e me. The doctors said it was only because I wasn't
used to looking at objects at close range."

"You ought to be out of doors. Why, may I ask, did you take up
nursing?"

She shrugged her shoulders and flashed a frank smile at him.

"I had to do something--there were such crowds of us at home. And I
haven't any talents."

"It strikes me as remarkably plucky."

"Why?" she demanded promptly. "Thousands of girls are doing the same
thing every day."

"I suppose they are, but that's quite another thing.

"I fail to see it," she retorted with an ironical sparkle in her eye.

"You wouldn't, of course, and I can't altogether explain. But perhaps
when I've had time to think it over..."

Again they laughed. It was the sort of stupid little conversation to
which enormous point is given solely by mutual attraction. However
slight and evanescent that affinity may be, it yet hints at the
possibility of other things, surrounding the most trivial remarks with
a kind of roseate glow.

In this instance the glow lasted during what might have been an awkward
interval, while the two stood looking at each other with nothing to
say. Esther was the first to return to a matter-of-fact world.

"I mustn't stay here talking. I have things to do for my patient."

"I'm glad he's got you to look after him," said Roger impulsively. "It
can't be so bad to be..."

But she did not wait to hear more. With a quizzical smile over her
shoulder she vanished into the bedroom, leaving him to descend the
stairs whistling, conscious of an agreeable warmth he did not seek to
analyse.

Esther also felt oddly elated, but she did not neglect to enter very
softly, in case her patient should be dozing. Her hand still on the
door-knob, she peered cautiously around the edge of the screen.

Someone was in the room, she felt it instinctively even before she
discovered who it was. A woman's figure was bending over the table at
the other side of the room, her back turned, and something eager and
tense in her attitude. It was Lady Clifford. But what was she doing?

Of, of course! She was examining the chart.

CHAPTER XI

Why should Lady Clifford show so much curiosity about a technical thing
like a medical chart? She was told several times a day exactly how her
husband was progressing. She seemed to Esther like an importunate
child, probing to know the future, which no one could foresee.

As this thought crossed her mind, a quic