When she had gone, he wrote letters.
He wrote to Jean—he wrote every day to Jean.
He wrote to Hilda.
"You are splendidly fitted for just the thing that you are doing. Men come and go and you care for their wounds. But we have to care here for more than men's bodies, we care for their minds and souls—we piece them together, as it were. And we need women who believe that God's in his Heaven. And you don't believe it, Hilda. I fancy that you see in every man his particular devil, and like to lure it out for him to look at—"
He stopped there. He could see her reading what he had written. She would laugh a little, and write back:
"Are you any better than I? If I am too black to herd with the white sheep, what of you; aren't you tarred with the same brush—?"
He tore up the letter and sent a brief note. Why explain what he was feeling to Hilda? She was of those who would never know nor understand.
And he felt the need tonight of understanding—of sympathy.
And so he wrote to Emily.