calmly, 'but I am not such a fool as to suppose that I should ever know
it, if he were.'

'Cicely!'

Cicely took up a stalk of grass, and began to bite it. Her eyes seemed
on fire. Nelly was suddenly aware of the flaming up of fierce elemental
things in this fashionably dressed young woman whose time was oddly
divided between an important share in the running of her brother's
hospital, and a hungry search after such gaieties as a world at war
might still provide her with. She could spend one night absorbed in some
critical case, and eagerly rendering the humblest V.A.D. service to the
trained nurses whom her brother paid; and the next morning she would
travel to London in order to spend the second night in one of those
small dances at great houses of which she had spoken to Nelly, where the
presence of men just come from, or just departing to, the firing line
lent a zest to the talk and the flirting, the jealousies and triumphs of
the evening that the dances of peace must do without. Then after a
morning of wild spending in the shops she would take a midday train back
to Cumberland and duty.

Nelly, looking at her, wondered afresh how they had ever come to be
friends. Yet they were friends, and her interest in Cicely's affairs was
one of the slender threads drawing her back to life.

It had all happened when she was ill at the flat; after that letter from
the Geneva Red Cross which reported that in spite of exhaustive
enquiries among German hospitals, and in the prisoners' camps no trace
of Lieutenant Sarratt could be found. On the top of the letter, and the
intolerable despair into which it had plunged her, had come influenza.
There was no doubt--Nelly's recollection faced it candidly--that she
would have come off badly but for Cicely. Bridget had treated the
illness on the hardening plan, being at the moment slightly touched with
Christian Science. Nelly should 'think it away.' To stay in bed and give
in was folly. She meanwhile had found plenty to do in London, and was
away for long hours. In one of these absences, Cicely--having been
seized with a sudden hunger for the flesh-pots of 'town'--appeared at
the flat with her maid. She discovered Nelly Sarratt in bed, and so weak
as to be hardly capable of answering any question. Mrs. Simpson was
doing her best; but she gave an indignant account of Bridget's
behaviour, and Cicely at once took a strong line, both as a professional
nurse--of sorts--and as mistress of