had gone, so that her nerves and
flesh should know and feel their suffering and their danger. She was not
feeling anything now except the shame of her immunity.

She thought: "I can't look at a Belgian woman without wishing I were
dead. I shall have no peace till I've gone."

Her surface self was purely practical. She thought: "If I were in
Belgium I could get them out of it quicker than they could walk."

Dorothea could bring all her mind to bear on her Belgians, because it
was at ease about her own people. They, at any rate, were safe. Her
father and poor Don were out of it. Michael was not in it--yet; though
of course he would be in it some time. She tried not to think too much
about Michael. Nicky was safe for the next six months. And Frank was
safe. Frank was training recruits. He had told her he might be kept
indefinitely at that infernal job. But for that he would be fighting
now. He wanted her to be sorry for him; and she was sorry for him. And
she was glad too.

One afternoon, late in August, she had come home, to sleep till
dinner-time between her day's work and her night's work, when she found
him upstairs in her study. He had been there an hour waiting for her by
himself. The others were all at bandage practice in the schoolroom.

"I hope you don't mind," he said. "Your mother told me to wait up here."

She had come in straight from the garage; there was a light fur of dust
on her boots and on the shoulders of her tunic, and on her face and
hair. Her hands were black with oil and dirt from her car.

He looked at her, taking it all in: the khaki uniform (it was the first
time he had seen her in it), the tunic, breeches and puttees, the loose
felt hat turned up at one side, its funny, boyish chin-strap, the dust
and dirt of her; and he smiled. His smile had none of the cynical
derision which had once greeted her appearances as a militant
suffragist.

"And yet," she thought, "if he's consistent, he ought to loathe me now."

"Dorothea. Going to the War," he said.

"Not _yet_--worse luck."

"Are you going as part of the Canadian contingent from overseas, or
what?"

"I wish I was. Do you think they'd take me if I cut my hair off?"

"They might. They might do anything. This is a most extraordinary war."

"It's a war that makes it detestable to be a woman."

"I thought--" For a moment his old ungovernable devil rose in him.

"What did you think?"

"No matter. That's all ancient history. I say, y