ubled you."

It was past the usual hour of bed-time in the Red Cross hospital and
Sonya had come in to talk to the young Luxemburg countess on her way to
her own room.

She got up now and began walking up and down, feeling worried and
uncertain. The young countess's situation, her beauty and charm, made a
deep appeal and yet she was powerless to do what she asked and help her
to escape from her uncongenial environment.

The girl's suggestion had been singularly childlike. She wished to be
allowed to go away from Luxemburg with the Red Cross girls secretly and
to remain in hiding with them.

"I am not a useful person at present," she had pleaded, "I think because
I have never wished to be, but as soon as my arm is well I am sure you
will find, Mrs. Clark, that I can do a good many things that might be
worth while. It would not be Red Cross work perhaps, but I could help
with the translating, I suppose there may be a good deal of confusion of
tongues when the army of occupation reaches the Rhine."

Sonya was thinking of this speech now as she watched the shadows in the
old room, lighted only by a single lamp. A curious freak of circumstance
that this same room had once been the Countess Charlotta's mother's.

"Do you think I might talk to your father? Would it do the least good? I
suppose he would only think me extraordinarily impertinent?" Sonya
queried.

In the years of her work with the Red Cross since the beginning of the
war perhaps she had had a singular experience. Instead of finding as
most women had, that she had given herself wholly and entirely to the
needs of the soldiers, it seemed to Sonya that the greatest and most
important demands upon her had been made by the Red Cross girls.

Always it was young girls who came to her with their problems, their
disappointments and difficulties. And sometimes the difficulties were
associated with their work, but more often with their emotions. But then
it seemed that love and war had always gone hand in hand, and at least
the girls she had cared for had kept themselves free from unfortunate
entanglements. The soldiers they had chosen for their friends were fine
and generous. But with the little Luxemburg countess, Sonya felt it
might be difficult to guess what her future might hold. She was wilful,
beautiful and unhappy, with perhaps but few congenial friends among her
former associates.

At this instant the Countess Charlotta shook her head, smiling.

"No, I