“Every evening for about six months,” he answered. A little flame shot up and showed a smile upon his face. “Hardly the sort of anecdote that a truly noble and high-minded young woman would have received with laughter,” he commented.!

“Don’t think me unsympathetic,” she said. “No one will rejoice more than I shall if God sees fit to call you to good work. But I can’t help letting fall my little tear of fellowship with the weeping.” She seemed to be living in a dream. She could not shake from her the feeling that it was not bodies but souls that she was tending. The men themselves gave colour to this fancy of hers. Stripped of their poor, stained, tattered uniforms, they were neither French nor Germans. Friend or foe! it was already but a memory. Often, awakening out of a sleep, they would look across at one another and smile as to a comrade. A great peace seemed to have entered there. Faint murmurs as from some distant troubled world would steal at times into the silence. It brought a pang of pity, but it did not drive away the quiet that dwelt there.

“Did you ever see her act?” asked Joan. “I think God must want you very badly,” she said, “or He wouldn’t have laid so heavy a cross upon you. You will come?” She flung back her head and the grim mouth broke into a smile.