She moves about slowly, as if she were
in no sort of hurry for the adventure. She has slow-moving eyes, with
sleepy, drooping eyelids that blink at you. She has a rather sleepy,
rather drooping nose. Her shoulders droop; her small head droops,
slightly, half the time. If she were not so slender she would be rather
like a pretty dormouse half-recovering from its torpor. You insist on
the determination of her little thrust-out underlip, only to be
contradicted by her gentle and delicately-retreating chin.

In our committee-room, among a band of turbulent female volunteers, all
clamouring for the firing-line, Ursula Dearmer, dressed very simply,
rather like a senior school-girl, and accompanied by her mother, had a
most engaging air of submission and docility. If anybody breaks out into
bravura it will not be Ursula Dearmer.

This thought consoles me when I think of the last solemn scenes in that
committee-room and of the pledges, the frightfully sacred pledges, I
gave to Ursula Dearmer's mother. As a result of this responsibility I
see myself told off to the dreary duty of conducting Ursula Dearmer back
to Dover at the moment when things begin to be really thick and
thrilling. And I deplore the Commandant's indiscriminate hospitality to
volunteers.

Mrs. Lambert (she must surely be the next youngest) you can think of
with less agitation, in spite of her youth, her charming eyes and the
recklessly extravagant quantity of her golden hair. For she is an
American citizen, and she has a husband (also an American citizen) in
Ghent, and her husband has a high-speed motor-car, and if the Germans
should ever advance upon this city he can be relied upon to take her
out of it before they can possibly get in. Besides, even in the German
lines American citizens are safe.

We are all suffering a slight tension. The men, who can see no reason
why the ambulance should not have been sent out last night, are restless
and abstracted and impatient for the order to get up and go. No wonder.
They have been waiting five weeks for their chance.

There is Dr. Haynes, whose large dark head and heavy shoulders look as
if they sustained the whole weight of an intolerable world. His
features, designed for sensuous composure, brood in a sad and sulky
resignation to the boredom of delay.

His friend, Dr. Bird, the young man with the head of an enormous cherub
and the hair of a blond baby, hair that _will_ fall in a shining lock on
his pink fore