beside many
thousands; not one has been unkind--lacking in deference. . . ." A
slight smile grew on her lips; she coloured a little, looked up at
Berkley, humorously.

"It would surprise you to know how many have asked me to marry
them. . . . Such funny boys. . . . I scolded some of them and
made them write immediately to their sweethearts. . . . The older
men were more difficult to manage--men from the West--such fine,
simple-natured fellows--just sick and lonely enough to fall in love
with any woman who fanned them and brought them lemonade. . . . I
loved them all dearly. They have been very sweet to me. . . . Men
_are_ good. . . . If a woman desires it. . . . The world is so
full of people who don't mean to do wrong."

She bent her head, considering, lost in the retrospection of her
naive philosophy.

Berkley, secretly amused, was aware of several cadaverous
convalescents haunting the bushes above, dodging the eyes of this
pretty nurse whom one and all adored, and whom they now beheld,
with jealous misgivings, in intimate and unwarrantable tete-a-tete
with a common and disgustingly healthy cavalryman.

Then his weather-tanned features grew serious.

The sunny moments slipped away as the sunlit waters slipped under
the bridge; a bird or two, shy and songless in their moulting
fever, came to the stream to drink, looking up, bright eyed, at the
two who sat there in the mid-day silence. One, a cardinal, ruffled
his crimson crest, startled, as Berkley moved slightly.

"The Red Birds," he said, half aloud. "To me they are the sweetest
singers of all. I remember them as a child, Letty."

After a while Letty rose; her thin hand lingered, on his shoulder
as she stood beside him, and he got to his feet and adjusted belt
and sabre.

"I love to be with you," she said wistfully. "It's only because I
do need a little more sleep that I am going back."

"Of course," he nodded. And they retraced their steps together.

He left her at the door of the quaint, one-storied stone building
where, she explained, she had a cot.

"You _will_ come to see me again before you go back to your
regiment, won't you?" she pleaded, keeping one hand in both of hers.

"Of course I will. Try to get some sleep, Letty. You're
tremendously pretty when you've had plenty of sleep."

They both laughed; then she went indoors and he turned away across
the road, under the windows of the ward where Ailsa was on duty,
and so around