Page:Weird Tales volume 36 number 01.djvu/38

52 was unfastened and her shoe untied and only partly laced."

"Humph. No, guess that hasn't any bearing on our case. I know just how she must have felt," agreed Amberson. "When I first came in the service I almost died with my puttees. Even now I sleep better sitting up when I can loosen 'em and unknot my shoes.

was pleasant, even gay, at Treves. There was much influenza, but after the exertions of field and base hospitals with their never-ending lines of surgical emergencies we found routine visitation and dedication of bed-patients almost a vacation. My quarters in the Blumenstrasse were comfortable, for a huge white porcelain stove drove back the raw damp cold, and the great bed of carved mahogany was equipped with double feather mattresses. In intervals between duty I saw the town, visited the Porta Nigra, the great fortified gate past which the life of Treves had flowed since Roman days, the brick basilica and the vast amphitheatre where Constantine had butchered captives or turned them loose to be torn by wild beasts for the amusement of the populace.

In the evening there was always plenty of amusement, dances, dinners or the opera where fat German tenors serenaded equally fat German sopranos with a zest that defied years and embonpoint.

Fedocia Watrous was a favorite everywhere, pouring tea at the officers' club, dining at headquarters, or serving buns and coffee to the men. Half the younger officers were wild about her, but it took apKern to put their disappointment into words "Hang it, Carmichael," he complained, "the gal ain't human! She has you stopped, before you get a chance to get cranked up. She's—she's like a nun. You know—just a mere spiritual entity, with her body already in the grave and only her soul remaining, and that swathed in a religious habit. You don't fall in love with a nun any more than you do with a ghost, but—" he made a gesture of futility as he reached for the brandy to replenish his drink—"there it is! I'd go for her in a big way if she'd give me a break, or even act as if she knew that I'm around."

I knew just what he meant. She had an odd trick—or an unconsciously conditioned reflex—of fading out of the real world at times and becoming entirely oblivious of her surroundings. Her power to dismiss the world from her consciousness, apparently to notice nothing about her, or even completely to forget the existence of the person talking to her, was extremely disconcerting to young men with matrimonial designs, and utterly absorbing to a doctor with a leaning toward psychiatry.

came the influenza epidemic of '19. Ambulances strained and stalled with their loads of the stricken, hospitals were bulging with fresh cases till we set beds in the corridors and cellars and still required room for more cots. The only reason that we worked no longer was that no day could be stretched to yield a twenty-fifth hour. Our patients died like flies; at first that hurt us, for it's no easier for a doctor than a layman to stand by and watch men die, but presently we grew used to it.

I had a patient in 19-B, an infantry lieutenant named Ten Eyck, and from the first I knew his case was hopeless. He fought for life with a tenacity that almost startled me. "I have to get well, Doctor—" civilian titles were the rule among civilian soldiers—he told me. "There's a girl back home I've got to see—"

"Of course, you will, son," I soothed him. "You're getting stronger all the time. Like me to write a letter to her for you?" I hadn't time to act as secretary to a dying man, but somehow I determined to snatch it.

"I'd be obliged if you would sir. I've