d never existed; either she is ill or
she is banished.

Such is the secret diplomacy of these establishments that nothing is
known of her except her disappearance--at least among those whom one can
ask. Matron knows, Sister knows.... But these are the inscrutable,
smiling gods.

There is only one man in the ward I don't much care for--a tall boy with
a lock of fair hair and broken teeth. He was a sullen boy whose bad
temper made his mouth repulsive. I say "was," for he is different now.

Now he is feeble, gentle, grateful, and he smiles as often as one looks
at him.

Yesterday he went for his operation in the morning, and in the afternoon
when I came on duty he was stirring and beginning to groan. Sister told
me to sit beside him.

I went up to the little room of screens in which he lay, and taking a
wooden chair, I slipped it in between the screen and the bed and sat
down.

Is it the ether which rushes up from between his broken teeth?--is it
the red glare of the turkey-twill screens?--but in ten minutes I am
altered, mesmerized. Even the size of my surroundings is changed. The
screens, high enough to blot out a man's head, are high enough to blot
out the world. The narrow bed becomes a field of whiteness. The naked
arm stretched towards me is more wonderful than any that could have
belonged to a boy with dirty fair hair and broken teeth; it has
sea-green veins rising along it, and the bright hairs are more silver
than golden.

The life of the ward goes on, the clatter of cups for supper, the
shuffling of feet clad in loose carpet-slippers, but here within he and
I are living together a concentrated life.

"Oh, me back!"

"I know, I know...."

Do I know? I am getting to know. For while the men are drinking their
cocoa I am drinking ether. I know how the waves of the pain come up and
recede; how a little sleep just brushes the spirit, but never absorbs
it; how the arms will struggle up to the air, only to be covered and
enmeshed again in heat and blankets.

"Was it in me lung?" (He pronounces the "g"--a Lancashire boy....)

"The shrapnel?"

He nods. I hold up the piece of metal which has lain buried in him these
past three weeks. It has the number 20 engraved on it. That satisfies
him. The blood which has come from between his lips is in a bowl placed
too high for him to see.

Through the crack in the screens the man in the bed opposite watches us
unwinkingly.

Eight o'clock.... Here is Sister wi