YOU TOOK MY HEART

Elizabeth Hoy

He had always been her anchor.

Joan Langden had loved Garth Perros all her young life, and she believed, as she grew older,that he was coming to love her, too.

Why else would Garth suggest that she take her nurses’ training at the London hospital wherehe himself was a brilliant surgeon?

But she learned that life was not that easy. Garth’s past held a dreadful secret—one thatseemed destined to keep them apart.

CHAPTER ONE

JOAN WAS out of bed that morning before the great hospital bell had ceased its clamor. Othermornings it wouldn’t be like this. Other mornings she would lie lingeringly as most of thenurses did until the last possible moment. But today she couldn’t be quick enough reachingout for the unfamiliar starched pink frock and crisp white linen. A soft pink it was, the colorof hedge-roses in June, very becoming indeed to Joan’s fair skin glowing now after herhurried shower. She was glad it wasn’t an ugly uniform at St. Angela’s. Fastening the snowycap on her brown-gold hair she surveyed herself in the mirror, her pointed face eager, herblue eyes bright and expectant for all that this day might bring.

Feeling a little guilty she dabbed powder on her small nose. Miss Darley didn’t approveof make-up; white-haired, autocratic Miss Darley sitting aloof as a goddess in her office tointerview tremulous newcomers.

“I like my nurses to look nice, Miss Langden,” she had said to Joan on her arrivalyesterday. “And a face plastered with cosmetics is not nice. It is a nurse’s business to beunobtrusive in her appearance.” And Joan had murmured, “Yes, Matron,” respectfully, witha sinking heart. Shiny noses were awful, so were pallid countenances and anaemic lips.

But later Gemma Crosbie, her room-mate, had told her every nurse in the place carried abeauty compact in her uniform pocket. It was all right as long as you didn’t over-do it withthe powder and lipstick. Miss Darley would never know. That was the way it was, Gemmasaid, with hospital rules. There were hundreds of them, but for most of them one could findsafe little evasions. Otherwise life wouldn’t be bearable.

When she was dressed Joan stepped out of the french window on to the iron balconybeyond. It was six o’clock on a perfect summer morning; just the right sort of morning forbeginning life all over again, Joan thought. It might have been a country sky above her head,so blue and pure it was; and the garden of the square beneath, laid trim and fresh with itstended lawn and borders of flowers, might have been a hundred miles from the centre ofLondon.

On the other side of that oasis of grass and trees lay the main portion of the hospital. Joansaw it now with a thrill of importance ... her hospital. For four years its wards would be herhome, its background of suffering and healing her teacher. Would she be successful, shewondered? You had to be a “born nurse” they said. Was she? She didn’t know. Only that she

had always enjoyed helping Dad with the sick folk of his parish, visiting the mothers withnew babies and the old ladies with rheumatism. Often she had made herself quite useful inemergency in the cottage homes of Dipley-on-the-Marshes, and in the end she had nursed herfather through his two painful years of illness before he died.

Perhaps it was that more than anything which made her decide that nursing was hervocation ... those empty days after Dad was gone, and there was no more need of hervigilance. She had felt so lost and forlorn. She had wanted passionately to go on caring forsomebody, being important to somebody, being needed.

It was Garth Perros who had suggested St. Angela’s. “If you like to try your luck with usI’ll put in a good word for you with Matron and the committee,” he had written.

Joan felt she would like to try her luck at St. Angela’s with Garth somewhere in thebackground.

But just how much Garth counted in her scheme of things she would not let herself think asshe hurried down the staircase of the Nurses’ Home that summer morning in her pink frockand new white apron.

There were dozens of pink frocks running across the square now, like crumpled rosyflowers on the grey London pavement, dozens of fresh young voices calling. Miss Darleyliked you to be as quiet as a nun on those brief journeys from the home to the hospital, butMiss Darley would be sleeping still in her cloistered apartment behind the office. Only MissDon, her second-in-command, would be on the alert, her hard black eyes peering frombehind her bedroom curtains for over-ebullient probationers. Miss Don, known todisrespectful underlings as “Donald Duck” because of her strident voice, was a tartar.

“If Donald Duck sees us using the gardens as a short cut we’re done,” Gemma Crosbietold Joan as they hurried along.

“But why shouldn’t we cross by the garden? It’s so much nicer this way,” Joan said,sniffing the dewy freshness of morning flowers and wet grass.

“Because we wear out the lawn—trample it. At least that’s what she says. As though wewere a herd of elephants! Grass to old Donald is something to ‘please keep off.’ ”

With a whisk of her starched skirts Gemma jumped over the forbidding little notice.

Then they were running up the wide steps of the hospital entrance and the glass doorsswung back to admit them. Joan’s heart fluttered. She was glad of Gemma now. Gemma wasprobationer in Dale Ward, the women’s surgical, where Joan had been listed to begin herduties. Gemma was a veteran of six weeks’ experience. She was ready to tell Joan all sheknew, thrilled to tell. For too long she had been the junior in Dale. Now there would besomeone even greener and newer than herself to take on those everlasting “screens” and helpwith the sweeping and brass polishing.

As the lift sped upwards Gemma whispered dramatically, “Millet is the God Almighty uphere— she’s Sister-in-charge. Scatt is the staff nurse. A bit of a bully, but O.K. if you handleher right. Don’t let her hear you calling her ‘Scatty’ though, and never let her, see whenyou’re afraid. She’ll give you the most hair-raising jobs to do, but if you start in on themwithout fussing she comes to the rescue and helps you out. If you whine she has no use foryou.”

The lift stopped with a jerk. Joan drew in a quick breath. The corridor before them waswhite and gold with sunlight and full of flowers. On every windowsill and available shelfthe massed pitchers stood, bright with late roses and flaming spikes of gladioli. The scent ofthe roses struggled with those other terrifying odors, creosote and either soap and the tang ofcarbolic.

Gemma took Joan into the ward-kitchen and introduced her. Nurse Scatt scarcely lookedup, which, Joan felt, was rather surly of her. But she was busy listening to the report of aweary-eyed night-nurse. Later on, when she had time, she might more adequatelyacknowledge the existence of the unimportant newcomer.

“Mrs. Jenkins had a hypo at three a.m. Old Eldon slept well—” the night-nurse wassaying.

Gemma and Joan went away to make the ward-beds. It was the first duty of the day. Therewere twenty beds in “Dale,” ranged closely together against the green distempered walls. Itwas a large pleasant room lighted by an enormous bay window overlooking the square andits trees., The floor was bare, but brilliantly polished. There was a fireplace at either endand in the centre a white enamel table, upon which stood a bowl of pink glyco-thymol andjars of swabs.

Gemma said, “We’re supposed to give three minutes to each bed, so for heaven’s sake,Langden, look snappy!”

Joan tried hard, but at first her fingers were all thumbs. There were so many things shewas supposed to know ... things no one it seemed had time to tell her. There was a specialway of turning in the corners of the blankets, and you didn’t tuck in the top sheet, just foldedit over in a most peculiar fashion that Joan couldn’t help thinking must be uncomfortable forthe occupant of the bed.

The first two beds they flew at were empty because the almost convalescent patientsbelonging to them were in the bathrooms washing. They had them stripped, turned andremade well within the scheduled minutes. Joan looked a little breathlessly at the remainingeighteen beds. There were helpless folk lying in every bed ahead of them.

Gemma in an undertone tried to tell her how to manipulate the pillows and blankets withthe least possible discomfort to the patients. In bed number three was a heavy old lady whogroaned constantly. Joan felt awful trying to lift her and turn her while Gemma did lightningthings with the coverings. Gemma called the old lady “Granny,” and talked to her in a bright,high, unnatural voice which was meant to be encouraging. But the brighter Gemma was themore the old lady groaned.

“What’s the matter with her?” Joan whispered as they moved away at last from hercompletely smoothed and speckless couch.

“Dismal old trout! Had an Enterectomy done last week,” said Gemma, who had no ideawhat an Enterectomy might be. But her glib reply stunned Joan, who felt her abysmalignorance more deeply than ever before this display of surgical phraseology. Enterectomy,she decided, must be a most painful disease if the old lady’s groans were anything to go by.Why didn’t somebody give her morphia or something? Morphia was a sedative. At least sheknew that much.

“Lumbar Nephrectomy done yesterday. Go easy with this one,” Gemma panted at bednumber four. Joan’s hands shook with concern as she picked up the cheerful red top blanketand folded it back.

By eight o’clock, breakfast-time, she was feeling a wreck. She had, with Gemma, fixedand washed and fed twenty helpless and mostly seriously ill people. The names of theirailments alone, reeled off by Gemma, made her feel powerless; the fear of hurting them inher ministrations left her shaken. The ritual known as “screens” had brought her sharply tothe realization that there was no use being a nurse if you were going to be squeamish.

And after “screens” Gemma had set her to mopping out three large, tiled bathrooms.

Already with aching back and roughened hands she felt as though she had done a day’s work;but the day had hardly begun. At this rate she would scarcely survive a week at St. Angela’s,let alone four years. She was ready to weep with discouragement over her porridge-plate.The food stuck in her throat. All around her the pink-clad probationers chattered like somany cheerful magpies.

Gemma at her side introduced her perfunctorily to one or two of the nearest girls. “This isLangden, was Gemma’s invariable formula. “Better be nice to her. She’s a friend of the greatGarth Perros! He brought her here.”

“Mr. Perros! Did he really?” They were two of the senior probationers leaning across thetable, gazing with avid interest now at the newcomer. “Do you know Garth awfully well?”they asked in chorus.

Joan said yes, she did know him well. He’d lived in her home village as long as she couldremember. She was furious with herself for having mentioned Garth to the talkative Gemma,furious with herself for coloring now as she spoke of him.

“He’s a pet,” gushed one of the seniors. “And so divinely good, looking. They say he isthe most brilliant honorary we have.”

“What exactly is an honorary?” Joan asked out of her ignorance, though her impulse wasto drop the subject of Garth as quickly as possible.

“A visiting consultant—either physician or surgeon,” explained the senior. “Usually theyare men with West End practices and big refutations. They give their services to the hospitalfree.”

“Oh!” breathed Joan softly, tackling her scrambled eggs with a suddenly recoveredappetite. So Garth at twenty-nine was an “honorary.” An important surgeon with a reputation.She had known only vaguely of his connection with St. Angela’s. She hadn’t been sure justwhat it was. It warmed her heart to hear the quick commendation of him in this girl’s voice.It made her glow with secret happiness to think that she might see him soon at his work ...might see him this very morning. She had written to him that she would be beginning herduties today. Would he be looking out for her?

He was. He found her in the sunny corridor, her arms full of spiked gladioli. Millet hadgiven her the flowers to “do” because everyone was tired of her bunglings, she supposed.Changing the water in the flower-vases and carrying them into the ward was something she

could achieve without help or teaching. Not that they weren’t being terribly patient with her;they were. But they were so busy, so overworked at this hour of the morning, and alreadyScatty had wasted a valuable quarter of an hour showing her how to read thermometers andtake pulse-rates. The sense of her inevitable slowness and amateurishness in this hive ofindustry weighed on Joan more heavily with each moment that passed.

But now suddenly she forgot all about that. Garth was coming towards her down the longcorridor, smiling his nice twinkly smile. He looked tall and impressive in his white coat, thesun glinting on his dark head.

He said, “Hello, Joanna! It’s good to see you, old thing.” He took her hand and held ittightly. She was pink as her frock smiling up at him.

Joanna. That was Garth’s special name for her. He’d called her Joanna to tease her whenshe was seven and he was a mischievous grammar-school boy, and the name had stuck. Sheliked it now because no one but Garth had ever thought of calling her Joanna. It was thesecret insignia of their friendship.

She said, “Garth, you make me homesick for Dipley—just the very sight of you.”

“I know, my dear,” he answered, the twinkle leaving his grey eyes. “It must have beenhard for you getting away yesterday. But you’ll soon get over that here with all this bustlearound you.”

He meant, she knew, that she would get over Dad’s death now and saying good-bye to thewhitewashed rectory with its mellow garden; that the old life would fade away from herpainlessly, rapidly, as this new life took its place. She smiled up at him bravely.

“Bustle is the right word,” she agreed with a chuckle. “I’ve never dreamed mere humanbeings could accomplish as much in one single morning as St. Angela’s nurses do. We makebeds in three minutes and wash twenty people in half an hour.”

Garth said, “That’s nothing. You wait till you go on duty in the Out Patient’s block. Wesee a hundred folk a day down there easily, to say nothing of emergency calls.”

Joan felt shuddery. “I know. Going out in the ambulance to street accidents! Do you thinkI’ll ever be brave enough to face it?”

“Of course you will,” Garth told her heartily, and she looked up to see Sister Millet’s

disapproving countenance in the ward-kitchen door.

“Scoot!” warned Garth in quite a scared aside. “Sister won’t like you to talk to me. I’llring you up at the Home tonight and we’ll fix a meeting. You’ve got to have dinner with meyour first free evening.”

“Love to,” said Joan and fled. Sister Millet followed her into the ward and when thevases of gladioli had been set down on the, centre table she said icily, “Nurse Langden,please don’t let me find you talking in the corridor with any doctor or houseman again. It’sagainst the rules.” She turned on her heel and stalked away, leaving Joan crimson.

“Can’t I even say ‘how-do-you-do? to someone I’ve known since I was in the nursery?”she grumbled to Gemma a little later in the privacy of the sluice-room. “Biting my head offlike that in front of the patients! She made me feel like a worm.”

Gemma grinned. “Thank your stars she didn’t report you,” she said tersely. “If you asmuch as lift an eyelash in the direction of a houseman in this place you’re flirting.”

“But Garth isn’t a houseman.”

“All the worse. The Millet adores honoraries and she has a special crush on Mr. Perros.Once, it is said, he was rash enough to take her out to dinner, and she’s dreamed about himever since.”

Joan washing dusters looked serious. Had Garth really been unwise enough to offer acasual friendship to this tight-lipped woman with the greying hair and homely, middle-agedface? Women of Sister Millet’s type wouldn’t know how to be casual. Didn’t Garth realizethat? And her fury just now had been out of all proportion to the incident which prompted it.

“It must have been rather thrilling knowing Garth Perros in the nursery,” Gemma wassaying curiously. “What was he like in those days?”

“Like any other boy, ” snapped Joan rather shortly. She didn’t want to discuss Garth withGemma.

“His father is the doctor at Dipley, isn’t he?” Gemma persisted.

Joan nodded.

“But surely he was a lot older than you as a playmate—Garth, I mean. You’re what is it?Twenty-one? And Garth Perros must be nearly thirty.”

“He’s twenty-nine. Eight years older than I am. But it didn’t use to matter somehow whenwe were kids. I suppose because we were both a bit lonely. Anyway, we always got on quitewell.”

“I bet you did,” sighed Gemma enviously. “And I bet you still will when you get thechance. Anyone could get on with a lamb like Garth. Are you going to meet him in your off-duty times? That’s against the rules too, you know.”

“Blow the rules,” said Joan vigorously and slapped the wet dusters down on thesplashboard. “Where do I dry these things?”

“In the hot press,” Gemma told her and went away to the dispensary, an empty carboyunder each arm, her freckled face wearing a particularly demure expression because she wasthinking of the few moments’ flirtation she might have with her special friend the dispenser.Gemma was an incurable opportunist and the watchfulness of a Donald Duck or a Millet onlyadded zest to her small affairs.

* * * *

It was seven o’clock that evening when Joan crossed the grassy square once more, herfirst hospital day behind her. She was so tired she felt as though she had been beaten all overand her feet, she confided in Gemma, ached like “a couple of toothaches.”

“Everyone feels like that at first,” Gemma consoled her. “My first few days I ached allover. It’s all the lifting and running about. You’ll soon become hardened.”

Joan murmured fervently that she hoped she would and sat through supper in a daze ofweariness. After supper Garth telephoned her. She had to confess that she didn’t yet knowher off-duty time and hadn’t the courage to ask Sister Millet. “She was wild with me fortalking to you in the corridor,’ Joan told him indignantly, and Garth chuckled.

“The Millet is a bit of a sergeant-major, but I’ll fix her for you. She eats out of my hand.”

“So I’ve heard,” Joan put in drily, and refused to be drawn when Garth, still chuckling,begged for the source of her information.

“If you listen to hospital gossip you’ll hear some apocryphal tales,” Garth warned. “Andfurthermore, if you go and look at the notice-board in the hall of the Nurses’ Home you’llsoon know your off-duty time. You’ll find it all tabulated there.”

“You seem to know the ropes,” Joan murmured, and Garth said naughtily that she wasn’tthe first nurse he had taken out to dinner by a long chalk.

“The Millet?” enquired Joan.

“Yes,” he admitted; “on two occasions, the Millet. It pays to get on the right side of thatgood lady, as you’ll very soon find out.”

“It’s something to know she’s got a right side,” Joan said rather crossly, and went away tolook at the notice-board.

She would be able to have dinner with him the following evening, she told him. Her voicesoftening she added, “And thank you so much for all you’ve done in helping me to get here,Garth, my dear. I meant to say that this morning but Sister Millet didn’t give me time.”

“You don’t have to thank me, Joanna, darling. Anything I’ve done has been pureselfishness. You don’t know how marvellous it is for me having you on the spot like this!”His tone was tender.

Joan’s face was thoughtful as she went upstairs to her room. In the .summer twilight shesat a long time, her eyes fixed on the motionless tree-tops beyond the window.

Garth was a puzzle to her. Garth had been a puzzle for years now. He liked her ... even, itseemed at times, he loved her. That quickening in his dark grey eyes when he looked at her,the warmth of his voice, the eagerness. And it wasn’t altogether because they had beenbrought up like brother and sister. It wasn’t a brotherly Garth who had held her in his armsone sudden passionate moment last summer holiday under the rectory apple trees. It wasn’t abrotherly Garth then who had kissed her yielding lips. And afterwards he had looked at herso queerly, so miserably. “Forget that Joanna, will you?” he had said. “I had no right to dothat; only you looked so sweet, my angel, so tempting. It’s not fair of you to be so beautiful,Joan.”

She had puzzled over that incident a good deal. And other incidents like it.

Garth had come faithfully twice every year to the house beside the rectory, and it wasn’t

only because of his mother and father. “I’ve got to see you every now and again to make lifebearable,” he’d told Joan once. And ever since he went away at nineteen to walk St.Angela’s as a student, they had spent the long holidays together. Save for one year, one longblack year when he didn’t come home and had scarcely written. That was when he wastwenty-one. Eight years ago; but she could still remember the pain of his absence, theinadequacy of his letters during that period. And when he did turn up again he was a changedGarth for a while, a white-lipped, haggard young man with bitter eyes. She’d worked hardover him that holiday and she’d won him back to his ordinary cheeriness in the end, so thatthey had a more wonderful time than ever before.

Joan sighed to herself, sitting there in the small dim bedroom, only vaguely conscious nowof her aching, weary body because of that other familiar ache at her heart.

She thought of Garth’s father and mother who loved her. She knew that they too had hopedhis friendship for her would ripen to something more.

And Dad. Dad had been so sure that it would. When he lay dying it was of Garth he hadspoken. “Garth will take care of you, little Joan,” he had whispered, his voice suddenly fullof peace and certainty.

In the black days after his death Joan had remembered that. She had wondered if Garthwould come to her in her sorrow. But Garth had not come. Instead he had written suggestingthat if she really wanted to take up nursing, as she had so often said, now was her chance.Would she care to come to St. Angela’s?

With slow fingers she took off her stiff belt and folded away her crisp white apron.Brushing her hair at last in a comfortable dressing-gown she asked herself if Garth reallywanted her near him why he did not do something more practical about it? Garth knew shewas fond of him. In her honesty she had never tried to hide her affection for him. It was anintegral part of herself and she did not dream of denying it. There had never been anyone butGarth in her heart; there never would be. And now Garth was established. Garth was evenaffluent in a mild way with his Welbeck Street house and fashionable clientele. Wouldn’t ithave been natural for him to have asked her to marry him at this crisis? He needed her; he’dsaid so. And she needed him. Just how much she suddenly let herself realize, her blue eyesclouding with unshed tears.

Of course it was grand to be near him, she hastily assured herself. Half a loaf was a lotbetter than no bread at all. And it was good to be entering upon this period of hospitaltraining, with its vital absorbing work. But when you are young and very much alive, work,

no matter how absorbing, cannot be everything.

There was no answer to the puzzle that was Garth, Joan told herself for the hundredthtime, and went along to the bathroom. Lying in luxurious hot water she dismissed Garth fromher mind. Tomorrow she would spend the evening with him. After all there was alwaystomorrow. A buoyant hope welled up within her—that bright unquenchable tide of hopewhich is the very heritage of youth.

She was singing softly to herself, rubbing down briskly with the big, cosy towel, achingbones and aching thoughts all stilled with comfort. In hospital you couldn’t go on for longmaundering about your small private worries. In hospital there was so much to occupy one’smind.

With glowing eyes she thought back through the hours of the day. In spite of its rigors,being a nurse was going to be a lot worth while. She was quite sure of that now,remembering her crowded moments in Dale ward. She’d done a lot that seemed menial andirrelevant today, but she’d done other things too; things quite thrillingly professional. Scattyhad let her take the evening temperatures and showed her how to fill up the charts. She hadwheeled the trolley for the late dressings and watched them done without batting an eyelid.Scatty was pleased with her about that; brisk, hard-faced little Scatty who was sodesperately keen on her job that it made you like her in spite of yourself.

There were the patients too. They were so ready, so quick, poor darlings, to absorb anylittle fragments of sympathy or tenderness you were able to give them. Groaning Mrs. Eldon,for instance. Joan hadn’t rested until she got to the bottom of those groans. It wasn’t physicalsuffering at all it turned out; merely a craving for pity. Over the evening washing Mrs. Eldonhad confided her plight in whispers. Her illness was a catastrophe which had broken up herlife. At sixty-five it is difficult to start again. Coming to hospital she’d lost her job ascaretaker in a block of flats, and when she went weak and ailing from her comfortable bed inDale Ward she would have nowhere to tum. She was quite alone in the world—andpenniless into the bargain. Her problem was worrying her day and night, retarding recovery.

Joan told Scatty about it and Scatty said in her hard-boiled way, “It’s not a good idea tolet the patients become too personal, but if there is anything in Mrs. Eldon’s tale of woe thealmoner will help her. I’ll ask the almoner to come and talk to her tomorrow. You can tellold Eldon that if you like, and you might add that it would be a great relief to us all if she’dstop that moaning of hers. It depresses the other patients.”

Then there was Mary Bree, Joan’s own age. Poor Mary Bree lying all strung up with

pulleys and propped on cushions because she had been smashed so terribly in a car accidentwhen she was out driving with her young man one bright July evening. The young man haddied of his injuries. But Mary did not know that and thinking of him in the men’s block acrossthe way, sent him daily messages of tenderness. No one had the heart to tell her the messagesweren’t any use.

Back in her room again, climbing into her small white bed, Joan thought of Mary Breewith a catch in her throat. No, you couldn’t worry about your own trivial heartaches in St.Angela’s. Metaphysical troubles faded to extreme unimportance before the suffering andcourage which kept those twenty beds going in Dale Ward. You’d just have to be brave tooin a place like this, you’d be shamed into it.

With a yawn Joan snuggled into her pillows and long before Gemma came up to bed shewas sleeping the sleep of exhaustion.

CHAPTER TWO

The next day Joan was free of the wards at tea-time because it was her long evening “off.”She was bright-eyed and flushed, dressing for her appointment with Garth. In her beadedsilver bag lay the pass which permitted her to be away from St. Angela’s until 11.30 p.m.That was early enough for the ending of a party, but none too early when you rememberedyou would have to be up by six the following morning.

She chose from her small stock a black dinner-frock, because she was still wearingmourning. But tonight the sombre hue did not match her mood and she longed for color.Perhaps Garth would have flowers for her. He had—a great spray of orchids, tawny andgold and mauve. They lent a touch of sophistication to Joan’s simple toilette.

“They don’t look like Dipley-on-the-Marshes, do they?” she said, as she held them againsther soft creamy shoulder. “Hot-house flowers—all glamorous and extravagant. I always feelorchids are a little sinister. They make me feel like a vamp with green eyelids.”

“You don’t look like a vamp,” Garth said disappointingly, stooping to fasten the pin forher. He was very close for a moment, his hands shaking a little in their clumsiness, his leanface alight.

He had waited for her in the foyer of his club, a dim, red-carpeted place with aforbiddingly masculine atmosphere.

“Shall we have cocktails here or push on to the Berkeley right away?” he asked.

Joan said, “Are we going to the Berkeley, Garth? Oh, how wonderful!”

In the taxi he caught at her hand, turning its soft palm over, studying it. “It isn’t a nurse’shand yet,” he said. “A year from now you’ll have hard little palms and nobbly knuckles—unless you’re extraordinarily lucky. All doctors and nurses acquire ugly hands burned withthe constant application of disinfectants and hot water. Look at mine!” He held them out toher and gently her finger-tips touched them.

“They’re nice hands, Garth,” she said, her voice a little shy suddenly.

He said, “I hate to think of how hard you are going to work—how tired you’re going to bebefore you are done with St. Angela’s.”

“But I like it, Garth,” she assured him. “It’s a gloriously interesting life.”

“I can think of a much more interesting life for you,” he said softly. “Or at least I flattermyself that you might find it more interesting!”

Joan flashed him a look. “Interesting isn’t exactly the word I’d use for it,” she saidunguardedly, and saw the dull red leap to his cheeks.

“If I wasn’t tied up the way I am,” he said in a muffled voice, “I’d never dream of lettingyou start training. But as things are it is the only way to have you anywhere near me.”

Joan didn’t answer that, but a warm glow of happiness flooded her. Garth did want tomarry her, then, But he couldn’t because of the way things were. That meant economic things,of course. He had borrowed money to enable him to take over that expensive Welbeck Streetpractice. She knew that from the things Garth’s father had said to Dad. And somethingmysterious, called “overheads,” kept him constantly hard up. After all he was very young inhis profession—a brilliant beginner. Later on, when he was better off financially, everythingwould be all right. She’d wait forever quite contentedly if only she were sure of his love, shetold herself, and unconsciously moved nearer to him so that her soft, brown head all buttouched his shoulder.

His eyes were enigmatic, looking down at her. Disturbing eyes.

Arriving at the restaurant broke the queer, tremulous silence between them. They werevery gay all at once in the lofty room with its mulberry curtained windows. They ate spiced,deliciously chilled melon, smoked trout, and Garth ordered grouse, although it was so earlyin the season that they cost the earth. With the grouse they drank a smooth Chateau Lafitte,like melted rubies in the tall, slim glasses. Garth was clever about food, though poached eggson toast would have tasted like ambrosia to Joan that evening. She was very happy, athrobbing ethereal happiness that turned the whole world into a shimmering rainbow dream.

And Garth too was happy. They laughed easily as children as they chattered. Everythingseemed to conspire to their gaiety. It was a rare hour of companionship. Then it was overand Garth was asking what she would like to do next.

“There’s the ballet,” Joan suggested. “I’ve never seen a real ballet in my life.”

Garth looked dubious and said they ought to have seen about getting tickets in advance.Ballet was popular at the moment. But they could try their luck at the booking-office. Thetheatre was close by and they walked to it through the soft summer twilight. Garth in hisdinner-jacket looked more distinguished than any man she had ever seen, Joan thought. Shewas very proud of him.

In the theatre foyer he left her to see about the tickets. She waited in a tranced state ofinterest, savoring the vivid life about her, beautiful women in diamonds and summer erminemoving slowly from limousines to the theatre entrances, their escorts immaculate in formal“tails.” It wasn’t a fashionable moment for ballet, Garth had said. The real ballet season wasin June. But fashionable or not, tonight’s display was glittering enough to Joan’s countryeyes.

On the walls of the foyer were photographs of the ballerinas. They were all posed to looksoulful and impossibly ethereal. Joan found her attention caught by one face particularly, anodd, pointed face with high, Slavonic cheekbones and great starry eyes. It wasn’t a beautifulface classically but it had a strangely arresting quality. It had more character than the others,a little hard perhaps, but very alluring with its full pouting mouth and rounded chin. Therewas a scrawled feminine signature in one corner which she could not read.

When she turned from the pictured face Garth was hurrying back to her. There were noplaces he told her, or at least nothing but side seats left and they wouldn’t be good. “I’llbring you here next time you’ve got an evening to spare,” he promised, and she tried to hideher disappointment.

His hand was warm on her bare arm. “I don’t really want to watch other women dancing,darling,” he whispered. “I want to watch you. I want to dance with you. Let’s go some placewhere we can.”

She smiled up at him then, all her disappointment vanishing.

It was leaving the theatre that they walked bang into Sister Millet, unfamiliar but quiteunmistakable in a dowdy brown lace wrap.

She glared at them, recovered herself quickly and said coldly, “Good evening, Mr.Perros.” To Joan she said nothing.

Garth was swearing under his breath, hailing a taxi. “Who in heck would have thought ofthat old trout turning up?” he growled as they got into the cab.

Joan laughed uncomfortably. “Gemma Crosbie says we get complimentary tickets foreverything at St. Angela’s sooner or later. I suppose the Millet picked up a couple fortonight’s ballet. I knew it was her half-day ‘off,’ but I never dreamt she’d be here.”

“To hell with her,” snapped Garth, furious now with the foolish, cramping rules whichbound the girl at his side.

“It will be ‘to hell’ with me, tomorrow,” Joan reminded him.

“No, it won’t,” Garth said stoutly. “I’ll see Miss Darley myself first thing in the morning.It is all very well making it a law that probationers are not to run about all over the townwith housemen and students, but you and I are different. I refuse to be separated from one ofthe oldest friends of my life because of the narrow-mindedness of a pack of nursing oldwomen. Not that Miss Darley is narrow. Miss Darley is the soul of reason and I’m sure shewill see my point of view. In any case I shall tell her that I intend to go on taking you out,rules or no rules, and if she has any sense she will give in gracefully.”

“Let’s hope so, anyhow,” Joan murmured, feeling much assured by his outburst.

They went to a night club, quiet and demure as a church vestry at this early hour. But therewas a heavenly floor and a heavenly band and they danced to their heart’s content. In anamazingly short time it was eleven. Joan had to remind Garth of the hour and his face fell.

“Damn all hospitals and their regulations,” he grumbled. “We are only just beginning toenjoy ourselves.”

“I’ve been enjoying myself frantically all the time,” Joan told him wistfully.

He grinned delightedly, his ill-humor vanishing. “That was a sweet thing to say, Joanna!I’ve been enjoying myself mightily also. All I meant was that I hate to let you go with thenight so young.”

At the door of the taxi-cab he said good night, then changed his mind and stepped inbeside her.

“I’m coming with you,” he told her. “I refuse to take you out by stealth. I’m going to bequite bold about it and return you to the Nurses’ Home as though I had every right to be withyou. Because I have got every right.”

It was well for Joan perhaps that he did make this decision. Sister Millet was waiting forthem in the hall of the home, Miss Darley at her side. Miss Darley, still on duty at this, latehour after an arduous day, looked tired and faintly disgusted. The bitter Sister Millet was notone of her favorite colleagues and the spite in her voice was unpleasant as she poured outher complaint against the new probationer.

It was a dramatic moment when the new probationer walked in calmly, Mr. Perros behindher.

Sister Millet gasped. Miss Darley smiled. In a quiet way she would enjoy the interviewwhich followed.

“I’ve come to throw myself on your mercy, Miss Darley,” Garth said, his smile ingenuousand appealing. “I’ve stolen one of your probationers for the evening, but now I deliver her upto you safe and sound again. Have I offended too grossly against your code, I wonder? MissLangden, as I have already told you, is an old a friend of my family’s.”

