The doctor himself was a broad-shouldered, bullet-headed man, clean shaven, with close-cropped, bristly hair.  He had curiously square hands, with short, squat fingers.  He had been head surgeon in one of the Paris hospitals, and had been assigned his present post because of his marvellous quickness with the knife.  The hospital was the nearest to a hill of great strategical importance, and the fighting in the neighbourhood was almost continuous.  Often a single ambulance would bring in three or four cases, each one demanding instant attention.  Dr. Poujoulet, with his hairy arms bare to the shoulder, would polish them off one after another, with hardly a moment’s rest between, not allowing time even for the washing of the table.  Joan would have to summon all her nerve to keep herself from collapsing.  At times the need for haste was such that it was impossible to wait for the anaesthetic to take effect.  The one redeeming feature was the extraordinary heroism of the men, though occasionally there was nothing for it but to call in the orderlies to hold some poor fellow down, and to deafen one’s ears.

One day, after a successful operation, she was tending a young sergeant.  He was a well-built, handsome man, with skin as white as a woman’s.  He watched her with curious indifference in his eyes as she busied herself, trying to make him comfortable, and did nothing to help her.

“Has Mam’selle ever seen a bull fight?” he asked her.

“No,” she answered.  “I’ve seen all the horror and cruelty I want to for the rest of my life.”

“Ah,” he said, “you would understand if you had.  When one of the horses goes down gored, his entrails lying out upon the sand, you know what they do, don’t you?  They put a rope round him, and drag him, groaning, into the shambles behind.  And once there, kind people like you and Monsieur le Medecin tend him and wash him, and put his entrails back, and sew him up again.  He thinks it so kind of them—­the first time.  But the second!  He understands.  He will be sent back into the arena to be ripped up again, and again after that.  This is the third time I have been wounded, and as soon as you’ve all patched me up and I’ve got my breath again, they’ll send me back into it.  Mam’selle will forgive my not feeling grateful to her.”  He gave a short laugh that brought the blood into his mouth.

The village consisted of one long straggling street, following the course of a small stream between two lines of hills.  It was on one of the great lines of communication:  and troops and war material passed through it, going and coming, in almost endless procession.  It served also as a camp of rest.  Companies from the trenches would arrive there, generally towards the evening, weary, listless, dull-eyed, many of them staggering like over-driven cattle beneath their mass of burdens.  They would fling their accoutrements from them and stand in silent groups