He seems haunted by a vision of the
wives, mothers, sweethearts, whose happiness is in his hands. I think
of him as a Christ in khaki.
The other face is of a girl--a sister I ought to call her. She's the
nearest approach to a sculptured Greek goddess I've seen in a living
woman. She's very tall, very pale and golden, with wide brows and big
grey eyes like Trilby. I wonder what she did before she went to
war--for she's gone to war just as truly as any soldier. I'm sure in
the peaceful years she must have spent a lot of time in being
loved. Perhaps her man was killed out here. Now she's ivory-white with
over-service and spends all her days in loving. Her eyes have the old
frank, innocent look, but they're ringed with being weary. Only her
lips hold a touch of colour; they have a childish trick of trembling
when any one's wound is hurting too much. She's the first touch of
home that the stretcher-cases see when they've said good-bye to the
trenches. She moves down the ward; eyes follow her. When she is
absent, though others take her place, she leaves a loneliness. If she
meant much to men in days gone by, to-day she means more than
ever. Over many dying boys she stoops as the incarnation of the woman
whom, had they lived, they would have loved. To all of us, with the
blasphemy of destroying still upon us, she stands for the divinity of
womanhood.
What sights she sees and what words she hears; yet the pity she brings
to her work preserves her sweetness.
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