Miss Darley’s wise face was expressionless. “Of course you haven’t offended, Mr.Perros,” she said gently. “Sister Millet has done her duty in reporting Nurse Langden, but asit happens there has been no infringment of rules. Naturally we demand discretion inbehavior of our nurses where the resident medicals and the students are concerned. There isno rule against friendship with visiting doctors. As a matter of fact the point has never beforearisen. It would not arise in an old and established family friendship like yours and MissLangden’s. I hope you have both had a pleasant outing. And now. Nurse, you had better hurryaway to bed if you are to be fresh for your work in the morning!”

Her good night nod was very kindly and with a glow at her heart Joan skipped offdownstairs. It was only human to feel elated over the downfall of the Millet, she told herself.But her elation suffered a little when she recalled the look of suppressed fury on the Sister’sface. They’d got away with it for the moment, she and Garth, thanks to Miss Darley. Theyhad triumphed over old Millet most beautifully. But they had probably made an exceedinglydangerous enemy of the woman. For herself, Joan reflected bleakly as she slowly undressed,that enmity would most likely be translated into a hundred pin-pricks of humiliation everyday that she continued to work in Dale Ward. Tonight wasn’t the end of the unfortunateepisode by a long way!

* * * *

Joan’s forebodings were justified. The days that followed were made so difficult for her

that it couldn’t all have been accidental. Her work in Dale Ward now seemed to be full ofsubtly prepared pitfalls. No doubt some of her blunders were caused by her inevitableignorance, but when working directly for Sister Millet there were so many things she wasunfairly supposed to know. The names of the instruments on the dressing trolley, for example,and the mysteries of asepsis. There were so many complicated details about sterilizingthings. Hurried Scatty outlined a few of them, answering her nervous questions as fully asshe could. But even so there were dangerous gaps in her knowledge.

It was a bad day when Scatty had a whole holiday and the buffer of her experiencedpresence was removed. Joan was entirely at the mercy of Sister Millet that black Mondayand with a glint in her eye she seemed to glory in that fact, bidding Joan wheel the trolley forthe important morning dressings, though it was Gemma, as senior pro, who ought to havebeen given that task. But Gemma had been sent away to scrub an already painfully cleanlinen cupboard at the other end of the corridor.

To make matters worse it was Sir Humphrey Rassat, the great gynaecologist, who wasseeing his patients that morning, the House Surgeon respectfully dancing attendance on him,accompanied by a handful of students. Joan paled before this awe-inspiring assembly andinwardly prayed that she would not be called upon to do anything very special. She couldmanipulate the electric switch on the sterilizer or hold the kidney-trays or pass swabs. Butthat was about all. Sister Millet would have to see to the more important details.

With trembling limbs Joan pushed the trolley from bed to bed, breathing a sigh of relief aseach dressing or consultation was accomplished. Then the dreadful moment came whenSister Millet whispered, “Go and get a Nelaton’s probe, Nurse Langden. Quickly!”

Joan fled. She hadn’t the faintest notion what a Nelaton’s probe might be. Standing in frontof the instrument cupboard her eyes went misty with apprehension and small drops ofperspiration stood out on her brow. There were hundreds and hundreds of probes here andthey were all different. Already she had been an unwarranted time over her errand she felt.The patient was lying with wound exposed and it was a crime of the most heinous kind tokeep Sir Humphrey waiting. The Nelaton thing, whatever it was, ought to have been on thetrolley before they started.

As a last resource Joan rushed down the corridor. “What’s a Nelaton probe look like?”she panted.

Gemma shook her head blankly. “Search me,” she murmured without much sympathy.

So Joan had to go back to the ward and falter out to Sister Millet that she was very sorry,but she didn’t know what a Nelaton probe was.

“Then for God’s sake why didn’t you say so at first, woman!” roared the impatient SirHumphrey. Joan went red and white and Sister Millet with a twisted little smile on her mouthproduced the necessary instrument from the tray where it had lain all the time.

That was the kind of thing that was always happening. Joan’s nerves suffered and shebegan to dread her hours on duty. Sometimes Sister would keep her scrubbing shelves orwinding bandages for hours together. But that wasn’t so bad. She could tackle any amount ofboring hard work. It was things like the Nelaton probe that got her down. In the evenings shepored over every book she could find which would teach her the rudiments of surgery. Butthere was so much to learn. Much more than any brain could take in in a few snatched hoursof leisure, and there remained so many ways in which Sister Millet could trip her up if shewanted to.

At the end of a fortnight she told Joan she would have to pull herself together if shewanted to remain in Dale Ward.

“The work is too strenuous here for the toleration of stupidity,” Sister Millet said gravely.

Had she been unusually stupid? Joan wondered, and began to doubt herself—whichwasn’t any help. She made mistakes now which were begotten of sheer nervousness andover-anxiety to please.

“What will happen to me if I’m kicked out of Dale?” she asked Gemma forlornly.

“You’ll be sent to the Ripley Trust Ward,” Gemma told her, “where they do nothing butkids’ adenoids and tonsils. That’s where all the dumbest of pros are broken in.”

Joan caught herself thinking miserably that apart from the disgrace of a descent toadenoids and tonsils she wouldn’t ever see Garth if she went to the Ripley Trust.

She tried harder than ever after that and for a day or two outwitted Sister Millet’smachinations so completely that life was almost sweet again.

In a way it was an excellent, if somewhat heroic, beginning to her training.

* * * *

Then something happened which put Sister Millet and her petty tyrannies right out ofJoan’s head. It was a Sunday afternoon with routine work cut down to a minimum. Only Joanand Nurse Scatt were on duty. It was ward tea-time and the patients’ Sunday visitors had justgone leaving a litter of gifts behind them. There were flowers to put in water and fruit topack as neatly as possible in the bedside lockers. Beside the fruit there were the lesspoetical offerings of eggs and butter and lump sugar. Joan couldn’t get used to the messinessof keeping food of all sorts in the small lockers, together with soap and toothpaste and wornundergarments. It didn’t seem to go with the strict hygiene which dominated every otherdepartment of the hospital life. But it was a time-honored custom and it kept the patientshappy.

She was busy trying to fit warmish butter and a fruit jelly into the jumble of old Mrs.Eldon’s bedside possessions when Nurse Scatt called to her.

“There’s an emergency coming in. Perros is taking it. Mastoid. Kid of seven. Privatepatient. I want you to get room fifteen ready,” Scatty said breathlessly.

Joan hurried away. Room fifteen was rose-colored and pleasant with a chintz-coveredarmchair and an eiderdown quilt on its bed. Private patients, it seemed, had luxuries. Alsothey were a perfect curse as a rule, Scatty said, throwing the clean sheets down on the bed.Joan, whisking blankets about, wanted to know why the child of seven wasn’t going to thechildren’s block.

“Because the G.P. who’s sending him in wants him to have a room to himself. Therearen’t any sidewards on the kids’ block,” Scatty explained.

They finished the bed by a neat sleight-of-hand just as the lift came up and stretcher-wheels sounded on the stone corridor outside.

Joan felt a pang of pity for the small golden-haired boy living under the brown stretcher-blankets. His pointed face was wan with terror, his grey eyes wide. A tall, slim girl walkedbeside him, golden-haired like the child, wide-eyed too and even more terrified. The mother,Joan supposed, in spite of her youth, and started with a pang of recollection as she looked atthat curiously striking face. Where had she seen it before? At the ballet, of course, that wasit. The pictured face she had studied on the foyer wall while she waited for Garth thatmemorable evening. Her interest quickened ... She hadn’t imagined a youthful ballerinahaving a small son who developed acute mastoiditis. It was tragic and pathetic.

She was very gentle helping to lift the child from the stretcher, laying him on the foldedblankets of the newly made bed and fixing the pillows beneath him. “We aren’t going to hurtyou, dear,” she said in answer to the pitiful questioning of the eyes looking up at her.

The child’s lips quivered. “If only Mummy could stay with me,” he said in a brave, shakyvoice.

The golden-haired young woman knelt down beside her. “Mummy is going to stay,” sheasserted. “They’ll let me, won’t they?” she shot at Joan.

“Of course they will,” Joan told her and fervently hoped she was right.

Scatty put her head in the door. “I want you to admit this patient while I get on with theward work. Come and help me as soon as you’re through.”

Joan murmured, “Yes, Nurse Scatt, and hoped that she would remember all the details ofadmission. They were fairly simple. Name and age for the chart. Pulse and temperature.Then a blanket-bath. She set to work. It was difficult with the young mother sitting on thebed, the child’s hot hand in her own Joan hadn’t the heart to move her and after a moment ortwo she began to help. That was all wrong, of course. Scatty would be furious if she camein. But Joan couldn’t help it. It was easy to sense the passionate attachment between thesetwo human beings, easy to sense the awful acuteness of their terror in this emergency. Youhad to do everything you could to make it easy for them.

Ivan Petrovna was the name Joan wrote on the chart-head. They were Russian, of course,like most ballet folk.

Madame Petrovna said, “It has all happened so quickly. Two days ago Ivan was so well.Then this terrible earache and high fever.”

When she spoke, her face went soft and wistful, her great eyes eloquent with appeal. Thephotograph in the theatre had left out her coloring. It was gold and creamy and delicate withthose unbelievable brown eyes. Madame Petrovna, Joan thought, was the most attractiveperson she had ever seen. And it wasn’t that she was smartly dressed. Her black frock wasshiny with age, only redeemed from its shabbiness by the vivid gipsy scarf at the neck andthe single heavy bangle on her slender wrist. But Petrovna’s body was so beautifully shapedthat it didn’t seem to matter what she wore. She moved with the supple ease of the dancer,using her hands a little when she talked. Her voice was thick and dulcet, with a faintlyforeign intonation which gave it unusual charm.

“Tell me about this mastoid operation,” she begged. “Is it safe—simple?”

“Perfectly simple,” declared Joan out of her ignorance. “Ivan will be well before weknow where we are.” She smiled reassuringly at the wide-eyed little boy—grey misty-lashed eyes quite unlike his mother’s brown ones. It was important to keep him as peacefulas possible now and the anxious questionings of his parent were not good. So Joan firmlydiscouraged them.

Madame Petrovna switched over to the subject of doctors. “You have such cleversurgeons here I am told,” she said hungrily. “That is good. This specialist who is to see Ivan—I did not quite catch his name when our doctor telephoned just now?”

“Perros,” Joan put in.

The brown eyes went tight and wary. “Perros,” she whispered almost as though to herself.“Strange it should be that name. But this man who is so famous, he must be old—yes?”

“No, he is not old,” Joan said, seeing the lovely face before her grow curiously puzzled.“Did you know a surgeon of that name then?”

Madame Petrovna shook her head. “Not a surgeon. Just someone very young indeed. Agreat many years ago. It could not be the same.”

She leaned over her son then murmuring the liquid endearments of her own tongue.

When the blanket-bath was over Joan went back to the ward to plunge into the eveningritual of washing and screens. Scatty it was who took Garth Perros to room fifteen when hearrived to make his preliminary examination.

Joan met him a quarter of an hour later in the corridor when she was fetching the milk forthe patients’ supper. His face was ashen and he passed her without a word, without a look.He was like a sleep-walker with that dazed, terrible expression in his eyes. Joan stood quitestill with the pitcher of milk in her hands. Something had gone wrong with Garth. Somethingvery serious. Was it the condition of the child he had just seen? Was it that this operationwas to be so much more than ordinarily difficult that it dismayed him, to the point of terror.Joan couldn’t quite believe that. Garth was so sure, so experienced.

With a troubled feeling she went into the ward-kitchen and began to cut the thick pieces ofbread and butter which she would serve with the mugs of hot milk. Scatty came in, fussing

with a hypodermic needle. She had just given Ivan a preliminary sedative she said, andexplained the principle of ante-operation sedatives to her usually eager pupil. But Joanwasn’t listening.

“I met Mr. Perros just now,” she said, when Scatty was done. “He looked so ill, so odd!”

Scatty nodded. “I was just going to tell you. It’s the queerest thing you ever heard. Whenhe marched into number fifteen just now I thought he was going to faint. I’ve never seen aman turn so many colors of the rainbow. And Madame Petrovna, she went white as a sheettoo and called him by his Christian name. Then because I was in the room they pulledthemselves together. But you can mark my words there is something very peculiar about thewhole thing. They have obviously met before and in pretty dramatic circumstances I shouldsay.” With another nod of her head Scatty rushed away.

Joan poured milk into the big aluminum saucepan and lighted the gas-ring. Then sheranged the mugs carefully on the tray, counting them twice over to make sure she had thecorrect number. Everything she did was done with exaggerated care—as though she were alittle drunk.

She went through her subsequent duties in a stiff, mechanical fashion. Garth’s strickenface wouldn’t go out of her mind. And the odd way Madame Petrovna had looked when sheheard his name. The odd things she had said. But it was years ago since she had knownsomebody called Perros. It couldn’t have been Garth, Joan told herself firmly, andnevertheless believed that it was.

How many years ago had Madame Petrovna meant, she asked herself, taking the heavytray into the ward. Eight? It was eight years ago that Garth had stayed away from Dipley andshe had always suspected that an unhappy love-affair had been at the bottom of that. But itwas silly to go on like this with no evidence whatever to support her suspicions. An exotic,foreign creature like Madame Petrovna couldn’t possibly mean anything to the clear andcandid Garth. And yet he had been so upset at his encounter with her that even a prosaicperson like Scatty had noticed it!

With a sigh Joan carried hot milk and bread and butter to Mrs. Eldon. The old lady peeredup at her waiting expectantly for the usual cheery word which accompanied Joan’s services.But for once there was none forthcoming.

“What has happened to our little nurse’s smiles this evening?” Granny Eldon murmuredwith kindly concern. “You look right tired, dearie! When are you going off duty to get some

rest? It’s crool the way they works young things in this hospital. That’s what I say.”

Joan scarcely heard her. She was listening to the wheels of the stretcher taking Ivan to thelift. In a moment he would soar upwards to the grim white theatres on the top floor, andGarth would be waiting for him there.

Ivan’s mother would be alone now, somehow enduring this awful interval of suspense.Joan tried to keep away from room fifteen but in the end her heart drove her in there with acomforting cup of freshly made tea.

Madame Petrovna was still sitting on the bed—now bleakly empty and forsaken, hercolorless face mask-like.

“I brought you some tea,” Joan murmured.

The girl looked at her blankly. She did not attempt to take the cup Joan held out to her. Shedid not seem to see it.

“How long will they be?” she asked in a voice gone harsh and cracked as though withlong fever. Her great eyes searching Joan’s face for some crumb of reassurance were almostlike mad eyes in the intensity of their anxiety. “How long?” she repeated. “For I cannot bearmuch more. Why wouldn’t they let me go with him? Why? Why? He looked so little, sohelpless going away from me. They’d put him to sleep with something. They cut off hislovely hair, ’ she said with a sob. Then suddenly she was all broken up, throwing herselfdown on the bed, her slender body shaken with weeping.

It was better so. Joan knew that. Tears would ease that awful tension. But her own eyeswere wet as she uttered what comfort she could. Presently she took the unwanted tea awayand sent Scatty in instead. Scatty knew all about soothing hysterical outbursts though shelooked as though she were quite incapable of one herself. Scatty at moments like this was atower of strength. In a little while she had restored calm to the occupant of room fifteen, andabout three-quarters of an hour later the stretcher came back.

Joan was in the small adjoining private bathroom folding away the rubber sheets whichwould be used for Ivan’s bed. Garth had come back with his patient. She heard his voice. Itwas hollow and tense and unnatural, but the words he spoke were good. The operation hadbeen quite simply and effectively accomplished and the child had stood it remarkably.

Nurse Scatt went away rolling the stretcher in front of her. Garth and Madame Petrovna

were done now.

Garth said, “He’ll be all night, Vera. A month from now if all goes well he will be on hisfeet again perfectly fit.”

Joan made a little sound so that they would realize she was in the bathroom close by. Shewanted to walk boldly out. But somehow the courage to perform this simple action wouldnot come to her. She stood perfectly still, her hands clasped hotly together ... waiting for sheknew not what. Only that she couldn’t go out. She couldn’t see Garth again with that awfullook on his face. She couldn’t bear to see any more this stranger he had called by name ...this terrifying disturbing stranger.

She heard the gush of feminine weeping again, broken now by queer strained laughter.

“I’m so glad, Garth. Oh, I’m so glad. And it’s the queerest thing in the world that it shouldbe you, my dear, who has saved Ivan. You don’t know yet how queer.”

“It’s an odd coincidence,” Garth murmured in agreement. “But I’m glad to have helpedyou, Vera—and your son. He’s very nice.”

“My son—” said Madame Petrovna quietly—“and yours, Garth. You didn’t guess that,did you?”

CHAPTER THREE

Hidden in the bathroom Joan stood perfectly still. There was the most extraordinary feelingin her head—as though all the sense had been emptied out of it. It felt hollow and dead andthere were no thoughts in it of any kind. She knew that Vera Petrovna and Garth were stilltalking in low hurried tones, quite clearly, but she could not have told what they Weresaying. Words didn’t make sense to her any more. The last words that had made any sensewent on echoing and echoing around the small glistening bathroom like a gramophone recordthat has got stuck

My son ... and yours, Garth. You didn’t guess that, did you? My son, and yours.

With steady hands Joan folded the last of the red rubber sheets. She folded it in four, thenin eight, then opened it out and folded it all over again. When it slid to the floor at her feetshe didn’t seem to see it go. It was her own face she was seeing looking at her out of theslice of mirror above the bath. White cap with tendrils of warm chestnut hair tucked into it,and below the cap arched brows and wide blue eyes, only they didn’t look blue any more,but black, as though they were in pain.

Nurse Scatt had come back into room fifteen. Garth was going.

She was like a hunted animal listening now, taking in every movement on the other side ofthe door. She’d got to get out of this bathroom somehow without being seen. She’d got tokeep it from them forever that she’d overheard ... Them! Vera Petrovna and Garth.

They were coupled already together in her mind, a common enemy.

She heard Garth say, “I’ll look in a little later on. The boy will be all right now; I think.The ether effects are passing off nicely. Keep him quiet, Nurse.” Then he was gone withScatty pattering behind him. Joan peeped forth cautiously. Vera Petrovna was kneeling by thechild’s bed, her golden head buried in her hands. She might have been praying ... or weeping.Joan didn’t know. Noiselessly in her rubber ward-shoes, she crept from the room. When shefound herself safely in the corridor she wanted to run ... she didn’t know where. Justanywhere away from the sound of Vera Petrovna’s voice repeating that astounding,incredible statement.

Garth’s son! The small pathetic Ivan with the bandaged head was Garth’s son. And Vera.What then was Vera to Garth?

Still with that dazed feeling Joan went into the ward. It was Sunday evening—still Sundayevening, although the world had been turned upside down. That seemed most extraordinary!

Mrs. Eldon was waiting for her late treatment and there was the ward-kitchen to mop overand leave clean for the night-nurses. Scatty was sitting at the white enamel table in the centreof the ward writing the day’s report.

She looked up sharply when Joan came in and said, “You’ve forgotten to take the flowersfrom the mantelpiece. Where on earth have you been all this time?”

Joan didn’t answer her. She walked heavily down the room to-the empty fireplace andcollected the vases of half-faded roses.

“Don’t leave them in the corridor with the fresh flowers,” warned Scatty. “Those rosesare withered. Throw them into the waste-pan in the lotion-room.”

Joan said, “Yes, Nurse Scatt.”

There was a lovely, sweet scent from the dying roses. As she carried them they droppedgreat petals of scarlet, slow as tears, so that she had to come back with a dustpan and brushand sweep them up. They were like splashes of blood on the pale polished boards ... AndVera Petrovna and Garth had been lovers. That was the essential, terrible, earth-shaking facttoday’s drama had disclosed. Eight years ago it must have been. Ivan was seven ... all thepieces of the puzzle fitting in now, the mystery made clear. That was the summer of Garth’sodd behavior, his anguish—and his plain, ordinary sulks. The year when she had lost himand known him lost. The year she had worked so hard to win him back again.

In the ward-kitchen Joan fumbled for the galvanized tin pail and big curly mop. She filledthe pail with hot water from the tap, shook soap-flakes into it and began to wash over thedark, green linoleum ... Garth and Vera Petrovna had been lovers and Ivan was their son.Things like that happened in life, of course, remotely, without reality. You read about them inbooks or in rather sordid newspaper stories. It hadn’t seemed possible they could come nearyou. But Garth who had kissed her so passionately under the apple trees, Garth who had heldher in his arms, who had so many times so nearly told her that he loved her ... Garth was nowthe centre of just such a story. He had loved, he had erred perhaps, in a past too easilyforgotten, and now the past had come back to strike at him. The past in the lovely shape of

Vera Petrovna, with her golden hair and husky voice, her wistful, appealing eyes. Whateffect would she have upon Garth? What would it do to him now that he knew that Ivan washis son?

With small icy hands Joan carried the pail of suds away down the corridor to be emptiedin the lotion-room sink. Vera Petrovna was in the corridor too—talking to the fat, motherlynight-sister. She looked very tall and fragile against a sunset window with the flowers whichhad been banished from the ward for the night massed behind her. She looked all drained andfinished somehow, her face like an ivory mask under her tiled hat, her great eyes fastenedupon night-sister’s homely countenance with that avid hunger for assurance they had heldever since she had walked into the hospital beside Ivan’s stretcher.

Night-sister was saying, “He’ll be quite all right with me, Mrs. Petrovna. You can rely onthat. I’ll ring you up at your flat if he should waken and ask for you. I promise you.”

Vera said, “I’ll be at the Berkeley, dining with er—a friend. Maybe I’ll be there an hour;not more. After that I’ll be at the Museum number I’ve given you. How early can I come backhere in the morning?”

“Nine o’clock,” night-sister told her, and Joan took her humble scrubbing-pail into thelotion-room, lifted it on to the splash-board and stood staring at it as though she werewondering what it was and how it had got there.

Garth was taking Vera to dine at the Berkeley. Of course it was Garth who was the friend.They would have to get away alone together at the first opportunity to talk about Ivan—wouldn’t they? They would have to talk about the past and their amazing meeting. It wasperfectly natural, even right in a way that they should. Garth couldn’t very well do any lessthan offer to look after his old friend Madame Petrovna and give her dinner this night of allnights, in her pain and distraction.

Scatty put a disapproving face round the lotion-room door. “You’ll be late for supper,Langden. Hurry up, for goodness’ sake! What on earth has come over you this evening?You’re about as snappy as a sick tortoise!”

Joan with a start pulled down her sleeves, put on her cuffs and followed obediently inScatty’s wake.

The night-nurses were already hurrying along the corridors to their posts in twos andthrees. Across the square the supper-bell tinkled. It was Sunday night and Miss Don would

be taking the meal. It was the worst possible night for any unpunctuality. Under the shadowy,whispering trees Nurse Scatt and Joan began to run. It seemed incredible to Joan that thewrath of Miss Don could still matter, and yet in some incredible fashion, and in spite of heragonized preoccupation, it did matter. The subtle, relentless discipline of hospital life hadalready got into her blood. If the world were crashing around her in ruins she wouldautomatically continue to answer bells and watch clocks and flatten herself against wallsrespectfully for Matron to pass her by.

Though it was not of that she was thinking as breathlessly, in the nick of time, she took herplace at the probationers’ long table.

It was another table she was picturing, a small and intimate one set out with fine glass andsilver in a dignified room with long mulberry curtains. And across the table a man and a girlwould be talking, a grey-eyed young man with a puckered, unhappy brow, and a goldenslender girl with the face of a broken madonna—talking together as though their livesdepended now on what they might say to each other, on what they might plan to do.

* * * *

Joan didn’t know how she got through the nightmare days that followed. In the morning shewould waken in her narrow hospital bed with the courage fresh to her rested nerves. Shewould tell herself she was making a mountain out of a mole-hill. Men did have youthfullove-affairs that sometimes rose up in after years to haunt them. Men did have mistresses andnameless, pathetic little children. But the world did not come to an end because of that. Itwas life. It was the way things were. You had to grow up and face it some time.

But the courage born of this hasty philosophizing never lasted her long. And even whileshe lay waiting for the harsh morning bell to ring out she would know that it was no good.Garth was lost to her. Nothing would ever be the same between them again. It was the streakof puritan in her, she would tell herself; it was perhaps plain and unvarnished jealousy ... itwas this or it was that. And at best it was a pain which seized her heart in a vice and left itwithout life or reason.

She went through her duties in a blind, mechanical fashion, somehow weaving for herselfan outer armor of appearances behind which she could hide her wound. She listened toGemma chattering in their shared bedroom, even contriving chatter back. It would be sodreadful if the inquisitive Gemma should notice her distress, question her about it. So that inthe Nurses’ Home, in the wards, she was brighter than usual with a hard, unreal brightness.

And with a passion of secret purpose she concentrated on avoiding Garth. If she werewheeling the instrument trolley for his dressing she kept her eyes fixed on the floor, on SisterMillet assisting him, on the cruel, shining little knives and probes in the clear glass trays.She would not exchange the briefest of glances with him. If she saw him in the corridor shewas gone with a whisk of her starched skirts, hiding in the lotion-room (that inviolablesanctuary of all hunted probationers). She could not, would not speak to Garth yet nor allowherself to be cornered by him. One day of course she would have to acknowledge hisexistence again ... but not yet, her heart cried out in panic. She couldn’t bear it yet.

And it was specially hard that week because Garth was so much more than usual inevidence on Dale floor. Morning and afternoon, very often evenings as well, he went alongto room fifteen. It wasn’t because Ivan was dangerously ill any longer. Ivan was recoveringrapidly.

Perhaps it was the presence of Ivan’s golden-haired mother that drew the young surgeon.Madame Petrovna snatched every moment she could from rehearsals and performances to sitby the bedside of her boy. Maybe it was that, Joan thought to herself in dull misery, whichtook Garth with the odd, half-thrilled, half-expectant expression on his face hurrying alongDale corridor. At all events his conduct was so marked and so wholly unusual that SisterMillet in the end became aware of it.

She mentioned it to Nurse Scatt one afternoon in the ward-kitchen with a glint in her eyefor the junior probationer who was polishing ward-knives and forks at a corner of the muchscrubbed dresser.

“Mr. Garth Perros,” said Sister sneeringly, “is honoring Dale floor with a lot of hisattention this week, Nurse. Have you noticed it? I wonder what the attraction can be!”

Nurse Scatt giggled.

“It isn’t often, of course,” the Millet continued, her eyes fixed with a sort of spitefultriumph on Joan’s downcast lashes and flushing cheeks, “that we have beautiful Russianballet dancers in our midst. And young Ivan’s mother is an extremely attractive creature. Nodoubt that fact is not lost on our good Mr. Perros!”

“I’ll say it isn’t!” put in Scatty with another of her hateful giggles, and she proceeded totell Sister Millet the dramatic way in which Mr. Perros and the Russian girl had greeted eachother when they first met in room fifteen.

Sister Millet pricked up her ears at that, her face going greedy and eager all at once at thescent of a piece of gossip so particularly spicy. So Petrovna and Perros had already knowneach other before she came to the hospital! That was interesting.

Sister Millet said Mr. Perros was a dark one, a deep one, and she would never havesuspected him of being the type who fell for foreign dancing girls. But then you never couldtell—could you?

“But of course, you knew of his liking for ballet, Nurse Langden,” she went on, turning toJoan. “He takes you to ballet on your off-duty nights, doesn’t he?”

The sneering smile which accompanied this remark made Joan go hot all over. Sheclenched her hands tightly to prevent herself hurling the knife-box into Sister Millet’stwisted, revolting face. She thought with a sudden panic: if only this creature knew the wholetruth about Garth and Vera Petrovna how terrible it would be! And Scatty like a fool had puther well on the way to discovering quite a lot. The facts even dimly guessed by her,purveyed to the world on her malicious tongue would be enough to ruin Garth’s reputation atthe hospital, wreck his career. Instinctively, Joan knew that it would give Sister Millet thegreatest possible satisfaction to do this. Garth had hurt her badly, whether wittingly orunwittingly, and hers was not the type of nature to forgive.

Piling the brightly shining spoons in the kitchen-table drawer, Joan wondered bleakly if itwere her duty to warn Garth to be more careful about his visits to room fifteen, and if therewere any way in which she could do this without letting him know that she was aware of hisold intrigue with the Russian girl. It was a difficult problem, and for the moment it baffledher. She could not yet trust herself to speak to Garth about Vera without betraying herfeelings.

Then she discovered that it wasn’t only Vera who drew Garth to room fifteen. It wasSunday again, and Ivan, a whole week away from his operation, was sufficientlyconvalescent to sit propped up with pillows, and enjoy a mild game with a jig-saw puzzlewhich he adored. Throughout the morning Joan had snatched odd moments from her duties torun in and help him with its intricacies.

She liked Ivan. She couldn’t help herself. In the beginning—those first strange days afterVera Petrovna’s revelation when he had lain still and small in his bed, she had tended himwith a sense of shrinking. He was so close to her hurt. There was nothing about him that didnot make her heart cry out in protest. Even, she was a little afraid of him in some curiousway, as though his very life was a threat to her own.

But later, when the first shock of her agony had been assimilated, she began to see himdifferently. He was, after all, just a small boy in bed with bandaged yellow curls and largeappealing grey eyes. When his dressing was being done he held her hand tightly for comfort.He did not cry out or moan. He was so little, so brave. He said to her with his quaint, old-fashioned air, “This isn’t very nice, but it is something I have to put up with. Mummie sayslittle boys have to learn to put up with things, as well as grownups.”

Joan’s throat had gone lumpy and hot at that because it came to her with a pang that in allprobability Vera Petrovna’s philosophy of endurance had been learned in a pretty bitterschool.

That was the day she bought Ivan the jig-saw puzzle when she went out for her off-dutywalk, and she couldn’t help feeling warm at the heart when she saw the appreciation withwhich it was received. It occurred to her that for some reason Ivan hadn’t had many toysgiven to him in his short life. He was so unspoiled, so fresh and lovely in his enthusiasm forthe little chips of colored wood.

And so that slack Sunday morning while she was waiting for the mid-day lunches to beserved, Joan ran back again to room fifteen, almost at interested as Ivan was in the problemof the cow with the missing horns and the house that hadn’t any roof.

Only this time Garth was there, sitting most unprofessionally on the patient’s bed, his backvery road and square in its week-end tweeds.

Her heart turned over sickeningly at the sight of him, and he jumped up very quickly andsaid “Come on in, Joan. I was hoping I’d catch you this morning.”

She couldn’t say anything to that. She couldn’t escape. There was nothing for it now but toadvance into the small sunny room with its chintz armchair and high surgical bed. She wasthinking in bewilderment: He’s never come on a Sunday morning before. Honoraries neverdo come on Sundays. He journeyed all across London and sacrificed his weekly game of golffor this. Why?

She saw the answer in his eyes looking down at the small boy so gravely engrossed withthe pieces of colored puzzle. Garth had come to see Ivan. There was an expression now onhis mobile, sensitive face she had never seen there before, a kind of proud affectionate,almost pitying tenderness. It was quite an unconscious expression, and his hand restingprotectingly on Ivan’s small shoulder had a possessive, hungry look about it that made herwant to cry.

Knowing that this child was his own hadn’t horrified Garth, then. It had done somethingquite different from that—it had made him look proud like this, given him this air ofhappiness, of suppressed excitement. The knowledge coming to hurt her in a new way,puzzled her, shut her out further from him than ever.

He said casually enough, “Where have you been hiding yourself all these days, Joanna?I’ve peered into every nook and cranny on Dale floor for you, and all I’ve succeeded inlocating was the tail of your skirt vanishing round the nearest corner. Almost as though youwere running away from me. Were you?”

Joan tried to laugh naturally. “Certainly not,” she said. “I’ve been busy. I’m busy nowactually and Scatty will have something to say if she catches me loafing in here. I justpopped in to see how Ivan was getting on with that puzzle.”

