Hilda was cold. "I shouldn't go for that. As I told Jean, I am not
making any grand stand plays. I should go for all that I get out of
it, the experience, the adventure--."

He looked at her with some curiosity. Jean's words of the afternoon
recurred to him. "She's a ghoul--"

Yet there was something almost fascinating in her frankness. She tore
aside ruthlessly the curtain of self-deception, revealing her motives,
as if she challenged him to call them less worthy than his own.

"If I go, it will be because I want to become a better nurse. I like
it here, but your practice is necessarily limited. I should get a
wider view of things. So would you. There would be new worlds of
disease, men in all conditions of nervous shock."

"I know. But I'd hate to think I was going merely for selfish ends."

She shrugged. "Why not that as well as any other?"

He had a smouldering sense of irritation.

"When I am with Jean she makes me feel rather big and fine; when I am
with you--" He paused.

"I make you see yourself as you are, a man. She thinks you are more
than that."

All his laughter left ham. "It is something to be a hero to one's
daughter. Perhaps some day I shall be a little better for her thinking