ges of
life, leaving nothing on the mouth but that brief acceptance. It came to
her with a note of the profound and of the supreme. "So," she said, and
pressed her lips till they stopped trembling, and went into the
hospital.

She asked a question or two, in search of Sister Margaret and the new
case. It was "located," an assistant surgeon told her, in Private Ward
Number 2. She went more and more slowly toward Private Ward Number 2.

The door was open. She stood in it for an instant with eyes nerved to
receive the tragedy. The room seemed curiously empty of any such thing.
A door opposite was also open, with an arched verandah outside; the low
sun streamed through this upon the floor with its usual tranquillity.
Beyond the arches, netted to keep the crows away, it made pictures with
the tops of the trees. There was the small iron bed with the confused
outline under the bedclothes, very quiet, and the Sister--the
whitewashed wall rose sharp behind her black draperies--sitting with a
book in her hands. Some scraps of lint were on the floor beside the bed
and hardly anything else, except the silence, which had almost a
presence, and a faint smell of carbolic acid, and a certain feeling of
impotence and abandonment and waiting which seemed to be in the air.
Arnold moved on the pillow and saw her standing in the door. The bars of
the bed's foot were in the way. He tried to lift his head to surmount
the obstruction, and the Sister perceived her too.

"I think absolutely still was our order, wasn't it, Mr. Arnold?" she
said, with her little pink smile. "And I'm afraid Miss Howe isn't in
time to be of much use to us, is she?" It was the bedside pleasantry
that expected no reply, that indeed forbade one.

"I'm sorry," Hilda said. As she moved into the room she detached her
eyes from Arnold's, feeling as she did so that it was like tearing
something.

"There was so little to do," Sister Margaret said. "Surgeon-Major Wills
saw at once where the mischief lay. Nothing disagreeable was necessary,
was it, Mr. Arnold? Perfect quiet, perfect rest--that's an easy
prescription to take." She had rather prominent, very blue eyes, and an
aquiline nose and a small firm mouth, and her pink cheeks were beginning
to be a little pendulous with age. Hilda gazed at her silently, noting
about her authority and her flowing draperies something classical. Was
she like one of the Fates? She approached the bed to do something to the
pillow--Hilda