“I’m getting on beautifully since Doctor Perros came,” Ivan told her excitedly. “Look!We’ve found that cow’s other horn and the red bit for the farmhouse roof.”

Joan bent over to see, her pulses throbbing in her throat because when Ivan looked up ather like this with his lovely, direct grey eyes he was so terribly, so terrifyingly like Garth.They were Garth’s eyes shining there in the small heart-shaped face beneath the whitebandages. It was Garth’s own characteristic, twinkly smile.

“I’m so glad about the cow’s horn,” she said.

And Sister Millet, she was thinking ... how soon would it be before that watchful womandiscovered Ivan’s dramatic resemblance to his too attentive surgeon? How soon would it bebefore the talkative Scatty began to joke about it in her coarse, earthy fashion? It was soclear for anyone to see if they thought of it—so specially clear somehow today now that Ivanwas looking stronger.

She turned then as if she would go, but Garth caught at her arm. “No you don’t, youngwoman!” he said jocularly. “I’m not letting you vanish again until I’ve wrung some sort ofexplanation out of you. Why have you been keeping out of my way all the week? Why haveyou avoided me so carefully—so that you wouldn’t even let your eyes say a friendly ‘how-do?’ to me across the dressing trolley? What have I done, Joanna? What can I have done todeserve such treatment?”

“Nothing,” cried Joan wildly. “Oh, nothing, Garth! It is just that I have been busy. Truly itis.”

“Then you’ve got to stop being as busy as all that,” he said drily. “I don’t like it.”

He was standing in front of her now to hinder her going. He looked very tall, verymasterful, towering over her. He took her hand gently in his own, and she wanted to cry outagainst that. She was amazed at the flood of bitterness his touch aroused in her. She couldn’tbear it ... the smell of his tweedy-smoky Harris coat came to her, the fresh, soapy scent of hisskin. This nearness was awful ... an outrage flaying her heart with pain.

“Joanna, darling, what is it?” he asked in a low tender voice.

She didn’t know how lovely she was looking up at him with that quivering intensity on herfine little face, her lips childishly parted, her eyes wide and afraid. She didn’t know nowmuch too evident was the distress she ought to have hidden from him.

“I’ve hurt you in some way, though I haven’t meant to. Tell me what it is that’s annoyingyou, Joanna?” he urged.

“I’m not annoyed,” Joan said. Which was true enough. Annoyed was hardly the word todescribe the turmoil of her feelings.

But Garth would not be put off. “I always know when you are cross with me, no matterhow much you may try to hide it,” he told her with so loving, so reproachful a smile that herheart felt like breaking.

“When you were seven and I first called you Joanna you had a knack of opening your eyesvery wide and looking at me with the utmost dignity and coldness. That look scared me eventhen. It scares me now.” His fingers tightened round her arm as he drew her nearer.

“Is it because you think I’ve forgotten I was going to take you to the ballet that you’reangry with me?” he asked. “Because, I haven’t forgotten, my dear. The tickets are here in mypocket-book at this moment. I’ve got them for Wednesday—that’s still your late night off,isn’t it?”

She shook her head with a choking feeling. With frantic urgency she pulled away from himand made for the door.

“Not ballet!” she whispered, the very sound of the word now sickening her ... VeraPetrovna in white, diaphanous skirts flitting light as a blown leaf across a flood-lit stage, hergolden head thrown back, her painted mouth smiling, her brown eyes serious and intent ...

Vera on magic tip-toe, poised like a bird, one slender forefinger held beneath her roundedchin while the audience applauded and the violins laughed and sang ... Oh, she could see itall so clearly!

“I can’t possibly go to the ballet on Wednesday night, nor any other night,” she told himwildly. “I’m busy working for my first exam, Garth. Truly I am, so please don’t bother me.”

She opened the door then, and fled, not seeing the quick wound on his face, not caring.Because her own wound was so much too great for her. She never wanted to see him again,she told herself. She never wanted to speak to him. She wanted to be done with him now andforever, and she hadn’t the courage to explain to him the reason why. She never would havethe courage. For the rest of her time at St. Angela’s she would just have to go on escapingfrom him in this foolish, unsatisfactory fashion.

Her cheeks were burning as she hurried into Dale Ward. The chestnut-bright hair edgingher cap lay curled in damp childish rings on her forehead, her breath felt hot and tight in herbreast. It was ridiculous to go on in this way! It was crazy! But Garth had been so much toher. Garth had stood for steadfastness and honor as well as for love. He had been like ananchor to her in the uncertainties of living since her father’s death. She had depended uponhim more deeply, more vitally than she had guessed.

And he had failed her.

She reached the kitchen beyond the ward and Scatty was waiting for her, telling her, asusual, to hurry. The lunches, she said, were cooling on the service lift at the far end of thecorridor.

Joan picked up a heavy enamel tray and went away dully to collect them. As she lifted thetin-covered plates from the lift she was aware of footsteps behind her. It was Vera Petrovnahurrying to room fifteen. Vera cool and fair and utterly desirable in a flimsy summer frock ofdelicate green.

She smiled at Joan, her quick, sweet smile, and her voice was eager asking if Ivan was allright this morning, if he had slept well?

Joan told her, yes, Ivan was wonderfully well today and actually sitting up playing.

With a nod of thanks she was gone, her feet skimming the corridor floor, her wonderfuldancer’s feet with the lightness of thistledown in them. There were flowers in her hand for

Ivan’s room, and a bulging, unromantic oil-cloth bag with Ivan’s clean pyjamas sticking outon one side of it, a decrepit Teddy bear on the other.

“Here I am, darling! Here’s Mummie!” she was calling joyfully, as she pushed open thedoor to room fifteen.

“Oh, Garth—you here, too! How nice,” Joan heard her say, and the door was shut again.

With hands that shook a little, she picked up the heavy tray, odorous now with the scent ofroast mutton and cauliflower.

“Vegetables only, for number ten. The steamed sole for Mrs. Eldon,” she was forcingherself to remember. And with a dogged air she set herself to the task of propping pillowsbehind weakly backs, spreading napkins beneath chins, and shredding the little elegantportion of chicken for poor Mary Bree whose arms were still helplessly bound in plaster ofParis.

CHAPTER FOUR

After that day Joan avoided Garth more desperately than ever. She even tried to avoidthinking of him, throwing herself into her ward work with frenzied energy. At nights, whenshe was off duty, she studied hard for her approaching examination, sitting at her schoolroomdesk of varnished pine in the lecture-room while Miss Don, grim and gaunt on the dais,talked stridently of circulatory systems and bone processes, of simple anatomy and simplerhygiene. She would illustrate her points on the blackboard, drawing the thin chalky riversthat were meant to be veins, and the pear-shaped blob that was meant to be a heart. (Thoughhow could she know anything about that organ, Gemma whispered, when God had left herentirely without one herself?)

It came to Joan, smiling at this witticism, that it would be good indeed if a heart could beno more and no less than Miss Don was describing it ... a little chalk sketch on a blackboard,a queer, impersonal muscle with a complicated vascular and arterial equipment, a bundle ofvalves and pumps that had nothing to do with aching and grieving, that could not possibly lielike a lump of stone in a person’s breast day after day!

With her head wearily on her hand, she jotted down this note and that, her blue eyes liftingat times with unconscious pathos to the open window beyond Miss Don’s stern back. Andthere in the breathless August evenings the trees hung lifeless as painted shadows on abackcloth. And there in the drowsy, dusky square the humble lovers walked, the sound oftheir murmurous voices drifting into the lighted classroom with its rows of bright,imprisoned heads.

But to Joan, on the whole, those evenings of extra work in the lecture-room were a refugeand a relief. For one thing they kept her nicely out of the Nurses’ Home at the hours Garthmight be expected to telephone. And he did telephone assiduously. But to all his messages,scribbled on the ’phone memo-pad by Greta the Home parlormaid, Joan turned a deaf ear.She did not answer any of them.

In this oddly unsatisfactory fashion she got through a whole fortnight of existence, a verylong and dragging fortnight. Things would be better, she assured herself, when Ivan had leftthe hospital and she no longer had to come in contact with him, nor with Vera Petrovna.

And yet when the day came for Ivan to depart, she was perversely reluctant to see him go.She had come to like the small boy much more than she had ever intended to, and still more

extraordinarily she had grown to like Vera. The truth was, she supposed, that the twoRussians, with their quick, mercurial charm, were a bright spot of color among the ratherdrab personalities of the other Dale floor patients. She would find her step quickening quiteunconsciously as she approached room fifteen, and she couldn’t help being touched by theway Ivan clung to her, the way he singled her out from among all the other nurses as Hisspecial friend. He would call her that with his absurd babyish dignity, enquiring of Gemmaor Nurse Scatt with gravity, “Is my friend on duty this afternoon?” And if she were he wouldbeg for her to be the one to wash him and make his bed.

“Because you seem to have more time than the others,” he told her rather pathetically.“You don’t scurry me like Nurse Scatt does, and you never put soap in my eye, and you’rekind to Mr. Dippy.”

Mr. Dippy was the disreputable Teddy bear, and Joan had won Ivan’s heart forever theday she rescued him from the hygienic wrath of Scatty, who wanted to have him thrown inthe waste-bin in the lotion-room.

“I can get him cleaned up, Nurse, really I can!” she had begged in a passion of anxiety,seeing Ivan’s grey eyes so perilously near to tears. “He’s made of real fur and he will washbeautifully,” she asserted, taking him away before Nurse Scatt could doubt her, scrubbinghim to within an inch of his sawdusty life.

When she brought him back with his shoe-button eyes firmly sewn in place and a freshblue ribbon round his fat neck, Ivan was speechless with joy. He snuggled down with thetreasured toy in his arms, and when Joan bent over him to say good night that evening he puta small, soft arm round her neck and kissed her soundly.

“That’s because you’re the kindest nurse in the world,” he said drowsily, addinggallantly, but still more drowsily, “And the prettiest!”

And Joan went away with quite a flustered feeling ... because you weren’t supposed tokiss the patients, not even the baby ones, and the feel of Ivan’s soft lips against her cheek andthe clutch of his arm round her neck had momentarily done something most disconcerting tothe hard, cold knot of pain that served her for a heart these days.

So on that blustery September morning when Ivan was all ready to leave, she went alongto room fifteen to say “good-bye” with quite a bleak feeling. And when Vera said in herhusky, golden voice, “It hasn’t got to be a real good-bye, Nurse Langden. We’ve simply gotto see you again very soon,” she couldn’t help being relieved. Not that she really intended to

go on seeing Vera Petrovna and her little boy. But it was nice of them to be so friendly andappreciative of the trivial things she had done to help them during their difficult hospitaldays.

It might have been left like that, a courteous but vague invitation, only for Ivan, who was avery exact young man indeed and liked his plans to be definite. Couldn’t his friend come totea with them tomorrow, or the next day? he asked, and Vera was most enthusiastic, seizingon this idea, making Joan promise in the end to visit them at their Bloomsbury flat on hervery next afternoon off.

It was three days later that Joan set out to fulfil this promise. She was wearing a newautumn costume of rough, blue material, a clear deep blue that made her eyes look likegentian flowers under their warm dark lashes. It was a relief to be out of uniform for a fewhours, she told herself, and wouldn’t admit, not even in her inmost mind, that the wearing ofthe new suit was in some way an armor against the beauty of the girl she was on her way tosee.

But in the end she was a little ashamed of her smartness because Vera was so speciallyshabby that day in a worn and shiny serge skirt and a much washed cotton blouse. She wastired too, her dark eyes ringed with violet shadows, her hair a little lank and rough, as thoughshe had not had the energy to brush it. At the theatre, she confessed, they had had to rehearseafter the later performance the previous night because of the sudden illness of one of thestars. She was not the kind of star who could be understudied, and a fresh danseusealtogether had been introduced into the company. It had meant hours of work for the wholecorps de ballet, and Vera had not got to bed until the early morning.

“And on top of that,” she went on with her cheerful little shrug, “I’ve been trying tohousekeep—seeing to Ivan’s meals and doing the marketing and the washing-up. We’ve got,this flat but no service, you see,” she explained.

“This flat,” Joan discovered, was a euphonious term for the one large barn-like room inthe basement where Vera had received her, and where she now served the somewhatramshackle meal of coffee, cold sausages and bottled beer, which was her interpretation ofan English afternoon tea!

There was, in addition, a damp-smelling flagged corridor outside this room, leading to aforlorn and vast kitchen which had once served the needs of the tall Victorian house, andbeyond the kitchen a patch of sooty garden in which a few blades of grass and a handful ofchrysanthemums struggled to survive. There was also a bathroom and one small bedroom,

and it was all much too dark to be healthy, and much too underground. But it was very cheap,Vera said happily, and there was room to swing cats—and swing her own long lovely legs ifshe felt like practising. She hated with a kind of frenzy the awful little hotel bedrooms shehad had to live in so great a part of her existence.

Nibbling at cold sausages and drinking the very excellent and quite un-English coffee Joanlistened in amazement. She had imagined the surroundings of the lovely Vera so differently.Soft shaded pastel walls, she had pictured, and long velvet curtains, and divans heapedseductively with fat cushions. She had thought of Vera, if not wealthy, at least comfortable inan artistic kind of way, at least secure. But there was little of either artistic comfort orsecurity about this dreary residence.

“Actually,” Vera was telling with her naive frankness over the rim of her glass of beer,“we do better in London than anywhere else. Our salaries are quite munificent in London. Atthe moment I’m getting five pounds a week. That’s why I’m able to rent this furnished flat.”

Joan stammered, “Five pounds a week! But I thought ballet dancers got much more thanthat.”

Vera shook her golden head and said, “Oh, no. The leading dancers of course, the fewwith great names, are paid more. But even they don’t get anything like the same money athird-rate film actor can command. As for the dancers like me—the nameless strugglingones, life is just hard work and long hours and small thanks at the end of it.”

“Then why do you do it?” asked Joan.

Vera shrugged again and said she didn’t know. “My mother was in ballet. I was broughtup in the atmosphere. I’ve never been particularly good at it,” she confessed, “but I like thedrifting life and the music and I love the stage. What I really want to do is to work inlegitimate drama. Once I did for a little while. I was lucky enough to be taken on in anEnglish Repertory company playing in the provinces. We toured such lovely old towns—York and Harrogate and as far north as Edinburgh. We came south to Bath and Bournemouthand Torquay. It was spring and I was so happy. Then Ivan was born—”

She stopped abruptly.

Joan felt the stab of hot blood in her cheeks and a wave of utter confusion swept over her.Suddenly she was so hurt and so panic-stricken inside that she could neither speak nor move.She just sat there huddled in the cheap velvet armchair, watching Vera’s cool, beautiful

hands lighting a cigarette.

She would die, she felt, if she were forced to listen to any more confidences. She didn’twant to know any more about Vera Petrovna’s struggles nor the tragedy of Ivan’s birth.Though of course, Vera Petrovna would hardly be likely to tell her the truth about that!

With an effort she stood up. “I’ve got to get back on duty,” she stammered, though actuallyshe still had plenty of time to spare, as Vera would know very well.

Vera’s red lips drooped. “I’ve been boring you with my egotistical grumblings,” she saidwistfully. “But please do not yet go. Ivan will be so sad not to see you. He is out driving inthe park but he will be home at any moment, indeed I am surprised he is not back already forhe knew you would be here at four.”

And even as she spoke there was the sound of a car drawing up before the area railings,and that other sound that sent Joan’s pulses racing in alarm. It was Garth’s voice out there,Garth laughing and talking as he came running down the area steps with the small, warmlybundled invalid in his arms.

They had had the most exciting drive round the Serpentine, he said, rushing into the roomin his big, impetuous fashion. He stopped short at the sight of Joan but Ivan in his armswhooped with joy and scrambling from his hold ran to greet his friend with such noisywelcoming that it tided the awkward moment safely over.

After that Joan couldn’t get away easily because Ivan had so much to tell her, so much toshow. There was Mr. Dippy to be brought out for a kiss and a new jig-saw puzzle to beinspected, a puzzle that was so enormous it took all the hearth-rug to hold it when it wascompleted.

Joan tried to keep her mind on these important matters but with every nerve in her bodyshe was aware of Garth’s eyes watching her. He was lounging in the cheap velvet armchairwhich she had abandoned, teasing Vera with an easy familiarity that smote Joan like asword. When he laughed at her choice of eatables for tea she offered to go into the kitchenand make him some toast instead. He said, “If you bring me the bread, old thing, I can makeit myself here at the gas-fire.”

He seemed so immensely at home, so even comically domesticated, if anything could havebeen comical about that nightmare half-hour for Joan.

He made the toast most expertly for himself and for Ivan. He went into the kitchen to fetchIvan’s milk, warming it in a saucepan on the gas-ring. He told Vera he did not think smallboys should be given cold sausages to eat, and she replied a trifle sharply that they wereperfectly good sausages, and much better for Ivan than the dreadful plum cake she had seenEnglish mammas give to their young. They quarrelled mildly for a few minutes about therival merits of plum cake and cold sausages, and then they both apologized to Joan andswitched the conversation with a jerk to more conventional paths.

But Joan had no heart any more for her visit. She kneeled there on the hearth-rug with Ivanand his toys, so pale and diminished, all the life, all the color drained out of her. Not eventhe new blue costume could save her now from the awful feeling of defeat that had seized onher. And presently she said once more that she would have to get back to St. Angela’s, gladthis time that it was true and that she would have to run through the intervening streets like awhirlwind if she were to be on duty punctually by six o’clock.

Garth picked up his hat with an air of determination. He would drive her back, he said,and beat down her protests with an almost bullying air.

"Don’t be ridiculous, Joanna!” he commanded. “Trot up those stairs and get into my carthis very minute. You know you’ve barely got time to make it even if I drive you. You’dnever do it by bus.”

She gave in limply. There was nothing else to do. Vera Petrovna was charming in herfarewell, begging her to come again soon, to come any time. “We are really so near to you,”she pointed out. “We are practically neighbors, so you must come whenever you are off duty,whenever you like.”

Ivan said bleakly, “You got to come back I can’t possibly do this ole jig-saw puzzle if youdon’t. You’re better at jig-saw puzzles even than Mr. Perros.”

But there was one puzzle she would never solve, Joan was thinking miserably, as she tookher seat beside Garth in the big, open car ... the puzzle of Garth and Vera Petrovna, thepuzzle of the far-off beginning of this strange story whose climax had so curiously engulfedher too, and shattered her life within her.

Garth was looking at her intently to the detriment of his driving. With a muffled oath hemissed an oncoming taxi-cab by inches, then set his face to the road ahead of him in grimsilence.

“It’s nice of you to run me back to the hospital,” she said formally. “Though I could quitewell have got there on my own. There was no need for you to leave your friend, MadamePetrovna, on my account.”

She hadn’t meant it to sound bitter and small and spiteful, but somehow it did sound mostfrightfully all of those things.

Garth laughed. A very hollow laugh.

He said, “That’s right, Joanna! Come out with it. Let me have it in the neck if you feel likeit. I’m glad we’ve got to the bottom of the mystery at last. It is because of my friendship withVera Petrovna that you’re angry with me—it’s that and nothing else which has made youtreat me like an outcast these last weeks. I might have guessed it if I hadn’t been such a blindfool. Own up, now! It is that, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” said Joan in a muffled tone, and instantly wished she hadn’t admitted it. Her eyeswere hot with pain turning to him. “It’s a little hard for me to understand, Garth. That’s all.She seems to be so very important to you—”

He put in grimly, “She is. Frightfully important.” She saw his face go oddly haggard, hismouth tighten. He said quietly, “Joanna, my dear, I’ve been wanting to tell you about VeraPetrovna for years but somehow I’ve never had the courage. But now you’ve got to know.Vera Petrovna is my wife.”

CHAPTER FIVE

FOR A MOMENT Garth wondered if Joan had heard him. His swift unhappy side-glance took inher clear profile, the jaunty new blue hat above the tender curls, the small straight nose, thesweet red mouth quivering a little ominously. So she had heard! But he couldn’t tell what shewas thinking. Her eyes looked straight ahead under their warm dark lashes.

Garth swung the big car round into the hospital square. It was quiet suddenly with thetraffic of the streets left behind. In the garden the trees stood motionless, tall beech and planeand sycamore touched now with autumn gold. Pigeons fluttered lazily across the roadway, sotame, so fat that they scarcely troubled to get out of the way of the slowly-moving car. Highin the cool branches the doves called plaintively.

It was so much too quiet suddenly, too intimate, too sad in this windless evening peace. Inthe high clock tower that topped the hospital pile the bronze hands shone, small tongues offlame picked out by a westering sun, and Garth heard Joan’s quick-drawn sigh at the sight ofit. Like a frightened child she was, turning to him now, her blue eyes wide, her face so ivorypale.

“I’ll be late, Garth,” she whispered in terror, as though that was all there could be for herdistress!

“It’s five to six. I’ve got to change—” Her hand was already on the door, although the carhad hardly stopped. She was out in an instant, running up the steps of the Nurses’ Home.

“Is that all you’ve got to say to me, Joanna?” he called after her, and his voice held adesperate note of entreaty.

But the look she flashed back at him had nothing of kindness in it, nothing of yielding. Sohard, so cold she was now, it was as though the warm blue eyes had turned to ice. There wasice in her voice too, answering, “What else can there possibly be to say, Garth? You know Ican’t stop now.” And even as she spoke she was glad that it was so, that she didn’t have tostay with Garth in this awful wounded moment; that she could so easily, because of herhospital duties, run away from him and hide.

“Then when—where—?” he was asking. “I’ve got to talk to you, Joanna!”

She didn’t even reply to that. With a nod of thanks to Greta the parlormaid, who hadopened the door to her, she fled down the long hall with its shining, waxen floor, its faintsmell of polish and cleanliness. She was breathless reaching her room at last, throwing offher hat and coat, snatching from her wardrobe her pink cotton frock, her apron, her cap.She’d never yet been late on duty. She mustn’t be late now. It was the worst thing you coulddo because it meant that you took five minutes or so from the person who was waiting tocome off duty. It wasn’t only the principle of punctuality that was involved, but the muchmore important principle of loyalty to the tired Gemma who had worked all through the longday, and would not be released until Joan was there to take her place.

So that when Joan’s fingers shook fastening her stiff belt, it was for Gemma’s sake that shetrembled, and for the sound of the great bell now striking the hour. In the back of her mind, inthe dark bleeding of her heart that other terror awaited her, pushed now quite genuinely intothe background by the fluster of being in time on Dale Ward. If the skies should fall on herand the whole of her world crumble she must still think first of her obligation to St. Angela’s.

A streak of white apron, she was flying across the square, trying to remember that MissDarley didn’t like you to run, trying so hard not to notice that Garth’s car was still parked inthe precincts—outside the medical library now so that he was probably in there in the long,dim reading-room, or even at one of the windows seeing her. Her heart was wrenched at thethought. But she mustn’t let Garth come into her head now!

Missing the lift by a maddening second, she took the stairs two at a time. It was twominutes past six when she got to Dale floor and Gemma was washing her hands in the ward-kitchen, humming to herself happily because she was going to spend the rest of the eveningwith her friend Alan Raine, the dispenser. They would eat at some little place in Soho, andthen go on to dance. She was done with the irksome restrictions of hospital until nearlymidnight, maybe even later than that if she could work it!

“I’m in the mood for love,” she announced in her pleasant little treble, and in the samebreath told Joan that Scatty was in a fever about some instruments which had been foundrusty in the surgical cabinet.

“Whoever sterilized them last, she said cheerfully. “evidently left them in the water to getcold and then forgot to wipe them. They are in an awful state! There’ll be the devil to pay ifMillet spots them.”

“I’ll clean them,” Joan said dully, and went away to do so. Perched on a high stool in thelotion-room she rubbed at the offending probes and knives and forceps. There was nothing

now to put between herself and the hot agony of her mind. The little bustle and excitement ofcoming on duty had served her so briefly and now, defenceless, and alone, she tried to adjustherself to the amazing thing Garth had to a her. He was married to Vera Petrovna. She mighthave guessed at something of the sort, she told herself limply. Garth was hardly the man tohave plunged into illicit loves. He was too chivalrous, too idealistic, too brave. She mighthave known. Vaguely she wondered what the details of the story might be. Though detailsdidn’t matter very much. The bitter fact she knew was enough. Garth was married. He’d beenmarried a long time. “I’ve wanted to tell you about Vera for years,” that’s what he had said.Probably he and Vera had quarrelled soon after their strange, secret wedding, and then shehad gone away on her tour. And Garth hadn’t known about Ivan till now. That was mostlikely how it had happened. But no matter how it had happened, Vera Petrovna was Mrs.Garth Perros. Vera and Garth belonged to one another irrevocably.

Suddenly the bright blades of the knives and lancets went blurred with tears. Garth waslost to her hopelessly and forever! Just how much she had refused to believe so bleak apossibility Joan had not suspected until this moment. Secretly, hidden even from herself untilnow, had lurked the hope that Vera and Ivan might in some way not matter as greatly as theyseemed to matter. That they might disappear again, explained or not explained. She had clungto the belief that Garth would come back to her cleared in some miraculous fashion of thedark mysteries which these past few weeks had enshrouded him. Well, he was cleared rightenough. There was no mystery any more, and the dream of her whole girlhood was burned toashes.

Garth! her heart cried in anguish, Garth! And suddenly he was so clearly in her mind, thedear sound of his voice calling her “Joanna,” the laughing, loving look in his grey eyes, theway his hair grew in its crisp, but ruthlessly brushed-out waves. It was as though he hadcome into the small, white-tiled room, filling it with his electric, vivid personality, talking toher, teasing her, drawing the very heart and soul out of her in hot and passionate response.She was shaken and sick with the longing for him.

For a while she was so lost, so swamped with pain that she thought she must truly diethere with the bright knives twinkling before her. Then with a mighty effort she pulled herselftogether. People didn’t really die of heartache. Death was not so kind as that, nor peace soeasily come by. Numbly she gathered the clinking instruments together and carried them backto the cabinet.

Scatty was joking cheerfully with a home-sick old lady in bed number five, rallying her,telling her that her operation the following day was nothing at all ... absolutely nothing.

“You’ll feel the little prick of a needle here in your own bed in the early morning,” shepiped on with such stimulating confidence, “and then you’ll just have a lovely sleep, andwhen you wake up again you’ll feel like a two-year-old with all your pain behind you.”

“And I won’t see the the-ay-ter, nor those horrid doctors with the carving knives, nor theman with the chloryform?” the poor old lady asked incredulously.

“Of course you won’t,” Scatty said brightly. “That’s not the way we do things in St.Angela’s. You just have a shot of morphia and that’s all you’ll know about.”

The old lady shook her head in wonder. “When I was young and I had me appendick out, itwasn’t like that,” she told Scatty, and Scatty said that was in the dark ages, and thatnowadays having an abdominal was just so much child’s play. “You’ll be at home eatingfried steak and onions in less than a fortnight,” she prophesied, and hurried in Joan’s wake tocast her eagle eye on the neglected instruments.

“I’d just like to know,” she said fiercely, “whether it was you or Crosbie who threw thoseprobes and things into the cabinet in such a disgraceful condition!”

Joan, knowing perfectly well that it had been Gemma Crosbie, said nothing to clearherself.

And somehow the evening dragged by and it was supper-time, and all around her the pink-clad probationers chattered and giggled and ate while she toyed with the food before her. Itseemed as though at least a hundred years had gone over her head since she had come homewith Garth and he had told her about Vera. A bare three hours or so stretched out in thisfantastic pain ... and there was a whole life-time ahead of her to be got through somehow.Funny, she thought, the tricks time plays on you in moments of mental misery. Oh, very funnyindeed!

“And how’s the fascinating Garth?” piped up the girl sitting opposite her. “I saw youdriving with him in style this afternoon! Did he take you out to tea?”

Joan shot her a glance of fury and said nothing, which was so unlike her usual sunnyresponse to such teasing, that her persecutor shrugged cotton-clad shoulders and left heralone.

It was heaven to get to her room at last, and to know she was safe even from Gemma untilalmost midnight. It was heaven—just for a moment—to be alone. Then with a surge her

unhappiness came back to her. Garth was lost to her. Garth was gone. There was no Garthreally—there hadn’t been for the last eight years. She had dwelt in a fool’s paradise atDipley, waiting for his vacation times, dreaming of him, living for him. Yes, living for him ...fool that she was, so sure, so certain that in the end he would come to her forever, and thattheir lives would be one. Odd how strange that certainty had been, and yet she had notacknowledged it to herself until now. But it had been the mainspring of her whole existence.

She thought back over the years, the mystery of Garth’s behavior so clear now. He hadliked her ... he had loved her perhaps ... he had wanted her. But all the time Vera was hiswife—a phantom but terribly real Vera. Why hadn’t he told her? Confided in her? Anythingwould have been better than to have let her drift on in her warm, lovely foolishness. Oh, hehad been cruel, this Garth. He had been so much more cruel than he knew!

She was dry-eyed, undressing at last, getting into her narrow, unfriendly little institutionbed. In the dark she lay rigid, hearing the girls along the corridor calling to one another,hearing the lights snap out one by one and the hospital bells strike ten. The day was done.The high song was over. Where did that line come from? Ah, yes, she remembered ... thatHumbert Wolfe thing her father had loved and so often read to her in his rich clerical voice... the words came flooding back to her:

The high song is over. And we shall not mourn now.

There was a thing to say, and it is said now.

It is as though all these had been unborn now,

It is as though the world itself were dead now ...

“Requiem.” That’s what it was called ... there was a thing to say, and it is said now ... it isas though the world itself were dead now.

The final, sorrowful sound of it. The lovely, aching grief. Like music and like tears. Andsuddenly, blessedly, her own tears were loosed and, turning to press her head into thepillow, she sobbed and sobbed. Because it was the end of so much tension. For days now,for weeks, watching Garth and Vera, wondering about them, thinking this thing or that, andhope somewhere persisting in spite of everything. Like nursing someone very sick, shethought, hoping against hope that way, achingly hoping day after day. And now the end hadcome, and it was all over.

* * * *

The next morning she was pale but conscientiously forcedly cheerful. At breakfast-timeshe joked with Gemma, teasing her about her wan, blue-circled eyes, her suppressed air ofdissipation.

“Shut up, idiot! Gemma whispered at last. “I didn’t get in till all hours. I came up the fire-escape, missing night-sister by the skin of my teeth!”

Joan said, “Gosh!” in a suitably awe-struck tone, and Gemma looked pleased. She’d had arip-roaring good time, she confessed proudly. “We went out to a place on the river. Didn’tget there until nearly midnight. There was cabaret and dancing, and a gorgeous moon and—oh—it was heavenly! I couldn’t possibly have missed it. Alan would have been furious if Ihad broken up the part for the sake of my mingy eleven-thirty pass.”

Gemma went on to say that it was an especially gay party because Alan’s girl cousin wascelebrating her engagement. “There were five of us altogether. The odd man out was BarneyO’Crea, an Irish chum of Akin’s. I wish you’d been there to partner him. He’s awfully nice—a journalist. I know you’d like him.”

“I’m sure I should,” Joan murmured a little doubtfully as they left the dining room. In thehall-rack the morning post peeped forth invitingly from the initialled pigeonholes. Joansearched her own and saw Garth’s handwriting. Her face went stony.

“Then come and meet him with me on Sunday night,” Gemma was saying. “That is, unlessyou’re too taken up with your boy friend, Garth.”

“I’m not taken up with any boy friend,” Joan answered steadily. “And I’d love to meetyour Irishman.”

“Good!” said Gemma delightedly. “Then that’s fixed. I’ll tell Alan when I go down to thedispensary for the boracic this morning.”

