wisely sympathizing with the difference in their own futures
and hers.

Bianca Zoli spared nothing of her past save the betrayal of her
country's secrets by her Italian mother, a fact to which she never
alluded.

Sonya even discovered herself relating anecdotes of her own somewhat
long and checkered career for the benefit of the newcomer who was at
once the guest of the hospital and its hostess. She even spoke of her
recent marriage to Dr. David Clark and the fact that his Red Cross unit
would establish a hospital in one of the old castles on the Rhine as
soon as the American Army of Occupation were in possession of Coblenz.

Ruth Carroll reported that she had not so interesting a story to tell as
she knew the little countess would have liked to hear. Her life had
been fairly prosaic; her father was a country doctor in a little
Kentucky town and she had never left home until the interest in the war
led her to study nursing and later to join the Red Cross service in
France.

Regardless of Charlotta's openly expressed unbelief, Ruth insisted that
never in her life, not even as a little girl, had she possessed a real
admirer.

In compensation Ruth could only declare that if Theodosia Thompson cared
to tell of her past it would form a contrast to her own humdrum tale.

It chanced that Bianca Zoli was also in the little countess's room when
one evening after supper Theodosia dropped in to rest and talk before
going upstairs to bed.

Her duties were over for the day and it seemed to both the other girls
that she appeared tired and cross. Yet the work at the hospital at
present was not severe. Most of the American soldiers, who had suffered
attacks of influenza on their eastward march, were now nearly well,
while a few of them had already left the hospital at Luxemburg for one
of the convalescent hospitals in southern France.

In their brief acquaintance Bianca and Charlotta had become intimate
friends, for one reason because Bianca had more time to devote to her
than the regular Red Cross nurses. But there was another strange bond in
the difference in their temperaments, since concealment of her emotions
was the habit of Bianca's life, while Charlotta apparently never
concealed anything.

Yet Bianca was talking of Carlo Navara and their friendship when
Theodosia interrupted her unconscious revelation of her affection for
the young American soldier and singer.

"Perhaps you would rather I did not come in," Theodos