He laughed back.  He felt that it would be unbearable for Hilda to go hungry, to spoil her red and white with abstinence.

“My dear girl,” he said, “what did you mean when you spoke of going away?”

“Haven’t you been thinking of going?”

The color came up in his cheeks.  “Yes, but how did you know it?”

“Well, a woman knows.  Why don’t you make up your mind?”

“There’s Jean to think of.”

“Emily Bridges could take care of her.  And you ought to go.  Men are seeing things over there that they’ll never see again.  And women are.”

“If my country needs me—­”

Hilda was cold.  “I shouldn’t go for that.  As I told Jean, I am not making any grand stand plays.  I should go for all that I get out of it, the experience, the adventure—.”

He looked at her with some curiosity.  Jean’s words of the afternoon recurred to him.  “She’s a ghoul—­”

Yet there was something almost fascinating in her frankness.  She tore aside ruthlessly the curtain of self-deception, revealing her motives, as if she challenged him to call them less worthy than his own.

“If I go, it will be because I want to become a better nurse.  I like it here, but your practice is necessarily limited.  I should get a wider view of things.  So would you.  There would be new worlds of disease, men in all conditions of nervous shock.”

“I know.  But I’d hate to think I was going merely for selfish ends.”

She shrugged.  “Why not that as well as any other?”

He had a smouldering sense of irritation.

“When I am with Jean she makes me feel rather big and fine; when I am with you—­” He paused.

“I make you see yourself as you are, a man.  She thinks you are more than that.”

All his laughter left ham.  “It is something to be a hero to one’s daughter.  Perhaps some day I shall be a little better for her thinking so.”

She saw that she had gone too far.  “You mustn’t take the things I say too seriously.”

The bell of the telephone at her elbow whirred.  She put the receiver to her ear.  “It is General Drake’s man; he thinks you’d better come over before you go to bed.”

“I was afraid I might have to go.  He is in rather bad shape, Hilda.”

She packed his bag for him competently, and telephoned for his car.  “I’ll have a cup of coffee ready for you when you get back,” she said, as she stood in the door.  “It is going to be a dreadful night.”

The streets were icy and the sleet falling.  “You’d better have your overshoes,” Hilda decided, and went for them.

As he put them on, she stood under the hall light, smiling.  “Have you forgiven me?” she asked as he straightened up.

“For telling me the truth?  Of course.  You take such good care of me, Hilda.”