They were laughing, talking, going up the stairs. In her apron pocket Joan clutched atGarth’s letter. It felt like a hot coal between her fingers.

This was the interval for bed-making and room-tidying before getting back to the morningwork on the wards. Joan flung the covers over her bed in double quick time, flipped a dusterover her dressing table and fled. She couldn’t let Gemma see her face when she was opening

Garth’s letter. She couldn’t let anyone see. In the lobby behind the big linen cupboards therewas peace. She ripped Garth’s envelope and read the few lines he had written. He would bealong in Dale about four that afternoon. Would she make a point of seeing him for a moment?It was desperately important to him that she should. “Darling, Joanna, please!” he ended.Joan tore the sheet of notepaper into a hundred fragments and went over to the hospital. In thegutters of the square as she passed through, she scattered the fragments of Garth’s pleading,to the indignation of the fat pigeons who had fluttered down hoping for crumbs.

All morning she worked like a fury, polishing, cleaning, serving early lunches of milk andegg-flip, making swabs, packing surgical drums, fitting the trolley out for its round soperfectly that Scatty complimented her, and even Sister Millet looked mildly pleased andforebore to find fault.

At noon for the first time in her training she was left alone in charge of the ward whileSister and Nurse Scatt went away to their midday meal. She felt proud of the responsibility,hovering over the old lady in bed number five who had had her operation and was nowsleeping uneasily still under the influence of her anaesthetic. Scatty had told Joan to watchher pulse, to give her a sip of boiled water if she asked for it, to ring the Staff Nurse on thenext floor immediately if any emergency arose.

But there was no emergency. Only poor Mary Cree crouched under her bedclothes havingone of her sobbing fits. Joan comforted her as well as she could, fetching an armful ofcheerful magazines from the library, finding a specially lovely vase of roses and a plate ofgrapes from the stock of flowers and fruit which had just come in from some Church HarvestFestival.

And all the time she was a little envious of the luxury of the other girl’s tears. Mary Creecould he in bed and sob quite openly, she could seek for sympathy and find it. No oneexpected her to be anything but broken up because her young man had died. Everyone wassorry for Mary. But Garth was dead too, and there must be no tears. No weakness. If lovewent out of your life because of some other woman you had to hold your head up, rememberyour pride.

Soberly, with her lips in a grim line, Joan went off presently for her own meal. Garth wascoming to the ward at four o’clock, but she wouldn’t be there. There was a kind of wretchedtriumph in the reflection. Sister Millet had asked her to go down to Out Patients to relieve aprobationer who was ill, and she had only been too glad of the chance of escape.

All through the bright hours of the afternoon she filled in case-sheets, helped visiting

patients in and out of waiting rooms and dressing rooms, ran in the wake of fussy,overworked staff nurse who was furious when she didn’t know by instinct just where all thefiles in the receiving office were kept.

At six, draggled and tired, she was sent into the main waiting-hall to tell the patients stillsitting there hoping for their turns to come that the work of the day was over and the doctorsleaving. She saw a black bonnet nodding frantically to her, a beaming smile. It was Mrs.Eldon. Joan stopped for a word with her. The old lady was quite well again, she saidhappily, and almost done with the hospital. Today she was merely waiting for the nice youngman in the dispensary to bring her the last bottle of her tonic.

Joan talked to her for a while, warmed by her friendliness, her gratitude. “It was all due toyou, dearie,” Mrs. Eldon told her, “that I had such a good long convalescence. The ladyalmoner got me a lovely place in a home by the sea. Now I’m fit for work again, and lookingfor a job.”

Joan asked her what sort of job, and while the old lady rambled on about her prowess as ahousekeeper or a plain needle-woman, she recalled with a stab of pain Vera Petrovna, whowasn’t really Vera Petrovna at all, but Mrs. Garth Perros. Vera wanted someone badly for afew hours in the mornings to take Ivan for a daily walk in the park.

Somehow or other Joan made herself say Vera’s name quietly, repeating to Mrs. Eldonagain and again the address of the Bloomsbury flat until she had got it thoroughly into herhead. Mrs. Eldon was once more filled with gratitude. She seized Joan’s hand and shook it.She said, “You’re my good angel, Nurse. I can’t thank you enough!” Her wrinkled old eyeswere filled with tears.

Joan was quite touched by all this. She was young enough to feel just a shade importantover the things she had been able to do for Mrs. Eldon. Helping people had a queersatisfaction about it—made you all warm and good inside, she decided. Maybe she wouldgive her life to just this, and no more. Maybe it would be enough. She thought of nuns withtheir calm, still faces, of wonderful Sisters of Charity who went out to Leper colonies, ofMiss Darley, rather less remote than these beings; Miss Darley so proud and so powerfuland fulfilled in her responsible work as Matron of the big hospital. There were lots of thingsfor women in life besides love and marriage after all. It was silly to fret yourself sickbecause the dream of your heart had been shattered, silly to go back to the Nurses’ Home andfind yourself quite without appetite for supper, to creep up to bed afterwards and sobyourself to sleep for the second night in succession. Yet that is precisely what she did!

And the next day she had forgotten all about Mrs. Eldon and about good works. Garthcame into the ward kitchen when she was making a surreptitious cup of tea for Scatty andherself just before six o’clock. Sister was having her half day off, and they had had agruelling afternoon. But now, suddenly things had slackened off a bit, and the greendistempered kitchen with its screen of leafy trees was swimming in the gold light of evening.On the gas-ring the silvery aluminium kettle hissed cheerfully. Joan turned to find thecanister, the little pink enamelled teapot, and found Garth instead! He had come in so quietlyand Scatty was miles away at the other end of the corridor. There was no one in the world todisturb them, to object to his being there.

He said gently, “Joanna!” and she caught her lip between small, white teeth, and looked athim with the tears held back in her blue eyes, the tears somehow held back. He had caughther here so suddenly, so unawares. But it was only for a moment, her weakness. She wassteeling herself already, drawing herself back from the touch of his hand, saying so frigidly,“Garth, you’ll get me into trouble if anyone comes along and finds you in here!”

“Yes, I know,” he said penitently. “But I just had to come, Joanna. I won’t stay a moment.All I want is to fix up a date with you. This is—let me see—Tuesday. What abouttomorrow? You still have your Wednesdays, don’t you? It’s so long since we’ve had aWednesday together.”

She drew a sharp breath at that. There were patches of white suddenly on her soft cheeks.Just at first she didn’t answer him, turning to switch off the flame beneath the hissing kettle.She took the canister and teapot from the dresser and set them on the table. She was peeringinto the depths of the canister when she said in a tight little voice, “I’m busy Wednesday.Sorry, Garth!”

She heard him sigh, half impatiently. “Joanna, my dear!” he pleaded. “You mustn’t be likethis. You’ve got to stop being so angry with me about Vera. It isn’t fair, until you knoweverything. You’ve got to come out with me soon and listen to the rest of my story. Itprobably isn’t quite what you think it is.”

Joan said drily, “I don’t see that it has got anything to do with me, no matter what it is.”

Garth put his hands on the little white scrubbed table and leaned close to her, too close!Disturbingly she was aware of him ... the deep grey eyes fixed on her so compellingly, thebrowned, healthy skin, the strong jutting jaw with the dark line of the close-shaven hairbeneath its tan. The whole aura of him now, so dear and male and desirable stirring her,threatening her.

“It’s got everything to do with you, Joanna,” he said deliberately, “because I love you.”

She gave a little cry at that. There were red circles now in the pallor of her face, and all atonce her blue eyes were blazing. She was so angry. So beautifully, gloriously angry, the hottide of her wrath quite suddenly saving her from the glamour of his nearness.

How dare he talk to her like this! How dare he! She said in a choking voice, “You must bemad, Garth. Quite mad! I don’t understand you. I don’t think I want to understand you—notnow. All I want is that you will leave me alone. And that I insist upon. Will you please get itinto your head once and for all that I will not come out with you, and that I’m not in the leastinterested in the story of your marriage to Vera Petrovna. I’m just—just a little bit sorry forVera, that’s all.”

And with that she walked out of the kitchen and into the ward, where he could not followher with his outrageous, incomprehensible statements about love. Love indeed! Like a youngfury she set about the business of giving the ward its final straightening for the night, pullingred blankets tightly over still, meek forms, folding white quilts and carrying them away to thebig locker in the corridor. She did not even see him go, did not care whether he went or not.He could stay there in the kitchen and wait for Scatty for all she cared. Scatty might evengive him tea. She was done with him. She was clear of him. There wasn’t even any pain leftfor him, she told herself with a wild sort of delight. For eight years he had fooled her along.Eight long years. And now he wanted to go on fooling her, talking about love, imagining hecould explain Vera away as though she were nothing. As though wives didn’t count in theleast. Probably they didn’t to a man like Garth Perros, she decided, heaping hercondemnations on him now, burying him in them until he was quite lost. Until there was noGarth at all but the fiend in human form she had made of him. She was so angry that she feltmagnificent. Garth could never touch her again, never hurt her.

And when the anger had died a little, when she was sitting limply at supper with Gemmabeside her she was still beautifully free of the old enchantment. Her horror against Garth’swords of love, his lack of loyalty to Vera were very real indeed. It didn’t occur to her that hehad been guilty of that same disloyalty almost ever since she had grown up—that his looks,his kisses for her were all stolen ones. It was his conduct today that she felt illogicallyenough to be the greatest offence. But then Garth’s marriage had not existed for her before.Now that she knew about it everything was different. She had been brought up in her countryparsonage to regard the marriage tie as something very binding and sacred. That Garth wasthe husband of another woman finished everything for her. It was as clean and swift anending of her relationship with her lover as though he had died.

In the days that followed it was that which saved her. So completely had she turned awayfrom Garth in her heart, so utterly had she put him out of her mind that she began to adjustherself very quickly. Only at night sometimes the thought of him would come to her in dreamsof haunting sweetness. But she didn’t let the dreams disturb her. She threw herself into herwork with fresh vigor, worked hard for her examination, and on Sunday night she went outwith Gemma and Alan Raine, the dispenser and, met Barney O’Crea. He was a freckled,good-tempered looking boy about her own age, and he had an irresistible smile. She likedBarney.

He took them out of town in his ramshackle little car. It was a warm, windless evening,more like June than late September. They saw the autumn day dying over the Surrey downs,and with the rising of the harvest moon they came to the sea. Alan and Gemma wanderedaway on the sandy dunes, their arms frankly entwined. Barney and Joan sat in a shelteredhollow and, scooping the white, salty sand through her fingers, Joan listened to the boy’ssoft, Irish voice rambling on in a dreamy, companionable way. He told her about hisambitions, about his wonderful job on a great London daily—the job that had transplantedhim from a little town in Sligo where he had been reporter, sub-editor and man of all workon a local weekly rag. He didn’t worry her with compliments or try to make love to her. Hejust lay in the warm sand beside her and talked, or didn’t talk. It was wonderful howcomfortable those silences were ... as though they had known each other a very long timeindeed. Joan told herself she was really happy tonight, marvellously at peace.

When they stopped for dinner at a roadhouse she danced with Barney, and going home inthe car as late as they dared, she leaned her shoulder contentedly against his shoulder. At thedoor of the home they whispered their good nights and Joan promised Barney she would goout with him again on her very next night off duty.

She was still telling herself that she was happy as she got into bed. Her life was filling upso beautifully. Now her off duty times with Barney for a friend would be as busy as her on-duty times. That was grand, fine! So long as you didn’t have any time to think in this worldyou were all right.

CHAPTER SIX

It was the next day that Vera telephoned. Joan had forgotten that possibility. She was caughtby the warm, golden voice with its faint huskiness before she could escape, saying politely,“Yes, Madame Petrovna, this is Joan Langden. How-do-you-do?’

With a sense of inner panic she wondered if the call meant some kind of invitation to beeluded. She couldn’t go to the Bloomsbury flat again. She just couldn’t bear it ... Garthmaking toast and running around with saucepans of milk in his hand ... Garth teasing Vera,laughing with her ... Garth playing with Ivan, who called him Mr. Perros ! It was toosickening. Too horrible. Why didn’t they tell the child Garth was his father? Why couldn’t itbe all open and honest and clear, brought out o: this furtive mystery?

No, Joan decided, clutching the receiver in a wet palm, she would make any excuse onearth now to avoid Vera Petrovna ... Vera Perros, that is, and her strange ménage. She wouldbe downright rude about it if necessary.

But in the end it was easier than she had feared. Vera had only telephoned to thank Joanfor sending her Mrs. Eldon. The old lady was proving herself a real comfort, taking Ivan outfor his daily walks, and helping in the house besides. She was gentle and sweet andsympatico, Vera said. Her only fault, if she had a fault, was her verbosity. She would talk,all day if she were allowed. But, after all, she was old, Vera added graciously, and the oldmust have their little weaknesses.

“And you’ll come to see us very soon, won’t you?” she ended sweetly.

Joan murmured something polite and noncommittal and the conversation came to an end.

It had taken place in the full publicity of the hallway at the Nurses’ Home, and Joan,turning away from the instrument, saw Sister Millet standing close to her, her face rigid withdisapproval.

Joan colored angrily. How dare the woman stand there listening to her? And quiteunabashed, Sister Millet was owning to having listened. “Don’t you know yet,” she askedicily, “that any kind of familiarity between nurses and patients at St. Angela’s is mostseverely frowned upon? And this applies to ex-patients, too. Friendships must not be

indulged in, nor favors received from these people by probationers in training. Matronwould be most annoyed if she heard of it.”

Joan’s angry blush deepened. It was beastly of the Millet to pounce on her like this for sotrivial a fault—and in the hearing of so many passers-by, too. Pink-clad probationers leavingthe dining-room threw her half-mischievous, half-sympathetic glances, and Greta, theparlormaid, lingering with a tray of evening post for Matron, was frankly enjoying herdiscomfiture.

Joan said with spirit, “But Madame Petrovna is scarcely an ex-patient.”

“No, but Mrs. Eldon is,” replied Sister Millet tartly, showing how thoroughly she hadlistened to every word spoken.

Joan made an effort to control her indignation. “Can’t I even help a poor old woman to geta job of work?” she asked with an exasperated inflexion which was hardly as respectful as itmight have been.

Sister Millet drew herself up with an affronted air. “I don’t like your manner, NurseLangden,” she announced. “Please remember that you are talking to your ward-sister and notarguing with a mere probationer. I think we had better have this out. Come into my sittingroom for a moment.”

Sulkily Joan followed her into the Sisters’ drawing room on the far side of the hall. It wasa cosily furnished apartment with deep arm chairs, good carpets and plenty of cushions andflowers. Sister Millet seated herself in one of the inviting chairs and bade Joan be seated inanother. This was surprising. Joan had expected a scolding, and here was the Millet smilingquite charmingly (“greasily” was Joan’s private word for it!) and actually offering her acigarette.

“I don’t want to be hard on you, Nurse,” she said, “but I have to point out to you when youare breaking the rules.”

“Thank you, Sister,” Joan answered meekly, but with an inner feeling of uneasiness. Whatwas the Millet up to now? It was difficult to trust this sudden change of front.

For a few minutes the older woman questioned her quite sympathetically about Mrs.Eldon. How was the old lady making out? Had the almoner finished helping her? What sortof work was she looking for ?

Joan told her.

At the mention of needlework Sister Millet nodded kindly, and said that she herself wouldbe able to help the old lady in that respect. “I’ll speak to the other sisters also,” she said.“No doubt, several of them will be glad to give her odd jobs to do. I might even ask MissDon to have her taken on the permanent outdoor staff for darning and mending of linen. Itwouldn’t interfere with her morning work for Madame Petrovna in the least.”

Joan was surprised and grateful. After all, she told herself, the Millet was not such a badold stick. It was decent of her to take up the Eldon case like this.

She rose to go, but Sister Millet was not yet, it seemed, finished with her. Of MadamePetrovna she was talking now, still kindly, silkily. “She is such a charming girl,” she said.“One cannot help feeling sorry for her struggling on alone with that boy to educate. You’veknown her some time, haven’t you?”

“Oh, no!” Joan murmured in a soft, startled tone. She didn’t at all like the turn theconversation had taken. “Only since she came here to hospital with Ivan.”

“Ah,” mused Sister Millet. “Then it is your friend Mr. Perros who knows her. I thoughtperhaps she had some connection with Dipley—that—er—you as well as Mr. Perros hadknown her before she came here.”

Joan shook her head.

“Mr. Perros has been very good to her,” Sister Millet persisted.

At which Joan colored violently, and hated herself for doing it!

Sister Millet’s small eyes looked amused, noting that tell-tale blush. “It’s not that I’mbeing inquisitive,” she went on. “But I hoped you might have been able to tell me somethingof Madame Petrovna’s life—of her present circumstances. Her husband, of course, is dead?”

“I don’t know,” Joan stammered in a muffled voice. “I don’t know anything about her.”

“Then I’d better ask Garth Perros. It is simply that the Lady Almoner was talking to meabout her the other day. It is the question of her bill to the hospital. It hasn’t been paid yet!We don’t want to be hard on her—naturally. But we’ve got to find out something of her

circumstances.”

Sister Millet smiled her dismissal. “Don’t you worry about it, my dear,” she saidcordially. “I’ll have a talk with Perros.”

Joan got out of the room with cheeks still burning. Every word that had been spokenseemed natural, inevitable, even unusually benevolent, but she was filled with a sense offoreboding all the same. For Garth’s sake—of course. Garth who meant nothing to her, withwhom she had quite definitely finished. But if Sister Millet should question him about Vera,what would he do? Answer suavely, cleverly, evasively probably. And it was Garth whoought to be paying Ivan’s hospital account—not Vera. Supposing the Millet suspected that?

Oh, it was horrible, all this mystery and intrigue. There were things impossible toreconcile no matter which way you turned ... Vera’s poverty and struggle ... Garth’scomparative comfort, even wealth, Garth with his West End clientele and big fees.

With a sense of extreme distaste Joan put the whole matter out of her head (or thought shedid), and turned into the probationers’ recreation room to have a game of table tennis withGemma before going up to bed. Garth could stew in his own unsavoury juice, she told herselfindignantly, and ran into the long brightly-lit room where pink clad probationers hoppedlithely on either side of the long green tables chasing the bouncing, popping white balls.There was warmth in here, and the music of the radio, and young voices laughing, calling. Itwas safe and bright and reassuring. Hungrily, Joan sensed the homely atmosphere.

“Are you ready, Gemma?” she cried, serving her ball with smashing force across the net.

“Pig!” groaned Gemma, and missed it.

Joan served again. A fault this time. And Garth could go hang for all she cared, she toldherself school-girlishly, inelegantly. Garth’s affairs were as nothing to her any more. Nothingat all. Let the Millet bait him, pester him, trap him if she liked into admitting the relationshiphe strove so curiously to keep secret. Why didn’t he face the world like a man anyway, andgive Vera the position that was rightfully hers? Garth, of all people, behaving in this mean,extraordinary fashion! It was almost impossible to believe, and yet it was true. Her blue eyeswere wild suddenly, not seeing the green table any more, nor the bouncing little ball.

“Joan Langden,” called Gemma reprovingly as she missed her sixth ball in succession.“What’s the matter with you tonight? Are you supposed to be playing ping-pong or justbeating the air?”

“Beating the air,” said Joan with a crazy little laugh. “That just about expresses it,Gemma, darling. Beating the air!”

* * * *

Then it was winter suddenly and very definitely. In the early mornings the little pinknurses shivered as they ran across the blustery square, huddled now in their serviceable thickblue cloaks, their heads bent before the flurries of rain and buffetings of wind. The planetrees and the sycamores stood stripped save for a few ragged, disconsolate leaves, and thepigeons huddled together for warmth moaning softly. Inside the great hospital the steam heatwas turned on and the ward fires lighted, blossoming banks of flame and crimson in the biggrates at the end of the long, pleasant rooms. There were chrysanthemums now in the vases,brown and gold and creamy, smelling a little tonicky and bitter after the summer roses. Therewere extra blankets on the neat beds and crimson dressing jackets for the women in DaleWard.

And with a start one morning Joan realized that her days on this momentous first floor ofhers were almost over. She had served her initial three months. She was no longer a novice.Her preliminary examination was now safely behind her, and her long weekend holiday infront of her. At the end of each three months of duty and before you were changed to anotherfloor you were entitled to five whole days’ holiday. That was one of the nice things about St.Angela’s.

Joan, trying to feel as enthusiastic about it as she ought to have done, realized with a pangthat she had nowhere to go for her five days’ leave. A wave of pure homesickness washedover her. Longingly now she thought of the old red-walled rectory at Dipley, of the countrylanes deep in fallen crimson leaves, of the great sweep of the marshes still ragged withblackberry vines and trails of yellowing bracken. It would have been good to go home, shereflected ... if there had still been a home to go to! Bravely she listened to the other girlsmaking their plans, and tried hard to think up some plan for herself. She might go to Epsom toa distant and rather crotchety spinster cousin. Or she might just stay in London, put up atsome quiet boarding house and have breakfast in bed and visit museums and cinemas all dayBut somehow, neither of these alternatives was really thrilling.

Then one morning, just in the nick of time, there was the letter waiting for her in the rackoutside the breakfast room with its big, generous handwriting and Dipley postmark. It wasfrom Mrs. Perros—Garth’s mother. Joan flushed with pleasure as she read it. Mrs. Perroshad written to remind her that she had promised them a visit on her first really, longweekend. They were impatient to see her. Dipley was still looking very lovely and autumnal,

and there was a new filly in the stable for her to ride. Couldn’t she make the visit soon?What about the weekend approaching?

Joan put the letter down with a sigh of longing. The Perroses were darlings. She wouldlove to go ... more than anything else in the world she needed a breath of Dipley air.Resolutely she put the thought of Garth aside. Garth, after all, was quite distinct from hismother and father. Dr. and Mrs. Perros had been friends of Joan’s as long as she couldremember. Garth’s extraordinary behaviour need not rob her now of that friendship. In fact itmust not rob her. She couldn’t afford to lose touch with the older people ... she loved themand they loved her. And most of all, they stood for Dipley.

Dreamily sipping weak tea and munching toast, Joan pondered. Garth hadn’t bothered herin a long while now. Not since that bitter scene in the ward kitchen. She had spoken her mindthen and he had accepted, apparently, his dismissal. He had left her alone as she had askedhim to. And she told herself she was glad about that, seeing him remote and distant, a correctyoung surgeon moving about the hospital wards and corridors, nodding to her briefly if anacknowledgment were unavoidable, but otherwise seemingly unaware of her existence. Thatwas the way she wanted it. That was grand.

And now ... well, he needn’t know anything about this visit until it was over. His mothermight mention it to him when she wrote to him, but that would not matter. What did matterwere the forlorn five days stretching ahead of Joan and the hunger and thirst for the countrythat was upon her—her own country.

She rushed away as soon as the meal was over and telegraphed her acceptance to Mrs.Perros. After that her excitement steadily mounted, it was wonderful to think that tomorrowshe would actually step out of the slow local train on to Dipley’s nasturtium-clad platform!That Cranley the stationmaster would greet her and the sweet air of the marshes blow on herLondon-pale cheeks. She would hear words of welcome wherever she went—in the postoffice, in the grocer’s and the butcher’s. She would go into the little church where as a childshe had fidgeted through her father’s long sermons and she would linger a while in thechurchyard where the new, sad grave stood under the yews.

There were tears in her blue eyes as she packed her suitcase that evening. But they werenot unhappy tears altogether. The wound of her father’s death had healed and closed in theselast busy, fruitful weeks. She could go back to the old place now with peace in her heart,peace and thankfulness.

Deliberately, as was her habit now, she did not think of Garth as she folded her soft velvet

dress for dinner time, her best fluffy negligee for luxurious late mornings in bed. It wasGarth’s home she was going to—but that mustn’t count at all. In a way it was her own homealso. Mrs. Perros had always been a second mother to her—much closer indeed than theshadowy person who had died in her early childhood and whom she had scarcelyremembered.

No, she told herself firmly. Garth must not be allowed to rob this precious holiday of onemoment of its sweetness.

Then at last it was tomorrow and Joan was on her way. In the dusty railway carriage shesat tense and keyed up, her glance keen for each familiar landmark as the train neared itsdestination. She saw the flat green fields of Suffolk, the straight roads with their borders offine poplars, the wide ribbon of river that laced the marshes, the lonely, empty countrysideunder an evening sky of clearest frosty green.

Then it was Dipley and she was dragging her suitcase out on to the platform, too impatientto wait for the services of Tom Edmonds, the lame porter, who was still hobbling afar off.There were pink roses of excitement glowing in her fair cheeks, stars in her blue eyes; andstanding there hesitant she was so much more lovely than she knew, a tall, slim girl in a suitof sapphire colored wool, the red-gold silken hair laid close to her smooth young foreheadbeneath the jaunty hat.

Mrs. Perros would be here in a moment, she told herself. There was the doctor’s car withthe glint of sun on it beyond the barrier. She saw the plump familiar figure hurrying then,running towards her between the dying beds of summer flowers, and the whitewashed stonesand country milk cans.

With a sickening jerk her heart stood still. Because Mrs. Perros was not alone. It wasGarth holding her arm, helping her in her haste, smiling with her as she cried out herwelcome. Garth looking so debonair, so careless, his grey eyes twinkling—as though therewere no dark and hurting bitterness between them!

For a moment Joan did not know what to do, her glance turning away desperately asthough, too late, she sought some means of escape. This was terrible. This was mean, shethought in a perfect flurry of resentment. It was Garth then who had worked this miraculoustimely invitation for her. Garth who had planned the whole thing. For, of course, he hadknown that her five days’ holiday was due. She hadn’t dreamed of this in her wildestmoments. Garth never left town for odd weekends in the midst of his work. It wasn’t usuallypossible for him to get away. But this time he had contrived it somehow.

Oh, she had been a fool to come! To walk so nicely into his trap ... for there would be noavoiding him now! Before her suddenly the weekend stretched with its nightmarepossibilities and her heart quailed.

“Joan, my dear, how nice to see you!” Mrs. Perros said, kissing her.

“Joanna! This is great,” Garth echoed, and with all the assurance in the world, stoopedand kissed her too!

CHAPTER SEVEN

JOAN stiffened under this salute, her only emotion at the touch of his lips being one ofimmense and outraged surprise. Really Garth was acting in the most extraordinary fashionlately! He didn’t seem to have the smallest shred of decency or consideration left in him. Itwas diabolically clever of him to have planned this visit, knowing perfectly well that shewould be unable to show her displeasure at the trick in front of his parents. For, of course,they were unaware of Vera Petrovna’s existence; they must be. Always, Joan recalled with apang, they had treated herself and Garth as though they were tacitly engaged. It was all goingto be most frightfully awkward. Even now, Mrs. Perros was beaming at her romantically,saying, “It’s so good to have you both at home together, children! You’ll be able to amuseeach other nicely. It really was lucky Garth was able to get this particular weekend off.”

“Not so much luck as good management!” murmured Garth, with a mischievous glance forJoan. The look she flashed back at him ought to have told him most eloquently what shethought of him, but he merely took her arm affectionately, his mother taking her other arm,and in this amiable fashion the three of them walked to the car.

“You’re a bit thinner, my dear, but it suits you.” Mrs. Perros was saying. “I’m glad theyhaven’t quite worked you to death at the hospital.” Her eyes were admiring for the slick bluehat, the glowing, vivid little face, the trim well-cut suit. “You look charming, mostcharming,” she said with an affectionate squeeze for Joan’s arm.

Joan gave her a grateful smile. “It’s sweet of you to say so, Auntie Miggs. I love beingthinner—and I love hospital. But most of all at the moment I love being here—with you,” sheadded hastily, avoiding Garth’s glance.

They were getting into the car now. Garth at the wheel and Joan jumping hastily into theback with Mrs. Perros.

“Now, you sit with Garth, dear,” Mrs. Perros said with a coy little smile which wasmeant to convey a special understanding of the relationship of the two young people.

But Joan stayed where she was. “It’s you I want to talk to,” she persisted. “I see Garth allthe time.”

“Liar!” said Garth calmly from the front. “You haven’t looked at me or spoken to me forexactly three weeks.”

Mrs. Perros raised shocked eyebrows.

“But hospital is like that,” Joan found herself explaining hurriedly, her color rising.“There is so much to do always, and so much not to do—I mean—it’s against the rules forme to talk to Garth on the wards.”

Her eyes were snapping as she spoke, two pools of stormy blue under their thick, darklashes. If Garth were going to bait her like this in front of his parents at every opportunity itwould be intolerable. The sooner she could have a private word with him, the better!

The opportunity came almost at once—after the short drive through the village street, theswift climbing of the curving driveway and the bustle of arrival at the old white house withits covering of jasmine and windblown yellow roses.

It was Garth who carried her suitcase up to her room for her, and suddenly with the doorof the chintzy guest room shut behind him (most deliberately and indiscreetly shut in the faceof a maid who was fussing about with towels and hot water can) he faced Joan seriously.There was no twinkle now in his grey eyes and his mouth wore an odd twisted look of pain,so that her anger faltered a little in her heart and a bleak feeling of defencelessness cameover her. “Why did you do this, Garth?” she was asking, so much more gently than she hadmeant to ask.

“Because I had to see you somehow, Joanna,” he explained humbly. “I haven’t got thecourage to go on the way things are. I want to tell you everything—things, perhaps I ought tohave told you long ago and” he hesitated—“one thing I have never quite had the right to tellyou until now. That’s why I fixed this meeting of ours; away from hospital, at home. I kneweverything would be different here—in this atmosphere, I mean. We couldn’t possibly go onquarrelling here, Joanna, where we’ve always been so happy, so—so right together.” Hisvoice altered a little. “You’ll give me the chance sometime over the weekend of a talk withyou, won’t you?”

She didn’t promise anything. She was very young, very puzzled standing there before him,taking her hat off, rumpling her brown-gold hair with a childish gesture. She said, “And yourmother and father, Garth, do they know about—about Vera?”

He shook his head. “Nobody knows except you,” he told her.

She gave a small, bewildered sigh and turned away from him. “I don’t understand, Garth,”she whispered. “I can’t understand. All this seems so unlike you.”

“Of course you don’t understand,” he put in quickly, “but you’re going to. I’m going tomake you.”

She said stonily, “I’ve got to dress now. Will you leave me?”

He went out slowly, the droop of his big, tweed-clad shoulders, his air of dejectiontugging at Joan’s heart. She did not instantly begin her preparations for the evening when hewas gone. Drifting idly to the window she set it open, letting the cool, sweet frosty air blowin on her heated forehead. There was a scent of burning leaves from somewhere, a gardenbonfire of the last of summer’s gaudy rags. There was a pleasant smell of upturned earth andthe faint, delicate perfume of the half-wild little yellow roses which covered the house.

Leaning out a little between the softly stirring chintz curtains Joan saw the sloping gardenwith its trim green lawn and twisted monkey-puzzle tree. Chrysanthemums fluffed their proudheads in gold and bronze, redeeming the shabbiness of the finished summer borders. Andbeyond the massed shining of the laurel bushes arose the red brick wall which marked theboundary between the adjoining grounds. The rectory was the other side of the wall, itscomfortable chimneys sending forth the smoke of the stranger’s fires. A young man it waswho now had the living, a young man with a wife and babies. In the old nursery which shehad used for a study Joan saw the lights snap on. Then a nursemaid in a white cap drewcurtains sharply together, shutting her out.

Tomorrow, Joan promised herself, she would make the acquaintance of her father’ssuccessor and his family. It wouldn’t be easy going back to the house which for as long asshe could remember had been home, but it would be polite to call—and in a way it would beexciting and there were still her trunks and various bits of treasured furniture stored in theloft over the garage. Perhaps they would want her to have these removed now, though thenew rector had written to her kindly enough before taking over the place, bidding her makewhat convenience of it she needed. Maybe by this time he, would be regretting hisgenerosity. She had left rather a lot behind. And if the rectory folk did want her to take awayher “junk” she wondered a little bleakly where she could put it instead, and suddenly sheshivered with a queer, almost physical sense of homelessness—that sinking, frightenedfeeling which a lost child knows!

