dn't. I wonder if that is not Nature's narcotic for all experiences
outside those we are to expect from Life, which, in its normal course,
has tragedies enough.

Then again, sometimes, in the night, I have a sensation as if I were
getting a special view of a really magnificent spectacle to which the
rest of "my set" had not been invited--as if I were seeing it at a risk,
but determined to see it through.

I can imagine you, wrinkling your brows at me and telling me that that
frame of mind comes of my theatre-going habit. Well, it is not worth
while arguing it out. I can't. There is a kind of veil over it.

Nor were the day's mental adventures over.

I was just back from my promenade when my little French friend from
the foot of the hill came to the door. I call her "my little friend,"
though she is taller than I am, because she is only half my age.
She came with the proposition that I should harness Ninette and go
with her out to the battlefield, where, she said, they were sadly in
need of help.

I asked her how she knew, and she replied that one of our old men
had been across the river and brought back the news that the field
ambulance at Neufmortier was short of nurses, and that it was
thought that there were still many wounded men in the woods who
had not yet been picked up.

I asked her if any official call for help had come. She said "No," but
she presented so strong a case in favor of volunteering that, at first, it
seemed to me that there was nothing to do but go, and go quickly.

But before she got outside the gate I rushed after her to tell her that it
seemed impossible,--that I knew they didn't want an old lady like me,
however willing, an old lady very unsteady on her feet, absolutely
ignorant of the simplest rules of "first aid to the wounded," that they
needed skilled and tried people, that we not only could not lend
efficient aid, but should be a nuisance, even if, which I doubted, we
were allowed to cross the Marne.

All the time I was explaining myself, with that diabolical dual
consciousness which makes us spectator and listener to ourselves,
in the back of my brain--or my soul--was running this query: "I wonder
what a raw battlefield looks like? I have a chance to see if I want to--
perhaps." I suppose that was an attack of involuntary, unpremeditated
curiosity. I did not want to go.

I wonder if that was not the sort of thing which, if told in the
confessional in ancient times, got one conv