“You don’t have to drain wounds and dry out sores and do the thousand unspeakable offices that we do.”
“Why do you do them?”
“I have to.”
“You didn’t have to enlist. Why did you?”
“Why do the men enlist?” asked the Nurse. “That’s why you and I did—whatever the motive may have been, God knows.... And it’s killed part of me.... You don’t cleanse ulcers.”
“No; I am not fitted. I tried; and lost none of the romance in me. Only it happens that I can do—what I am doing—better.”
The Nurse looked at her a trifle awed.
“To think, dear, that you should turn out to be the celebrated Special Messenger. You were timid in school.”
“I am now.... You don’t know how afraid a woman can be. Suppose in school—suppose that for one moment we could have foreseen our destiny—here together, you and I, as we are now.”
The Nurse looked into the stained hollow of her right hand.