It was with a pang of relief she turned to the cosy room behind her, seeing the maid comein now with fresh hot water and fat, cosy towels. There was a leaping fire in the grate, a fire

of sweet-smelling apple wood, and when she was alone again she sat by it as long as shedared in a comfortable dressing gown, brushing her silken tangle of hair, thinking of Garth—trying not to think of him, telling herself that he had by ruining her holiday done just one morething to steel her heart against him.

She was calm and self-possessed in the end, running down to dinner in her pretty velvetfrock. It was red-brown with gold lights in it—like her own soft curling hair—and her neckand her arms were bare; a clinging frock, thin as fine silk against her slender limbs, herrounded childish breasts.

To the elderly doctor taking off scarf and coat in the hall below, weary after a day oftiring visits, she, was a fair picture indeed. He held out his arms to her and there was a catchof real emotion in his voice saying, “Joan, my child, welcome home!”

She ran to him laughing a little brokenly. He was very dear to her, this father of Garth’s,and the sight of him brought back so vividly those other days of her own father—the daysbefore life had gone all queer and hurting and difficult to understand, when Dipley had beenhome indeed and she was “Garth’s girl” with all the security of his love about her.

After that there was the long pleasant evening; dinner at the great old-fashioned walnuttable with its covering of snowy damask, its creamy candles in tall, branching Sheffieldcandlesticks. There were crisp homemade dinner rolls and curls of delicious butter, hot soupin leaf-thin bowls, roast ducklings with peas and extravagant soufflé potatoes, a cranberrysweet, chilled and tangy, blackberries smothered in rich yellow cream and a savoury ofmushrooms picked that morning in the wet sheep fields behind the house. After the weeks ofplain hospital fare Joan ate with youthful zest and enjoyment.

She was gay now, with a wild, intoxicated gaiety she could not understand, joking withold Dr. Perros, sending Mrs. Perros into fits of laughter over the escapades of Gemma, thestiff and awe-inspiring proprieties of Miss Don; she told of the new probationer who hadbeen sent cruelly by her fellows to bath in Miss Don’s own sacred bathroom and who hadbeen ejected shivering by that irate lady in dire disgrace and an inadequate towel. She toldof the old lady in Dale who would keep pork pies wrapped up in her stockings of all things,until her bedside locker became entirely too unsavoury and had to be fumigated. She madethe dull routine of the hospital sound like the maddest, merriest thing under the sun—and allthe time she was conscious of Garth’s grey eyes glowing for her, watching her, Garth withthat “special” look on his face she had always found it so difficult to resist.

And suddenly she wasn’t so angry with him any more, all the hard knot of bitterness in her

heart dissolving, the strange, soft mood of happiness enfolding her. Only she couldn’t lookdirectly at Garth it seemed, nor bring herself to speak to him.

After dinner they sat in the cosy drawing room with its drawn velvet curtains and leapingfire. There were candles here too and Mrs. Perros, gracious and white-haired bringing outher knitting; going presently to the open grand piano to play for them, Chopin and Mozart andthe sweet, thin airs of Purcell that she loved.

Joan sitting on the furry hearthrug then with her shoulder against Dr. Perros’ chair grewserious. And presently her eyes fell on the treasured oil painting of the house—Garth, at theage of five, in a frilly silk collar and velvet suit. The childish face so exactly Ivan lookingdown at her that her mood chilled and her heart grew heavy.

She was oddly silent after that and when Mrs. Perros and the doctor presently spoke ofgoing upstairs—so plainly going to their rooms early in order to leave the young peopletogether—she jumped up in alarm and said she too was tired, and would like to go to bed.She was clinging to Mrs. Perros’ plump arm like an anchor getting out of the room, seeingGarth holding the door for them, the strangest expression of hurt and bewilderment on histanned face.

Though what he had got to be hurt about, she told herself with some asperity, she did notknow!

In the sanctuary of her beautifully warm bedroom she lingered over her nightly ritual,creaming her face, brushing her brown-gold silken curls, toying idly with the small pinkfinger nails that would never these days come quite right because of their toil on Dale floor.In her dressing gown she went to the window, opening it again, letting in the icy flood offrost crisp air. In the absolute hush of that country night the stars twinkled and snapped in avault of cloudless sky; branches cracked here and there in the motionless trees; leaves,loosened by the frost, went fluttering to the hard ground with a small, ghostly sound; andaway over the marshes the wild geese “honked” as they flew south over the salty estuary.

And tomorrow, Joan thought, with a shiver as she turned at last to the warmth and comfortof her luxurious bed ... tomorrow Garth would talk to her. They would walk out there on themarshes and she would be helpless no longer to evade and elude this thing she had got tohear ... Garth talking about Vera ... Garth, her own, cruel, incomprehensible Garth talkingabout his wife!

* * * *

And that in the end was exactly how it happened, just as she had known it would. It was abright, sunny morning, almost hot again after the night of white frost. Hatless in her casualtweed coat, her slim ankles tucked into comfortable scarlet socks, her feet encased in“sensible” country shoes, Joan set off with Garth at her side ... They would walk over to theestuary before lunch. He had proposed the expedition at breakfast and with a lost feeling shehad agreed to it. Tomorrow they might ride, he said, when she had had time to retrieve herriding clothes from the lumber room at the rectory, but today was so perfect for walking.Striding through the village he was awkwardly silent, a tall, stern young man in a roughtweed jacket, bright polo jersey and whipcords, his hands dug deep in his pockets.

At first it was an interrupted walk, Joan stopping to greet her old friends one by one—thebutcher, the grocer, the old verger who came hobbling out of his cottage to speak to her, hisface lighted with pleasure. She had a happy word for all of them.

Then the village was left behind and they came to the rough cart track that led away fromthe high road, a track used by the farm carts that labored down to the sea to gather seaweedand drift. There were low hedges of bramble and dog-rose here, great scarlet pips of roseshining among the bronze and purple leaves. The air had a salty tang and the sun was warm.

Garth took out an empty pipe and sucked at it unhappily for a moment. “It’s going to behard, talking to you, Joanna,” he said quietly and the glance he gave her was a veryappealing one.

She looked up at him steadily, brave now that the moment was actually upon her. And allat once she felt, sorry for him. It hadn’t occurred to her until this moment that Garth had beensuffering these past few weeks perhaps as much as she had. In the clear, wintry sunshine shecould see the fine lines etched about his eyes, the furrow marking his frowning forehead. Helooked tired—nervously tired, in spite of his healthy tan. At the corner of his mouth a muscletwitched.

She said impulsively, “I’m sorry, Garth, if I make it hard for you—to talk to me; I mean. Itnever used to be hard for us to say things—did it? I know I’ve been horrid to you lately. Butwhat else could I be? It’s been so—so peculiar; all this about Vera Petrovna!”

“Did you guess,” he asked in a muffled tone, “that Ivan is my son?”

“I didn’t have to guess,” she told him. “I overheard Vera Petrovna telling you—the day ofIvan’s operation. I was stuck in the bathroom adjoining his room and couldn’t get out—couldn’t help hearing.”

He gave her a shocked and startled look. “You poor kid!” he murmured. “Having it crashdown on you like that. I didn’t know. Why didn’t you come to me about it—talk to me—question me?”

“Oh, I couldn’t, Garth!” Her voice was wild with pain. “I just didn’t understand you anymore. I don’t now. All this seems so extraordinary somehow, so utterly unlike you, so—socheap!”

He winced at that. “Well, you’d better have the whole story before you condemn mealtogether,” he commented drily.

She stumbled a little in her misery in that rutty, sandy lane, and he put a quick hand to herelbow. She didn’t move away from him and while he talked his fingers were warm on herarm.

“You were only a baby, Joanna, a baby in the schoolgirl frocks when I first met VeraPetrovna eight years ago,” he began.

“I was fourteen,” Joan put in, adding in her heart, and even then old enough to be in lovewith you, Garth, darling, old enough to be quite crazily in love, writing about you in mydiary, weeping when you forgot to write ...

Garth’s voice went on: “She was staying at that boarding house near the medical school,the place in Gower Street where I lived when I first went up to London. There was a bunchof us there, all students, and we had a kind of silly, childish competition among us for thefavors of the Russian ballet dancing girl. We all thought she was marvellous—oh, glamorousand all that sort of rot. We used to go to the theatre night after night and hang round the stagedoor and vie with one another for the privilege of riding home with her in a taxi, or takingher out to a half-crown supper somewhere in Soho. We thought we were men of the worldrunning around town with a real live actress.” He gave Joan a hollow sort of look. “It doessound cheap, doesn’t it?” he said.

“Go on,” she commanded, her eyes fixed on the straight bright line of the sea shining nowbeyond the sandy hummocks of the marshes.

Garth took his hand from her elbow. With his stick he switched at the ragged heads ofsorrel beside the path.

“I’m not excusing myself,” he said fiercely, “but I was young, and for a time I was

genuinely in love with Vera. She was very sweet, very feminine. She still is. Whoever wascheap in this story it wasn’t Vera.”

“I’m sorry I used that word. Forget it,” Joan put in shortly, the color coming into her pale,tense little face. This business of listening to Garth explaining himself was proving evenharder than she had thought it would be. She was breathless keeping pace with him along thelevel lane—as though she were pushing her way up the steepest hills.

“So you were in love with Vera,” she prompted, “and Vera was in love with you.”

“No,” Garth said quietly. “Vera was never in love with me, never pretended to be. But forthe whole of one autumn I was mad about her. And then she got into difficulties over herpassport—”

He gave Joan a despairing look. “Damn it, I’m no good at atmosphere, local color and allthat sort of thing,” he explained impatiently, “but you see we all had meals together at thisboarding house place—at one long, friendly table. We used to read our letters in public andeven discuss them. Vera told us the morning she got the letter from the Home Office. She wascrying a little. They’d told her she had to get out of the country in forty-eight hours. Shehadn’t even a Nansen passport like most Russian refugees, but only some kind of identitypapers which meant she ought to have stayed in France. How she got over here at all I can’timagine. But she did, and it was her ambition to remain and to get on to the legitimate stage.Actually, at the time she got this Home Office warning to quit there was a prospect of herbeing taken on by a repertory company. She was dreadfully upset at the thought of losing thatchance.

“One of the fellows at the table said right out of the air, ‘If you married an Englishman,Vera, you could stay put. You’d have a British passport then and no one could annoy you anymore.’

“I was altogether stunned by this idea—sitting there not saying a word, just looking atVera and wondering if I could induce her to marry me so that I could give her the protectionshe needed—give her a country. You see, she’d been kicking about the world ever since theRussian Revolution. She’d been through untold hardships and tragedies. Her people wereWhite Russians, of course, Czarists. Very aristocratic and all that. Her father was murderedby the revolutionists. Her mother died (of starvation, I imagine) in Cannes a few years laterwhen she had finished selling the jewels they were living on. Vera just succeeded in notdying of starvation because she could dance. She joined a corps-de-ballet. Probably that’show she got into England in the first place—with them. Then she was silly enough to throw

up her job with them and try the straight stage. She hadn’t realized that as an alien without apassport she had no right to remain in England. But, of course, the Home Office tracked herdown pretty quickly—and there it was.”

“And you married her to appease the Home Office?”

“Well, it had that effect, I suppose, if no other. She was terribly grateful to me and terriblyhonest—told me she didn’t love me in the least, but like a fool I imagined that wouldn’tmatter. I thought I could make her happy—be happy myself. We tried it for a few ghastlyweeks. It was a hopeless failure—oh, a wretched business altogether. I was a jealous,impossible, ill-tempered young ass, I suppose. I could not bear her being on the stage. Thefeeling that she didn’t love me drove me wild. She went on being honest, you see—neverpretended anything for a moment. We began to quarrel violently. We were in debt. I only hadmy allowance from Dad in those days. It wasn’t very much. We left the boarding house andwent to live in a couple of ramshackle rooms in Camden Town. Then Vera got her job withthe rep. company. They were to tour for a year. That somehow finished us. We were justabout through anyhow, I imagine, and I wasn’t the least bit in love with her any more. Thewhole sordid muddle had cleared my romantic mind with a vengeance.”

They had come to the sea now, the path widening out suddenly losing itself in the sandytufts of coarse grass and heaped mounds of seaweed. The tide was out, leaving the flat shoresmooth and wet and shining. Pink-toed gulls padded solemnly to and fro from one gleamingpool to another in their endless search for food. To the right the river bubbled and foamed inits shallow channel, emptying itself into the great wastes of sand.

With an aimless kind of feeling Garth and Joan walked on a little way until their shoesbegan to sink into the wet sand, then they turned aside and sat themselves on one of thetussocks of coarse sea grass which bordered the shore.

“And that was the end?” Joan asked at last, breaking the troubled silence which hadpersisted since Garth’s last words.

“In a way—yes,” he admitted. “I wasn’t too worried about Vera. She had ten pounds aweek from her rep. job. Far more than I had. I thought vaguely she would write. She didn’t. Ifound that a relief and began to work hard trying to pull up on all the time I had wasted. Iwas badly ploughed in an exam. That shook me. I worked all that long vac. at home—remember? You were marvellous to me. Just as though you knew I was in need of some sortof special consolation. I’ll never forget you that summer, Joanna—” His voice broke. “Youseemed to have grown up suddenly.”

“I think I had,” she put in quietly.

They sat silent again a while, then Garth went on. There wasn’t much more to tell. Whenhe at last began to look for Vera with an unhappy sense of his duty towards her he was toldby her theatrical agency that she had gone abroad. They did not know where. But she had leftLondon ... disappeared completely. Garth drifted on month after month wondering what to doover his queer matrimonial tangle. Vera would come back some time. Vera would write.

“In the meantime there was you, Joanna,” he said. “Every time I saw you I realized moreand more how much I liked you. You were so—so right somehow, always fitting in with mymoods, being so companionable. You were seventeen I think when I had to admit to myselfmy liking for you was something much more vital. I went through hell. You were so lovely,so adorable in your first grown-up frocks. I had lost feeling when I was away from you, andwhen I was with you I felt marvellous—complete, somehow. I can’t explain, only that youseemed to be a part of me, a part I couldn’t live without. It has been like that a long whilenow.”

In the soft sand Joan sat, her fingers playing convulsively with the coarse stems ofwithered sea-pinks and sedge. Under their level brows her eyes were dark with pain. Shedid not dare now to look at Garth—did not dare to speak. Blankly, unseeingly she watchedthe bright line of the distant sea, the sudden rising of the gulls as a man with a shrimping netappeared far off on the flat sands.

She heard Garth sigh. He said, “I didn’t know what to do about it. I couldn’t tell you. Ithought I would find Vera somehow and get her to agree to our unsatisfactory marriage beingdissolved. I knew she would be as glad as myself to be clear of it. But I didn’t know how toset about searching for her. Then I qualified and I was hard up for some years. I knew Icouldn’t afford divorce proceedings even if I found Vera, and that they would hurt myprofessional reputation most unfairly. I told myself I would have to establish myself firstbefore I risked the publicity of divorce. I did establish myself. Sooner than I thoughtpossible, but still I was poor and still Vera was lost and still—even if she hadn’t been—there was that damnable social stigma to be considered if I allowed Vera to divorce me. Idreaded hurting my mother and father too. I dreaded what you would think. I hoped on wildlythat somehow things might come right. I even thought Vera might be dead—that that was theonly thing which would account for her extraordinary disappearance.

“Then your father died, Joanna, and I wrote you to come to St. Angela’s. It was wonderfuland awful at the same time having you near, taking you out, seeing you that evening at theBerkeley in your loveliness with the flowers on your shoulder—my flowers. I went home

that night determined to trace Vera. I rang up a private detective agency the very next day.They were busy searching for her when she walked into St. Angela’s quite calmly with Ivan—my son Ivan whom I had never heard of until that moment.

“The rest you know, Joanna. Or not quite the rest. Vera had kept out of the way in thatextraordinary fashion all those years because of Ivan. She loves him terribly, you see, in facthe is her entire world and she feared if we met again I might have some claim on him. Shewants divorce as much as I do, but she dreaded having, perhaps, to share Ivan’s time withme. She wants him entirely and wholly. So,” his voice faltered a little, “I’ve told her she canhave it that way. And now she is quite happy about it and the divorce can go through asquickly as we can arrange it.” He paused.

But still Joan did not look at him, did not speak. She was very pale now, her lips heldtightly together, her dark lashes drooped and shadowy on her soft cheeks. He took her handgently from its resting place in the rough grass and it was icy cold to his touch.

“It will all come right, Joanna, baby,” he whispered. “It’s more nearly right now than everit was. Can’t you see that? Vera will divorce me ... and then I shall be free at last to come toyou. You do love me, don’t you, darling?”

She turned to him, her blue eyes steady in spite of the trembling of tears in them. Shedidn’t answer his question. She said quietly, “If Vera divorces you it will hurt you, Garth.Hurt your work, I mean. There is the Hospital Committee, for instance. What are they goingto say to all this?”

He gave her a quick, troubled look. “I’ve considered that. They won’t like it, of course.They’re a pretty sticky, old-fashioned crowd on the Board at present. It may mean my havingto resign from St. Angela’s.”

“That would be a pity,” Joan murmured flatly. “And then there’s Ivan,” she went onthrough stiff, dry lips. “You can’t just abandon him entirely, can you?”

She saw his face quiver. “Ivan will be all right,” he said a shade too hurriedly. “He won’tmiss the father he’s never known. We’ve decided not to tell him anything about me, you see.So my clearing out can’t possibly affect him. I’ll look after him in the background, of course,see to his schooling and that kind of thing. I’m looking after him now in a way, paying amonthly sum into Vera’s account for him. I’ll see that the little chap gets as fair a deal as wecan manage in the circumstances, Joanna. You can trust me for that.”

They were silent then for a moment, a throbbing unhappy silence. Presently Garth said,“Don’t let’s talk any more about the past, sweetheart. I’ll fix it all. For the first time I’ve gota chance to fix it ... that’s why it isn’t going to count any more. The main thing is that soonnow I shall be free to marry you, if you’ll have me, Joanna? Will you?”

She turned away from him at that. She couldn’t bear the hunger in his grey eyes; Garthwaiting for her to speak, to reassure him, waiting as though his very life depended on whatshe might say. Her senses reeled. She tried to think clearly, to sort out of the welter of heremotions the truth of what she felt. She loved him. Oh, there was no doubt about that! Shewanted him as much as ever she had done. The past weeks with their nightmare of forgettinghim—hating him even—were as nothing suddenly, here in this dear familiar spot. It wouldbe heaven to lean there beside him in the long, salty grass, sink into his arms, throw to thewinds this story of youthful foolishness. In a way it was so different a story to the one shehad braced herself to hear! Poor Garth, so young, so impetuous and chivalrous. Garth nomore than a romantic baby at the age of twenty-one rushing to the rescue of the cold-heartedRussian girl. Well, Vera Petrovna had got no more than she asked for if the marriage hadbeen a failure. She ought to have had more sense, more kindliness than to have embarked onit. Let her go now. Let Ivan go. Let there be divorce. It couldn’t be wrong in these quiteunusual circumstances. It wasn’t as though they would be breaking up anything real orimportant—just putting straight a stupid muddle of years ago.

She looked at him waveringly, not knowing quite what to say, not yet knowing quite whatto think.

“I wish you’d told me about Vera long ago,” was all she managed to bring out in a smallvoice.

He looked dashed. “I wanted to ... hundreds of tunes, ’ he said apologetically. “Butsomehow I couldn’t. I kept on hoping things would right themselves, that Vera would writeand ask me to divorce her, that something would happen, something miraculous. But ofcourse nothing miraculous did turn up. It doesn’t in this logical old world. One makes a badmistake—and there it is. There’s no turning back, is there?”

“No, there is no turning back,” Joan agreed sadly.

She stood up then with a definite and final air, shaking the sand out of her skirts. She didnot trust herself to look at Garth’s anguished, pleading face. She said in a dull tone, “Shallwe get back now? We’ve all of three miles to walk before lunch and it is just on noon.”

“And you aren’t going to answer my question?” Garth demanded humbly. “I’ve been tryingto propose to you all morning in my own clumsy fashion, Joanna, darling. I don’t know if youquite realize that ... rather a queer kind of proposal, I’m afraid!” he ended with an unhappylaugh.

A strange proposal indeed, Joan thought with a stab of bitterness. She had imagined it sodifferently, so beautifully different in her girlish dreamings. Not this bleak, half-shamed thing—with a wife in the background to be disposed of, a small son to be ignored.

She said, “Will you let me think about it all a little while, Garth? Will you not hurry me?”

He agreed a little wistfully that she could take all the time she wanted, and they turnedback to the sandy cart track. As they rounded the corner of the lane there was a suddenoutbreak of pandemonium, horses and scarlet-coated huntsmen and yapping hounds streakingacross the track and away over the marshes

“The hunt!” Garth exclaimed. “I’d forgotten it was meeting at Dipley today.”

They stood back to let the tornado pass, and after that the lane filled up miraculously withbicycles and small cars and excited errand boys. There was no more opportunity forconversation. In the crowd assembled now there were many of their friends, and after theyhad watched the huntsmen’s fruitless attempt to dislodge the fox who had gone to earth on theedge of the marshes a neighbor with a car took them home.

CHAPTER EIGHT

AT LUNCH Joan was as quiet and subdued as she dared to be. Mrs. Perros, with her beamingsmile, announced over the hot roast that Mr. Sparkes, the rector, had popped across to saythey would be so glad if Joan and Garth would go over for tea that afternoon.

Mr. Sparkes even thinking of them together that way, Joan reflected. That was Mrs.Perros’ doings. She always talked of her son and his friend, Joan Langden, as though theirengagement were an established thing, something that would inevitably be announced as soonas Garth’s prospects were quite settled and he was in a position to marry. If only the poordarling knew the amount of “settling” there had to be before anything of the kind werepossible! And what would Dipley say to the news of the divorce—the discovery of Vera’sexistence? What would the doctor and his romantic, trusting little wife have to say to it all?

Wretchedly now Joan toyed with her delicious meal, her hearty appetite all vanished.

In the blustering, cloudy afternoon which followed the sun-filled morning she went withGarth across the familiar rectory, garden. Mrs. Sparkes’ greeting was effusively kind. In thecosy, old-fashioned drawing room that Joan knew with such heartbreaking thoroughness, teawas served. Mr. Sparkes and Garth talked politics mildly. Mrs. Sparkes told Joan snippetsof village gossip. And after the meal the children were brought in, a rumpled, curled,adorable baby girl of two and a solemn, thin little boy of seven.

It was a pleasant half hour that followed in the firelit room with the dusk deepeningoutside in the windblown garden, the fierce autumnal gale now lashing at the bare treebranches, whistling at the windows, sending sudden sprays of hard rain against the panes.

The children were friendly, unspoiled, delightfully unselfconscious. Small Margot sat onJoan’s lap. Peter told Garth proudly about his new school. He was going by train every daynow to Shadworth, the county town grammar school. And later, the rector put in, Peter wouldgo to Harrow. His name had been down on the rolls of that illustrious place since the weekhe was born.

Garth was interested at once. Did one really have to enter a child’s name as early as that,he asked, or wasn’t it possible sometimes to find a vacancy at one or other of the greatpublic schools when the pupil was of a more mature age?

He was thinking of Ivan, Joan guessed, sitting there with Peter leaning against his knee,waiting so eagerly for the rector’s advice about schools and schooling.

There were sometimes vacancies, of course, owing to illness or change of plan in afamily, the rector was assuring him. Had he any special case in mind?

“A boy I’m interested in,” Garth said quietly. “I wanted to advise his mother about hiseducation. This child is seven, too, just about your Peter’s age.”

“Well, if he’s going to get into one of the larger schools it is high time something wasdone about it,” Mr. Sparkes asserted.

They began to talk of costs and fees and entrance examinations.

Joan and Mrs. Sparkes went away to the loft out in the windy yard to see about the trunks.Alone, presently, in the warm, odorous barn Joan unfastened straps and searched among herjumble of possessions for her riding clothes. In the shadowed place, lit with its one stormlamp, her face was small and pale, her eyes great hollows of pain.

Garth and Peter, she was thinking ... the beautiful gentle way Garth had with the child andthe quick response there was to it, as though small Peter knew how much a little boy of sevencould appeal to this big, broad shouldered young man with the twinkling grey eyes. Peterhadn’t been five minutes in the drawing room before he had told the stranger all about hispuppy, his bicycle, his new pony—and then his school. Peter who had so much that it wasright for a boy to have! Peter who had everything, a home, security, a devoted mother, awatchful father. Peter was living the way it was right to live; and Ivan in his shabbyBloomsbury flat was merely a boy Garth was “interested” in.

Uneasily Joan wrapped her jodhpurs, her jersey, her coat together and turned to search forboots. She had imagined herself being emotionally stirred by this moment among her oldpossessions; seeing the stacked pictures with their faces to the wall, the Queen Anne writingdesk she had kept, the grandfather clock that was eight feet high and had faded roses paintedon its smooth and priceless panels. There was her mother’s workbox with the pearl inlay,her father’s folio of youthful water colors. She had thought to be so moved, seeing thesethings cast out in their homelessness, but now she had hardly a glance to spare for them,hardly a thought. There was enough of pain to fill her heart without these small voices from apeaceful past—enough of puzzlement and misery!

She was fastening the trunks again when Garth came to look for her. Under the soft

lamplight she turned to meet him, a tall, slender child, the light tangled in her aureole of hairand sharpening the fine pure bones of her face. She looked so young, so tender, so forlornhere in this lonely place of shadows that his heart smote him suddenly and he moved close toher, impulsively, as though he would take her in his arms.

“What is it, Joanna, baby?” he asked brokenly. “I’ve hurt you terribly I’m afraid—and Ididn’t mean to hurt you today. I meant to clear everything up. Can’t you forgive me for mymuddle with Vera? It was all so long ago, so unreal—” Diffidently he put an arm about herand she did not stir away from him. He stroked her silken hair and gently pressed her headagainst his strong young shoulder.

She was very quiet, very yielding, leaning there in his arms. She said, “I’m not angryabout Vera—not even hurt any more. I do understand the way it all happened now and—and Ilike Vera. I think she’s a grand person.”

“What is it that is troubling you then, sweetheart?” Garth murmured caressingly.

“I don’t know, Garth!” Her voice was a little wild, her blue eyes were wild looking up athim, her sweet lips parted. Because it was too much of ecstasy to be here in this dim, lamplitroom with Garth so close, his heart beating beneath her own, his arms crushing her. Outsidethe storm raged on and the trees shook and the brown leaves whirled in their dance of death.In the yard below doors slammed and creaked. There was a sound of tearing, rushing windeverywhere; the old barn trembled with it, the storm lamp swayed so that its rays wentwaveringly across the wooden floor golden and dim like running water. And still they clungthere. And suddenly with a fierce hunger their lips met, and for Joan the world went crashingand dissolving in glory and in pain.

When she pushed Garth away from her at last she was very pale. And she trembled,moving away from him, seating herself on the broad old trunk. He came and sat beside herhot touching her now, just watching her quietly. He said after a while warmly, triumphantly,“You do love me then, Joanna!” Not asking it, just stating it that way. She put out a smallhand and laid it on his arm, but she did not look at him. She said, “Were you thinking of Ivanjust now when you talked to Mr. Sparkes about Harrow?”

He looked a little surprised at the turn her thoughts had taken, a little troubled. “Yes, I wasthinking of Ivan,” he admitted. “Why?”

“You must think of him a great deal, Garth, don’t you? You must find it rather wonderfulhaving him belong to you.”

“It is wonderful,” he said.

“Tell me about it,” she invited. “Tell me what you felt when you first saw him—first knewabout him?”

He stirred uneasily. “That’s rather a hard thing to ask, Joanna. I felt—oh, I don’t know—very stirred, I suppose.” He laughed shortly. “It’s a little odd finding oneself a ready-madeparent so to speak, with no sort of preparation.”

“I wonder,” Joan said, “what he would feel like if he knew you were his father.”

Garth didn’t reply to that, and presently Joan was asking about Vera. “Does she know youwant to marry me?” she enquired abruptly.

“No. But she knows there is somebody I love.”

“Does she want to marry again?” Joan asked, still in that desperately quiet, rather shakenlittle voice.

Garth shook his head. “Vera’s wrapped up in the boy—body, soul and spirit,” he said. “Idon’t think she ever gives a thought to anyone else.”

“Then, if I didn’t exist maybe there would be no divorce,” Joan suggested.

“No divorce? Why not?” Garth’s tone was sharp.

“I mean there might be no need,” Joan faltered. “You might stay With—Ivan.”

“I might—but I won’t, darling, for you see you do exist—very much so. You’re the mostimportant person in the world as far as I’m concerned.”

“More important than Ivan?”

For the fraction of a second Garth hesitated, then he said, “Ivan is, naturally, veryimportant indeed to me, but—well, he isn’t you, Joanna. It’s you I want to be with.”

“I see,” Joan said quietly. “It’s a question of divided loyalties then, divided loves.”

“Not at all,” Garth put in quickly. “There need be no division. I’ll always see Ivan, bewith him as much as possible, get him the best this world can give in the way of education,amusement, pleasant surroundings. He’ll be a drain on us, darling; I mean financially. Butyou’d put up with that, wouldn’t you?”

“But he will never know why you are doing it all,” Joan said with a troubled air. “He’llnever know he is your son.”

Garth looked unhappy. “In time he would know, I suppose. But not yet. He’s such a littlechap, it hardly seems fair to drag him into all this, the way things are. It would be different ifVera and I had made up our minds to carry on together for his sake, patch up our differencesand live under one roof as a couple of polite friends might live. We could have told Ivan inthat case, without hurting him, that I am his father. But as it is it’s much better to tell himnothing.”

“Have you considered that course seriously then—going back to Vera?” Joan whispered.

“We did discuss it—for Ivan’s sake, of course. Neither of us wanted it for ourselves. Butwe decided against it.”

Because of me, thought Joan with a hollow feeling, and hurriedly got to her feet. “Let’s godown, Garth,” she said in a tight little voice. “It will look so queer to the Sparkes if wespend too long up here talking—after all, we’re supposed to be their guests this afternoon!”

All the evening she was gay with a wild gaiety. There were festive cocktails at thedoctor’s, and a party afterwards which included all the young people in the neighbourhood.Joan, in her golden-brown velvet frock with her blue eyes shining, danced and laughed andplayed the childish parlor games one after the other, with a lovely zest that made it anenchanted evening for everybody, a memorable evening, in fact one of the best parties soberlittle Dipley had ever known. Garth couldn’t take his eyes off her, couldn’t be near enough toher, hovering at her side forever to the immense satisfaction of the romantic Mrs. Perros.

It was late when the party broke up and the guests departed. It was later still when after alast comforting hot drink by the dying fire in the drawing room the Perroses abandoned theiranimated discussion of the evening and Joan was free to go to her room.

And suddenly there, all the sparkle was gone from her. She was very thoughtful layingaway her velvet dress, abstractedly brushing her hair. In her luxurious bed with its fat downquilt she lay in the darkness listening to the storm outside, her eyes wide open. Tomorrow

she would ride with Garth, she supposed, and soon after lunch he would have to get out hiscar and go back to Town. She herself had yet another whole day’s holiday before her, butGarth would go tomorrow afternoon and before he went she must sort out this hot and bittertangle in her mind. She did not even hear the clocks downstairs marking the passing of thatstrange night of vigil—her thoughts were too busy, too fevered turning this way and that waydistractedly as the hours stole on.

