ice. I looked fearfully at the others to see if
his terror would be communicated to them. But they were apparently
oblivious of each other, wrapped up in their separate lives and
experiences. One middle-aged man, with a rough, reddish beard, was
smiling mildly and smoothing the sheet as though it had been somebody's
hair. We left the room, leaving the nurse to calm the screaming man. I
thought of the terrors and fears and memories in that room: the snatches
of memories pieced together that made up the actual lives, now, of those
broken men in there.

"Are they--do they suffer?" I asked the doctor.

"No. They don't seem to realize that they are wounded and suffer the way
normal people would with their wounds. The only thing is, they all have
moments of terror, when it's all we can do to quiet them. They think the
wall of the room is the enemy moving down on them. I guess they went
through hell all right, there at the front!"

"Will they get better?"

"We can't tell. We have a specialist studying just such cases. These men
seem pretty well smashed, to me."

In one corner lay a young man propped up with pillows. A nurse was
holding his hand. His eyes were looking at her so trustfully. He hardly
seemed to be breathing and his face was bloodless--even his lips were
dead white. And as I looked, he gave a little sigh, and his eyes closed
and his body sagged among the pillows. The nurse bent over him and then
straightened herself. Quickly she arranged a screen round the bed. When
she walked away, I could see she was crying uncontrollably.

"Is he--?"

"Yes. He's dead," the doctor replied. "He's been dying for a week. He
was terribly wounded in the stomach, and there was nothing we could do
for him. It was a repulsive case to care for, but Sister Mary had full
charge of it. She sat with him for hours at a time. In the beginning, to
encourage him, she bought a pair of boots he was to wear when he got
well. For days, now, he's been out of his head and fancied she was his
mother."

And life presses as close to death as that--while I was looking at him,
he had died. I just managed to reach the door before I fainted.

_October._

The Governor of Kiev has been removed. He was too cautious. It was a bad
example!

VI

_October._

_Darling ones:--_

There is the most careful avoidance of any official responsibility here
in trying to find ou