"But—but you're not a nurse."
"No.... My official capacities wall be treasurer, secretary, courier, and emergency chauffeur. But between ourselves, the idea is that I should write up incidents of our daily round; and knock them into a book of which the enormous profits shall be devoted to the purchase of more ambulances. We've an awfully scratch lot at present."
"Just now you said books didn't matter."
She shrugged her shoulders. "I should have said fiction didn't matter. Campbell thinks that a volume of impressions jotted down on the spot ought to go well, before the market is choked up with them."
"Campbell——?"
"Yes. He was up at Ferguson's the other day; and he made a fairly generous advance offer."
Gareth sat down again, his hands propping his head, while his mind swam with dim pellucid shapes ... hardly as yet apprehended. Sick disappointment at his sacrifice so lightly spurned.... Sick fear that Patricia was going into danger, and that he would not be there to protect her.... Sick envy of the ease with which she had found a way into the very centre of action—ungetatable centre where he so longed to be.... But it was all wrong: she was a woman and he a man. In the Quest for the Grail, in the Crusades for Jerusalem, it was the knight who strode forth with mighty effect and clangour, the maiden who sat at home musing over his shield....
So her intention was indeed to write again!... Already to have arranged matters with Campbell—his chief; his firm—and he only to hear now, and how casually, of the step taken!... Things would never be right again between them—never! never! Although they were married; although he was the husband;—still that inversion of leadership. And after the war she would be able to say she had been in the thick of it; she would be One of Them.... The old horror re-threatening him.
Supposing she did not come back. The Prussians did queer things in Belgium; queer and ugly things to women—to Pat, who was beautiful and fearless ... his wife. Oh, he was proud of her; but he wished she had been confronted with sufficient difficulties that her desire, her excellent and gallant desire to achieve her share in the war, might have remained stuck fast in a bag of non-accomplishment. He would not have had it otherwise than that she should wish to participate.
Above all and again ... it was not quite fair. He had been touched to such an exalted mood during his walk down the Strand; exalted, yet humble; eager to renounce; sensitive to appreciate each subtle evidence of a nation quickened at last to nobility. The sort of mood one must really cherish. And then Pat had thoroughly upset him.