icted of being "possessed
of the devil"?

Of course Mlle. Henriette was terribly disappointed. Her mother would
not let her go without me. I imagine the wise lady knew that I would
not go. She tried to insist, but my mind was made up.

She argued that we could "hunt for the dead," and "carry consolation
to the dying." I shook my head. I even had to cut the argument short
by going into the house. I felt an imperative need to get the door
closed between us. The habit I have--you know it well, it is often
enough disconcerting to me--of getting an ill-timed comic picture in
my mind, made me afraid that I was going to laugh at the wrong
moment. If I had, I should never have been able to explain to her, and
hope to be understood.

The truth was that I had a sudden, cinematographical vision of my
chubby self--me, who cannot walk half a mile, nor bend over without
getting palpitation--stumbling in my high-heeled shoes over the fields
ploughed by cavalry and shell--breathlessly bent on carrying
consolation to the dying. I knew that I should surely have to be picked
up with the dead and dying, or, worse still, usurp a place in an
ambulance, unless eternal justice--in spite of my age, my sex, and my
white hairs--left me lying where I fell--and serve me good and right!

I know now that if the need and opportunity had come to my gate--as
it might--I should, instinctively, have known what to do, and have
done it. But for me to drive deliberately nine miles--we should have
had to make a wide detour to cross the Marne on the pontoons--
behind a donkey who travels two miles an hour, to seek such an
experience, and with several hours to think it over en route, and the
conviction that I would be an unwelcome intruder--that was another
matter.

I am afraid Mlle. Henriette will never forgive me. She will soon be
walking around in a hospital, looking so pretty in her nurse's dress
and veil. But she will always think that she lost a great opportunity that
day--and a picturesque one.

By the way, I have a new inmate in my house--a kitten. He was
evidently lost during the emigration. Amelie says he is three months
old. He arrived at her door crying with hunger the other morning.
Amelie loves beasties better than humans. She took him in and fed
him. But as she has six cats already, she seemed to think that it was
my duty to take this one. She cloaked that idea in the statement that it
was "good for me" to have "something alive" moving ab