een disappearing in the direction of the Post and Telegraph
Office.

Tom swallows words that would be curses if I were not there.

I keep my eyes fixed on the doors of the Post Office. Ages pass.

I go to the Post Office to look for the Commandant. He is not in the
Telegraph Office. He is not in the Post Office. Tom keeps his eyes on
the doors of both.

More ages pass. Finally, the Commandant appears from inside the
Hospital, which he has not been seen to enter.

The chauffeur Tom dismounts and draws from his car's mysterious being
sounds that express the savage fury of his resentment.

You would think we were off now. But we only get as far as a street
somewhere near the Hotel de la Poste. Here we wait for apparently no
reason in such tension that you can hear the ages pass.

The Commandant disappears.

Tom says something about there being no room for the wounded at this
rate.

It seems his orders are to go first to the British lines at a place
whose name I forget, and then on to Melle.

I remember Tom's views on the subject of field-women. And suddenly I
seem to understand them. Tom is very like Lord Kitchener. He knows
nothing about the aims and wants of modern womanhood and he cares less.
The modern woman does not ask to be protected, does not want to be
protected, and Tom, like Lord Kitchener, will go on protecting. You
cannot elevate men like Lord Kitchener and Tom above the primitive plane
of chivalry. Tom in the danger zone with a woman by his side feels about
as peaceful and comfortable as a woman in the danger zone with a
two-year-old baby in her lap. A bomb in his bedroom is one thing and a
band of drunken Uhlans making for his women is another. Tom's nerves are
racked with problems: How the dickens is he to steer his car and protect
his women at the same time? And if it comes to a toss-up between his
women and his wounded? You've got to stow the silly things somewhere,
and every one of them takes up the place of a wounded man.

I get out of the car and tell the Commandant that I would rather not go
than take up the place of a wounded man.

He orders me back to the car again. Tom seems inclined to regard me as a
woman who has done her best.

We go on a little way and stop again. And there springs out of the
pavement a curious figure that I have seen somewhere before in Ghent, I
cannot remember when or where. The figure wears a check suit of extreme
horsyness and carries a kodak in its hand. It