you he can do all that can be done.
I offered her an injection--she would not have it."

"She pretend--all ze time she pretend. Even before me, 'er mother, she
pretend. But I know."

"Her mother!"

He stepped back against the railings, freeing himself fretfully from
the hand that clutched his arm.

"If you are her mother she treats you strangely. She treats you like a
servant."

"Before others, Monsieur. She is different--of different stuff. We
'ave always understood. If I am to be with 'er it must be as 'er
servant. That is our affair. But you are not kind. You let 'er
suffer too much. I will not 'ave it."

She drew herself up. She almost menaced him. He saw that she knew.
As a physician he had done what lay in his power, but as a human being
he had failed utterly and deliberately. Had always failed. And he was
aware of an incredible fear of her.

"I will come now," he stammered.

He gave her such sleep that night that it seemed unlikely that she
would ever wake again. He knew that he had exceeded the limits of
mercy set down by his profession and that the nurse had looked
strangely at him. But he was indifferent. It was as though he, too,
had been momentarily released.

Nor did he leave her again until the morning, but watched over her,
whilst on the other side of the bed the old woman knelt, her face
pressed against a still hand, a battered, sullen effigy of grief.

3

From the beginning she had defied the regulations of the hospital, as
she had defied the rules of life, with an absolute success. The
inelastic, military system bent and stretched itself beneath her
good-humoured inability to believe that there could be any wilful
opposition, to her desires. The macaw had been a case in point, the
gramophone another. After tea the old woman set the instrument going
for her, and when the authorities protested, ostensibly on behalf of
neighbouring patients, it transpired that the patients rather liked it
than otherwise, and there were regular concerts, with the macaw
shrieking its occasional appreciation.

She inquired interestedly into her neighbours. She seemed less
concerned with their complaints than with their ages, their appearance,
and the time when they would return to the outside world. With a young
man on her right hand she became intimate. It began with an exchange
of compliments and progressed through little folded notes which caused
her infinite amusement to a sys