they are here fighting this war--here encamped
all around us throughout these hills and forests.... They have lost none
of their glamour for me. Their mystery remains."

The Volunteer Nurse looked up with a tired smile:

"You always were emotional, dear."

"I am still."

"You don't have to drain wounds and dry out sores and do the thousand
unspeakable offices that we do."

"Why do you do them?"

"I have to."

"You didn't have to enlist. Why did you?"

"Why do the men enlist?" asked the Nurse. "That's why you and I
did--whatever the motive may have been, God knows.... And it's killed
part of me.... _You_ don't cleanse ulcers."

"No; I am not fitted. I tried; and lost none of the romance in me. Only
it happens that I can do--what I am doing--better."

The Nurse looked at her a trifle awed.

"To think, dear, that you should turn out to be the celebrated Special
Messenger. You were timid in school."

"I am now.... You don't know how afraid a woman can be. Suppose in
school--suppose that for one moment we could have foreseen our
destiny--here together, you and I, as we are now."

The Nurse looked into the stained hollow of her right hand.

"I had the lines read once," she said drearily, "but nobody ever said
I'd be here, or that there'd be any war." And she continued to examine
her palm with a hurt expression in her blue eyes.

The Special Messenger laughed, and her lovely, pale face lighted up with
color.

"Don't you really think you are ever going to be capable of caring for a
man again?"

"No, I don't. I know now how they're fashioned, how they think--how--how
revolting they can be.... No, no! It's all gone--all the ideals, all the
dreams.... Good Heavens, how romantic--how senseless we were in school!"

"I am still," said the Special Messenger thoughtfully. "I like men....
A man--the right one--could easily make me love him. And I am afraid
there are more than one 'right one.' I have often been on the
sentimental border.... But they died, or went away--or I did.... The
trouble with me is, as you say, that I am emotional, and very, very
tender-hearted.... It is sometimes difficult to be loyal--to care for
duty--to care for the Union more than for a man. Not that there is any
danger of my proving untrue----"

"No," murmured the Nurse, "loyalty is your inheritance."

"Yes, we--" she named her family under her breath--"are traditionally
trustworthy. It is part of us--our race was always, will always