In the morning she was limp and pale, her eyes hollowed with weariness, so that therewas no need for eye shadow at all, and great need indeed for the carefully rubbed-in rougeand peach pink powder with which she tried to hide her exhausted air. For Garth must neverknow of the agony of the night that had passed. No one must know. Just for a little whilelonger she must be brave and gay. Just for a very few hours she must be strong. Then Garthwould be gone, and it would be all right. She told herself this feverishly, running down thestairs to a late breakfast. She told it to herself more than once through the wild, sweetmorning as they rode over the marshes with the sea wind tugging at their hair, whipping theblood into their cheeks. Joan’s new filly was restive, difficult to handle, altogether thrilling.There was, blessedly, in this outing, no opportunity for deep conversation of any kind. Thenthey were home again, and in the stable they unsaddled their horses and Joan was very busyindeed rubbing down the troublesome, sweating little filly, fetching a snug blanket for her,filling the manger in the stall with crisp, golden oats.

Garth in his riding clothes, his tanned face glowing with exercise, leaned casually againstthe low door watching.

He said presently, “I’ve got to be off by three, Joanna, so it’s good-bye for a little while.But it’s been a glorious weekend!”

She turned to him with a hunted little smile. “It’s been nice, Garth,” she said.

“Is that all it has been, sweetheart?” His voice was pleading.

She gave him a frantic look and turned hurriedly to fondle the filly. “Garth, it’s not goingto be easy to say this to you, but it’s got to be said. I’ve made up my mind about—what youasked me yesterday. About marrying you, I mean. I can’t do it. Please don’t try to persuademe—don’t talk to me any more about it. It’s no good.”

He did not speak for a moment, and when he did his words were slow with pain and withincredulity. “You mean you don’t care for me that way, Joanna?”

She nodded, still without looking at him. “There’s too much in the way,” she explained. “Icouldn’t face it. All this divorce and everything. It would just spoil everything for me.Maybe I’m a coward. I don’t know. But I hate it the way it is.”

“You mean if it hadn’t been for Vera things might have been different?” he asked, his facegoing hard suddenly, his eyes angry.

“Yes, they might have been very different,” Joan conceded.

“They wouldn’t,” he told her sharply. “If you loved me at all nothing would make anydifference—not this or anything else.”

“Maybe so,” she answered in a very ghost of a voice, turning now to walk out of the stablebecause the luncheon gong was sounding and they must go in and eat. They must sit side byside at the long table and somehow contrive to talk naturally, to smile, even.

Garth walked with her in silence across the yard. “I knew all along you hadn’t forgivenme, I think,” he said bitterly, “that you never would forgive me. Maybe that’s why I hadn’tthe courage to tell you about Vera years ago.”

She didn’t reply to that. Under her drooped lashes her eyes were stinging with tears thatmust not be shed. Garth mustn’t know how madly far from the truth was this thing he wassaying about forgiveness. How madly far from the truth her own few pitiful words had been.Garth must never know. Her hands were wet, thrust into her pocket of her riding breeches.Her heart was a hot burning pain. He must go from her thinking she did not love him becausethat was the only way he would ever go—to that other love, that other loyalty. He could havehis son now. Claim him before the world, give him all that his proud heart longed to give.

This was the right thing. This was the way it had to be. She was so sure of it, and it wasonly that clear, hard certainty which gave her the courage to get through the hours thatfollowed. It wasn’t only right for Garth—but for herself. She couldn’t have snatched at herhappiness with the ghost of that small boy haunting her. She couldn’t have faced the yearswatching Garth’s hidden hunger for the thing she had robbed him of. Ivan meant so muchmore to Garth that he yet seemed to realize. Or if he had realized it he had squashed downthe knowledge because of his love for herself, his longing, for her. But no matter how muchhe loved her, it wouldn’t have worked. Not with Ivan shut out—Ivan doing without all thosevital things ordinary little boys like Peter Sparkes had as a matter of course ... Ivan evenwithout his rightful name, because the giving it to him in such circumstances would havebeen too much for him, too great a psychological hurt. Vera and Garth, knowing Ivan, had

decided that together and no doubt they had been right.

But what would they decide together now, Joan wondered wildly, managing somehow tosmile steadily her goodbye, standing in the thin wintry sunlight beside the gleaming car.

Garth looked white and hurt as he turned to her. “Good-bye, Joan,” he said. “A pretty grimgood-bye, my dear, but it can’t be helped, I suppose. Only I never would have believed thatyou, of all people, would have been shallow enough to throw everything aside for the sake ofa quite ordinary little unpleasantness, a modern divorce! It’s still hard for me to understandit.”

“I’m sorry, Garth,” she managed to say casually, only just managing it because the car wasalready moving and he wouldn’t see the quivering of her lips nor hear the one great sobwhich shook her thin, childish shoulders as she turned back to the house.

She would pull herself together and get indoors somehow to spend the rest of theafternoon with Mrs. Perros and the doctor. They would sit round the cosy log fire chatting,dozing a little perhaps until tea was brought in. Tomorrow they would go in to Shadworth forshopping and lunch, and in the evening she would pack her suitcase and get into the trainonce more for London and St. Angela’s.

Life would go on, because life, always did go on, Joan supposed. And some time in thedim distant future she might become accustomed to this deadly ache that was her heart.

CHAPTER NINE

JOAN had been a week on duty in the children’s block of St. Angela’s when she saw Garthagain. She was putting Dilly Parsons’ stringy brown hair into pigtails when he walked intothe ward. Dilly was a new patient, eight years old and very sad indeed, with a forlorn littleupturned nose and large dark eyes, red now with weeping. Joan’s hands were gentle, coaxingthe unruly strands of hair into neatness, and her voice was gentle telling Dilly that she was abig, brave girl, and that big, brave girls never cried for long in this nice ward with its lovelyflowers and gallant rocking horse.

With a stifled sniff Dilly looked round to find the attractions mentioned. “Are childrenallowed to ride the horse?” she asked suspiciously, with a swallowed sob. Joan said ofcourse they were, as soon as they were able to get up, and went on to assure Dilly that thedoll’s house at the end of the room had a real kitchen and bathroom in it, real stairs, a motherand father doll, and four children.

It was at this point that Garth came in. Dilly was, it appeared, to be his patient.

When he saw Joan the muscles of his face tightened, but his smile for her washeartbreakingly casual.

“Liking it with the kids?” he asked her, seating himself on Dilly’s bed.

“I’m liking it immensely,” Joan told him quietly, and wondered at the hard, quick beatingof her heart. Her slim little body felt quite shaken by it—a monstrous, sledge hammer of aheart under her tightly-drawn, neat white apron. She was pale to the slip suddenly and herfingers shook tying the final tape on Dilly’s lanky braids.

Garth cruelly watched the receding color, noted the wide blue anguished eyes and thetrembling hands, his glance coldly appraising. Then he turned to Dilly, who shrank back intoher pillows and demanded in her belligerent little Cockney voice, “Wot yer goin’ to do terme?”

His grey eyes twinkled reassuringly. “Mind if I listen to your heart through my littletelephone?” he asked, holding out a stethoscope for inspection. Dilly eyed the instrument amoment, then gingerly submitted a small bony little chest for inspection.

For a few silent moments Garth busied himself with his examination, Joan helping himwith a quiet efficiency, folding back bedclothes, holding Dilly’s frightened hand, whiskingthe diminutive nightgown out of the way.

She was thinking, watching his tenderness with this small patient: Garth is quite unusuallylovely with children—all children. Even when they are sick and unattractive like Dilly headores them. He’s made that way. I was right about wanting him to go back to Ivan. I know Iwas right.

“I’ve a pain in my tummy,” the child moaned, her face going pinched and grey under theyoung surgeon’s gently probing fingers.

“I know, baby,” he soothed. “It’s just that very pain I’m chasing. Hold still, like a goodgirl! Just one more minute of this—There!” He straightened up and turned to the chart at thehead of the bed; The red line of Dilly’s temperature went high, the pulse rate in Joan’s neatfigures said 128.

When Garth moved from the bedside Joan moved also, walking decorously behind him.That was what hospital etiquette demanded of her. She heard him murmur into the air, “Notmuch time to lose with that child!—marked inflammation of the peritoneum. Sister on duty,Nurse?”

“I’ll fetch her, sir,” Joan said meekly, official now as himself. She was very much NurseLangden whisking along the corridor in her starched skirts, her head held high, two brightspots of color on her cheeks. A month ago Garth would have smiled at that professional“sir”, she was thinking. But he hadn’t smiled today. Just looked at her coldly, calmly, asthough she were any humble probationer who couldn’t be trusted with the details of his Dillydiagnosis, nor given the swift instructions for the ante-operative treatment which must becommenced at once.

Sister was seated in her neat flower-filled office copying out case histories, Sister Perry,who was young and fresh and charming and so mighty a relief after the grim Millet that Joanadored her. She smiled now, hearing that Mr. Perros wanted her and laid her pen and papersaside.

“I didn’t know he came down to this block,” Joan was saying stupidly, impulsively. “Ithought—”

“Oh, he often takes our more interesting cases,” Sister Perry said, coolly explanatory, her

eyes a little pitying for Joan’s distress. “Is he one of your pet aversions among thesurgeons?” she asked, without much interest. “He’s a sharp-spoken young man when he’s putout.”

“He was about on Dale a good deal,” Joan murmured, thanking her stars that Sister Perrydidn’t know anything of her personal friendship with this important honorary, that she couldhave no suspicion for the real reason of the new probationer’s distress at having been leftalone with the great Garth Perros for a bedside examination.

“You ought to have called me the moment he arrived. You ought not to have tried to attendto him. It’s hardly your job.” Sister was chiding gently, floating away now in her tight-fittingnavy blue frock and smart spotted muslin cap.

Joan swallowed the rebuke and went off to the humble task of scrubbing out lockers,which was her rightful occupation that foggy November afternoon. In the long medical wardwith its neat, too quiet little cots she knelt soberly before a score of lockers in turn,swabbing them with scalding, soda-strong water, wiping them dry, spraying them withdisinfectant. It was a cruel surprise to her that her escape from Dale Ward hadn’t after allbeen an escape from Garth. She had been so sure that he did not visit Merlin House, as thechildren’s block was known. But now he would be in the place every day for at least afortnight, watching Dilly Parsons—and after that perhaps other cases. All the interestingones, Sister Perry had said. It was like Garth to pick and choose from the welter of patientsin St. Angela’s with their welter of ills. And if Mr. Garth Perros chose you you were one ofthe lucky ones. The Perros’ cases progressed better than anyone else’s. Often they got bettermiraculously, when by all the laws of nature they ought to have died. That was because GarthPerros had genius in his brain and in his hands. He was the most dramatically successfulsurgeon the hospital had ever known.

All this went through Joan’s mind painfully as she toiled with the lockers. She thought toherself also that if Garth had let Vera divorce him, most probably not all the brilliance in theworld would have saved his career at St. Angela’s. Then, for the hundredth time, shewondered what she would feel like if, in spite of her efforts, Garth went ahead with hisdivorce plan after all. Ever since she had got back from Dipley she had been wondering that,trying to stifle the mad little burst of hope that came with it. Maybe, she would tell herself,Vera and Garth disliked one another so thoroughly that they would not be able to face livingtogether even for Ivan’s sake.

And if so—what next? Would Garth come back to her?

With a painful intensity she longed that afternoon to discover what Garth and Vera hadmade up their minds to do. Not knowing gave her a sick kind of uncertainty which made herfeel positively ill. Going along the corridor for a fresh supply of hot water she tried to pullherself together. This, she told herself was a ridiculous way to be. When she left Dipley lastweek she had persuaded herself that she was really and truly done with the Garth business,and that she must begin life all over again just as though she had never known him, neverloved him. For a little while she had felt dead inside and finished and ... well, quite definite.Now this insidious uncertainty about Garth and Vera was robbing her of all her peace again,making her come to life, making her hope. And she didn’t want to hope. It was too painful.

Besides, this feverish mood would affect her work sooner or later, and that would be anuisance. She liked this new work too well to want to bungle it. In brief moments of self-forgetfulness she would find herself utterly enthralled by it. She liked Sister Perry. She likedher fellow-nurses at Merlin. The wards were delightful with their cream-washed, stencilledwalls, their fairy-tale murals and dadoes. The cots were pink enamel with pale blue covers,the fireplaces had bright brass guards and Mickey Mouse tiles. There were flowerseverywhere and big potted plants hung with scarlet winter berries. And there were literallyhundreds of toys. It was one of Joan’s jobs to collect them at night and put them away in thespacious cupboard beside the fireplaces. And even then Sister Perry was lovely about it anddidn’t insist upon them all being put away. If some small sick girl wanted to keep a preciousdoll to hug throughout the long night she was allowed to do so. The boys tucked racing motorcars under their pillows, and half-built Meccano outfits or trays of jig-saw puzzles werenever ruthlessly taken to pieces for the sake of hospital tidiness. They were put carefully intoone of the waiting rooms on the ground floor instead so that their owners could go on the nextday with the interrupted task.

It was a beautiful atmosphere at Merlin House—peaceful, orderly and with a gentlehomeliness you aid not usually find in hospital. That was because Sister Perry loved childrenand understood them perfectly.

But now Garth Perros had threatened all the peace as far as Joan was concerned. Whenback at her locker-washing she caught sight of his broad shoulders and dark, unruly hairpassing the door of the medical ward she wanted to crawl under the nearest bed and hide. Hewas on his way to the theatre probably, she reflected, and by this time poor little Dilly wouldbe having her Nembutal or whatever it was they were going to give her to put her to sleep.

Sister Perry was the next person to appear in the frame of the doorway, pausing to speakto Joan.

She said, “Nurse Langden, will you run along to my room, please, and ’phone Mr. Perros’home. You’ll find the number on my pad—Welbeck something . Tell them at his house thathe’ll be delayed at the hospital this evening, and will not be home for dinner.”

“Yes, Sister,” gasped Joan, and scrambled to her feet to carry out this order.

In Sister’s office she clutched the ’phone in damp, red, soda-burned fingers. There was noneed for her to bother looking at the pad. She knew Garth’s number by heart. He had given itto her ... that night at the Berkeley. He had said, “You’ve got to ring me up any time, Joanna,just any time, day or night, that you feel like it. I’ll always be glad.”

She dialled now, and waited. “Is that Mr. Perros’ flat?” she asked. And when the golden,husky voice with its slightly foreign intonation said, “Yess—this is Meester Per-ros’,” Joancaught her breath. Somehow she gave her message, listened to the voice saying, “Thank you,”and hung up. Her eyes were wide and afraid now staring at the little instrument on the table.It was Vera’s voice that had come to her across the wire ... Vera in Garth’s flat! Vera takingmessages about his not being back for dinner as though it were the most natural thing in theworld for her to do. What could that mean? That she was visiting Garth’s home this afternoon... that she was living there? Joan pushed the suspicion from her in a frenzy of distaste. Itcouldn’t possibly mean that, she told herself. Not yet. Not so soon. They couldn’t be livingtogether just calmly this way without Garth having told her about it ... Though why he shouldbother to tell her about it, she reflected bleakly a moment later, she did not know. In any caseshe had given him no opportunity for conversation with her this week. She hadn’t phonedwhen she got back from Dipley on Tuesday although she had had every excuse to do so. Mrs.Perros had given her a message for Garth about some books he had left behind. But shehadn’t the courage to speak to him even about books. It had, she found, been utterlyimpossible to perform that simple action.

For the rest of her time on duty Joan puzzled over the matter of Vera’s voice in Garth’sflat. She was quite limp with frustrated curiosity, by the time she crossed the lamp-litevening square to the Nurses’ Home. Greta, the parlourmaid, told her there was a visitorwaiting to see her in the nurses’ reception-room and she flushed with sudden childishpleasure that was more than half sheer relief at having something fresh to think about.Nobody ever called on her at St. Angela’s, and running down the corridor to the reception-room, she wondered excitedly who it could possibly be.

It was Barney O’Crea, impudent and handsome and debonair in white tie and tails, hisfreckled, face shining with soap and water, his tawny hair brushed ruthlessly slick.

“Could you wring a midnight pass from the nuns who run this establishment, do ye think?”he asked with a grin, his fingers holding her own in a warm, friendly grip.

“Barney O’Crea!” Joan murmured in horror. “Walking in on me like this! You’ll get meshot at dawn. Don’t you know casual young men visitors are most sternly discouraged innurses homes? If Donald Duck sees you she’ll have a fit.”

Barney’s grin only widened. “You could tell her I’m your long-lost Irish brother,” hesuggested. “But listen, Joan, really! Can’t you manage to make a getaway? I’ve a couple oftickets here for the opening of the new restaurant at the Carchester tonight. It’s going to be agorgeous affair—food for the gods and a cabaret thrown in. All the cream of society will bethere—if you want to feast your eyes on them. Can’t you possibly make it?”

Joan looked thoughtful. “I’ll see what I can do.” she promised, and went away to find theHome Sister. As it happened that stern personage was out for the evening, and the meek littlestaff nurse who was deputizing for her rather nervously gave Joan one of the eleven-thirtypasses and told her she must be satisfied with that. Joan was more than satisfied. Anunexpected party with Barney was just what she needed to lift her out of the wretched moodshe was in. Barney tonight was a godsend if he only knew.

She was radiant a little later driving away with that cheerful young man in a taxi cab, hersapphire-blue evening cloak drawn close about her bare white shoulders. Her spirits hadrocketed out of their depression in a feverish unreal kind of way so that she was altogethertoo gay, too elated suddenly. She knew it, but there wasn’t anything she could do about it.Her moods went like that these unstable days. And even this wild hilarity wasn’t happiness.But it was something to be thankful for all the same.

In the gold and glittering dining-room of the Carchester she laughed delightedly atBarney’s feeblest witticisms. She ate the luscious food set before her with a dazed kind ofenjoyment, glanced at her fellow-diners who were all famous or interesting in some way—luxurious, suave, amusing people whose world this was. She admired the exquisite womenin their exquisite frocks, and Barney told her she was more exquisite than any of them.

She didn’t believe him, of course, but turned all the same to flash a smile at herself in theslim, mirrored wall panel beside her. The new frock she had put on for the occasion wascertainly a distinct success; a daringly lovely frock of sapphire tulle and lace, cut low at theback, draped tightly in front, its skirt foaming out in ruffles that suggested a Victorian bustle.She had bought it in a moment of extravagance on her first shopping expedition in London—the day after her Berkeley evening with Garth, to be exact. She’d pictured herself needing it

for a winter too beautifully taken up with Garth’s invitations, Garth’s dinners and theatresand dances. But she wouldn’t let herself think of that now, seeing her flushed small face inthe mirror beside her, her gleaming goldy-brown hair piled high on her brow, her thincurving eyebrows so effectively darkened, her lips softly scarlet.

“You look like one of those tall blue fluffy flowers tonight,” Barney told her. “Adelphinium, I think it’s called. Come on! Let’s dance.”

The music crooned softly about them, shirts swished and silver sandalled feet wentslurring on the perfect floor. Once Barney stooped quickly, lightly, his lips brushing the curlson her brow. “Sorry,” he murmured, “but I had to do that. You’re the loveliest thing, JoanLangden, and I’m falling in love with you—which will never do! No journalist should evermarry until he is fat and forty and sure of his success.”

“Thanks!” Joan laughed. “But who said anything about marriage? It takes two to make amarriage, you know.’

“I do, indeed,” sighed Barney sadly, “and I’ve no illusions about the way you feel overme. Still and all, I might make you change your mind if I really set meself to it!” He grinnedhis nice impudent grin.

“See that chap over there?” he whispered presently, “that’s the much married Duke ofAxshire, and the blonde he’s dancing with is an ex-wife!”

Joan looked at the handsome, florid aristocrat with an unwilling interest, a sullen, ratherunpleasant looking person, she thought.

“Good story,” Barney was murmuring. “The present wife is nineteen and went yesterdayto a Swiss sanatorium with T.B. lungs. Hubby hasn’t lost much time in looking up oldfriends, has he?”

“Oh, how disgusting!” Joan said hotly.

“But good story, all the same,” Barney persisted. “Mind if we go back to our table nowand I leave you for a moment? I’ll have to put a ’phone-call through to our gossip editorabout this. After all, he gave me these tickets tonight and I’ve got to do something to earnthem.”

“Do you mean you’re going to have it put in the paper about the Duke and the ex-wife

dancing here?” asked Joan, rather shocked.

Barney nodded smilingly.

“But isn’t that rather a mischievous thing to do?” Joan went on earnestly. “I mean,supposing the poor little new wife in the Swiss sanatorium reads about it?”

Barney shrugged. “That’s her look out,” he said crisply. “And my look out is my job. Itwould go hard with me if it ever came out that I’d passed up a fine little scandal like thisone!” With another smile he was gone.

Joan, toying with an ice in his absence, felt distinctly uncomfortable. Barney’s actionseemed to her ruthless and a little unnecessary. She was vaguely disappointed in him. Still,she told herself after a moment’s reflection, Barney was ambitious and young and he wantedto get on in his profession. He didn’t really mean to be mischievous or unkind. She tried toforget the unpleasant little episode when he came back to her, watching the cabaret now, thewhirling dancers in their rainbow of colored lights, the darkie singers, the fat lady in featherswho shrieked American vaudeville songs in a hoarse, incredible tone.

Then it was eleven, and because of Joan’s limited time they had to go. Barney said he’dhad enough of it, anyhow, as he had to be on early duty the next day. In the palm-filled foyerhe helped her tenderly into her wrap and suddenly Garth was there looking at them, Garthbowing with an incredulous, hurt, bewildered look in his grey eyes—and Vera beside himtall and lovely in a black velvet frock, one massive diamond star in her golden hair.

It was all over in an instant, and they were outside getting into their taxi, Joan hatingherself for her trembling knees and violently beating heart. For why shouldn’t Garth bringVera to the Carchester? she asked herself. It was natural enough that they should decide tocome along for the second cabaret at midnight. Garth would be finished at the hospital now... finished with small Dilly and the glittering operating theatre. And Vera who had waitedfor him through a long, lonely evening would be glad of a little diversion. Oh, it was the mostnatural thing in the world for them to be at the Carchester together after the day’s work. Andof course, this settled everything. Vera must be installed at Welbeck Street. It couldn’t beany other way in the face of this fresh evidence. Or could it? Round and round in her mindwent the mad merry-go-round of questioning again.

She was absent and distraught answering Barney’s questions on the homeward journey,submitting to his friendly good-night kiss on the threshold of the Home.

And suddenly in her own little room taking off her fine frock she was tired with a deadlytiredness. Gemma sitting up in bed rubbed sleepy eyes. “Where on earth have you been?” sheenquired complainingly. “I’ve been killing myself, simply killing myself trying to keepawake for you.”

“I’ve been out on a special pass,” Joan explained shortly. “With your friend BarneyO’Crea, if you want to know. We went to that new show at the Carchester.”

“My friend nothin’,” Gemma said with a yawn. “It’s you Barney’s crazy about—and justas well too, as it turns out. You’ve lost your other boy friend good and proper, it seems!”

Joan, in the act of pulling off long silk stockings, was struck suddenly still. “What boyfriend?” she asked in a voice that tried hard to be casual.

“Garth Perros. That’s what I’ve been keeping awake to tell you about. The great Garthscandal! The Nurses’ Home was simply buzzing with it tonight. It’s that Russian balletdancer woman he picked up in our own little Dale Ward. It seems he’s living with her now—that he’s got her right there in his respectable Welbeck Street flat and she’s calling herself‘Mrs. Perros.’ What do you know about that!”

“Where did you hear all this?” Joan managed to ask.

“From Scatty originally, afterwards from pretty nearly everyone. They are all talkingabout it. You know what a hero Garth is in this place!”

“But Scatty,” murmured Joan bleakly, “how did she know?”

“From Sister Millet, of course, and she, my dear, had it right from the horse’s mouth—inother words from Mrs. Eldon. Old Eldon, it seems, has a morning job with MadamePetrovna, taking the boy out. In the afternoon she comes here sewing, and the Millet waylaysher and lures her with cups of tea in her own room and gossips with her. Anyhow, Mrs.Eldon told her last week of the upheaval there was when the Petrovnas moved into GarthPerros’ house and how two of the maids walked out and refused to work for Garth anylonger as they didn’t think it was ‘quaite naice.’ ” Gemma giggled. “It sounds as though Garthhas gone mad, doesn’t it? He can’t possibly expect to get away with a thing like this. Youknow what the committee is! And you can bet that the Millet has already seen to it that they’llhear of it.”

Joan jumped into her small, icy-cold bed and snapped off the light with a vicious hand. “It

sounds like a lot of disgusting old women’s gossip to me,” she said. “It sounds in fact likeSister Millet—than which nothing could be more vile and spiteful. Supposing MadamePetrovna is staying at Welbeck Street! There’s probably some quite simple explanation to itall.”

“But calling herself ‘Mrs. Perros,’ persisted the shocked Gemma.

“Well, perhaps she is Mrs. Perros,” Joan said stoutly.

“Then why wasn’t there a wedding—an announcement of some kind? Oh, and the boy!Gosh, I’m so sleepy I nearly forgot the most spicy bit of all. The kid is Garth’s, it seems.Even Mrs. Eldon is a bit scandalized over that revelation. I must say it all sounds prettyfishy.” Gemma yawned again. “I thought you might be able to throw some light on it all,knowing Garth the way you do.”

But Joan had no intention of throwing light into the mischievous recesses of Gemma’slittle mind.

She said hotly, “Knowing Garth the way I do I’m pretty certain anything he is doing is allright and if any members of the staff dare to hint in my presence anything to the contrary I’lltell them straight out they are a bunch of liars.”

“Gosh,” murmured Gemma admiringly, “you’re a loyal little pal, aren’t you? I wouldn’ttake it so sweetly if a blonde Russian dancing woman tried to walk off with my Alan, I cantell you!”

Joan didn’t answer that. In the darkness her eyes stung with tears. Fiercely she clenchedher tends, holding back the sobs which threatened her. Her mind was a turmoil, her heart asharp and bitter pain. Garth and Vera together ... it was all settled for her now. There was nomore need for wondering. Ivan had won, as she had known he would. She tried hard to beglad about it. Only Garth was managing it all so badly, defying the conventions this way,going his own high-handed road in this impulsive fashion. Of course there would be gossipto live down now unless he did some humble explaining to somebody ... to whom, she didn’tquite know. But he ought to have managed it better than this!

Rage against Sister Millet, against Mrs. Eldon, even against the chattering Gemma,seethed in her mind., It was a foul, disgusting, hideous world. Almost she didn’t want to livein it any more. Pressing her hot face into her pillows she told herself that St. Angela’s was ahot-bed of evil-mouthed females and passionately she wished that she might shake its dust

from her feet and blot it out of her life forever.

For long after Gemma’s gentle breathing proclaimed her asleep she lay there, in a tensefever of resentment. She did not weep. Tears were no use now. She must steel herself to thefinal loneliness which Gemma’s half-expected news had brought her. She must strengthenherself somehow to meet the insidious whispers against Garth which tomorrow would surelybring. In the end she wondered if she should warn him about the outbreak of stupid gossip. Itwouldn’t be easy. But suddenly it seemed most clearly her duty to tell Garth how busilySister Millet was campaigning against him. There might be something he could do to stop hertongue! Yes, she decided, tomorrow she would swallow her shrinking fears and have it outwith Garth—tell him he couldn’t go on like this, that it was foolish, unfair to himself, unfairto Vera, and Ivan. He would be angry, of course. But that couldn’t be helped. He’d got to betold the way they were all talking.

The definite resolution somehow eased her and at last she fell exhaustedly asleep.

CHAPTER TEN

BUT the next day it was so much harder than she had imagined. Things happened so quickly.There was no need for her to open the painful subject with Garth after all because it was hewho started it. In the long gloomy corridor with the lights glowing at mid-morning against theswirling, clinging November fog he came to her, his face white with suppressed fury.

He said, “Where can we talk, Joan? I’ve got to have a word with you!” And she knew thenthat he had already learned about the unkind whispering and was already hurt by it beyondher saving. Throwing caution to the winds she pushed open the door of the linen-room.

“In here, Garth,” she breathed with a scared look over her shoulder for prowling staffnurses. But there was nobody about to hinder her and in the warm little room with its piles ofclean airing sheets and faint smell of iodoform she turned to him.

He asked angrily, “Have you heard all this disgusting rubbish about myself and Vera?” Hedidn’t wait for her answer. He went on, breathless now with indignation. “Simply because Itry to put right an old wrong—because I have my own wife and son to live in my home theycome about my ears like a nest of hornets! I’ve been commanded by the committee to appearbefore them at the Annual Board Meeting tomorrow to answer ‘certain charges against myconduct of my personal affairs.’ That’s how they worded their letter to me this morning—their damned, impertinent letter! As though they were a bunch of policemen, or inquisitors.They go on to thank me for my invaluable services to St. Angela’s but point out gently that itis vitally necessary for every member of their staff, even those in the highest executivepositions, to be above reproach in every way.

“In other words they are quite ready to dispense with my invaluable services unless I cantrot out my marriage certificate and put their nasty minds at rest about my morals.”

His eyes were so coldly angry looking down at her, his voice was so coldly aloof asking,“Do you know who is at the bottom of all this, Joan?”

Did he think she was, she wondered for one awful startled moment. Then she put theunworthy suspicion from her. Of course Garth didn’t connect her with this wretchedbusiness. He knew better than that. But he was fighting in the dark ... he needed her help. Shegave him what she could. She told him that it was Sister Millet who had started this mare’s-nest of gossip. “But it’s all so silly, Garth,” she murmured placatingly, “you can soon put it

right.”

“I’m not even going to try to put it right,” he returned. “I’m resigning today. I absolutelyrefuse to crawl before that self-righteous Committee, discussing my private affairs withthem. Why couldn’t they trust me a little?”

She shook a bewildered red-gold head. “I don’t know, Garth, dear. There isn’t much trustin this world, is there? People are horrible—but, you mustn’t feel so badly about it. And youmustn’t, oh, you mustn’t resign! That would be as tragic as it is unnecessary.”

Her blue eyes were warm with pleading looking up at him. I wanted to save you this verything, she could have told him. That’s why I cleared out of our tangle. Don’t let my sacrificebe wasted. It wasn’t an easy one!

But of course, she couldn’t say anything of the sort, she could only stand there with herheart in her eyes waiting for his answer, murmuring her ineffectual soothing littlecommonplaces. “Don’t act in a hurry, Garth, I beg you,” she ended.

But he only turned to the door impatiently. “I’m resigning at once,” he told her implacably.“And now we’d better get out of this cubby-hole or there’ll be another ripe little scandalabout my philandering with probationers.”

Maybe he didn’t mean to make the last word sound scornful. But somehow it did. Joanflushed hotly, escaping from him, running down the corridor to her morning tasks, seeingSister Perry coming out of the surgical ward her face drawn and anxious. “I’ve been lookingfor you, sir,” Joan heard her say. “It’s the child Parsons. There’s a marked collapse thismorning. House surgeon is with her now but I’m afraid it’s too late.”

“Why wasn’t I told before?” Garth boomed angrily, almost pushing Sister Perry aside inhis haste to get into the ward.

“It happened so quickly,” Sister Perry murmured apologetically, beckoning Joan now tocome too, because she might be needed, because they might all be needed unless indeed itwas too late.

It seemed that it was, standing there by the small white bed with its tiny, motionlessoccupant. The gay nursery screens had been drawn to hide this final drama from the eyes ofthe other children in the ward, and within the walls of colored chintz small Dilly lay in thelast extremity of her exhaustion. The young house surgeon bending over her looked serious

and wise, but somehow entirely helpless. At the foot of the bed the humble woman who wasDilly’s mother stared ahead with wide, pain-filled eyes.

It was very quiet for a moment—as though they were all waiting for those last laboredbreaths. Then the breathing stopped.

