CHAPTER III
General Alexis
ALL that day Mildred Thornton had scarcely left the bedside of her patient.
For the Russian boy was dying, and as there was no hope for him, Mildred could only do her best to make him as comfortable as possible.
Now he seemed half asleep, so with her hands folded in her lap the girl sat near him trying to rest, although unable to keep her mind as quiet as her hands.
How strange her surroundings! Since her arrival in Europe as a Red Cross nurse she had lived and worked in two other countries and certainly had passed through remarkable experiences, yet none of them were to be compared with these few weeks of nursing in Russia. One might have been transferred to another planet instead of another land.
As an ordinary American tourist, Mildred had been familiar with Europe for several years, having spent three summers abroad traveling with her parents. But this was her first vision of the East, for Russia is eastern, however she may count herself otherwise.
The American girl now lifted her eyes from the figure of the dying boy and let them wander down the length of the room which sheltered them.
An immense place, it held rows on rows of other cot beds with white-clad nurses passing about among them. When they spoke or when the patients spoke Mildred could rarely guess what was being said, as she knew so few words of Russian. Yet she had little difficulty with her nursing, for the ways of the ill are universal and she had already seen so much suffering.