“For a woman, no. For a soldier, yes,” she answered. It was a key-note. Nina spoke for the Battalion. Soldiers and women were, for them, things apart. When they cut off their long braids and soft curls, and pledged themselves to fight and die for their country, they put aside all the superficial femininities. Powder-puffs and cosmetics had remained at home. Just once I saw a tiny mirror emerge from a kit-bag long enough to permit its owner to examine critically a small red spot on the end of her nose. But the essential womanliness in them cropped out in a thousand ways. Day and night the rain pounded upon the low roof, and all that week our feet and boots were soaked beyond all drying. It was bitterly cold in the barracks, and the odors of cheese and sausage purchased at the soldiers’ store mingled with the smell of wet clothes and greased boots. Marya Skridlova acquired a severe cough, and her cheeks were flushed with fever. “I am afraid I will never make a soldier,” she said one day, with a wry little smile; “I am too demoiselle.” I recalled the first time I saw her. It was in the barracks at Petrograd, the day she joined the regiment. She still wore her Red Cross nurse’s uniform, and the lovely oval of her face was framed with braids of soft brown hair. She was twenty-five years old, spoke five languages, was pretty, accomplished, and popular. Apparently she had everything to live for, but she was quite certain that her hours on earth were numbered, and briefly. Every girl in the barracks was devoted to her, and they were continually coaxing her to eat just another spoonful of the soup and _kasha_, which she loathed. “Why did you come?” I asked her. “Because I felt I had to,” she answered. “What else is there for us to do? The soul of the army is sick, and we must heal it. I have come, and I shall stay until they give me a cross--a metal one or a wooden one,” she added. Every night Bachkarova announced that to-morrow they would leave for the trenches, and every night the announcement brought a cheer. In the morning they packed their kit-bags and rolled up their blanket-coats; at night they were still in the same place. Always there was something lacking. First it was the boots. The army shoemaker was not used to providing for such small feet, and the commissariat was sorely taxed. When the boots arrived, the medical supplies were missing. When the big metal soup kitchen on wheels had come, there were no horses to pull it. A week went by, but gradually the entire camp equipment was collected. Late one Sunday afternoon Bachkarova and Skridlova were summoned to staff headquarters. When they returned, they brought the news for which every girl in the barracks was longing. The Battalion was ordered to march at three o’clock next morning.