ing things to do.' And she compared the now famous hospital,
with its constant scientific developments, the ever-changing and
absorbing spectacle of the life within it, and Farrell's remarkable
position amid its strenuous world--with poor Nelly's 'housemaiding.'

But Nelly was choosing the path that suited her own need, and in the
spiritual world, the humblest means may be the best. It was when she was
cooking for her nuns that some of St. Teresa's divinest ecstasies came
upon her! Not that there was any prospect of ecstasy for Nelly Sarratt.
She seemed to herself to be engaged in a kind of surgery--the cutting or
burning away of elements in herself that she had come to scorn. Hester,
who was something of a saint herself, came near to understanding her.
Cicely could only wonder. But Hester perceived, with awe, a _fierceness_
in Nelly--a kind of cruelty--towards herself, with which she knew well,
from a long experience of human beings, that it was no use to argue. The
little, loving, easy-going thing had discovered in her own gentleness
and weakness, the source of something despicable--that is, of her own
failure to love George as steadfastly and truly as he had loved her. The
whole memory of her marriage was poisoned for her by this bitter sense
that in little more than a year after she had lost him, while he was
actually still alive, and when the law even, let alone the highest
standards of love, had not released her, she had begun to yield to the
wooing of another man. Perhaps only chance, under all the difficult
circumstances of her intimacy with Farrell, had saved her from a
shameful yielding--from dishonour, as well as a broken faith.

'What had brought it about?'--she asked herself. And she asked it with a
desperate will, determined to probe her own sin to the utmost. 'Soft
living!'--was her own reply--moral and physical indolence. The pleasure
of being petted and spoiled, the readiness to let others work for her,
and think for her, what people called her 'sweetness!' She turned upon
it with a burning hatred and contempt. She would scourge it out of
herself. And then perhaps some day she would be able to think of
George's last faint words with something else than remorseful
anguish--_ love you, sweetheart!--I love you, sweetheart!'_

During the three weeks, however, that she was with Hester, she was very
silent. She clung to Hester without words, and with much less than her
usual caressingness. She found--it was