exactly being on the stage, she yet appeared to live on the fringe of
it, and combined the slangy freedoms of a chorus girl with a certain
quick wisdom and hard sense. It was she who discovered a steerage
passenger, on the Liverpool dock, who had lost his wife and was bringing
his four little children back to Ireland from Chicago, and, while the
other cabin passengers fumed over their luggage, took up a collection
for him then and there.

"Listen here!" she would say, grabbing my arm. "I want to tell you
something. I'm going to see this thing--d'you know what I mean?--for
what it'll do to me--you know--for its effect on my mind! I didn't say
anything about it to anybody--they'd only laugh at me--d'you know what I
mean? They don't think I've got any serious side to me. Now, I don't
mind things--I mean blood--you know--they don't affect me, and I've read
about nursing--I've prepared for this! Now, I don't know how to go about
it, but it seems to me that a woman who can--you know--go right with
'em--jolly 'em along--might be just what they'd want--d'you know what I
mean?"

One Russian had said good-by to a friend at the dock, he to try to get
through this way, the other by the Pacific and Trans-Siberian. The
Englishman who shared my stateroom was an advertising man. "I've got
contracts worth fifty thousand pounds," he said, "and I don't suppose
they're worth the paper they're written on." There were several Belgians
and a quartet of young Frenchmen who played cards every night and
gravely drank bottle after bottle of champagne to the glory of France.

Even the Balkans were with us, in the shape of a tall, soldier-like
Bulgarian with a heavy mustache and the eyes of a kindly and highly
intelligent hawk. He was going back home--"to fight?" "Yes, to fight."