Mrs. Prentiss had not related a single anecdote of the
front, nor alluded to the fact that she was a Red Cross nurse.
But she and Kate Terriss sat up until midnight. They were both women
capable of seizing those rare opportunities for service that flit past
so many intelligent women lacking initiative, and here was one that the
most clear-thinking man would have envied. It was a piece of
unbelievable luck; Gisela Doering was not only here to their hand in a
relaxed and friendly mood, but she possessed charm combined with a
great intelligence and an iron will: she was far more the obvious leader
than they had inferred from her work, and they guessed something of the
powerful influence she must quietly have obtained over the women of
Germany. Mrs. Prentiss had by no means approved of her at an earlier
period, for she had shrewdly suspected that it was the handsome German
governess, not the high-born Irma, who thwarted her designs upon the
most attractive "foreigner" she had ever met. But even if she had
cherished a grudge, and her life had been far too happy and successful
for that, she would have been so profoundly grateful to Gisela for
saving her from the anomalous and wretched position of other modern
American women married to medieval Germans, that she felt almost as
great a desire to serve her as civilization in general.
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