“Not yet,” answered Joan. “But I hope to be, one day.” She spoke without thinking, not quite knowing what she meant. But it came back to her in after years. Joan laughed. “Difficult to get anything else, just at present,” she said. “It’s the soldiers I’m looking to for help. I don’t think the men who have been there will want their sons to go. It’s the women I’m afraid of.”!

“Must you, dear?” she said. “Can’t you reconcile it to yourself—to go on with your work of mercy, of saving poor folks’ lives?” “I don’t see what you are going to do,” commented Mary. “So long as men are not afraid to sell their souls, there will always be a Devil’s market for them.”

“I know he’ll come back,” he said. “I won’t tell you why I am so sure. Perhaps you wouldn’t believe.” He was still holding her hands, looking into her eyes. “No,” answered Joan. “Surely you’re not one?” And she had promised him. He needed her. The words she had spoken to Madge, not dreaming then of their swift application. They came back to her. “God has called me. He girded His sword upon me.” What right had she to leave it rusting in its scabbard, turning aside from the pathway pointed out to her because of one weak, useless life, crouching in her way. It was not as if she were being asked to do evil herself that good might come. The decision had been taken out of her hands. All she had to do was to remain quiescent, not interfering, awaiting her orders. Her business was with her own part, not with another’s. To be willing to sacrifice oneself: that was at the root of all service. Sometimes it was one’s own duty, sometimes that of another. Must one never go forward because another steps out of one’s way, voluntarily? Besides, she might have been mistaken. That picture, ever before her, of the woman pausing with the brush above her tongue—that little stilled gasp! It may have been but a phantasm, born of her own fevered imagination. She clung to that, desperately.