four more patients for whom room must be made besides these from the battlefield that have been operated on, twenty of them, since nine o'clock this morning. These four who are now being laid tenderly on the white cots have two of them had their legs blown off, and two others are already dying from wounds more mortal.
Eleanor Warrender a little later closes their eyes in the last sleep. She has watched beside hundreds of men like that as they have gone out into the Great Beyond. And just now she walks into the Ladies' Empire Club as calmly as if she had but come from a shopping tour in Oxford Street. Ah, well, but one can suffer just so much, as on a musical instrument you may strike the highest key and you may strike it again and again until it flats a little on the ear because you have become so accustomed to it. But it is the limit. It is the highest key. There is nothing more beyond, at least. And that is what you feel ultimately about these women who have come through the experience that leads to the decoration. It is one in the most constant danger who arrives at length at the most constant calm.
"I don't know really why it should be called bravery," says Eleanor Warrender's quiet voice. "You see, a bomb has never dropped on me, so I have no actual personal experience of what it would be like. Now in that old convent in Flanders turned into a hospital, Sister Gertrude at the third cot from where I stood had a leg blown off, and Sister Felice had lost an arm, and I think it was very brave of them to go
