ut he had never
had this sort of feeling.

He put the concert up to her with a certain amount of anxiety. If
she could sing, or play, or recite--although he hoped she would not
recite--all would be well. But if she refused to take any part, he
did not intend to have a concert. That was flat.

"I can play," she said, making a neat period after the H on the
pincushion.

He was awfully relieved.

"Good," he said. "You know, I like the way you say that. It's
so--well, it's so competent." He got out a notebook and wrote "Miss
Brown, piano selections."

It was while he was writing that Jane Brown had a sort of mental
picture--the shabby piano at home, kicked below by many childish
feet, but mellow and sweet, like an old violin, and herself sitting
practising, over and over, that part of Paderewski's Minuet where,
as every one knows, the fingering is rather difficult, and outside
the open window, leaning on his broom, worthless Johnny Fraser,
staring in with friendly eyes and an extremely dirty face. To
Twenty-two's unbounded amazement she flung down the cushion and made
for the little ward linen room.

He found her there a moment later, her arms outstretched on the
table and her face buried in them. Some one had been boiling a
rubber tube and had let the pan go dry. Ever afterward Twenty-two
was to associate the smell of burning rubber with Jane Brown, and
with his first real knowledge that he was in love with her.

He stumped in after her and closed the door, and might have ruined
everything then and there by taking her in his arms, crutch and
all. But the smell of burning rubber is a singularly permeating one,
and he was kept from one indiscretion by being discovered in
another.

It was somewhat later that Jane Brown was reprimanded for being
found in the linen room with a private patient. She made no excuse,
but something a little defiant began to grow in her eyes. It was not
that she loved her work less. She was learning, day by day, the
endless sacrifices of this profession she had chosen, its
unselfishness, its grinding hard work, the payment that may lie in a
smile of gratitude, the agony of pain that cannot be relieved. She
went through her days with hands held out for service, and at night,
in the chapel, she whispered soundless little prayers to be
accepted, and to be always gentle and kind. She did not want to
become a machine. She knew, although she had no words for it, the
difference between duty and