Of how softly she would touch the wounded; of how deftly she would cure them.

Of how carelessly she would dash through under a raking fire, to take a draught of water to a dying man.

Of how she had sat by an old Grenadier's death-couch, to sing to him, refusing to stir, though it was a fete at Chalons, and she loved fetes as only a French girl can.

Of how she had ridden twenty leagues on a saddleless Arab horse, to fetch the surgeon of the Spahis to a Bedouin perishing in the desert of shot-wounds.

Of how she had sent every sou of her money to her mother, so long as that mother lived--a brutal, drunk, vile-tongued old woman, who had beaten her oftentimes, as the sole maternal attention, when she was but an infant.