Still--there had been an eager upspringing light in his eyes...was it
recognition?...merely the passing impulse of flirtation over a match and a
briquet?...No doubt she would never see him again.
CHAPTER III
I
Did she want to?
She had gone through many and extraordinary phases during these years of
close personal contact with the martial history of Europe, as precisely
different from the first twenty-six years of her life as peace from war.
During those months of nineteen-fifteen when she had worked in hospitals
close to the front as auxiliary nurse, all the high courage of her nature
which she had inherited from a long line of men who had fought in the Civil
War, the Revolution, and in the colonial wars before that, and the tribal
wars that came after, and all that she had inherited from those foremothers
whose courage, as severely tested, had never failed either their men or
their country; in short, the inheritance of the best American tradition;
had risen automatically to sustain her during that period of incessant
danger and horror. She had been firm and smiling for the consolation of
wounded men when under direct shell fire. She had felt so profound a pity
for the mutilated patient men that it had seemed to cleanse her of every
selfish impulse fostered by a too sheltered life. She had bathed so many
helpless bodies that she lost all sense of sex and felt herself a part of
the eternal motherhood of the world.
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