women should do are forgotten in the rush of the things which must
be done by women. It is as if we had all been bewitched and turned
into somebody else.

"Well, I wish that Hilda could be turned into somebody else. Into
somebody as nice as--Emily--. But she won't be. She hasn't been
changed the least bit by the war, and everybody else has, even Alma, or
she wouldn't have said that about your being lucky to have me. Are you
lucky, Derry?

"And when Hilda sets her mind on a thing--. Oh, I can't seem to talk
of anything but Hilda--when she sets her mind on anything, she gets it
in one way or another--and that's why I am afraid of her."

Derry wrote back.

"Don't be afraid of anything, Jean-Joan. And it won't do any good to
talk to Hilda. I don't want you to talk to her. You are too much of a
white angel to contend against the powers of darkness.

"As for my luck in having you, it is something which transcends
luck--it just hits the stars, dearest.

"I wonder what the fellows do who haven't any wives to anchor
themselves to in a time like this? Through, all the day I have this
hour in mind when I can write to you--and I think there are lots of
other fellows like that--for I can see them all about me here in the
Hut, bending over their letters with a look on their faces which isn't
there at any other time.

"By Jove, Jean-Joan, I never knew before what women meant in the lives
of men. Here we are marooned, as it were, on an island of masculinity,
yet it isn't what the other fellows think of us that counts, it is what
you think who are miles away. Always in the back of our minds is the
thought of what you expect of us and demand of us, and added to what we
demand and expect of ourselves, it sways us level. We don't talk a
great deal about you, but now and then some fellow says, 'My wife,' and
we all prick up our ears and want to hear the rest of it.

"It is a great life, dearest, in spite of the hard work, in spite of
the stress and strain. And to me who have known so little of the great
human game it is a great revelation.

"In the first place, there has been brought to me the knowledge of the
joy of real labor. I shall never again be sorry for the man who toils.
You see, I had never toiled, not in the sense that a man does whose
labor counts. I was always a rather anxious and lonely little boy,
looking after my father and trying to help my mother, and feeling a bit
of a mollycoddle because I