family
connections which no well-born bourgeoise can escape, and gradually
became infected with the excitement of the hour; despite the fact that
she believed her poor worn-out body never would take a long walk
again.

Then, one day, the thought suddenly illuminated her awakening mind:
"How fortunate I am! I have no one to lose in this terrible war!" (Her
brother was too delicate for service.) "These tears I see every day
after news has come that a father, a brother, a husband, a son, has
fallen on the battlefield or died of horrible agony in hospital, I
shall never shed. Almost alone of the many I know, and the millions of
women in France, I am mercifully exempt from an agony that has no end.
If I were married, and were older and had sons, I should be suffering
unendurably now. I am fortunate indeed and feel an ingrate that I have
ever repined."

Then naturally enough followed the thought that it behooved her to do
something for her country, not only as a manifest of thanksgiving but
also because it was her duty as a young woman of wealth and leisure.

Oddly enough considering the delicate health in which she firmly
believed, she tried to be a nurse. There were many amateurs in the
hospitals in those days when France was as short of nurses as of
everything else except men, and she was accepted.

But nursing then involved standing all day on one's feet and sometimes
all night as well, and her pampered body was far from strong enough
for such a tax in spite of her now glowing spirit. While she was
casting about for some work in which she might really play a useful
and beneficent role a friend invited her to drive out to the environs
of Paris and visit the wretched eclopes, to whom several charitable
ladies occasionally took little gifts of cigarettes and chocolate.

Then, at last, Mlle. Javal found herself; and from a halting
apprehensive seeker, still weary in mind and limb, she became almost
abruptly one of the most original and executive women in
France--incidentally one of the healthiest. When I met her, some
twenty months later, she had red cheeks and was the only one of all
those women of all classes slaving for France who told me she never
felt tired; in fact felt stronger every day.

III

The eclopes, in the new adaptation of the word, are men who are not
ill enough for the military hospitals and not well enough to fight.
They may have slight wounds, or temporary affections of the sight or
hearing,