aid firmly. 'Life has separated us--it has not
been your fault or mine--but some day, Elise, when I get my grip on
things again, I shall come to you, and you will have to listen. We need
each other, and nothing on the earth can alter that'----

'Except America!' She laughed again, and withdrew her hand from his.

'Elise!' he cried, reaching towards her, 'listen to me'----

The Cockney patient leaned over with a bag in his hand. ''Ave a gripe?'
he said genially.

'No, th'---- began Selwyn.

'Thanks so much,' said Elise, taking the bag and picking a small cluster
for the American, afterwards handing the bag back to the Tommy.

''Ave a few yourself, won't yer?' said the warrior.

'May I?'

''Ere,' said the Cockney, with mock brusqueness. 'Tike a bunch.'

Perhaps from the very intensity of their previous talk, the threads
snapped, and her quickly uttered sentences, with the accompanying sparkle
in her eyes, showed him that he could hope for little more than badinage
for the rest of her visit. Almost as if she desired to eradicate the
memory of her emotional admission, she gave her vivacity full play. For
a few minutes he tried to bring back the close intimacy of their souls,
but she fenced him off, and met his heart-hungry glances with the gayest
of smiles.

Roselawn, she told him, had been transformed into a convalescent home,
and Lord and Lady Durwent were living in one of the wings. Practically
all the servants had enlisted or gone into war-work; and even Mathews,
the groom, after perjuring himself before a whole regiment of army
doctors, had been accepted (with grave official doubts) for military
service.

Interspersed with these details she recounted incidents of her London
life as an ambulance-driver, and it was all her listener could do to
follow the swift irrelevance of her course. Only once did she pause
when, in answer to his question, she told him she had heard nothing of
Dick.

IV.

A few minutes later she rose to go.

'I have stayed much too long,' she said. 'I do hope you'll get better
quickly.'

He took her hand in his, but made no attempt to translate the meaning of
the moment into language. He had worked against her country; while she
plied her rounds of mercy, he had written on the debasement and the
fallacy of it all. Lying in the wreck of his idealism, in the grip of
physical pain, dreading the torture of his own thoughts, could he express
what her coming had meant? He