dge on the horizon, then a world of grimy
streets, rows of miserable tenements festooned with rags, then a tunnel
or two, and at length the echoing glass-arched terminal of the station.
Lloyd alighted, and, remembering that the distance was short, walked
steadily toward her destination till the streets and neighbourhood
became familiar. Suddenly she came into the square. Directly opposite
was the massive granite front of the agency. She paused abruptly. She
was returning to the house after abandoning her post. What was she to
say to them, the other women of her profession?

Then all at once came the reaction. Instantly the larger machinery of
the mind resumed its functions, the hurt of the blow came back. With a
fierce wrench of pain, the wound reopened, full consciousness returned.
Lloyd remembered then that she had proved false to her trust at a moment
of danger, that Ferriss would probably die because of what she had done,
that her strength of will and of mind wherein she had gloried was broken
beyond redemption; that Bennett had failed her, that her love for him,
the one great happiness of her life, was dead and cold and could never
be revived, and that in the eyes of the world she stood dishonoured and
disgraced.

Now she must enter that house, now she must face its inmates, her
companions. What to say to them? How explain her defection? How tell
them that she had not left her post of her own will? Lloyd fancied
herself saying in substance that the man who loved her and whom she
loved had made her abandon her patient. She set her teeth. No, not that
confession of miserable weakness; not that of all things. And yet the
other alternative, what was that? It could be only that she had been
afraid--she, Lloyd Searight! Must she, who had been the bravest of them
all, stand before that little band of devoted women in the light of a
self-confessed coward?

She remembered the case of the young English woman, Harriet Freeze, who,
when called upon to nurse a smallpox patient, had been found wanting in
courage at the crucial moment, and had discovered an excuse for leaving
her post. Miss Freeze had been expelled dishonourably from the midst of
her companions. And now she, Lloyd, standing apparently convicted of the
same dishonour, must face the same tribunal. There was no escape. She
must enter that house, she must endure that ordeal, and this at
precisely the time when her resolution had been shattered, her will
broken, he