"Emily Bridges could take care of her. And you ought to go. Men are seeing things over there that they'll never see again. And women are."
"If my country needs me—"
Hilda was cold. "I shouldn't go for that. As I told Jean, I am not making any grand stand plays. I should go for all that I get out of it, the experience, the adventure—."
He looked at her with some curiosity. Jean's words of the afternoon recurred to him. "She's a ghoul—"
Yet there was something almost fascinating in her frankness. She tore aside ruthlessly the curtain of self-deception, revealing her motives, as if she challenged him to call them less worthy than his own.
"If I go, it will be because I want to become a better nurse. I like it here, but your practice is necessarily limited. I should get a wider view of things. So would you. There would be new worlds of disease, men in all conditions of nervous shock."
"I know. But I'd hate to think I was going merely for selfish ends."
She shrugged. "Why not that as well as any other?"
He had a smouldering sense of irritation.
"When I am with Jean she makes me feel rather big and fine; when I am with you—" He paused.