Page:Our Girls.pdf/38

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30
OUR GIRLS

side we breathe more freely. It is still very quiet. The moonlight is now shining clear on the wraith-like figures which are moving silently to and fro in their rubber slippers. The river must be somewhere near, for we can hear the syrens of the steamers that are sailing by, and sometimes the lap of the running waters. We have a sense, too, of the imminent presence of the great city that is unseen and unheard from here, though not far away. Its tumultuous life must now be at high tide of early evening, with its darkened but crowded thoroughfares, its hurrying taxis, its glimmering theatres, its surging railway stations and its faces, faces, faces everywhere. And is it only an effect of the strained and perhaps disordered condition of one's nerves, at sight of these brave and fearless women filling with deadly explosives the shells that are soon to batter down the trenches of the enemy who lies in wait behind them to kill their husbands and lovers on the battle-field, that as one stands in the breathless silence