't
on duty when you came in, but the night-sister said you were quite
delirious--though you seem ever so much better this morning, don't you?
I'll take your temperature, and after you've had some breakfast I'll put
a new dressing on your wound.'

She was just going to insert the thermometer between his lips, when he
stopped her with his hand. 'Nurse,' he said, 'why was I brought
here--among soldiers?'

'Because every hospital is filled to overflowing. The casualties are so
heavy just now.' Her voice was still kind, but there was a look of
resentment in her eyes at his question.

'Please don't misunderstand me,' said Selwyn wearily. 'It is only the
feeling that I have no right here. This cot should be for a soldier, and
I'm a civilian. I'm an American, and--and if you only knew'----

'Just a minute, now, until we get this temperature, and then you can tell
me all about it.'

With his lips silenced, but his doubts by no means so, he watched her
move down the ward in commencement of the countless duties of her day.
She was a woman of thirty-three or thirty-four years, still young, and
possessed of a womanliness that softened her whole appearance with a
tranquil restfulness. But beneath her eyes and in the texture of the
skin faint wrinkles were showing, thinly pencilled protests against
overwork, that no treatment could ever eradicate. On the red collar of
her uniform was a badge which told that she had gone to France with the
first little army of Regulars in 1914.

Noting her calloused hands and the too rapid approach of life's
midsummer, Selwyn watched her, and wondered what recompense could be
offered for those things. In ordinary life, given the privileges and the
opportunities which she deserved, she would have been another of those
glorious English women whose beauty is nearest the rose. She would have
been a wife to grace any home, and as a mother her charm would have been
twofold. But for more than two years incessant toil and endless
suffering had been the companions of her days, and the not over-strong
body was giving to the ordeal.

But as his heavy thoughts drifted slowly through this channel, he saw
grinning patients who were well enough get out of bed to help her. As if
she carried some magic gem of happiness, her soft voice and deft touch
brought smiles to eyes that had been scorched in the flames of hell. Men
looked up, and seeing her, believed once more in life; and hope crept
into t