idly away.

"Well, I can't see her coming just now," he said. "But she will," he
added.

"You let me know at once when she comes."

"Why, cert'nly, of course," said the steward.

Three trained nurses came over the side just before the transport
started North. One was a large, motherly-looking woman, with a German
accent. She had been a trained nurse, first in Berlin, and later in the
London Hospital in Whitechapel, and at Bellevue.

The nurse was dressed in white, and wore a little silver medal at her
throat; and she was strong enough to lift a volunteer out of his cot and
hold him easily in her arms, while one of the convalescents pulled his
cot out of the rain. Some of the men called her "nurse;" others, who
wore scapulars around their necks, called her "Sister;" and the officers
of the medical staff addressed her as Miss Bergen.

Miss Bergen halted beside the cot of the Lieutenant and asked, "Is this
the fever case you spoke about, Doctor--the one you want moved to the
officers' ward?" She slipped her hand up under his sleeve and felt his
wrist.

"His pulse is very high," she said to the steward. "When did you take
his temperature?" She drew a little morocco case from her pocket and
from that took a clinical thermometer, which she shook up and down,
eying the patient meanwhile with a calm, impersonal scrutiny. The
Lieutenant raised his head and stared up at the white figure beside his
cot. His eyes opened and then shut quickly, with a startled look, in
which doubt struggled with wonderful happiness. His hand stole out
fearfully and warily until it touched her apron, and then, finding it
was real, he clutched it desperately, and twisting his face and body
toward her, pulled her down, clasping her hands in both of his, and
pressing them close to his face and eyes and lips. He put them from him
for an instant, and looked at her through his tears.

"Sweetheart," he whispered, "sweetheart, I knew you'd come."

As the nurse knelt on the deck beside him, her thermometer slipped from
her fingers and broke, and she gave an exclamation of annoyance. The
young Doctor picked up the pieces and tossed them overboard. Neither of
them spoke, but they smiled appreciatively. The Lieutenant was looking
at the nurse with the wonder and hope and hunger of soul in his eyes
with which a dying man looks at the cross the priest holds up before
him. What he saw where the German nurse was kneeling was a tall, fair
girl with great ba