"The prospect of being taken prisoner, I suppose."
"Of course. If the Germans break through from the north they'll take him along. That would be pretty hard luck, wouldn't it?—To be taken before one has even a taste of battle!"
Sister Eila nodded:
"He says nothing, but I know that is what troubles him. When I came in this morning, I found him up and trying to walk. I sent him back to bed. But he tells me he does not need to use his legs in his branch of the British service, and that if he could only get to Chalons he would be fit for duty. I think, from things he has said, that both he and Mr. Halkett belong to the Flying Corps."
Warner was immensely interested. Sister Eila told him briefly why she suspected this to be true, then, casting another perplexed glance behind her, she asked in a low voice who might be the extremely unprepossessing individual shuffling along the road behind them. And Warner told her, humorously; but she did not smile.
Watching her downcast eyes and grave lips in the transparent shadow of her white coiffe, he thought he had never seen a human face so pure, so tender—with such infinite capacity for charity.
She said very gently:
"My duties have led me more than once into the Faubourgs. There is nothing sadder to me than Paris.... Always I have believed that sin and degradation among the poor should be treated as diseases of the mind.... Poor things—they have no doctor, no medicines, no hospital to aid them in their illness—the most terrible illness in the world, which they inherit at birth—poverty! Poverty sickens the body, and at last the mind; and from a diseased mind all evil in the world is born.... They are not to blame who daily crucify Christ; for they know not what they do."
He walked silently beside her. She spoke again of crippled minds, and of the responsibility of civilization, then looked up at his gloomy visage with a faint smile, excusing herself for any lack of cheerfulness and courage.
"Indeed," she said almost gayly, "God is best served with a light heart, I think. There is no palladin like good humor to subdue terror and slay despair; no ally of Christ so powerful as he who laughs when evil threatens. Sin is most easily slain with a smile, I think; its germs die under it as bacilli die in the sunlight. Tenez, Monsieur Warner, what do you think of my theories of medicine, moral, spiritual, and mundane? Is it likely that the Academy will award me palms?"