The chief had never seen the nurse turn so white. Her eyes spoke the appeal her lips refused to make. He tried to put something into words to make it easier for her, but gave it up in final despair. What was there to say? In silence the girl put on her trench coat, jammed on her hat, and was gone. For the first kilometer her senses were too numbed to allow for much thinking. Mechanically she passed her canteen to one of the wounded, readjusted a blanket over another. It was not until the division turned loose its first barrage that day that she woke up to what was happening to her. She was going back; she was not going to have her chance. The noise was terrific. It drowned everything but the mutinous hammerings of her own heart. In the flash of an eye she changed from the Sheila O'Leary of civilized production to a savage, primitive woman. She had but one dominating instinct, to stand by the male of her tribe, to succor him, fight with him, die with him. It seemed as futile a thing to try to stay this impulse as to try to put out the burning of a prairie when the wind blows. The ambulance stopped with a jerk. Something was wrong with the engine. The driver climbed down and threw back the hood, and, unnoticed, the nurse slipped down and passed him. When he had finished his tinkering, Sheila was fifty rods away across the meadow. "Here, you, you come back!" shouted the driver. For answer Sheila doubled her speed. The driver watched her, uncertain what to do. A shell whizzed from beyond the barrage and burst a hundred yards from the nurse. The shock threw her, but she was up in an instant, her course changed toward some deserted trenches. The driver hesitated no longer. He climbed back and started the engine. "No use tacklin' them kind," he remarked to the empty seat beside him. "She'll get there or she won't--but she won't turn back." It was nightfall when Sheila came up with what she had chosen to call "her division." She intended to possess it in spite of the commander. An outpost sentry challenged what he thought a wraith. His tongue fumbled the words, "Oh, Gawd! it's a woman!" "Yes. Will you pass her? Lots to do." He looked at the red cross on her arm and smiled foolishly. "You bet there is! Sure I'll pass you." She came up with the first battalion, bivouacked under a shell-riven ridge. "A woman!" The first boy whispered it, and the exclamation rippled on to the next and the next like wind in dry leaves. Remembering the exodus of the morning, the nurse knew if she was to stay she must prove her need and prove it quickly. Her voice was as business-like as in the old San days. "Dressing-station? Company's surgeon? Wounded? Doesn't matter which, only get me some work."