The Call of the Red Cross

Despite the enthralling interest of her new work and surroundings, it
seemed to Rose, during the year after she gained entrance to the temple
of her desire, that her life was standing still, while all things else
were speeding by her at a breakneck pace.

It had never been so before. Even in the isolation and simplicity of her
former home she had felt that she was a part of it all. It had seemed to
her, somehow, as though her existence had been patterned after her own
turbulent mountain stream, which danced along through sunshine and
shade, with here and there a ravine and cataract, here and there a rapid
or impeding boulder in its course; but always moving, moving. Then,
suddenly, it was as though that swift little river had fallen into a
broad, quiet basin, walled in, where it moved forward almost
imperceptibly. True, it was daily gaining greater depth and fulness as
it gathered to itself the tributary waters of knowledge and experience,
and Smiles was not insensible to this fact. But it was difficult to
remember it always, for the outer world of events was moving forward so
fast.

The very day upon which her probationary period came to an end and, with
a smile on her lips, a song in her heart, she placed the cherished cap
upon her gold-brown curls, there came, from the heart of the swiftly
piled up, lowering clouds, the blinding flash which shattered the peace
of the world and started the overwhelming conflagration into the
seething, bloody-tongued vortex into which nation after nation was
sucked irresistibly. The world had become the plaything of the Gods of
Wrath.