il are beginning
to ask themselves what they are here for. To go through the wards is
only to be in the way of the angelic beings with red crosses on their
breasts and foreheads who are already somewhat in each other's way.
Mrs. Torrence and the others do, however, go into the wards and talk to
the wounded and cheer them up. I sit in the deserted mess-room, and look
at the lunch that Tom and Dr. Bird and Mr. Grierson should have eaten
and were obliged to leave behind. I would give anything to be able to go
round the wards and cheer the wounded up. I wonder whether there is
anything I could conceivably do for the wounded that would not bore them
inexpressibly if I were to do it. I frame sentence after sentence in
strange and abominable French, and each, apart from its own inherent
absurdity, seems a mockery of the wounded. You cannot go to an immortal
hero and grin at him and say _Comment allez-vous?_ and expect him to be
cheered up, especially when you know yourself to be one of a long
procession of women who have done the same.

I abandon myself to my malady of self-distrust.

It is at its worst when Jean and Max, the convalescent orderlies, come
in to remove the ruins of our mess. They are pathetic and adorable with
their close-cropped heads in the pallor of their convalescence (Jean is
attired in a suit of yellowish linen and Max in striped flannels).
Jean's pallor is decorated (there is no other word for it) with
blue-grey eyes, black eyebrows, black eyelashes and a little black
moustache. He is martial and ardent and alert. But the pallor of Max is
unredeemed; it is morbid and profound. It has invaded his whole being.
His eyelids and his small sensitive mouth are involved; and his round
dark eyes have the queer grey look of some lamentable wonder and
amazement. But neither horror nor discipline have spoiled his engaging
air--the air of a very young _collegien_ who has broken loose and got
into this Military Hospital by mistake.

I do not know whether intuition is a French or Belgian gift. Jean and
Max are not Belgian but French, and they have it to a marvellous degree.
They seemed to know in an instant what was the matter with the English
lady; and they set about curing the malady. I have seldom seen such
perfect tact and gentleness as was then displayed by those two hospital
orderlies, Max and Jean. They had been wounded not so very long ago. But
they think nothing of that. They intimate that if I insist on help