For weeks it had seemed to the girl that her love had lain dormant, hushed under the pressure of work. So vital and eternal were both love and happiness that in her zeal for perfect, impersonal service she had thrust them both out of sight, as one might put seeds away in the dark to wait until planting-time, assured of their fulfilment when the time came. But now in the lull between the work at the hospital and the work that would soon claim her again she discovered that in some inexplicable manner love would no longer be shut out. She was sick for the man she loved. A funny little wistful droop took Sheila's lips, and her chin quivered for an instant. It was so unlike the girl that the chief, seeing, reached across and laid a hand on her knee. "What is it? Not sorry?" "Never. But I was thinking how pleasantly easy it might have been to stay behind at the old San. Peter and I'd be climbing that mythical hilltop of ours, with a home of our own at the end of the climb--if we'd stayed behind." "Well, why didn't you?" The nurse laughed softly. Griggs volunteered to answer for her. "Because you were a fool, like a lot of the rest of us." "Because--oh, because of that queer something inside us all that pries us away from our determinations just to be contented and happy all our lives and hustles us somewhere to do something for somebody else. Remember in the old fairy-tales they were always cleaning the world of dragons or giants or chimeras before they married and lived happy ever after." "Bosh! Remember that it's only in the fairy-tales that the giants or the monsters don't generally get you, and you get an epitaph instead of a wedding. You romantic idealists make me sick," and Griggs snarled openly. Their mobile unit was held up that day in a little ruined city. Only one other dressing-station was there, and the wounded were passing through so fast and so wounded that many could not go on. So they set up another dressing-station and worked through the night until the stars went out and their orders came to hurry on. They caught two hours' sleep and by noon of another day they were as close to the front as a hospital unit could go. A dugout had been portioned out to them, and while orderlies brought in their equipment and the surgeons were coupling up lights and sterilizer, Sheila started to get a hot meal in two sterilizing basins. The nurse was just drawing in her first breath of real war. Before she had time to exhale it a despatch-bearer climbed down into the dugout and handed an order to the chief. It was from headquarters, and brief. The division did not intend to have any woman's name on its casualty list. Sheila was to be returned at once. The bearer added the information that an ambulance was returning with wounded; she could take it.