ousands was changing to one of millions. The
situation was desperate. Germany had more men than the Allies, and had
vast eastern resources to draw on for still more. To the Allies only the
untapped resources of America remained.

In private conference with the President Mr. Balfour had urged haste,
and yet more haste.

Audrey, reading her newspapers faithfully, felt with her exaltation a
little stirring of regret. Her occupation, such as it was, was gone. For
the thin stream of men flowing toward the recruiting stations there was
now to be a vast movement of the young manhood of the nation. And she
could have no place in it.

Almost immediately she set to work to find herself a new place. At first
there seemed to be none. She went to a hospital, and offered her strong
body and her two willing hands for training.

"I could learn quickly," she pleaded, "and surely there will not be
enough nurses for such an army as we are to have."

"Our regular course is three years."

"But a special course. Surely I may have that. There are so many things
one won't need in France."

The head of the training school smiled rather wistfully. They came to
her so often now, these intelligent, untrained women, all eagerness to
help, to forget and unlive, if they could, their wasted lives.

"You want to go to France, of course?"

"If I can. My husband was killed over there."

But she did not intend to make capital of Chris's death. "Of course,
that has nothing to do with my going. I simply want to work."

"It's hard work. Not romantic."

"I am not looking for romance."

In the end, however, she had to give it up. In some hospitals they were
already training nurses helpers, but they were to relieve trained women
for France. She went home to think it over. She had felt that by leaving
the country she would solve Clayton's problem and her own. To stay on,
seeing him now and then, was torture for them both.

But there was something else. She had begun, that afternoon, to doubt
whether she was fitted for nursing after all. The quiet of the hospital,
the all-pervading odor of drugs, the subdued voice and quiet eyes of the
head of the training school, as of one who had looked on life and found
it infinitely sad, depressed her. She had walked home, impatient with
herself, disappointed in her own failure. She thought dismally:

"I am of no earthly use. I've played all my life, and now I'm paying for
it. I ought to." And she ran over h