d out, "Richard
will marry her after all."

Annette added that they did not intend to get married until peace was
concluded.

"Of course," said Bertha, as if addressing me, "you will understand
that we can give no expression to our joy just now."

Annette, indeed, did not permit us to linger long over this joyful
message. She said that her patients now claimed all her time, and only
while we were descending the steps, she once stopped and quietly
related to us how her old custom of pouring out her feelings with every
new experience had suddenly opened the hearts that had so long been as
if sealed towards each other. She had said to Richard, who recently
passed through here, "So long as men are well, they are all alike. When
they are wounded or sick, each one displays the traits that are
peculiar to him." Then Richard replied, "You speak from my mother's
soul;" and on that day they were betrothed.

"Now I no more need," said Annette, as we went on, "to chloroform my
soul with religion. I have learned to apply the real chloroform, and in
helping others we help ourselves also."

Annette invited us to go with her to the patients; she might thereby
make the tedious hours of watching more easy for Bertha. She first
conducted us to a handsome young man with a full, blond beard, whose
thigh had been fractured. Her mere appearance seemed to revive the sick
man.

It was a pathetic look with which he gazed upon her, and stretched his
thin hand towards her.

Annette introduced him to us as an artist of great repute, and,
assuming a merry tone of voice, she said, "He has painted me in other
colors. He does not like the dull and sombre black; indeed, the
silver-gray dress with the white apron is much more cheerful. And why
should we not be cheerful?"

The face of the young man brightened, and Annette bade Bertha to read
something to him. In going the rounds, she made us acquainted with a
wounded German officer, who never ceased heaping extravagant praises
upon his nurse. Annette bade me to come quickly to a man from my
village, for whom I could perhaps do something, and, with a trembling
voice, mentioned Carl's name to me.

We approached his bed. He gazed upon me with staring eyes, and cried,
in heart-rending tones, "Mother, mother!" I spoke to him; I asked him
if he knew me. But he continually exclaimed, "Mother, mother, mother!"

The surgeon came and bade us leave the patient. Then he said to
Annette, "Have a screen p