"Our regular course is three years."

"But a special course. Surely I may have that. There are so many things
one won't need in France."

The head of the training school smiled rather wistfully. They came to
her so often now, these intelligent, untrained women, all eagerness to
help, to forget and unlive, if they could, their wasted lives.

"You want to go to France, of course?"

"If I can. My husband was killed over there."

But she did not intend to make capital of Chris's death. "Of course,
that has nothing to do with my going. I simply want to work."

"It's hard work. Not romantic."

"I am not looking for romance."

In the end, however, she had to give it up. In some hospitals they were
already training nurses helpers, but they were to relieve trained women
for France. She went home to think it over. She had felt that by leaving
the country she would solve Clayton's problem and her own. To stay on,
seeing him now and then, was torture for them both.

But there was something else. She had begun, that afternoon, to doubt
whether she was fitted for nursing after all. The quiet of the hospital,
the all-pervading odor of drugs, the subdued voice and quiet eyes of the
head of the training school, as of one who had looked on life and found
it infinitely sad, depressed her. She had walked home, impatient with
herself, disappointed in her own failure. She thought dismally: "I am of no earthly use. I've played all my life, and now I'm paying for
it. I ought to." And she ran over her pitiful accomplishments: "golf,
bridge, ride, shoot, swim, sing (a little), dance, tennis, some
French--what a sickening list!"