r Dr. Vincent. She understood she was to be
allowed, if she wished, two visits in the hospital, so as to give her an
opportunity of watching the patient she was going to see, without undue
hurry, and would then be motored back to D---- in time for the night
boat. She was bracing herself therefore to an experience the details of
which she only dimly foresaw, but which must in any case be excessively
disagreeable. What exactly she was going to do or say, she didn't know.
How could she, till the new fact was before her?

Punctually on the stroke of eleven, a motor arrived in charge of an army
driver, and Bridget set out. They were to pick up Vincent in the town of
X---- itself and run on to the Camp. The sun was out by this time, and
all the seaside village, with its gimcrack hotels and villas flung
pell-mell upon the sand, and among the pines, was sparkling under it. So
were the withered woods, where the dead leaves were flying before the
wind, the old town where Napoleon gathered his legions for the attack on
England, and the wide sandy slopes beyond it, where the pine woods had
perished to make room for the Camp. The car stopped presently on the
edge of the town. To the left spread a river estuary, with a spit of
land beyond, and lighthouses upon it, sharp against a pale blue sky.
Every shade of pale yellow, of lilac and pearl, sparkled in the
distance, in the scudding water, the fast flying westerly clouds, and
the sandy inlets among the still surviving pines.

'You're punctuality itself,' said a man emerging from a building before
which a sentry was pacing--'Now we shall be there directly.'

The building, so Bridget was informed, housed the Headquarters of the
Base, and from it the business of the great Camp, whether on its
military or its hospital side, was mainly carried on. And as they drove
towards the Camp her companion, with the natural pride of the Englishman
in his job, told the marvellous tale of the two preceding years--how the
vast hospital city had been reared, and organised--the military camp
too--the convalescent camp--the transports--and the feeding.

'The Boche thought they were the only organisers in the world!--We've
taught them better!' he said, with a laugh in his pleasant eyes, the
whole man of him, so weary the night before, now fresh and alert in the
morning sunshine.

Bridget listened with an unwilling attention. This bit of the war seen
close at hand was beginning to suggest to her some ne