ssion her body would make on its counterpane, and I get a
glimpse of the passage of time and of the effect of custom.

With me the sickness and the hunger and the ache are barely remembered.
It makes me wonder what else is left behind.... The old battle is again
in my mind--the struggle to feel pain, to repel the invading
familiarity.

Here they come!

One convoy last night and another this morning. There is one great burly
man, a sort of bear, whose dried blood has squeezed through bandages
applied in seven places, and who for all that mumbles "I'm well" if one
asks him how he feels.

Long before those wounds are healed he will diagnose himself better than
that!

"I'm well...." That's to say: "I'm alive, and I have reached this bed,
and this bit of meat, and this pudding in a tin!" He answers by his
standards.

But in a few days he will think, "I am alive, but I might be better...";
and in a few weeks, "Is this, after all, happiness?"

How they sleep, the convoy men! Watching their wounds as we dress them,
almost with a grave pleasure--the passports to this wonderful sleep.

Then when the last safety-pin is in they lie back without making
themselves in the least comfortable, without drawing up a sheet or
turning once upon the pillow, and sleep just as the head falls.

How little women can stand! Even the convoy cannot mend the pains of the
new V.A.D. I dare not speak to her: she seems, poor camel, to be
waiting for the last straw.

But when we wash the bowls together we must talk. She and I together
this morning washed and scrubbed, rinsed, dried, and piled basins into
little heaps, and while we washed we examined each other.

She is a born slave; in fact, I almost think she is born to be tortured.
Her manner with the Sisters invites and entices them to "put upon" her.
Her spiritual back is already covered with sores.

I suppose she is hungry for sympathy, but it isn't really a case in
which sympathy can do as much as custom. I showed her the white
butterflies, without supposing them to be very solid food.

She reminds me of the man of whom the Sister said, "He must stick it
out." I might have pointed to the convoy and suggested comparisons; but
one cannot rub a sore back.

Some one has applied the last straw in the night.

When I came on duty a brisk little war-hardened V.A.D. was brushing a
pile of dust along the long boards to the door. The poor camel whose
back is broken is as though she ha