er at Madeleine's and to stay the
night. My Sister said, "Go and enjoy yourself!" And I did. It is very
amusing, the change into rooms full of talk and light; I feel a glow of
pleasure as I climb to the room Madeleine calls mine and find the
reflection of the fire on the blue wall-paper.

The evening wasn't remarkable, but I came back full of descriptions to
the bunk and Sister next day.

I was running on, inventing this and that, making her laugh, when
suddenly I looked up, and she had tears in her eyes.

I wavered and came to a stop. She got up suddenly and moved about the
room, and then with a muttered "Wash my hands," disappeared into the
corridor.

I sat and thought: "Is it that she has her life settled, quietly
continuous, and one breaks in...? Does the wind from outside hurt?"

I regretted it all the evening.

Yesterday I arrived at the hospital and couldn't find the
store-cupboard keys, then ran across to her room and tapped at the door.
Her voice called "Come in!" and I found her huddled in an arm-chair,
unnerved and white. I asked her for the keys, and when she gave them to
me she held out her hand and said: "I'm going away to-morrow. They are
sending me home; they say I'm ill."

I muttered something with a feeling of shock, and going back to my bunk
I brooded.

The new Sister came in, and a new V.A.D. too, explaining that my former
companion was now going into a ward.

A sense of desolation was in the air, a ruthlessness on the part of some
one unknown. "Shuffle, shuffle ... they shuffle us like cards!"

I rose and began to teach the new V.A.D. the subtle art of laying trays.
She seemed stupid.

I didn't want to share my trays with her. I love them; they are my
recreation. I hung over them idly, hardly laying down the spoons I held
in my hand, but, standing with them, chivied the new V.A.D. until her
movements became flustered and her eye distraught.

She was very ugly. I thought: "In a day or two I shall get to like her,
and then I shan't be able to chivy her."

Out in the corridor came a tremendous tramping, boots and jingling
metal. Two armed men with fixed bayonets arrived, headed by a sergeant.
The sergeant paused and looked uncertainly this way and that, and then
at me.

I guessed their destination. "In there," I nodded, pointing through a
closed glass door, and the sergeant marched his men in and beyond the
door.

An officer had been brought back under arrest; I had seen him pass wi