mind as to the wisdom or right in her
coming--or Peter's verdict in the matter. He would not fuss over this
plunge into danger any more than he had misunderstood her giving away her
wedding back at the old San and coming over at the eleventh hour. The last
words Peter had said when he left her for the front came back with
absolute distinctness:

"Whatever happens, do what you think best, go where you feel you must go.
Don't bungle your instincts. I'd trust them next to God's own."

No, Peter Brooks would have been the last person to deny her this chance,
and so all was well. She was wondering now if by some rare good luck she
might stumble on Peter at the front. She had not seen him since they
separated the day after their arrival in France. A few penciled
hieroglyphics had come from time to time telling her all was well with
him. She had written when she could and when she knew enough of an address
to risk a letter reaching him. But Peter, after the manner of all
correspondents, was like Hamlet's ghost--here, there, and gone; and Sheila
had no way of knowing if her letters had ever reached him.

For weeks it had seemed to the girl that her love had lain dormant, hushed
under the pressure of work. So vital and eternal were both love and
happiness that in her zeal for perfect, impersonal service she had thrust
them both out of sight, as one might put seeds away in the dark to wait
until planting-time, assured of their fulfilment when the time came. But
now in the lull between the work at the hospital and the work that would
soon claim her again she discovered that in some inexplicable manner love
would no longer be shut out. She was sick for the man she loved.

A funny little wistful droop took Sheila's lips, and her chin quivered for
an instant. It was so unlike the girl that the chief, seeing, reached
across and laid a hand on her knee.

"What is it? Not sorry?"

"Never. But I was thinking how pleasantly easy it might have been to stay
behind at the old San. Peter and I'd be climbing that mythical hilltop of
ours, with a home of our own at the end of the climb--if we'd stayed
behind."

"Well, why didn't you?"

The nurse laughed softly. Griggs volunteered to answer for her.

"Because you were a fool, like a lot of the rest of us."

"Because--oh, because of that queer something inside us all that pries us
away from our determinations just to be contented and happy all our lives
and hustles us somewhere to do s