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BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

gels," found amusement in effort, always unsuccepsful, to distinguish them apart. The workers in the Canteen loved and admired them for their courage—that finest bravery which leads fear to intrepid action; they loved them for their rare charm, but they gave them whole-souled appreciation for the tireless, efficient labor which made them invaluable as practical canteeners. In September, at their own request, they were transferred to an Evacuation Hospital, for after the rest of a "permission" they longed to work with "our own boys." Eight months overwhelming strain and fatigue had made them more weary than they realized, and the horrors of conditions near the Front broke their already overtaxed endurance. In the diaries they left, signs of mental breakdown begin to show as early as October. After the Armistice, when they returned to Chalons as guests, they showed symptoms of nervous prostration, but years of self-control and consideration for others made them conceal the black horror in which they lived—the agony through which they saw a world which they felt contained no refuge for beauty and quiet thought. In such a world they conceived they had no place, and when on their way home they jumped from the deck of the Lorraine, it was in response to a vision that promised them fulfilment and

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