paid by the afternoon) that she mustn't have any visions at all. This
arrangement, however, was a family secret, which Kitty betrayed to me in
confidence. Every one said that Madame Mesmerre was wonderful, but I
didn't consult her.

I don't understand much about sewing or other really useful things of
that sort, but I've picked up enough (thanks to helping my poor friends
at Ballyconal) to know that men's shirts ought to have armholes bigger
than those for little boys, and that they shouldn't be as short as bibs,
or as long as surplices. Even this small amount of knowledge made me
unexpectedly useful at the guild, where every member seemed to have her
own original conception of what shape a shirt ought to be, and what it
should be made of. Even my brief apprenticeship with the Miss
Splatchleys, to whom most kinds of domestic work was as easy as
breathing, made these fashionable women's desperate efforts at doing
good seem pathetic. I agreed to return whenever I could, but no one
would promise to come and see the "Haven Home for Belgian Refugees."
They were all too busy working, by day; and at night it was a _duty_ to
go to a theatre or music hall, because the performance was given for the
benefit of some fund, or else somebody sang a patriotic song to
encourage recruiting.

We grew busier and busier at "The Haven" as the days went by. Refugees
poured in. There was hardly time to be sad or anxious in the daytime;
but at night always, always, my brain ceased to feel like a brain, and
became a battlefield, as before in Belgium. The horror and anguish of
war poured into my soul as water pours into a leaking ship. The most
dreadful thoughts could be warded off in the busy hours of the day; but
in the night stillness they found me without defence, and I surrendered.

Those were the hours when it seemed to me impossible that any of the men
I knew, and above all, Eagle March, could ever escape from the slaughter
alive. The Miss Splatchleys said that I looked pale and thin, with blue
shadows under my eyes, and begged me not to work so hard. But I could
have worked twice as hard without realizing that I was tired, if some
one who knew the future, as no crystal-gazer can know it, had told me
that Eagle would come out of the war unharmed.

Even when there was scarcely time for a decent meal, there was time to
read the war news. All night long I existed for the moment in the
morning when the two papers which the Miss Splatchleys