“A very little does for me,” she said. “I am strong.”
She had finished her studies now, and was fully qualified. Her ambition was to go to the famine district and join the medical staff at Kazan who were fighting the typhus. They had asked for her, but it was difficult to travel.
“How will your father and mother manage without you?” he asked, and she told him that Alexis had just been promoted to the Red Army Staff. He would be able to get better food for them, and protect them, because of his service to the state.
“I am going to Kazan,” said Bertram. “Why not come in the same train, if I can help you? The Americans are running it, and they would welcome your help.”
She was excited by the possibility, and begged him to speak a word for her; and then, believing she had asked too much of him, pleaded for forgiveness for putting him to so much trouble.
“It is my eagerness to do some work for Russia which makes me forget my manners,” she said.
He put aside the idea of trouble, and had only one doubt in trying to get her a place in the train to Kazan.
“They tell me typhus is a scourge there, and very dangerous.”
“Of course,” said the girl. “But you are going, are you not? You are not afraid, because you also want to be of service to our poor people. Why, then, should I who am a Russian, be afraid to go?”
He found no answer to that, but thought only of her devotion to her people and her unselfishness.