“The thing that gets me”—it was the youngest ambulance driver again—“is how the devil we’re ever going to make ’em see it back home—till it’s too late, same as she said.”
The tired surgeon lifted his head. “I would go home and make some speeches,” he said, “if I could get away. But if I go—who’ll do my job here?”
“It will take ten men,” said the nurse, simply.
He looked at her, and his grim smile touched his lips. “Twenty nurses to fill your little shoes,” he retorted.
“Little shoes?” The second ambulance driver looked down at them. “They are darned little, but it would take twenty nurses, at that!”
“America’s got to come!” spoke the third driver—a fair-haired boy with a fresh, tanned face. “Gee, she’s got to come, or I’ll turn Frenchman, for one. I can’t stand it any longer. Money and munitions—and food—that’s what they write—and we ought to be satisfied. Satisfied! Men—why don’t they send men? Why don’t they come—millions of ’em! Oh, it’s hell to have to be ashamed of your own country!”
“She will come!” It was the nurse. She stood up. Her eyes looked out again across the seas. “I see her coming.” She stretched out her arms. Behind her the four men, the tired surgeon and the boyish ambulance drivers, lifted their heads and stretched out their arms, too. The girl’s voice rang out:
“O America!—Come—before it is forever too late!”
The curtain fell. A murmur came from the audience—the delayed applause rose, and rose again—then died away. People got up, some triumphant, some uncertainly smiling, others dark of brow. The young men beside Black were aflame with the fire of that last challenge; their eyes looked as if they were seeing new and strange things. When he could get away from them Black pulled himself together, dived through the orchestra door and came upon the stage. He went first to Jane Ray.