e ladies in her shoes. At least
she never bemoaned her "reduced circumstances," and if her life was
irregular and had at least three episodes, it was very human. She
bravely took the rough with the smooth, never lost the power of enjoying
herself, and grew in sympathy with the hardships of others. But she
became deadly tired. When the war broke out, remembering that she was a
good nurse, she took her real name again and a change of occupation.
For one who liked to please men, and to be pleased by them, there was a
certain attraction about that life in war-time; and after two years of
it she could still appreciate the way her Tommies turned their heads
to look at her when she passed their beds. But in a hard school she
had learned perfect self-control; and though the sour and puritanical
perceived her attraction, they knew her to be forty-three. Besides, the
soldiers liked her; and there was little trouble in her wards. The war
moved her in simple ways; for she was patriotic in the direct fashion of
her class. Her father had been a sailor, her husbands an official and a
soldier; the issue for her was uncomplicated by any abstract meditation.
The Country before everything! And though she had tended during those
two years so many young wrecked bodies, she had taken it as all in the
a day's work, lavishing her sympathy on the individual, without much
general sense of pity and waste. Yes, she had worked really hard, had
"done her bit"; but of late she had felt rising within her the old
vague craving for "life," for pleasure, for something more than the
mere negative admiration bestowed on her by her "Tommies." Those old
letters--to look them through them had been a sure sign of this vague
craving--had sharpened to poignancy the feeling that life was slipping
away from her while she was still comely. She had been long out of
England, and so hard-worked since she came back that there were not
many threads she could pick up suddenly. Two letters out of that little
budget of the past, with a far cry between them, had awakened within her
certain sentimental longings.

"DEAR LADY OF THE STARRY FLOWERS,

"Exiturus (sic) to saluto! The tender carries you this message of
good-bye. Simply speaking, I hate leaving South Africa. And of all my
memories, the last will live the longest. Grape harvest at Constantia,
and you singing: 'If I could be the falling dew: If ever you and your
husband come to England, do let me know, that I may t