you. But now--now--you are doing nothing but nurse disgusting men like
the rest of us."

"Hush! You are talking too loud. And you are carrying your revolt too
far. These poor deluded men you nurse are only to be pitied, and if they
merely revolt you, you have no vocation--"

"When did I ever pretend to have a vocation for nursing? Like all the
rest I felt I must do my part, and heaven knows it is better than
sitting at home making bandages and watching my mother slowly starve. If
I had rolled one more bandage I should have gone mad."

"Well, dear Heloise, as far as I am concerned, the time for women to
battle for their rights is when their country is safe, not in mortal
danger. Be sure that when this war is over--"

She fell silent. A little flame had leapt in her brain. She
extinguished it hurriedly, but it burnt the fingers of her will, always
enthroned and always on guard. As she stared at Heloise, lovely in her
Red Cross uniform, a white torch against the dark horizon, her tragic
eyes once more searching the heavens, it struggled for life again and
again. She loved Heloise and she felt a sudden inclusive love of her
sex, an overpowering desire to deliver it from the sadness and horror of
war; a profounder emotion than anything it had inspired in those far off
days of peace. After all, however serious she had believed herself to
be, it had been a game, a career; for in times of peace one must invent
the vital interests of life, and one's success or failure depends upon
one's powers of creating and sustaining the delusion. Only two things in
life were real, love and war.