s.

"And that your tender heart may be at rest, I may as well tell you that
she and the kittens are living in great content in a country house
where one of the officers who was in the car with us is installed. We
have named her Dolores, but it is ceasing to be appropriate. She is no
longer sad, and while she is on somewhat slim fare like the rest of us,
she is a great hunter and catches mice in the barn, so that she is
growing strong and smooth, and she is not, perhaps, to be pitied as
much as Polly Ann on her pink cushion.

"And here I am writing about cats, while the only thing that is really
in my heart is--You.

"Ever since the moment I left you, I have carried with me the vision of
you in your wedding gown--my dear, my dear. Perhaps it is just as well
that I left when I did, for I am most inordinately jealous of Derry,
not only because he has you, but because he has love and life before
him, while I, already, am looking back.

"My work here is, as you would say, 'wonderful.' How I should like to
hear you say it! There are things which in all my years of practice, I
have never met before. How could I meet them? It has taken this
generation of doctors to wrestle with the problem of treating men
tortured by gas, and with nerves shaken by sights and sounds without
parallel in the history of the world.

"But I am not going to tell you of it. I would rather tell you how
much I love you and miss you, and how glad I am that you are not here
to see it all. Yet I would have all Americans think of those who are
here, and I would have you help until it--hurts. You must know, my
Jean, how moved I am by it, when I ask you, whom I have always
shielded, to give help until it hurts--

"I have had a letter from Hilda. She wants to come over. I haven't
answered the letter. But when I do, I shall tell her that there may be
something that she can do, but it will not be with me. I need women
who can see the pathos of such things as that starved cat and kittens
out there among the shell-holes, and Hilda would never have seen it.
She would have left the cat to starve."

Jean found herself crying over the letter. "I am not helping at all,
Derry."

"My dear, you are."

"I am not. I am just sitting on a pink cushion, like Polly Ann---"

It was the first flash he had seen for days of her girlish petulance.
He smiled. "That sounds like the Jean of yesterday."

"Did you like the Jean of yesterday better than the