pulling one Belgian out of the bloody dust than in your lifetime of shaving the market." The color came into his face with a rush. He was so used to expressing power, sitting silent and a little grim, and moving weaker men to his will, that it was a new experience to be talked to by a person who quite visibly had vital force. [174] [174] "I used to be afraid of people like you," she went on. "But you don't look half as big to me now as one of these young chauffeurs who take in the wounded under shrapnel. You've come to regard your directive ability as something sacred. You think you can sit in moral judgment on these people over here—these boys that are flinging away their lives for the future. Come with me to Belgium, and find out what they're really fighting about." Hinchcliffe was used to swift decisions. "I'll do it," he said. Hilda took him straight to Ghent. Then she pushed her inquiries out among her Belgian friends. The day before, there had been a savage fight at Alost. "You will find what you want in Wetteren Hospital," suggested Monsieur Caron, Secretary of the Ghent Red Cross, to Hilda. [175] [175] "To-morrow, we will go there," she said. That first evening, she led Hinchcliffe through Ghent. In her weeks of work there, she had come to love the beautiful old town. It was strangely unlike her home cities—the brisk prairie "parlor city," where she had grown up inch by inch, as it extended itself acre by acre, and the mad modern city where she had struggled for her bread. The tide of slaughter was still to the east: a low rumble, like surf on a far-away beach. Sometimes it came whinnying and licking at the very doorstep, and then ebbed back, but never rolled up on the ancient city. It was only an under-hum to merriment. It sharpened the nerve of response to whatever passing excellence there was in the old streets and vivid gardens. Modern cities are portions of a world in the making. But Ghent was a completed and placid thing, as fair as men could fashion it. [176] [176] As evening fell, they two leaned on St. Michel's bridge of the River
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