hill of great strategical importance, and the fighting in the neighbourhood was almost continuous. Often a single ambulance would bring in three or four cases, each one demanding instant attention. Dr. Poujoulet, with his hairy arms bare to the shoulder, would polish them off one after another, with hardly a moment’s rest between, not allowing time even for the washing of the table. Joan would have to summon all her nerve to keep herself from collapsing. At times the need for haste was such that it was impossible to wait for the anaesthetic to take effect. The one redeeming feature was the extraordinary heroism of the men, though occasionally there was nothing for it but to call in the orderlies to hold some poor fellow down, and to deafen one’s ears.!

“Do you think you will go on doing it?” he asked, with a laugh. “I don’t know,” answered the woman. “I believe that would do her more good than anything else. If she would listen to it. She seems to have lost all will-power.”

“Ever spent a day at the Home for Destitute Gentlewomen at East Sheen?” demanded Madge. “Why did you give it up?” asked Joan. “No, that’s precisely what he isn’t,” answered Joan. “You feel that he belongs to no class, but his own. The class of the Abraham Lincolns, and the Dantons.”