Incredible as it may seem, there is gossip even inside a great fortress in time of war.
But Mildred's Russian companions had neither time nor opportunity to reveal much to her at present. As soon as it was possible she begged that she might be allowed to go to her own room. Although she shared it with Nona and Barbara, neither one of them was there at the time.
But instead of lying down at once Mildred wrote a few lines to her mother. She knew that she would be greatly pleased by the attention that had just been paid her. Of course Mildred realized that the General's thanks were not bestowed upon her as an individual, but as a representative of the United States, whose sympathy and friendliness Russia so greatly appreciated.
Barbara had been writing a letter to Dick Thornton. She was seated on the side of her cot bed in a tiny room high up in a tower, with only one small window overlooking the courtyard below.
Although it was well into the twentieth century, this room was just such an one as might have concealed the hapless Amy Robsart in the days of Lord Leicester and Kenilworth Castle. But although Barbara had not to suffer the thought of a faithless lover, at the present moment she was feeling extremely sorry for herself.
Russia had no charms for her as it appeared to have for Mildred Thornton and Nona Davis. She disliked its bleakness, its barbarity and the strange, moody people it contained. Of course she realized that there was another side to Russian life, before the present war its society was one of the gayest in the world. But these days, when the Germans were driving the Russian army backward and even further backward behind their own frontiers, were days for work and silence, not social amusements. Moreover, Barbara knew that she could never expect to have any part in Russian social life when her mission lay among the wounded. So far she had met only other Red Cross nurses, a few physicians and the soldiers who required her care. But really Barbara was not so foolish as to resent these conditions; she was merely homesick and anxious to see Dick Thornton, and if not Dick, then Eugenia.
France had not seemed so far away from the United States and she had loved France and its brave, gay people. She had understood them and their life. Almost she had envied Eugenia her future possession of the old chateau and the little "Farmhouse with the Blue Front Door." But then Eugenia had seemed to find France as strange and uncongenial as Barbara now considered Russia.