Sheila went back to her patient and began the welding of a comradeship that only such a woman can weld when her heart is full with love for another man. Day by day she made him talk more. He told her of his soldiering; apparently everything that had happened before held little or no place in his scheme of life, and he told it as simply and directly as if he had been a child. He made her see the months of training in camp, when he grew to know his company and feel for the first time what the brotherhood of arms meant. He told of the excitement of departure, the spiritual thrill of marching forth to war with the heart of a crusader in every boy's breast. His eyes shone when he spoke of their renunciation, of the glory of putting behind them home and love until the world should be made clean again and fit for happiness. Sheila winced at this, but the boy did not notice; he was too absorbed in the things he had to tell. He told of the days of waiting in France, with the battle-front before them like a mammoth drop-curtain, screening the biggest drama their lives would ever know. "There we were, marking time with the big guns, wondering if our turn would come next. That was a glorious feeling, worth all that came afterward--when the curtain went up for us." He raised himself on an elbow and looked into Sheila's cool, gray eyes with eyes that burned of battle. "God! I can't tell you about it. There have been millions of war books written by men who have seen more than I have and who have the trick of words--and you've probably read them; you know. Only reading isn't seeing it; it isn't _living it_." He turned quickly, shooting out a hand and gripping hers hard. "Tell me; you've seen all sorts of operations--horrible ones, where they take out great pieces of malignant stuff that is eating the life out of a man. You've seen that?" The nurse nodded. "Did you forget it afterward, when the body was clean and whole again? Could you forget the thing that had been there? For that's war. That's what we're fighting, the thing that's eating into the heart of a decent, sound world, and since I've seen the horror of it I can't forget. I can't see the healing--yet." "You will. Not at first, perhaps, but when you're stronger. That is one of God's blessed plans: He made beauty to be immortal and ugliness to die and be forgotten. And even the scars where ugliness was time whitens and obliterates. Give time its chance." It was the next day that the boy spoke of Clarisse. "Will time make them all right, too? Leerie," he had picked up the nickname from the other nurses and appropriated it with all the ardent affection of worshiping youth, "we're miles--ages--apart. Can anything under God's canopy bring us together, I wonder?" "Perhaps." Sheila smiled her old inscrutable smile. "Tell me more."