Does she want to change her mode of life?"

"I don't know, of course. There are some things one doesn't discuss. She
cares a great deal for some man. The other day I propped her up in bed
and gave her a newspaper, and after a while I found the paper on the
floor, and she was crying. The other patients avoid her, and it was
some time before I noticed it. The next day she told me that the man
was going to marry some one else. 'He wouldn't marry me, of course,' she
said; 'but he might have told me.'"

Le Moyne did his best, that afternoon in the little parlor, to provide
Sidney with a philosophy to carry her through her training. He told her
that certain responsibilities were hers, but that she could not reform
the world. Broad charity, tenderness, and healing were her province.

"Help them all you can," he finished, feeling inadequate and hopelessly
didactic. "Cure them; send them out with a smile; and--leave the rest to
the Almighty."

Sidney was resigned, but not content. Newly facing the evil of the
world, she was a rampant reformer at once. Only the arrival of Christine
and her fiance saved his philosophy from complete rout. He had time for
a question between the ring of the bell and Katie's deliberate progress
from the kitchen to the front door.

"How about the surgeon, young Wilson? Do you ever see him?" His tone was
carefully casual.

"Almost every day. He stops at the door of the ward and speaks to me. It
makes me quite distinguished, for a probationer. Usually, you know, the
staff never even see the probationers."

"And--the glamour persists?" He smiled down at her.

"I think he is very wonderful," said Sidney valiantly.

Christine Lorenz, while not large, seemed to fill the little room. Her
voice, which was frequent and penetrating, her smile, which was wide
and showed very white teeth that were a trifle large for beauty, her
all-embracing good nature, dominated the entire lower floor. K., who had
met her before, retired into silence and a corner. Young Howe smoked a
cigarette in the hall.

"You poor thing!" said Christine, and put her cheek against Sidney's.
"Why, you're positively thin! Palmer gives you a month to tire of it
all; but I said--"

"I take that back," Palmer spoke indolently from the corridor. "There
is the look of willing martyrdom in her face. Where is Reginald? I've
brought some nuts for him."

"Reginald is back in the woods again."

"Now, look here," he said solemnly. "When we