id in the gymnasium the year I went
there," cried the invalid, with the first real interest she had felt in
anything outside herself. "We kneeled on the floor and swept our arms
out just like that!"

"If there were many of you, it must soon have been clean," said Hester,
moving the rug she knelt on deftly. "Oh, we were not cleaning it,"
said the invalid smiling. "It was only the same motion."

"Indeed? Then why were you doing it?" Hester asked, turning her
flushed face in surprise toward the ruffled whiteness in the window.

She stared at the worker, but even as she stared she frowned
uncomfortably.

"Why, for--for exercise--for strength," she said slowly, and coloured
under Hester's smile....

Later in the day she moved out again upon the balcony, regretful for
the first time that no one of her own world could be there to talk with
her. Hester, wiping bed, chair and mirror with the white cloth that
never seemed to soil, whipping the braided rag rugs below her on the
green with strong, firm strokes that recalled the scheduled blows she
had practised at a swinging leather ball, vexed her, somehow, and she
was conscious of a whimsical wish that her delusion of the white
wrapper stretched along the reclining chair had proved a reality. The
soft grey shadows of early evening covered the little balcony, the
chairs were plunged in it, and it was with a cry of apology that she
stepped into a grey gown, so soft and thin that she had taken it for a
deeper shadow, merely, and had actually started to seat herself in the
long chair where the slender woman lay. Her own body appeared so
robust beside this delicate creature's that pity smothered the surprise
at her quiet presence there, and the swift feeling that she herself was
by no means the frailest of the doctor's patients added to her
composure as she begged pardon for her clumsiness.

"I thought I was the only patient here," she explained. "Miss Hester
and Miss Ann have a wonderful way of getting quiet and privacy in their
little house, haven't they?"

"Is it so little?" the stranger asked. She felt embarrassed, suddenly,
and tactless, for she had taken it for granted that they were both of
the class to which the modest cottage must seem small.

"I only meant," she added hastily, for it seemed that at any cost this
gentle, pale creature must not be hurt, "I only meant that to take in
strangers, in this way, and to keep the family life entirely separate
requir