Joan felt her blood run cold. So far she had not seen death in her hospital work, and nowmost passionately on this troubled morning she did not want to see it. Not Dilly, her heartcried out in protest, not poor little Dilly with her eager, resentful eyes, her pitiful attempts atbravery!

“It’s all over, I’m afraid, sir,” the house surgeon was murmuring sententiously. Joan hearda quick sob from Dilly’s mother, a muttered oath from Garth. “It’s not going to be over soeasily as this!” he said brusquely, his eyes glowing suddenly, his face coming to life with afierce and desperate determination.

“Get the mother out of the way,” he ordered curtly. “Bring the oxygen tent—bringstrychnine, a hypodermic. Get a saline ready.”

Sister Perry fled. Two staff nurses appeared like magic. The house surgeon seemed todwindle visibly, standing helplessly by to watch the great Garth Perros at work. To Joanwas left the task of guiding Mrs. Parsons from the bedside, murmuring swift reassurances.

“My poor tortured baby,” sobbed the poor woman. “Why can’t they leave her alone nowto her rest! It’s all over. Can’t they see it’s over. She ain’t the first one I seen die.”

Joan said wildly, “Mr. Perros’ patients don’t die, Mrs. Parsons. They aren’t allowed to.”It sounded utterly mad. Somehow she got Mrs. Parsons away to one of the waiting-rooms andthen went back to the ward.

Garth had his coat off and his shirt-sleeves turned up. He had knocked one of the screensover. He didn’t seem to care. He was like a man possessed, a lock of unruly hair, fallen nowover his knotted brow. He had Dilly lying on her face, her small naked body almost coveredby his kneading hands. The hypodermic needle was lying with its point stuck into the floorwhere he had thrown it.

One of the staff nurses caught Joan by the wrist, “Hot-water bottle—four of them.Quickly!” she whispered. Joan ran.

When she came back with the first relay of bottles Dilly was lying on her face—breathingvery slowly. But breathing! It seemed like the wildest, the most impossible of miracles. Joanwanted to cry out in her excitement. She watched Garth setting the oxygen tent in place,regulating the flow of life-giving air.

Sister Perry whispered to her as calmly as though all this were the most ordinaryoccurrence imaginable in the hospital routine. “It’s all right, now, Nurse, you can get on withyour work.”

Joan went away to polish chromium taps and dust bathrooms feeling shaken and faint, butat the same time elated. She was more deeply stirred by Dilly’s remarkable recovery thanshe had been by any other incident since her arrival at St. Angela’s. Hospitals werewonderful, she reflected. Half the time you bothered about fluff under beds and cleanwashbasins and tidy quilts—trivial, stupid little things, and then something like thishappened! But it was Garth, of course, Garth was magnificent. Now she knew where he gothis sensational reputation. It was because he did not know when he was beaten, because hewouldn’t be beaten. Death was something he fought with a grim and splendid fanaticism. Hewouldn’t let a Dilly Parsons slip out of the world any more easily than he would let a princeor a king go. The life he had in his clever, sensitive hands was for everyone alike. St.Angela’s was incredibly lucky to have him. St. Angela patients were the most privilegedsick people in the world. And yet Garth was going to resign, throw up this by far the mostimportant part of his life-work because of a few narrow, mean minds and clacking tongues. Itwas tragic! It was unthinkable.

In the waiting-room Mrs. Parsons wept quietly, gratefully, now that the crisis was over.Joan took her a comforting cup of tea and some sandwiches at lunch-time. In a little whileshe would be able to see her small daughter again. It all seemed, she told Joan, like awonderful dream. “But you’ve got such clever doctors here in this hospital, miss,” she endedreverently.

“Doctor Perros,” Joan told her fervently, “is the best doctor not only in St, Angela’s, butin the whole of London!”

At one o’clock when the ward staff nurse went away for lunch Joan was detailed to sit byDilly’s bed and keep an eye on the oxygen apparatus. Garth found her there when he strolledin for a last look at his patient before departing for Welbeck Street and his own expensiveconsulting-room. There was a warm glint of satisfaction in his eye as he felt the steady pulseand noted the even, effortless breathing.

Joan looked at him with new awe and admiration on her candid, lovely little face. “Youwere so wonderful, this morning, Garth!” she said softly.

He smiled at her. “Not really wonderful,” he countered. “It’s simply that I’ve got a certainamount of common sense. And I like forlorn hopes and lost causes. You can often save a lifeby sheer obstinacy, you know.” His grey eyes twinkled again.

He was pleased about Dilly, as indeed he might well be.

Joan said, “If you hadn’t been here, Garth, this baby would have died.” Her fine little faceunder its white cap, its rings of gold-brown hair, was desperately pleading, desperatelyeloquent, her red lips quivered. “You can’t leave hospital, Garth,” she whispered. “Youcan’t do it!”

He did not answer her but she knew he was moved. He was gruff turning away from her,crisply giving her some final instructions. With a prayer in her heart she watched him go. Fora day and a night the prayer went on, wordlessly, passionately. Then she knew that it wasanswered. Garth had faced the Committee, explained to them his relationship with VeraPetrovna. The chattering nurses buzzed with the story at tea-time on the afternoon of theBoard Meeting. It was a first-class sensation. Garth Perros and Vera Petrovna the lovelyRussian girl! To think of them being married all this time, quarrelling, drifting apart, findingeach other again in the very wards of the hospital. The pink-clad girls in their white apronssighed in unison, sighed in romantic satisfaction. It was all too marvellous!

Joan in her place at the end of the long table listened and said little. Not even Gemma’sinquisitive questionings could move her. “But you knew, Langden. You knew something allalong I’ll bet my boots, and you never let us in on it. I think you’re mean!”

The Committee had recanted nobly to a man, they had even apologized. It was all over—the foolish, unpleasant scandal was laid and Sister Millet most beautifully defeated. Garthwas reinstated with full honor. There was nothing now, it seemed, that could disturb hisuseful work at the hospital, nothing to smirch his name.

Nibbling at thick slices of bread and butter with little appetite Joan was thankful. Thewhole awful incident had somehow justified her. For how would it have gone with Garthand his career if she had listened to his hot pleading, if it had been his divorce from Vera theprim committee folk had unearthed in their investigations instead of this simpler, domesticupheaval with its happy ending?

Oh, she had done the right thing in refusing to marry him—the right thing, not only by Ivanbut by Garth’s precious work. She had saved his life intact for him. For twenty-four hoursshe went about in a glow of inner satisfaction that did much to allay the aching of her heart.Then the fresh storm broke.

The Board Meeting at which Garth talked had been on Wednesday. It was Friday whenJoan came downstairs a little early for six-thirty duty to find Greta the parlormaid with hernose buried in the morning newspaper. The girl glanced up with an expression of shockedand mischievous delight.

“Seen this. Nurse Langden?” she asked.

Joan, reading over her shoulder, took in with one swift agonized glance the glaring blackheadlines, saw Vera’s lovely face all smudged with printer’s ink, and Ivan—even poor littleIvan, dragged into it, standing by a park bench with the hateful old gossiping Eldon. It wasall there, the intimate little family story which sounded so romantic, so ordinary even when itwas told in privacy. But here in these screaming headlines it was an outrage. “FAMOUS YOUNG

SURGEON’S DRAMATIC REUNION WITH BEAUTIFUL BALLET WIFE AFTER YEARS OF SEPARATION!” yelled theMorning Clarion.

The letterpress which followed left nothing unsaid. Whoever had written this account hadgot hold of every detail and made the most of it, twisting it cruelly in the process. Vera’syears of struggle and poverty while her husband climbed to giddy heights of fame ... Verahiding Ivan from the father who did not know of his existence—because (said the writersententiously) these foolish young people had quarrelled so bitterly that the lovely andcourageous dancer made up her mind they would never be re-united. And at all costs shemust keep the son she worshipped. This father who had failed her should have no part in hisupbringing. But it was the child who healed their wounded hearts—who in his illnessbrought the lovers once more together. It is the kind of miracle that happens once in ahundred years ... The sentimental rubbish flowed on; Ivan’s arrival at the hospital, Vera’sdiscovery that the surgeon who was to operate on him was none other than his own father,her long-lost husband ...

With a sickening sense of shame Joan read on. She was trembling and white, turning awayat last to take her blue cloak from its peg in the hall alcove. “How did they get hold of allthis Greta?” she asked in bewilderment. “Who on earth has been talking?”

“Search me!” giggled Greta happily. “This’ll make the Committee sit up again, won’t it?They’ll be wild at having their holy St. Angela’s dragged into the paper like this. The

pictures of Mrs. Perros in her dancing clothes and all!”

“It’s the worst possible thing that could have happened,” Joan murmured brokenly, goingout into the dark icy morning. She felt physically sick with misery crossing the muddy, lamp-lit square. This would hurt Garth much more than any other thing that had gone before. It wasawful—so degrading, so unnecessary, having his private life dragged out in public this wayfor the mobs of the world to read over their breakfast tables. It would break his heart, woundhim to the very soul, Garth, with his pride and his dignity! It was the sort of unhappypublicity which it would take years to live down.

Moving through her duties through the long hours of the morning she scarcely knew whatshe was doing. The hospital, of course, was seething with the day’s fresh sensation. Nursesand Sisters, even wardsmaids and scrub-women and patients discussing it—tittering over it,newspapers fluttering on the locker-tops, in ward-kitchens.

And Garth! Joan couldn’t bear to be around when he came in to look at Dilly. She couldn’tbear to see his face stricken and shamed before this whispering, stupid world of malicioustongues. She hid herself in side rooms and lobbies, telling herself that she was a coward, thatit was her duty to walk out and find Garth today of all days. To comfort him—if there wasany comfort.

She let him go right out of the place in the end before she could drag herself after him. Hewas getting into his car after his morning rounds when she ran down the front steps of thehospital, defying all laws and convention for the proper behaviour of probationers.

In a thin gleam of wintry sunshine she stood there before him, very young and tense, herhands clasped feverishly together. There were tears in her warm blue eyes suddenly becausethe face Garth turned to her was so wan somehow, so quiet and finished. He looked old andtired. He looked broken. It was worse, much worse than if he had been in one of hisimmense and blustering rages.

She gulped, “Oh, Garth, I’m so sorry, so terribly sorry! I can’t think who can beresponsible for this mischievous newspaper story.”

He regarded her steadily. There was no flicker of response to her quick sympathy in thelevel gaze of his grey eyes.

He said in a weary way, “Can’t you really think who it is that is responsible? Then maybeI can enlighten you. It is none other than your friend of the other night—the man who was

with you at the Carchester last week. He came to see Vera yesterday and she threw him outon his ear—refusing to answer his questions. Then apparently,” Garth laughed unpleasantly,“this enterprising news-hawk of yours, who seems to be so very familiar with our dailyroutine, went off to the park and waylaid Ivan and Mrs. Eldon on their morning walk. He hada photographer with him—as you will have noticed. Got some nice photographs of my son,too, didn’t he?”

Joan felt as though the world were spinning round her. Barney O’Crea! So it was Barneywho had done this thing. And Garth had called him her friend! Garth thought ... what? Whatcould he think but the one awful, obvious thing. It was like some hideous, horrible dream.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

SHE said haltingly, “Garth—you don’t think—you can’t think that I—?” She felt sick in hervery soul, waiting for his reassurance, waiting for him to say: “It’s all right, Joanna. Ofcourse I know you wouldn’t discuss my affairs with anybody!”

But he only said, “Well, it’s no use crying over spilt milk, is it? I’m sure you didn’t meanthis to happen. You wouldn’t know how much a clever newspaper man can make of anindiscreet word or so when he senses a good story. And this is a good story—successfulsurgeon and starving, deserted wife: with an invalid child to bring me at last to my senses!Makes me look one hell of a fine fellow, doesn’t it!” He laughed unpleasantly. The knucklesof his hands were white on the wheel suddenly. With a savage movement he threw the carnoisily into gear.

“And for heaven’s sake don’t look so worried over it, child! I’m not blaming you,” hecalled impatiently above the sound of the running engine. Then he was gone.

For a moment Joan stood perfectly still on the white steps. Then she began to move slowlythrough the pale sunlight. Her legs felt like pieces of wood—vague, uncontrollable limbs thatdidn’t belong to her, but which, nevertheless obligingly contrived to propel her in thedirection she had to take. High overhead in its glittering tower the hospital bell struck twelvesilver chimes and the pigeons went fluttering away at the sound of it, turning, and wheeling inthe brief noon sunshine, their white wings flashing.

In the dining-room of the Home nurses collected for the first lunch, chattering endlessly.Joan crept to her place and Gemma was there beside her, a rather subdued Gemma crumblingbread nervously, eyeing her white-faced companion with a look that was half ashamed, halfdefiant.

“I’m sorry, Langden! Honestly, I’m sorry—” she mumbled miserably.

“When did you see Barney?” Joan asked bluntly, without preliminaries.

“Night before last. Just after the Committee Meeting. I didn’t tell him much—really Ididn’t! But I was so full of it all I just had to talk about it. He asked a whole lot of questions,of course, and I tried not to answer them—I never thought he’d make all this out of it!”

“But you told him about Mrs. Eldon taking Ivan into the park every morning?”

“Yes, I told him that—curse him! And of course he went rushing off to the park next day,and what I left out of the story that old rag-bag of an Eldon woman supplied. Honestly, Joan,I’m sorry! I could kick myself.” Gemma’s bright eyes were near to tears.

Joan said dully, “He thinks I did the talking. He’s furious with me.”

“Garth?” whispered Gemma in awe. “Oh, Lord, how awful! And the old family friendshipis going to be broken up on the head of it?”

“Looks like it,” Joan said shortly.

“This thing gets worse every minute,” sighed Gemma in distraction. “I wouldn’t have hadthis happen for the world, Joan. You know that, don’t you?”

Joan nodded. “Don’t worry,” she said bleakly. “It’s just one of those things. I’ll get overit.”

They left it at that, Gemma toying unhappily with Irish stew, leaving her favorite gingerpudding untouched. As soon as Miss Don had murmured the concluding Grace she scrambledfrom her seat and disappeared. Joan didn’t know and wouldn’t have cared particularly, but itwas to the telephone kiosk at the corner of the square Gemma went running. She was paleand determined, picking up the receiver, fumbling in the directory for a number. Then shedialled and waited, her teeth chattering with fright.

When, later in the afternoon, Joan had her two hours off duty she took a library book to herroom, lay on her bed and tried to read. But the book didn’t seem to make sense, although itwas by an author she liked and usually devoured with avidity. After a while she threw itaside and got up, rammed a tam-o’-shanter on her brown-gold curls, slipped a loose, darkcoat over her uniform and went out.

It was cold and raw with a promise of frost in the greeny sky. Aimlessly she walked,watching the short day die, coming presently to the river where the flat Dutch barges floatedon a swollen tide. There was a harsh wind here whipping the water into miniature waves,making her eyes run and her cheeks ache with cold. She turned to escape from it and foundherself in a narrow side street congested with newspaper vans and drays bearing great rollsof paper. In the gathering dusk the illuminated signs of half a dozen famous journals twinkledand flashed. This was the land of printer’s ink and whirring rotary presses, under her feet the

very pavement trembled with the thunder of hidden machinery. She had come unwittingly tothe street of the Morning Clarion, and seeing its glass and chromium entrance she quickenedher pace, paling at the thought of a chance meeting with Barney O’Crea. She was almostrunning in her effort to get away quickly to the wider thoroughfare ahead with its shops andfamiliar red buses.

She never wanted to see Barney again, she told herself. Never as long as she lived! Evenwhen she was quite old, she would not recall his name without feeling this awful blank ofaching misery. He had robbed her of everything she most valued in the world. He had takenaway from her the last pitiful shreds of Garth’s liking, the whole of his trust. Garth hated hernow. Garth despised her. And it was Barney’s fault. She was white-lipped and despairing,seizing on the first bus she could find to take her back to hospital.

The lights were blazing in the shops now, in the winter dusk shopping crowds thronged thepavements. The sound of tea-time music floated from restaurants; flower women with red,cheerful faces held out unseasonable roses, violets and tiny waxen lilies, and over the greatbuildings electric night signs rippled and flamed, ruby and gold and green. It was a friendly,easy hour, the work of the day almost over, the pleasures of night calling enticingly fromgilded theatre domes and shining cinema doorways.

Crouched in her seat Joan watched the passing scene, only half conscious of it, her hearttight and hot, shut in with its inescapable pain.

When at last she got back to the Nurses’ Home she was limp and weary; much moreweary, she thought, than if she had spent the afternoon scurrying about the wards. That waswhat brooding did for you. That was what came of being alone to think. Hurrying up thesteps, ringing at the neat brass bell, she was impatient suddenly for the stir and bustle of thewards, for the sound of the children’s voices once more, the sharp orders of the staff nurses—anything, anything would be better than her own sick thoughts.

Greta the parlormaid opening the door told her there was a telephone message for her.From Mr. Perros. Would she ring him at Welbeck 00113 as soon as she got in. He had’phoned twice during the afternoon in the hope of finding her.

Joan listened in a dazed silence, then turned and went out of the door again. She would’phone Garth from the kiosk in the square. Not from the Home hall. She couldn’t talk to himthere with Greta’s sharp ears probably just round the corner waiting to hear what they said.For Garth was “news” today. Everything about Garth was exciting—even to the Gretas of thehospital. For, of course, he would resign now. The Committees would insist on it. They

could hardly be expected to swallow with equanimity this blaze of unpleasant publicity inwhich their favorite honorary had involved them.

With a sigh, Greta watched Joan’s long slim legs vanish down the steps. She had hungaround in the hopes of discovering just why Mr. Perros should be telephoning her with thateager, almost joyful sound in his voice. But apparently she had hung around in vain. NurseLangden was a sly one and no mistake to go and take the call outside!

In the frost-misted glass box under the wintry trees Joan was saying breathlessly, “Yes,Garth. You wanted me?”

“I did indeed, Joanna!” His tone was warm and generous—like life pouring into her cold,frightened little heart; He said, “I owe you an apology, my dear. I’m sorry. About thismorning, I mean. It was beastly of me to think—what I did think for a little while, that youhad been indiscreet. I know now, you see, who it was that provided the enterprising Mr.Barney somebody with his Morning Clarion exclusive and I’m covered with shame, simplywallowing in it. For doubting you! Can you forgive me?”

“Garth!” she sighed rapturously, not asking him yet how he knew the real culprit; not ableto think of anything but the blessed relief his words had brought to her. “Oh, Garth, I’m soglad! Not that this makes it any better for you—the silly story still stands, I know. But Icouldn’t bear it when I realized you thought I’d had a hand in it.”

“I was a blithering idiot, Joanna,” he said softly, “And this does make it better. I can putup with quite a lot of wounding from the ordinary folk of this world. But I can’t put up witheven the suspicion of disloyalty from you—because, oh, well, I’d better not tell you thereason, my dear! But it hurt more than anything else this morning when I remembered thatjournalist chap knew you and I thought—”

“It was a mad thing to think, Garth. You musn’t ever think it again. I’d cut my heart outrather than hurt you in any way.”

He was silent a moment. Then he said, “I think I’m just beginning to realize that, Joanna!I’m beginning to suspect, too, that I was a bit of a fool down at Dipley. A hasty, impulsivefool!”

She couldn’t answer that. The pulses were throbbing in her temples, in her soft whitethroat, her red lips were parted. Like a wondering child she stood there in the bright littleglass box hearing him sigh now, hearing him say passionately, “I wish I could tear away this

distance between us. The telephone is a devil’s invention, Joanna! Why can’t I see yourface?”

“Maybe it’s well you can’t, Garth,” she whispered so low that she did not think he couldcatch it. But he did.

He said, “It was always a tell-tale little face, Joanna. It was that dark and dreadful Sundaywhen you sent me away from you, but I was too blind to see clearly that day. It’s onlythinking about it since, this very afternoon to be exact, that I’ve got the whole thingstraightened out.”

“How straightened out, Garth? What do you mean?” she faltered, dreading his answernow, longing for it.

“It’s a bit too late to go into that, darling,” he said, his voice breaking. “But there’s onething I’d like to point out before we drop this subject forever, and that is—when you next setabout cutting your heart out for my sake will you remember that you stand more than a remotechance of cutting mine out too! Our hearts are a bit too mixed up for that sort of altruism.”

“Garth!” she cried wildly, “you’re talking in riddles tonight.”

“It’s the only way left for us to talk,” he told her sadly.

The rest of the conversation was to Joan a warm and confused blur, an exchange of wordsthat didn’t matter greatly because there were no words which could express the wonder, therelief of Garth’s change of manner. Garth understood—not only about the silly newspaperaffair, Garth suddenly miraculously, understood everything! Somehow, by intuition or thesheer telepathy of lovers, he had arrived at the truth behind their troubled days at Dipley. Heknew now that she had not sent him away from lack of love. It was too wonderful, toodangerously sweet. Garth was married to Vera, hopelessly committed to her now for the sakeof their boy. But it was not Vera he loved—it was herself. Joan hugged the thought with adelirious rapture, all the more beautiful because of the bleak days of coldness between them.

Oh, she could bear anything now, she told herself, hearing Garth’s voice half-amused,half-annoyed, telling her how Gemma had ’phoned him and bravely confessed to her toomischievous, chattering tongue. Gemma, she agreed, was a little baggage, but a brick,nevertheless, an entirely decent and courageous brick.

And then somehow they were talking about Vera and not even that could quite shatter the

rich happiness which wrapped Joan about. Vera was upset by the newspaper debacle—muchmore so than Garth. “She feels she has brought me nothing but bad luck, poor kid,” Garthexplained. “She dreads the effect of all this on my hospital connections and fears it will robme of my hospital friends. Today she spoke of you: said it was odd that you had never calledon her again in spite of her repeated invitations. She is, of course, unduly sensitive about thatkind of thing at the moment. It’s natural enough that she should be. But—” he hesitated—“I’dbe grateful if you would come along and see her sometime, Joanna!”

“Of course I will,” Joan answered quickly, with a cold sinking of her heart. She hadn’twanted to see Vera as Mrs. Garth Perros. She’d told herself she couldn’t bear it. But Garthwanted her to call on his wife—it was Garth asking so humbly, so wistfully at the other endof the line. For Garth’s sake then...

“Will you come on Tuesday? It’s Vera’s birthday. She is having a small afternoon party,”he was saying.

“I shall love to come, Garth,” she assured him.

* * * *

In the days that followed she went about torn with doubts, dreading her visit to Vera,hating the thought of it. Vera had written to her to confirm the invitation, an effusive, friendlynote. There was no getting out of it. She would have to put a bold face on it and turn up atMrs. Garth Perros’s birthday party as though it were the most natural thing in the world forher to do. She would have to see Garth—her own dear Garth with this stranger who was sostrangely his wife. And it would be doubly difficult now his heart was cleared of its lastmisunderstanding; the sweet forbidden secret of their love trembling in every glance betweenthem! Oh, she would have to walk warily, warily in this unhappy situation. She would haveto be brave, to be strong.

She was quite sick with suppressed emotion at last dressing herself after lunch thatTuesday afternoon which was her half-day off. Her small hands were clammy and coldfastening the buttons of her plain black frock, slipping on the single row of pearls which hadbelonged to her mother. Whatever she wore she felt she could not compete with Vera and herpicturesque shabbiness, her bizarre and startling jewellery. Vera would always lookstrikingly lovely. She was so golden, so statuesque, so altogether romantic and unfairlybeautiful, with her perfect dancer’s body, her easy, graceful movements!

With a sigh Joan put on the small swathe of black velvet which perched so lightly on her

gleaming hair. She took her fur coat from the wardrobe, a soft grey squirrel which had beenher father’s last Christmas present to her. It was well cut, it was good. It made her feelfaintly luxurious after all as she went out into the chill air. And snuggling her round, childishchin into its cosy collar, she braced herself for whatever this strange visit might bring.

If brought her, to begin with, her first view of Garth’s London home; the large, coldcolored rooms with their modern furniture, their bare hard-wood floors. There were a fewPersian rugs, one or two Japanese prints, a sprinkling of drab cushions. There were stiff-looking chrysanthemums standing bolt upright in stiff-looking vases. It was all so clearly abachelor’s effort at interior decoration. There was no touch of home anywhere. It was bleak.It was masculine, and not even Vera in her rich green gown and flashing ear-rings couldquite transform it to effeminacy.

She doesn’t care about this place, she can’t, was Joan’s reflection as she seated herselfon a slippery leather chair. No woman who loved a house could live in it even a week andstill have it looking like this. It needed softening, brightening. With her quick imaginationJoan filled the place with great bunches of crimson autumn leaves, thick rugs of fur, gailycolored curtains and cushions. As it stood it was more like the professional man’s waiting-room: which in all probability it had been before Vera had turned it to purposes ofentertainment.

But with my tall grandfather clock in that corner, Joan thought, my Queen Anne desk, acouple of deep, comfortable couches instead of all this hard, modern stuff, a real fire in thatbeautiful old grate—how different this room would be!

Abstractedly she replied to Vera’s kindly greetings, listened to her rather gushing thanksfor the simple birthday offering of roses she had brought.

Garth had had to go out on a call, Vera said. He would be back, she hoped, later on. Butyou never knew with Garth. Doctors, it seemed, lived the most fantastic lives! She shruggeddisgustedly.

Other guests began to arrive—theatrical folk mostly who greeted Vera noisily, filling theroom with cigarette smoke and loud, over-emphatic conversation. Of Joan they took littlenotice.

There was one. man in particular who caught her attention, because of his attitude to Vera;he was Russian like herself; his name was Stefan. He was good-looking in a queer orientalway, with sombre, dark eyes which never left his hostess for one moment. He was, Joan felt,

almost indecently open in his attention to her, attention which for the most part she receivedcasually as though she were long accustomed to them.

Stefan had brought an enormous jar of caviare for the birthday. There was rapturousapproval on all sides for this, and a fat man rushed off in a taxi-cab to purchase the vodkathey all said simply must go with it.

They would have vodka and caviare for tea, instead of those awful English crumpets,Vera decided, and told the maid to take away the conventional silver tray with its steamingtea-urn and plates of cake. Joan saw it go with a pang. She was healthily hungry in spite ofher emotions, and she might, she felt, have been asked if she preferred caviare. Butapparently it was so unthinkable not to prefer caviare that it hadn’t occurred to Vera toconsult her guests.

Thin toast was brought in, wafers of brown bread and butter, slices of lemon. The fat manwho had gone for vodka returned with pleveian bottles under his arms. The feast began.

Joan, nibbling at toast spread with the juicy, black substance, wondered at its delicate, SKI

flavour, its subtle richness, and presently forgot to regret hot crumpets and little iced cakes.This stuff—direct from Moscow by plane, Stefan said—was a revelation of what caviareought to be, something miles removed from the rather tasteless smears on cocktail biscuitswhich Joan had encountered before. This was really marvellous!

The vodka wasn’t quite such a success. For the life of her Joan couldn’t help gasping overthe fiery drink. The fat man, now sitting beside her, laughed good-naturedly at her grimacesand told her to swallow it off at one gulp. That was the only way to deal with it, he said. Itwas hopeless to sip at it so ladylike a fashion.

There was more caviare, more vodka. The room grew noisier and noisier. Everyonescreamed “shop” at the tops of their voices. New shows, old shows—this person’swonderful “fat” part, that person’s ,deplorable performance. Stefan, it appeared, was anauthor, quite a famous one. He was writing a play for Vera. The chance of her life at last, shesaid laughingly, a straight lead in straight drama.

“That is, of course, if my husband allows me to accept the part!” she went on with a queerlittle smile “Garth doesn’t care for the stage, it seems. He is very insistent that I shall give upmy acting.” Her tone was scornful.

There was a hoot of derisive laughter at this. It was such a scream, they said, thinking of

Vera with a husband to order her about; Vera with her pride and her independence! It wouldbe a shame if her career were to be interfered with, her ART.

“Garth won’t interfere,” Vera put in drily. “I’ll get my own way about Stefan’s play. Ialways do get my own way in the end over anything important. I see to that!” She put areassuring hand on Stefan’s aim and smiled at him. He looked down at her adoringly, takingthe white, pink tipped fingers, pressing them to his lips, kissing them.

Joan turned away, flushing uncomfortably. She wished she hadn’t come. She hated it.Vera was different today in this mob of noisy admirers. Not the same Vera she had been inthe humble rooms at Mull Street, not at all the same woman who had knelt weeping by Ivan’sbed in Dale Ward! She was harder in this setting, much more sophisticated.

Almost as though she was aware of this unspoken disapproval Vera detached herself atthat moment from Stefan and his group and came to Joan’s side. The smile in her long,slanting eyes was gentle. “It was so good of you to come today, ’ she whispered in an aside.“I wanted to talk to you. I’ve been so terribly disturbed about this newspaper publicity forGarth’s sake. Do you think the Hospital Committee will take a serious view of it?”

“I hope not,” Joan said as consolingly as she could. “I don’t see how they can take tooserious a view of it when they have already heard the story of his marriage from Garths ownlips.”

“You mean at that Board Meeting last week. But that was different somehow. This makesus both sound so awful, so cheap! All that stuff about me struggling along in my poverty,hiding my baby; making it sound too as though Garth hadn’t tried very hard to look for mebecause he was so occupied with his own money-making and success.”

“But where did the Clarion get all that? I still can’t work it out,” Joan put in with a frown.

“It was Mrs. Eldon, I expect. You see, when we came here and Garth’s servants weresuspicious of me, I talked to Mrs. Eldon a bit—gave her a simple version of our marriageand separation. It was silly of me, I suppose, but I thought she might smooth things over withthe domestics. It never occurred to me how it might sound handed on to a reporter forpublication!” Vera laughed and shrugged. “It’s just bad luck. But I’m most horribly sorry ithappened. It will be just too terrible if the Hospital ask Garth to resign!”

“Have they said anything yet?” Joan asked breathlessly.

“Not yet. They’re lying low for the moment, it seems. But with every post that comes weexpect a letter from them. It makes Garth so jumpy and wretched.” Vera sighed. Then sheturned to Joan with her sudden, sweet smile. “Anyhow, it was charming of you to come andsee the outcasts. It’s nice to think there is someone at St. Angela’s who isn’t shocked to deathat us for being married!”

Joan mumbled, “But of course I’m not shocked, Mrs. Perros! Why should I be? If it’s nottoo late in the day I’d like to say I congratulate you—that I give you my best wishes—” Thewords trailed away. Somehow they sounded all wrong and unconvincing. Vera gave her amischievous look.

“And Garth?” she asked. “Would you be so ready to congratulate him?”

For the life of her Joan couldn’t answer that question at once. Then she began somethinglabored, conventional. Vera smiled again.

“It’s a shame to tease you!” she said in her rich, husky voice. “Garth is dear to you. Iknow. You’ve been his friend so many years; living so close to him at home. He’s told me.You’ve been like a sister to him—almost.” (There was an odd emphasis on the last word.)“And then having all this come out about his secret marriage to me so many years ago; ofcourse it has been a shock to you—all of you. But you’re being very sweet about it. Thismorning Garth’s mother was charming. But most charming! Actually called me her deardaughter, and she has already taken Ivan to her heart.”

“Garth’s mother? Is she here, then?” Joan asked in an inward panic. Somehow she hadforgotten all about the old folk at Dipley these last hectic days.

“Yes. She came rushing up on Friday when that newspaper story appeared. Of course shehad known about us before. Garth had written to her that we decided to patch up our affairs.She’s out with Ivan at the moment and—well, here she is!” Vera concluded as the dooropened and a beaming be-furred Mrs. Perros came in leading Ivan by the hand.

“We’ve been to the Zoo!” he cried, rushing to Vera’s side excitedly. “We’ve seen littlemonkeys, and penguin birds and a baby lion that let me touch it. I stroked its head. I rode on aNelephant!”

