After the battle of San Juan Hill on July 1st 1898, Ruth Wakefield is one among many volunteer nurses who went to the assistance of a righteous cause. She stands beside a little cot and meets a man who speaks to her of "Teddy" and of the grand and glorious work that he had done that day; with this bond between them, they soon become friends. Ruth, as one who has authority, moves from cot to cot and, so, comes to stand beside the murderer of her husband or him whom she had called so, for Manuello evened up some of his wickedness by serving nobly in the battle of San Juan Hill and died in consequence of that day's dreadful harvest of human forms. Estrella, too, and Father Felix, come to stand beside his cot, but Ruth is all alone when his soul leaves the clay that it has been inhabiting for awhile, and, so, she realizes as never before, that the man she knew as husband was beneath her in every way and in that terrible and heart-rending moment, she begins to learn the way to forget the first wild love of her young womanhood and find the steps that lead to saner, quieter and happier hours and days and years. Ruth is given privileges that are not accorded to many near a bloody battle-field, and, when she leaves the hospital for the night on July 1st, 1898, she drives her team along a lonely road, hoping to leave behind her, not only the scenes she has just been among, but, also, the thoughts that those scenes have awakened in her mind. She thinks she is going directly away from the recent battle-field. Her team is startled by the sudden rising of a man near the road and runs away, throwing her out upon the ground; she climbs over a low embankment beside the road and finds herself among the dead; she is almost stupefied by this knowledge, but, soon, her instincts for helping those who are in trouble rise above her fears and she cries aloud and calls ... asking if any there are in need of help that she can give to them. A faint voice answers her and she seeks it out and finds an officer who has been stricken down at the head of his squad of men; they are all lying in a disordered heap and Ruth is obliged to lift one dead body off of the man who seems to be alive. Having found him, she proceeds, from her knowledge as a nurse, to aid him ... finds a wound from which his life-blood is flowing fast and forms a tourniquet with a silken scarf she happens to be wearing. He revives enough to whisper to her, naming her, on the instant "Tender Heart" by which title he afterwards addresses her.