“About seeing death at first hand. I didn’t feel the way you did. I was all broken up the first time; couldn’t sleep for a week. And yet, you Frenchwomen go through all that and can still smile. Why is it? Have we weaker nerves?”
“Don’t you think there is something changed in our smiles?” she said, looking up.
“Yes, yes, I feel that. But you have so much faith in the good of the world, you seem so uplifted by your experience, there is something so serene in your eyes—”
I stopped, realizing how personal my analysis was growing.
“Ah, but when you are not just a spectator, when you are helping, it is different. What is uplifting in service is that your own self becomes of such little importance.”
“Yes, but I should think your memories—” I broke off. “When you told that fairy tale to Master Jack, the first day, you could even laugh.”
“It’s because what I remember is not pain and ugliness but only the beauty of sacrifice and the nobility of men who at other times may have been very sordid,” she said warmly. “Do you know what our memories are?” She half closed her eyes, and a tender look touched her lips. “I think of one Christmas Eve—a great barn where I was nursing—a barn that had been improvised into a hospital, with beds in the straw, just like the birthplace of the little Saviour. I don’t like to speak of myself, but I will tell you this. We stayed—my mother and I—in a little village on the frontier—our village—when the Germans came through; and that village, our little village, changed hands six times.”
“And you stayed—you and your mother?”
“We stayed, not to abandon our people and to take care of our poor wounded.”