romantic girl I was that some day some man would marry me in spite of my poverty.  Now I would not marry one of the Kaiser’s sons.  Sick or well, German, English, French, I loathe them all alike.  Obscene beasts every one of them; but I hate the Germans most, for they are the most disgusting invalids.  And I am a German girl, too.  France has never had any call for me.  It is Marie who would be all French if she could.  Poor little Marie, with her drab face and hair, her poverty, her dynamic body, mad to marry, and climbing out of the window when mother is asleep, to go to Socialists’ meetings and scream off her pent-up passions.  What a hideous world!”

She sprang to her feet and flung her arms above her head and glared at the unresponsive stars.

“O God!” she prayed.  “Deliver us!  Deliver us from war and deliver us from men!  Deliver us from Kings and deliver us from criminal jealousies and ambitions and greeds that the innocent millions expiate in blood and tears!  Deliver us from cowards—­” She whirled suddenly upon Gisela.  “You—­you—­why don’t you lead us out?  You have more mind than any woman in Germany.  You have more influence.  I have always placed my hopes on you.  But now—­now—­you are doing nothing but nurse disgusting men like the rest of us.”

“Hush!  You are talking too loud.  And you are carrying your revolt too far.  These poor deluded men you nurse are only to be pitied, and if they merely revolt you, you have no vocation—­”

“When did I ever pretend to have a vocation for nursing?  Like all the rest I felt I must do my part, and heaven knows it is better than sitting at home making bandages and watching my mother slowly starve.  If I had rolled one more bandage I should have gone mad.”

“Well, dear Heloise, as far as I am concerned, the time for women to battle for their rights is when their country is safe, not in mortal danger.  Be sure that when this war is over—­”

She fell silent.  A little flame had leapt in her brain.  She extinguished it hurriedly, but it burnt the fingers of her will, always enthroned and always on guard.  As she stared at Heloise, lovely in her Red Cross uniform, a white torch against the dark horizon, her tragic eyes once more searching the heavens, it struggled for life again and again.  She loved Heloise and she felt a sudden inclusive love of her sex, an overpowering desire to deliver it from the sadness and horror of war; a profounder emotion than anything it had inspired in those far off days of peace.  After all, however serious she had believed herself to be, it had been a game, a career; for in times of peace one must invent the vital interests of life, and one’s success or failure depends upon one’s powers of creating and sustaining the delusion.  Only two things in life were real, love and war.