th
his escort. The rumour at tea had been that he had extended his two
days' leave into three weeks.

The V.A.D. looked at me questioningly but she didn't dare, and I
couldn't bear, to start any elucidations on the subject.

I couldn't think; she worried me. Her odds and ends of conversation
pecked at me like a small bird. She told me a riddle which filled me
with nausea, and finally a limerick which I had heard three times in the
Mess.

I left her and went into the bunk.

Here the new Sister had installed herself, gentle and pink and full of
quiet murmurs.

The rain, half snow, half sleet, dabbled against the window-pane, and I
lifted the blind to watch the flakes stick and melt on the glass.

The V.A.D., her trays finished, appeared in the doorway. The little room
seemed full of people.

"There's a concert," I said, looking at the V.A.D. with distaste.

She looked at me uncertainly: "Aren't you coming?"

"No," I said, "I've a note to write," forgetting that the new Sister
might not allow such infringements. She gave no sign.

The V.A.D. gave in and disappeared concertwards.

The Sister rose too and went out into the kitchen to consult with the
_chef_.

I slipped out behind her and down the steps into the garden--into the
wet, dark garden, down the channels that were garden-paths, and felt my
way over to the Sisters' quarters.

My Sister hadn't moved. There by the gas-fire, her thin hand to her
face, she sat as she had two hours before.

"Come in," she offered, "and talk to me."

Her collar, which was open, she tried to do up. It made a painful
impression on me of weakness and the effort to be normal.

I remembered that she had once told me she was so afraid of death, and I
guessed that she was suffering now from that terror.

But when the specialist is afraid, what can ignorance say...?

Life in the bunk is wretched (except that the new V.A.D. tells fortunes
by hands).

The new Sister is at the same time timid and dogged. She looks at me
with a sidelong look and gives me little flips with her hand, as though
(_a_) she thought I might break something and (_b_) that she might stave
it off by playfulness.

Pain....

To stand up straight on one's feet, strong, easy, without the surging of
any physical sensation, by a bedside whose coverings are flung here and
there by the quivering nerves beneath it ... there is a sort of shame in
such strength.

"What can I do for you?" my eyes cry dumbl