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“Barnum and Bailey travels with less!” exclaimed Maud, horrified. “People will think the circus has come to town.”

“Ah, Miss Randolph—you can be in charge of buying yarns, cloth, and woolens. I would advise starting at La Samaritaine. You’ll find it’s rather like Gimbels.”

“I don’t shop at Gimbels,” said Maud blankly.

“La Samaritaine,” said Mrs. Rutherford, “is giving us a five percent discount.”

And that was that.

Kate was rather less amused by Maud’s discomfort when she herself was tasked with buying two hundred dollars’ worth of agricultural tools. She refrained from pointing out that she wouldn’t know a garden implement if it bit her; she suspected that Mrs. Rutherford would only inform her that there was no time like the present to learn.

At least it wasn’t chickens.

While they were all in the midst of their orgy of shopping, Mrs. Rutherford was to tour the devastated areas; the doctors would visit hospitals. The rest of them, once they acquired their permits, would be loaned out to various organizations for the duration of their time in Paris, offered a choice of packing and unpacking supplies for the American Fund for French Wounded, rolling bandages for the Surgical Dressings Committee of the Red Cross, or manufacturing special splints for the wounded at the Société pour les Blessés in the Bois de Boulogne.

Kate had chosen the latter. She tried not to think what her mother would say about going all the way to Paris to engage in factory work, unpaid.

For that, she might have stayed in Brooklyn. And been paid for it.

The only saving grace was that their cots had arrived and were lined up in two rows in the attic like the beds for the seven little men in Snow White.

Kate crawled wearily into her cot, ridiculously grateful for something approximating a bed. It had been a long time since she had done anything more strenuous than write on a chalkboard. After carrying Margaret, her body felt as though someone had been at it with a hammer. And it was delicious to be on a mattress again, even only a sort of mattress, and not on a floor or deck. . . .

“Kate?” She heard the cot next to her creak as Emmie rolled in her direction. “Kate, are you awake?”

“Mmm?” She considered pretending to be asleep but couldn’t quite make herself do it. “Yes?”

“I can’t stop thinking about Nurse Fellowes.”

“Nurse . . . oh.” That morning felt like years ago already. It seemed absurd they’d only been in Paris for a day; it felt more like weeks. “The Canadian nurse with the red hair.”

“I know. It’s foolish of me.” Kate could hear Emmie thrashing about in the bedclothes. “We didn’t even see her foot. It wasn’t like those pictures we saw of the men without noses or—oh, you know. And her face—I suppose it’s the sort of thing that might happen if your hair caught fire on a candle, or you accidentally leaned too close to a fire, or goodness only knows what. Not necessarily a war injury. These sorts of things do happen. I met a woman at the settlement house who had lost both her eyebrows to a mistake with a gas jet.”

Kate groaned and buried her face in her pillow. “Emmie. What are you talking about?”

“Nurse Fellowes. Every time I close my eyes, I keep seeing her face, with all those scars.” Emmie sat up, swinging her legs over the side of the cot. Kate could see her in the darkness as a vague outline, long braid down over one shoulder. “It’s just that one doesn’t expect nurses to be hurt. Soldiers—they know they’re going to be shot at. But nurses?”

Reluctantly, Kate propped herself up on one arm. “I don’t imagine shells discriminate based on profession.”

“It seems wrong somehow, to hurt someone who’s trying to heal. War is war. I understand that. But—when someone is trying to do good . . .”

“I don’t imagine they do it on purpose.” It felt like being back at Smith again, whispering back and forth in the middle of the night. Although, admittedly, the subject matter had changed somewhat.

Kate had forgotten what it was to have a confidante, someone to talk to in the middle of the night. The last six years had been solitary ones. She had gone skating a time or two with her fellow teachers, and to the cinema as opportunity offered, but the acquaintance had never turned into friendship. The fault was hers, she knew. She felt as though she were a fraud; that if anyone got too close they would know her for what she was, not Kate Moran, Smith graduate, but Katie Moranck, whose mother scrubbed floors to keep a roof over their heads.

It was only Emmie who had seemed not to care about that, not to see her as less.

Until Julia had spoiled it all.

Emmie shivered and drew the blanket up around her shoulders. “Someone—someone told me the Germans deliberately fire at the ambulances. I know I’m not much to look at, but it’s one thing to be plain with the face one is born with and quite another thing to be—to be disfigured. Does that make me a coward?”

“Emmie?” Kate struggled to a sitting position, peering at her friend’s face in the darkness. “Is this because of that horrible British officer?”

“He wasn’t horrible. I don’t think he was unkind so much as sad. When you think about what he must have seen . . . He looks as though he hasn’t slept in a month.”

Kate muffled a yawn. “You aren’t going to offer to go plump his pillows, are you? That would be taking the angel-of-mercy act too far.”

“I’m not trying to put on an act.” The hurt in Emmie’s voice was enough to kill any thought of falling asleep.