and simplicity of her
former home she had felt that she was a part of it all. It had seemed to
her, somehow, as though her existence had been patterned after her own
turbulent mountain stream, which danced along through sunshine and
shade, with here and there a ravine and cataract, here and there a rapid
or impeding boulder in its course; but always moving, moving. Then,
suddenly, it was as though that swift little river had fallen into a
broad, quiet basin, walled in, where it moved forward almost
imperceptibly. True, it was daily gaining greater depth and fulness as
it gathered to itself the tributary waters of knowledge and experience,
and Smiles was not insensible to this fact. But it was difficult to
remember it always, for the outer world of events was moving forward so
fast.

The very day upon which her probationary period came to an end and, with
a smile on her lips, a song in her heart, she placed the cherished cap
upon her gold-brown curls, there came, from the heart of the swiftly
piled up, lowering clouds, the blinding flash which shattered the peace
of the world and started the overwhelming conflagration into the
seething, bloody-tongued vortex into which nation after nation was
sucked irresistibly. The world had become the plaything of the Gods of
Wrath.

Black days passed, shuddering things of horror to Rose, when she had
time to allow her mind to dwell upon them, and her keen imagination to
picture the atrocities which the fiend was committing upon the helpless
babies of Belgium and France.

Then, in answer to the cries and lamentations from overseas, the banner
of the Red Cross was shaken forth anew, like a holy standard, and, like
crusaders of old, doctors and nurses flocked beneath it for the battle.
From her own hospital home went physicians and graduate nurses to
dedicate themselves afresh to service. The call reached and wrung the
heart of Rose. She could not go as a nurse, she knew; yet the need was
so great that it seemed to her that somehow she must answer; but she
resolutely closed her ears to it and fixed her eyes the more steadfastly
upon the rocky, shut-in path which she had set forth to climb.

It was a raw, bleak evening in late November when she made her final
resolve. At noon Donald had met her in one of the corridors and stopped
to speak with her. His face, she thought afterwards, had appeared
unusually serious and determined, even for him, as he said, "This is
your afternoon and e