"You shall not! You'll go to Paris with Madame de Moidrey—that's what you'll do!"
"Jim, that is absurd. If I'm wanted I shall volunteer for hospital service, anyway. And if you offer yourself I shall wait until I find out where you are to be sent, and then I shall beg them to take me at the nearest field ambulance."
"No good, Philippa. They do that sort of thing in romances, but in real life a course of hospital training is required of volunteers."
"I can scrub floors and sew and cook," she said serenely. "Do they not need such people?"
"There's no use discussing it," he said. "Only trained women will be wanted—tolerated; and I suppose only trained men. The amateur nurse and warrior were utterly and definitely discredited in South Africa. There'll be no more of that. There's no room for us, Philippa; the firing line would reject me with derision, and the base hospital would politely bow you out." He laughed rather mirthlessly. "There remains for us," he said, "the admirable, but somewhat monotonous thinking-rôles of respectable citizens—items in the world-wide chorus which marches harmlessly hither and thither during the impending drama, and forms pleasing backgrounds for the principals when they take their curtain calls."
She felt the undertone of slight bitterness in his voice; understood it, perhaps, for, when the punt was turned and driven gently ashore among the foggy rushes, she retained the supporting arm he offered, clung to it almost caressingly.
"I know you," she murmured, as they mounted the grassy bank together; "you have no need to tell me what you are—dearest, noblest, best among men."
He answered almost impatiently:
"I don't want you to think that of me! You must not believe it, Philippa. Keep your head clear, and your judgment independent of that warm, sweet heart of yours. I'm a most ordinary sort of man, little distinguished, not in any way remarkable——"
"Don't!" she said. "You only hurt me, not yourself. Of what use is it saying such things to a girl when the whole world would be a solitary place if you were not in it—if your living mind did not make the earth a real and living place to me!