ophied--or
at least a reflex habit; sympathy, sorrow, remain as mechanical
reactions, not spontaneous emotions.... You can understand that, dear?"

"Partly," said the Special Messenger, raising her dark eyes to her old
schoolmate.

"In the beginning," said the Nurse, dreamily, "the men in their
uniforms, the drums and horses and glitter, and the flags passing, and
youth--_youth_--not that you and I are yet old in years; do you know
what I mean?"

"I know," said the Special Messenger, smoothing out her riding gloves.
"Do you remember the cadets at Oxley? You loved one of them."

"Yes; you know how it was in the cities; and even afterward in
Washington--I mean the hospitals after Bull Run. Young bravery--the
Zouaves--the multicolored guard regiments--and a romance in every
death!" She laid one stained hand over the other, fingers still wide.
"But here in this blackened horror they call the 'seat of war'--this
festering bullpen, choked with dreary regiments, all alike, all in
filthy blue--here individuals vanish, men vanish. The schoolgirl dream
of man dies here forever. Only unwashed, naked duty remains; and its
inspiration, man--bloody, dirty, vermin-covered, terrible--sometimes;
and sometimes whimpering, terrified, flinching, base, bereft of all his
sex's glamour, all his mystery, shorn of authority, devoid of pride,
pitiable, screaming under the knife.--It is different now," said the
pretty Volunteer Nurse.--"The war kills more than human life."

The Special Messenger drew her buckskin gloves carefully through her
belt and buttoned the holster of her revolver.

"I have seen war, too," she said; "and the men who dealt death and the
men who received it. Their mystery remains--the glamour of a man remains
for me--because he is a man."

"I have heard them crying like children in the stretchers."

"So have I. That solves nothing."

But the Nurse went on:

"And in the wards they are sometimes something betwixt devils and
children. All the weakness and failings they attribute to women come out
in them--fear, timidity, inconsequence, greed, malice, gossip! And, as
for courage--I tell you, women bear pain better."

"Yes, I have learned that.... It is not difficult to beguile them
either; to lead them, to read them. That is part of my work. I do it. I
know they _are_ afraid in battle--the intelligent ones. Yet they fight.
I know they are really children--impulsive, passionate, selfish, often
cruel--but, after all,