planning[16] to start off, almost immediately, to continue her Red Cross nursing. With only one real holiday, Nona Davis had been nursing almost continuously since the outbreak of the war. As a matter of fact she had the strength which so often seems a characteristic of delicate, ethereal persons.

[16]

After embracing Barbara and nodding to her other friends she dropped into a big leather chair, in which she appeared lost, except that it accentuated the shining quality of her pale, yellow hair and the blueness of her eyes, which looked darker, because of the rather strained, whiteness of her face.

“Please give me tea, and tea, and tea, Barbara, more than Eugenia ever allowed us to drink even in our most enthusiastic tea drinking days at the old château in southern France. I think I have been all over New York City this afternoon and seen a dozen people on business.”

At this Nona turned with an apologetic glance toward Sonya.

“Don’t be vexed, Sonya, please, but I’m sailing for France in a week or ten days.[17] Of course we can’t tell just when, or any other details of our departure. But I find I am very much needed, in spite of all the other Red Cross nurses who have already gone. Why, every few days another Red Cross unit sails! Still, with more and more American soldiers going over every week, until we cannot guess what the number may come to be some day, it may yet be difficult to find enough nurses with experience to care for them.”

[17]

From its original pallor, Nona’s face had changed and was flushed deeply with excitement as she talked.

Both to Barbara and Sonya it occurred as they now watched her, however, that she was trying to show more self-control than she actually felt.

Always, Nona had been intensely interested in her Red Cross work and had thrown herself into it with all the ardor and devotion of her southern temperament. But since the entry of the United States into the great European conflict she had undoubtedly developed an added enthusiasm and sense of responsibility.

[18]Just how much she was doing this to aid her in forgetting Eugino Zoli’s death and her experience with him in Italy, Sonya Valesky, who had been her companion in Florence, could not guess. Of her friend’s interest in the young Italian aviator, Barbara Thornton understood nothing beyond Nona’s occasional casual mention of his name in her Italian 

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