out, time-expired men and invalids coming in. Mr. Weldon--"

His questioning smile answered the pause in her sentence.

"Well?" he asked, after a prolonged interval.

Her teeth shut on her lower lip, she stared at the wide blue sea
with wide blue eyes. Something in its restless tossing, in the
changing lights that darted back to her from the crests of the
waves, seemed to be holding her in an hypnotic trance. Out of the
midst of the trance she spoke again, and it was plain to Weldon, as
he listened to her low, intent voice, that her thoughts were not
upon the sea nor yet upon him.

"It ought to terrify me," she said. "I mean the war, of course. I
ought to dread the going out into the atmosphere of it. I don't.
Sometimes I think I must have fighting blood in my veins. Instead of
being frightened at what my father writes me, I feel stirred by it
all, as if I were ready for anything. I went out to Aldershot, one
day last year; but that was only so many dainty frills, so much
playing soldier. That's not what I mean at all." Turning suddenly,
she looked up directly into Weldon's dark gray eyes. "One of my
cousins wants to be a nurse. She lives at Piquetberg Road, but she
has been visiting friends who live in Natal on the edge of the
fighting, where she has seen things as they happen. In her last
letter, she told me that she was only waiting for my uncle's
permission to go out as a nurse."

"Is that what you would do?"