night had not been without its lesson. "He's out there." She nodded
towards the North Sea, and as she spoke the blunt bows of a hospital
ship crept round a distant headland, making towards them. Silence tell
between them again.

Margaret broke it. "Betty," she said, "if the time ever comes for you
to choose between the love of the man you love and--and anything else
in the wide world, don't be misled by other claims . . . by what may
seem to be higher claims. Loving and being loved are the highest
responsibilities that life holds."

Betty turned her head and stared. "But," she said, "if you think duty
doesn't give you the right to----"

"Love gives you all the right a woman wants," replied Margaret, still
in the same low, sad tone. "If it's only the right to cry. . . . If
you forego love, you forego even that." She gathered the reins and
turned her horse. "Now we must get back to bath and dress. There's a
lot of work ahead of us."

Neither spoke again as they rode back across the downs. In the filmy
blue overhead a lark sang rapturously, pouring out its soul in gladness.

* * * * *

Margaret was in the hall when the first of the long line of
stretcher-bearers arrived. As each stretcher was brought in, a surgeon
made a brief examination of the wounded man, and he passed through one
or other of the wide doorways opening out on either side of the hall.
There was a subdued murmur of voices as every moment brought a fresh
arrival. Two blue-jackets, who came up the steps carrying a hooded
stretcher, stood looking about them as if for orders. The surgeons
were all occupied, but, catching sight of Margaret in uniform, with the
broad red cross on her breast, the blue-jackets crossed the hall
towards her and laid the stretcher at her feet, as if they had brought
their burden all this way for her alone.

"Second door on the left," said Margaret. "Wait--is it a bad case?"

"Too late, I'm afraid, Sister," said the stalwart at the head of the
stretcher. "'E's died on the way up."

"'Emmerage, Sister," supplemented the other, anxious to display his
familiarity with the technicalities of her profession. "'E wouldn't
take 'is turn to be attended to aboard of us--we was in a Destroyer,
an' picked 'im up 'angin' on to a spar. Would 'ave the doctor fix up a
German prisoner wot was bleedin' to death. Said 'e wasn't in no
particular 'urry, speakin' for 'isself. An' 'im a-bleedin' to