Of course Mlle. Henriette was terribly disappointed. Her mother would
not let her go without me. I imagine the wise lady knew that I would
not go. She tried to insist, but my mind was made up.

She argued that we could "hunt for the dead," and "carry consolation
to the dying." I shook my head. I even had to cut the argument short
by going into the house. I felt an imperative need to get the door
closed between us. The habit I have--you know it well, it is often
enough disconcerting to me--of getting an ill-timed comic picture in
my mind, made me afraid that I was going to laugh at the wrong
moment. If I had, I should never have been able to explain to her, and
hope to be understood.

The truth was that I had a sudden, cinematographical vision of my
chubby self--me, who cannot walk half a mile, nor bend over without
getting palpitation--stumbling in my high-heeled shoes over the fields
ploughed by cavalry and shell--breathlessly bent on carrying
consolation to the dying. I knew that I should surely have to be picked
up with the dead and dying, or, worse still, usurp a place in an
ambulance, unless eternal justice--in spite of my age, my sex, and my
white hairs--left me lying where I fell--and serve me good and right!

I know now that if the need and opportunity had come to my gate--as
it might--I should, instinctively, have known what to do, and have
done it. But for me to drive deliberately nine miles--we should have
had to make a wide detour to cross the Marne on the pontoons--
behind a donkey who travels two miles an hour, to seek such an
experience, and with several hours to think it over en route, and the
conviction that I would be an unwelcome intruder--that was another