omething for somebody else. Remember in
the old fairy-tales they were always cleaning the world of dragons or
giants or chimeras before they married and lived happy ever after."

"Bosh! Remember that it's only in the fairy-tales that the giants or the
monsters don't generally get you, and you get an epitaph instead of a
wedding. You romantic idealists make me sick," and Griggs snarled openly.

Their mobile unit was held up that day in a little ruined city. Only one
other dressing-station was there, and the wounded were passing through so
fast and so wounded that many could not go on. So they set up another
dressing-station and worked through the night until the stars went out and
their orders came to hurry on. They caught two hours' sleep and by noon of
another day they were as close to the front as a hospital unit could go.

A dugout had been portioned out to them, and while orderlies brought in
their equipment and the surgeons were coupling up lights and sterilizer,
Sheila started to get a hot meal in two sterilizing basins. The nurse was
just drawing in her first breath of real war. Before she had time to
exhale it a despatch-bearer climbed down into the dugout and handed an
order to the chief. It was from headquarters, and brief. The division did
not intend to have any woman's name on its casualty list. Sheila was to
be returned at once. The bearer added the information that an ambulance
was returning with wounded; she could take it.

The chief had never seen the nurse turn so white. Her eyes spoke the
appeal her lips refused to make. He tried to put something into words to
make it easier for her, but gave it up in final despair. What was there to
say? In silence the girl put on her trench coat, jammed on her hat, and
was gone. For the first kilometer her senses were too numbed to allow for
much thinking. Mechanically she passed her canteen to one of the wounded,
readjusted a blanket over another. It was not until the division turned
loose its first barrage that day that she woke up to what was happening to
her. She was going back; she was not going to have her chance.

The noise was terrific. It drowned everything but the mutinous hammerings
of her own heart. In the flash of an eye she changed from the Sheila
O'Leary of civilized production to a savage, primitive woman. She had but
one dominating instinct, to stand by the male of her tribe, to succor
him, fight with him, die with him. It seemed as futile a thing