In an instant Vera was a changed woman, all her sophistication dropping from her likemagic as she took off Ivan’s small shoes and felt at his socks for any lurking dampness theremight be. Eagerly she questioned him about his expedition, ringing for hot milk for him, for

warm slippers. The theatrical guests fell into a bored silence. But their hostess now seemedunaware of them. Even Stefan taking his leave with melancholy grace left her unmoved.

“Good-bye, Stefan,” she murmured abstractedly. “Yes. Yes. Thursday. I’ll remember. I’dlove to come and hear the play read, but it will have to be late—after Ivan is safely in bed.”

She’s crazy about that child, Joan caught herself thinking, almost too crazy. It can’t begood for him—She never takes her eyes off him for one single moment when he is in theroom.

One by one the neglected guests disappeared. And with the thinning out of the crowd Joanbecame conspicuous in her secluded corner. Mrs. Perros came over to her, a strange look,half embarrassment, half apology on her kindly countenance. “Joan, my dear,” she murmured,kissing the wistful little face. “I hadn’t realized that you would be here—that you—er—knew Vera.”

“But of course,” Joan said bravely, “Vera and I are old friends. We met at Dale when Ivanwas ill.”

“Ah, yes,” Mrs. Perros agreed. “I had forgotten.” She seated herself on the stiff chairbeside Joan’s and throwing back her furs looked round rather blankly. It was as though shedidn’t quite know what to say next. When her eyes met Joan’s they were full of bewildermentand pain.

“We had such a nice walk, Ivan and I,” she murmured lamely at last.

Vera took the small boy by the hand and said she thought she had better give him his warmbath straight away. “It’s so cold today and he looks quite blue. I think a bath will save himfrom catching a chill. He shall come back again in his dressing gown until dinner-time.”

“And I’ll bring Mr. Dippy,” he promised Joan with an excited nod of his fair head.

“There’s vodka and lots of caviare,” Vera called over her shoulder. “Do look afteryourself, Grannie.”

Alone, Joan and Mrs. Perros exchanged eloquent glances. But all Mrs. Perros said was,“Vodka, indeed, at my time of life.” With a determined air she rang the bell and when themaid appeared demanded tea. “Lots of it, nice and hot and some buttered crumpets andcakes.”

The maid retired and the ominous silence fell once more.

“It’s so odd to hear you called ‘Grannie’!” Joan managed at last in an odd tight littlevoice.

Mrs. Perros’ eyes filled with quick tears. “I know, my dear. It’s all so odd and sodisturbing! isn’t it?” Her hand was warm on the girl’s arm. “We’re so disappointed, Dad andI. You know I think, Joan—we had other plans for Garth! But somehow these days—youngpeople seem so different—things happen—” She blundered on, kindly, distractedly. “Vera isa sweet girl,” she concluded. “I like her. In any other circumstances I might have welcomedher very warmly indeed, and as it is I cannot do less than accept her. She is, after all, myson’s wife.” The old lady’s voice was proud suddenly. “And there’s Ivan,” she said, herface lighting up. “He’s the most wonderful boy, Joan, and so intelligent. Do you know whathe said to me when we were coming along the Marylebone Road just now? There was anelectric crane at work and Ivan pointed to it—”

For a quarter of an hour they talked of Ivan’s sayings and doings. There never had beensuch a clever child, Mrs. Perros hinted. He was so strong, so beautiful, so altogethereverything a small boy ought to be.

Joan listened with a queer contraction of the heart. Ivan had won here too, she wasthinking. Ivan had won all along the line. He would always win. It was right that he should.And already his existence had more than made up to the older Mrs. Perros for the muddleand disappointment of Garth’s strange marriage. Ivan had justified everything.

When he came back a little later, a ruffled, curly headed cherub in a bright woollybathrobe, the old lady fell into an enraptured silence, watching him settling on the rug by theelectric fire with his Mr. Dippy, his new model speed-boat, seeing in his thin, earnest littleface and absorbed grey-eyes her own Garth, her baby of long ago come to fresh life beforeher. There were tears in her eyes once more. But happy tears this time.

Joan slid from her chair to share the hearth-rug and admire the treasures. The speed-boatwas shining and wonderful, but it was the shabby bear Ivan held in his arms. “You sewed inhis eyes for him at the hospital. ’Member?” he reminded Joan with a look of specialaffection for her.

It was thus Garth found them when he got home, the small boy with his toys, the threewomen grouped around him in adoration; Vera with her golden, madonna-like head, herlovely face soft and thoughtful; Joan, slim and young in her plain black frock, her brown-gold

curls glinting with firelight and lamplight. Her blue eyes raised to him in greeting held a lookthat tore at his heart. But he greeted her calmly, casually, dropped a dutiful kiss on hismother’s cheek and seated himself in one of the hard leather armchairs. He had not, Joanobserved, kissed Vera.

CHAPTER TWELVE

FRESH tea was brought. Talk flowed drowsily. It was a homely, pleasant moment. The bestthere had been, Joan felt, since her arrival at the flat.

And it was the luck of the world surely that had postponed Miss Darley’s whollyunexpected entry until now. If she had come when the vodka-drinking, noisy theatrical folkhad been present! If she had come then! The thought persisted to Joan in horror above therising tide of her sheer astonishment. Miss Darley, here in this house, tall and dignified in herdark coat and winter furs, her proud, autocratic face softened with the most charming ofsmiles as she held out her hand to Vera, It was a miracle of miracles!

Did the others realize that? Joan wondered, her blue eyes sweeping the group. Garth did.Garth, with that look of amazement and relief on his tanned face, welcoming the Matron ofSt. Angela’s, the most influential woman in the whole important world of hospital,introducing her to his wife.

The firmly modulated voice was apologizing: “It is too bad of me to call so late, Mrs.Perros. I must beg your forgiveness. But I was visiting in the neighborhood and thought Iwould run in on the chance of finding you. I have wanted so much to know you.”

And Vera. Vera was doing her part most beautifully, waving aside the apologies with herslow, easy smile, offering the new guest tea or cocktails.

It was a cocktail Miss Darley chose. They all had cocktails. The atmosphere grew moreand more friendly and easy. Joan, with the sense of wonder growing in her heart added to itnow a sense of deepest thankfulness. Miss Darley’s visit was no chance gesture. It was adeliberate acceptance of Garth Perros’ wife. It was an alliance of the most powerful kindagainst the forces of malice. It was a declaration in effect that Miss Darley, at all events, wasentirely unaffected by the foolish newspaper publicity. And if Miss Darley took that attitudeit was certain the Committee would follow in her wake. This slender, elderly woman withher greying hair and fine, thoughtful face was a power to be reckoned with in the places ofauthority.

And now the most wonderful thing of all was happening! Miss Darley was speaking ofChristmas, so rapidly approaching. It would be a busy time at the hospital. Plans werealready afoot for festivities, decorations, amusements for the patients. Would Mrs. Perros, if

she could spare the time, take over the rehearsals of the Nurse’s annual pantomime? It wasquite a simple affair, short and light-hearted. It took place every Boxing Day in the mainobservation ward on the ground floor where a stage was erected. Mrs. Perros’ theatricalexperience would be of immense value. They would be so grateful to her for her help ...

Vera smiled, her delightful smile. Of course she would do anything she could to help, shepromised.

“Then that’s settled,” Miss Darley said with satisfaction, gathering up her furs, her gloves.“I’m putting my plans before the Committee tomorrow and they will be pleased to know youare giving us your services. They will indeed be most grateful.”

They’d jolly well have to be, Joan thought, with an inward chuckle, with Miss Darley onthe warpath!

She was leaving now, making her farewells. In a few days she hoped to arrange a smalltea-party in her rooms at which various members of the Board of Directors would bepresent. Would Garth and Vera come? What day would suit them? Garth was jubilant fixingthe date.

Then Miss Darley’s kindly glance took in her humble probationer, including her in thegood-byes. “And you too, Nurse Langden,” she was saying. “You’ll help with ourpantomime, won’t you? Do you sing? Do you dance?”

“Neither with very great success I’m afraid, Matron,” Joan found herself stammering. “Butof course I’ll do my best to fit in somewhere.” She would have given the world to refuse thishonor, but refusal was out of the question. Miss Darley’s lightest expressed wish to a St.Angela nurse was in the nature of a royal command!

She nodded, smiling. “Mrs. Perros will put you through your paces, and find you a suitablepart, I’ve no doubt,” she concluded happily.

Then she was gone. Ivan from the hearth rug said, “She’s a nice lady. I like her. She sesshe once saw Malcolm Campbell’s real speed boat racing!”

The grown-ups stared at one another in blank silence for a moment, then Garth burst outlaughing. “She’s a grand old girl, isn’t she?” he exploded. “Coming round here—hearteningus like this. Taking the whole Committee by the nose and leading it where it should go!”

“It means—we’re saved? That they won’t ask you to resign?” Vera asked breathlessly.

“Of course it means that!” Garth told her elatedly.

“Miss Darley has always liked you,” Joan put in stoutly. “She’s a woman of good sense ifever there was one.”

Old Mrs. Perros just sat and beamed. Miss Darley in the nature of things couldn’t be quiteso important to her as she was to the others, and she refused to join in their raptures. “I neverthought for one moment they would ask Garth to resign,” she said proudly. “Why, whateverwould the hospital do without him? I never heard of such a silly idea!”

“An idea, nevertheless, that has lost me two or three perfectly good nights’ sleep,” Garthcommented drily.

* * * *

Then Vera was taking Ivan away to supper and bed. Joan slipped on her grey fur coat andsaid she too must go.

“I’ll drive you wherever you’re going,” Garth put in just a fraction too quickly, tooeagerly, jumping up to hold her coat for her. “The car is at the door,” he assured her.

Her blue eyes clouded. “No, Garth, it’s all right. You mustn’t come out again. You’veonly just got in—you’re tired.” Ineffectually she fumbled for excuses. She didn’t want him todrive her back to the hospital. She didn’t want to be alone with him. She had most carefullyavoided any possibility of a tete-a-tete with him since their strange conversation on thetelephone the other day. And now the very thought of a few moments’ drive with him left herpanic-stricken.

“I’d rather walk back to hospital, really, Garth,” she murmured, going out on to thelanding with him, hearing his repeated protests. It was a wide, bright landing, all the doorsof the flat opening out upon it. Vera appeared on the threshold of Ivan’s room, a ginghamapron over her party frock.

“Ivan says you promised to read him a chapter of Tom Sawyer tonight, Garth,” shereminded her husband.

Garth murmured remorsefully, “Oh, yes, so I did! Let’s go and say good-night to the youngman, Joan.”

They followed Vera into the small, pleasant room with its white painted bed, itsaeroplane pictures, its thick soft carpet. There was nothing unhome-like in here.

Ivan, sitting up with Mr. Dippy beside him, greeted them rapturously. Any diversion thatpostponed the moment of putting out the lights and going to sleep was to be welcomed.

“You said you’d read to me, Daddy,” he reminded his parent with some severity.

Garth looked abashed. “I’m just taking Joan back to hospital, old man,” he apologized.The little boy’s face fell, and Joan put in quickly, “You’re not taking me back to hospital,Garth. This settles it. I’d really much, much rather walk.”

“Well, if you’re sure you don’t mind—” began Garth lamely.

She went away with the picture of him sitting on the rumpled down quilt, one arm aroundhis son, the Adventures of Tom Sawyer in his hand. In a dazed abstraction she walked alongthe quiet professional street with its rows of brass plates. It had been a tempestuousafternoon one way and another. So much had happened—Mrs. Perros’ appearance, MissDarley’s. Vera and that queer man Stefan, the shrieking friends, the vodka, the ratherhorrible way Vera had spoken of her husband before them all. Joan’s thoughts whirled. Wasit going to be all right now that they were together again, Garth and his wife? Were theyhappy or unhappy now that the step had been taken? Was Ivan all-important to Garth, too, aswell as Vera? ... it seemed that he was. She thought again of the contented expression onGarth’s face as she had just left him. A swift mental picture of the flat returned to her—thebright large hall outside the drawing room. All those doors with their rooms behind them,Vera’s room—Garth’s. Were they side by side? Were Garth and Vera really living asstrangers ... or...?

Pain caught at her heart. Vera was so lovely, so golden, so desirable! Wouldn’t the yearsbe bound to bring contentment to this strange marriage in spite of its tragic beginning?

With lagging footsteps she walked on. Mounting the steps of the Nurses’ Home she feltcuriously, utterly weary. In the floating scent of roasting mutton the dreary promise of suppercame to her. She would go in and sit down in her black frock among the lively probationers.She would listen to ward gossip. At ten o’clock she would go up to bed clutching her hot-water bottle. Tomorrow there would be work again and the cold scamper across the square

for meals and off-duty times. Life would go on.

The days that followed were busy ones with Christmas preparations in addition to theusual ward work. Off-duty time was curtailed. Voluntary helpers for the decorations, thecarol practising, the concerts, were begged for. Joan threw herself into the rush of eventswith an avid kind of eagerness. Life was simpler when you kept going madly all day long,when you were never alone with your thoughts, not even for a moment.

There was the nine days’ wonder of Mrs. Garth Perros taking pantomime rehearsals. Theneveryone accepted it calmly. The sensation concerning Garth Perros’ affairs faded as suchsensations always do, pushed into the background by fresh interests. Vera came and wentalmost unnoticed.

In the lecture room she drilled her awkward squad of enthusiastic amateurs. Thecustomary bungled tap-dancing she refused to countenance, and evolved pleasant, easyharmonious steps to the cheerful pantomime music instead. Joan had a small part with a songto sing. Her voice was sweet and rich. Vera was charmingly encouraging about it.

One early December day she rang Joan up and begged her to come round to WelbeckStreet for her small private rehearsal as she was too desperately busy that moment to get tothe hospital. Joan could do nothing but acquiesce, and as soon as she was off-duty afterlunch she set off. Garth was away in the country on a consultation, she knew; that gave hercourage. She had avoided him assiduously since the night of Vera’s birthday, and it waseasier now to go to his home once more knowing he would not be there.

She was a little early for her appointment. Mrs. Perros, the maid said, had gone out tolunch and was not yet back. Would Miss Langden like to be trying on her pantomimecostume which had just come from the dressmaker’s. She led the way to a dressing-roomopening off a larger bedroom, obviously Vera’s.

Left to herself Joan surveyed rather doubtfully the tinselled dress she must wear. It hadbeen altered to fit her after several years of hospital pantomime. It looked shabby andtawdry. But probably, she consoled herself, it would be better by artificial light. There werepointed, mediaeval shoes to go with it, and a ridiculous long golden wig. Gingerly Joanarrayed herself in all these props. She would feel an almighty fool on Boxing Day, she toldherself, and laughed at her reflection in the long mirror.

It was while she was wrestling with the wig, hot and heavy over her ears, that she becameaware of the voices in the adjoining room. Vera had come in, then ... and somebody else. It

was a man’s voice speaking.

The door of the dressing-room was almost closed so that Joan could neither see nor beseen, but she knew that faintly foreign intonation. It was Stefan, the Russian, and he wassaying half angrily, “But we can’t go on like this, darling. It’s impossible. I hate to see youso miserable.”

Joan’s cheeks grew scarlet. For one wild moment she contemplated the possibility ofclimbing out of the window and crawling along the parapet! She couldn’t stay here andlisten. It was awful!

And now it was Vera talking in a voice between laughter and tears. “Oh, Stefan, you’veno idea! It’s simply ghastly. We go to tea-parties with prim hospital matrons. We havemiddle-aged doctors and their wives to dinner. The wives get me into a corner after dinnerand talk servant problems while Garth and the men prattle about tumours and deep X-rayand carbuncles—yes, carbuncles! Last night they talked carbuncles for hours!” She laughedmiserably.

“Well, you know what to do about it, Angel,” Stefan pointed out dispassionately. “I’vebeen trying to get it into your head—for how long—five years is it?—that the only thing youcan do is to divorce Perros. You ought to have done it long ago.”

“And I,” replied Vera shrilly and nervously, “have been trying to get it into your thickhead, Stefan, for five years that I won’t even consider divorce. It would mean that awfulbusiness of shared guardianship. Ivan going to Garth for all his holidays—for six months ofthe year, perhaps. I couldn’t stand it. Ivan has never been away from me for one night in hislife except that hospital time. He’d die!—so should I!” She was weeping openly now, and inher unhappy hiding place Joan could imagine the tall sombre young Russian comforting her,holding her in his arms.

Her voice was muffled, saying presently, “You’re so sweet, Stefan darling. And sostupid. Can’t you see it would be worse than ever now that Garth has had Ivan for a while—had time to get fond of him? It might even be that he would refuse to let him come to me atall. The law would give him full control, you see, if I were the one to be divorced.”

Stefan was silent. Joan’s cheeks throbbed and burned. This was getting worse and worse.In desperation she looked round once more for some means of escape, and saw that therewas a second door to the dressing room, half hidden by a curtain. She made for it, movingcautiously.

Stefan was saying. “It is you who is the stupid one, my angel child. I’ve just thought of amarvellous plan for you. What is it that this good husband of yours dreads more thananything else—unsavoury publicity. Very well, then. There’s your solution. It’s as clear asdaylight. All you have to do—”

With a choking sensation Joan crept through the curtained door, shutting it softly behind her.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

THE corridor in which she found herself was dark, with sudden, unexpected little flights ofsteps over which she tripped in her foolish tinsel frock. Before the old-fashioned house hadbeen divided into separate flats, this passage had in all probability led the way to theservants’ staircase. Now it was just so much waste space—an untidy detail left over by thebuilder who had made the alterations.

Gasping, between laughter and annoyance, Joan stumbled along in the half light and foundherself at last face to face with a door which she opened gingerly. It was the drawing-room-cum-waiting-room of her earlier visit. With a sense of relief she hurried across thehardwood floor, seated herself on a chair near the open piano and picked up at random asheet of music. Now, if Vera came in she was safe! It would look as though she had beensitting here for ages, studying her pantomime part, and Vera wouldn’t know, not ever, thatshe had been trapped in the dressing room to overhear that strange conversation.

The hot cheeks began to cool. The hysterical desire to giggle subsided. Joan’s heart-shaped little face grew thoughtful. It was pretty disgusting when you came to think about it:Stefan in Vera’s own bedroom talking to her that way, saying—what? Queer, threatening sortof things about Garth, begging Vera to divorce him. And that last thing about Garth hatingpublicity!

With nervous fingers Joan picked up the plaited tail of her preposterous wig, and stared atit unseeingly. Probably Stefan had been saying horrible things about Garth for years. Fiveyears. He’d been in love with Vera as long as that and Vera hadn’t done anything about it. Sothat she couldn’t be very much in love with him. She’d sounded affectionate, tender even,talking with him. She had wept in his arms. But there hadn’t been any of the hot passion inher voice that had been so plain in every word spoken by the man. Only when she mentionedIvan ... she had been quite wildly emotional then. Maybe Ivan was the only person in theworld Vera had ever loved—ever would love. She was an odd, incalculable creature, thisSlavonic beauty, with her high cheek bones and great slanting brown eyes, her golden,amazing hair.

Restlessly Joan got up and crossed the room, seeing herself in the hanging wall mirror, agrotesque stranger in the coarse property wig. But the blue eyes were her own, the honest,puzzled eyes. Maybe it wasn’t such a dramatic conversation she had listened to as she had atfirst been inclined to suppose, she consoled herself. Maybe it wasn’t even very important.Just Stefan, whatever his name was, talking the way he had been talking for five years. Itwasn’t likely Vera would take any notice of him or his fantastic plans for her freedom after

all this time. There wasn’t anything to be afraid of, for Garth’s sake—not even that oddremark about his hatred of unsavoury publicity. Stefan and Vera couldn’t really do anythingharmful to Garth.

There was the sound of an advancing step outside the room now. Joan scurried back to herchair, to her sheet of music, and Vera came in. She looked tired and shadowy, her great eyessmudged with tear stains, her red lips drooping. But her manner was ordinary enough,apologizing for her lateness, hoping Joan hadn’t been waiting too long.

“And in such a cold room!” she ended remorsefully, feeling the inadequate radiatorsbeneath the enormous bleak windows, hurrying over to kneel on the soft toned praying matand turn on the electric fire.

The rehearsal began. Joan sang heavily, conscientiously through her song, wishing shewere not so bored with it. Lifelessly she recited her lines, parading about the room inobedience to Vera’s suggestions, trying to imitate the Russian girl’s slick, theatrical actions.But it was all hollow and unreal somehow. She felt such a fool!

Vera, too, it was clear was bored, out of humour today for this task of drilling yet anotherself-conscious uninterested nurse. Nurses ought to keep to nursing and leave acting alone, shewas thinking dully, and as though she had read the thought Joan began to apologize for herwooden performance.

“It will be all right on the night of the actual play,” Vera assured her with her charmingsmile. “It always is. It is excitement that carries most amateur performances throughsuccessfully; the lights and the music and having an audience. You’ll all be marvellous onBoxing Night—you’ll see!”

Joan, snatching the untidy wig from her ruffled chestnut-warm curls, said she hoped to.goodness they would!

Then she was out in the crisp December dusk again, hugging her fur coat cosily aroundher, dodging nimbly through the busy traffic, trying to put out of her mind the memory of theuncomfortable few moments she had spent in Vera’s dressing-room. It was so sordidsomehow, so nasty—Garth away on this important sick call in the country and Vera andStefan discussing him, sneering at him. She didn’t want to go on thinking about it. It was allso muddled, so confusing. Because Vera wasn’t really Garth’s wife in spite of her legalposition. She hadn’t a scrap of love for her husband, didn’t pretend to have. That made heraffair with Stefan less blameworthy, perhaps. Or didn’t it? But it was hard on Garth all the

same. And at the thought of Garth, Joan’s heart stood still with a hot pang of misery.

“Oh, why does life have to be so silly, so tangled up!” she cried aloud to the noisyuncaring street. A surge of impatience swept over her. The waste of it all! Garth lovingherself. Garth tied to Vera. Vera unhappy, Stefan unhappy, everyone unhappy! It was all soridiculous, she told herself bleakly, seeing the lighted Christmas shops about her, the happy,thronging family crowds; mothers and fathers with children newly released from theirboarding schools, women with shopping lists and unashamed burdens of brown-paperparcels, pavement merchants kneeling in the dusk to set their ingenious mechanical toystumbling and dancing with little stilted steps.

And suddenly, as she pushed her way into the crowded bus, her blue eyes were wet withtears.

* * * *

The days went by, the short, crisp December days. In the wards of Merlin House the air ofexcitement mounted. Christmas was coming! An air of gaiety began to pervade the wholehospital. There were festive red crinkly papers over the plain hospital lamps, coloredpaper-chains looped under the ceilings, night-nurses making silver-paper flowers and bigred poinsettias that were really only bits of cleverly cut out flannelette, hampers of toyspiled up in Sister’s office, in the big waiting-rooms, and everywhere the fragrant scent ofevergreens, the pungent breath of pine.

Each ward had its own tree, its own ingenious scheme of decoration. In Joan’s surgicalsection they were doing nursery rhymes. There was Old Mother Hubbard and her dogpeering dismally into an emptied medicine cupboard; Little Boy Blue, a life-size figure incardboard, dressed in a real blue linen suit, blew his horn triumphantly beside the hearth;Goosey, Goosey Gander, a large and expensive stuffed toy, somewhat shabby from years ofSt. Angela Christmases, was perched on a window-sill. And in the centre of the ward rosetriumphantly the House that Jack Built, complete with the rat that ate the malt, the cat, thedog, the cow with the crumpled horn, the maiden all forlorn, the priest all shaven and shornand the cock that crowed in the mom. It was a work of art and patience. On Christmas Evethey took the concealing screens from it, Sister Perry and the staff nurses and Joan and theother probationers, all flushed with toil and triumph, waiting for the soft “Ohs!” and “Ahs!”from the surrounding beds.

Dilly Parsons, sitting up in a wheel chair, her stiff little plaits standing straight out fromher head, all but wept with excitement. With dancing eyes she took in every detail of the

beloved story. Oh, it was wonderful—right here in the very room with her, all thesecreatures she had dreamed of since she was small! Like living in a fairy tale, it was, andthere was still more to come: the stockings pinned to the pink cots that would be filled bydawn tomorrow, the draped, mysterious tree just inside the ward door that the morningwould reveal in all its glory. There would be a real Santa Claus, too, they said, and a sleighand a deer, and lots and lots of presents. Dilly sighed with sheer repletion and clutched atJoan’s hand with tight little fingers.

“I’m glad I din have to go home before all this, Nurse!” she whispered in her hoarseCockney wheeze.

Joan, finding another significance in the words, felt a lump rise in her throat. Dilly, withher intense and vivid enjoyment of things, her eager, warm little heart ... how beautifullyoblivious she was to the fact that she might indeed have missed this lovely Christmas time ifit had not been for the skill and devotion of a certain young doctor!

And then it was Christmas Day, with whistles and trumpets rending the decorous hospitalair, drums being banged, mechanical toys whirring and whizzing about the floors. Dressingsand treatments were out of the way as early as possible. Illness today was to be forgotten. Atnoon Garth himself unveiled the children’s tree, with Vera at his side, trim and conventionalfor once in a neat dark suit, a fur of silver fox draped round her slim shoulders. She wascharming afterwards, helping to carry round the festive mid-day dinner, sitting by bedsidesto admire new dolls and examine new games, chatting with Sisters and probationers.

In the ward kitchen Garth seized on a quiet moment to whisper good wishes to Joan,putting a small white paper packet into her hand. “It’s nothing, Joanna,” he murmured withkindly awkwardness. “Just a small something to remind you of my existence and—my—affection.”

Joan looked at him with misty eyes and popped the little packet into her pocket for futureinvestigation. “You shouldn’t have bothered about me, Garth,” she said shyly. Adding with awistful smile, “I’m not very likely to forget your existence, you know!”

They were going back to Ivan’s Christmas, he told her, with a sudden flash of joy in hisgrey eyes. “He’s enjoying himself today, the kid,” he explained. “We’re giving him the besttime we know—his first real family Christmas!”

Joan winced at that “we”, but smiled bravely up at the man beside her. “I’m so glad he’shappy, Garth,” she told him.

And it came to her with a tiny stab of pain, that it wasn’t only Ivan who was happy today!She had never seen Garth in better spirits. Maybe, she reflected soberly, the muddle of hisrelationship with Vera was a small price to this man for the pride he had in his little son.Fervently, she told herself, that she hoped it was so.

She did not see Garth alone again in the whirl of festivities. The day was long andarduous, but it was very thrilling for all that, and Joan was young enough to be infected bythe general air of excitement, to forget for a few hours her own abiding pain.

She was as merry as any of them the following night dressing for the pantomime, gigglinghelplessly over her unmanageable wig and tinselled train, helping Gemma into a witch’s hatand cloak, lighting the big cardboard pumpkin lamp for her with a candle that would wobbleand fall over at every turn, threatening to set them all on fire. There was a fairy queen withan attendant retinue of rather large and clumsy fairies, there were gnomes and villains andeven a pantomime horse concealing two plump and perspiring young women whose anticswere at times impeded by their outbursts of helpless laughter.

Vera was wonderful, keeping her head when all other heads threatened to be hopelesslyand irretrievably lost. The orchestra struck up, the show began ... and somehow contrived toreach its triumphant conclusion with medical students throwing complimentary “bouquets” ofcarrots and sundry other vegetables on to the stage.

But it had been a wonderful evening, everybody said. The patients were wheeled back totheir wards, the lights were put out and the worst of Christmas, the older nurses declaredwith a sigh of relief, was over.

It was during the first week in January that the staff dance was held, a splendid affair inone of London’s most glittering West End hotels. Joan dressed for it with a sense ofanticipation, a trembling, feverish eagerness that she could scarcely control. Because Garthwould be there! Garth would dance with her! It was dreadful of her to let it be so importantto her. But she couldn’t help it. It was like a drink of water to someone dying of thirst in adesert—the prospect of being in his arms once more, having him hold her close even in theconventional setting of a ballroom!

Getting into the exotic tulle frock with its sapphire colored ruffles she sighed at her ownfoolishness, remembering again in what joyful mood she had bought this same frock forGarth’s delectation. Well, he would see it tonight, admire it, perhaps. With innocent vanityshe surveyed herself in the modest mirror of her cubicle, a tall, slender girl with blue eyesshining under their curling lashes, and hair that shone silken and curling above a smooth

young brow. Deftly she painted the line of her lips in soft crimson, touched the tips of hersmall white ears with perfume. It was an exquisite perfume with a number to distinguish itrather than any name because it bore the mark of one of the most exclusive of Parisperfumers! And Garth had given it to her—in the small white packet he had slipped into herhand on Christmas Day. It was clever of him to have chosen something so perfect, so right.She smiled now, contentedly, savouring its sweetness, thinking to herself of Garth, big andmasculine and a little clumsy, going perhaps into one of those shining little shops in BondStreet to purchase it, consulting earnestly with the saleswoman, sampling a little doubtfullythis perfume and that.

And her heart was singing suddenly as she slipped on her soft fur coat, thinking that afterall it was she who had the most precious part of Garth Perros’ allegiance in spite of all thatlay between them. Vera might have his name—his son. But to herself he had given his love.For that one clear, exquisite moment it was enough, and her head was held high as she wentdownstairs, seeing herself rich for life in this strange, ethereal fulfilment of her dream. Shewould grow old—perhaps here in this very hospital, serving the sick, working hard as yearsucceeded year, her youth and her loveliness dimming. A grey-haired night- sister, she sawherself, an assistant matron like Miss Don. Perhaps in tune even an important personage likeMiss Darley. But she would have her one perfect memory—her fragrant and hiddenromance.

If it was a youthful and wholly unsatisfactory piece of self-dramatization she did not see itas such and it bore her off in a dreamy glow that was almost happiness to the warm shiningballroom and the festivities that lay ahead.

It was all the more hurtful after that to face the moments of bleak, incredibledisappointment that followed. Garth didn’t arrive! Ten o’clock came, eleven, and still hehad not appeared. With widening, wistful eyes she watched the later guests trickle in,dancing abstractedly with this partner and that.

Was it possible that this night of all nights he had been called away on one of his urgentcases? she wondered. Oh, she couldn’t bear it, if that were so. It was unfair, cruel. Just thisone little interval of his companionship she had longed for, this gay moment of festivity, andit was to be denied her.

She was scarcely conscious that it was her arch enemy Barney now speaking to her,coolly taking the chair by her side, so stupidly unaware of him until it was too late to avoidhim.

“You’re angry with me, Joan,” he was saying. “About that Clarion scoop of mine. I knowall about it. Gemma has told me. And I’m sorry, more sorry than I can say. I haven’t dared tocome near you for weeks because of it, and I didn’t mean to come tonight only that Gemmaroped me into her party at the last moment.”

She regarded him coldly, wearily, saw his handsome, flushed young face bent seriouslytowards her, his eyes straight and honest and quite unashamed in spite of the humility of hiswords.

“I had no idea Perros was so close a family friend of yours,” he said. “Maybe I wouldhave kept off him if—” The explanation trailed away.

“I don’t see that his being my friend makes any difference. No matter whose friend he wasit was a beastly story to print.” Her words were hard and clipped, one small silver-shodfoot tapping the floor beneath the fluffy clouds of tulle.

Barney said, “Listen, Joan. It wasn’t a ‘beastly story.’ News is news. I’ve tried to explainthat to you before. When someone as well-known as Vera Petrovna and Garth Perros get intoa matrimonial mix-up, it’s good human interest stuff. People like to read about it.”

“But why? It’s none of their concern.”

“Yes, it is. Perros and Petrovna are in a small way public figures, and when you’re apublic figure the things you do don’t altogether belong to you. The more important you arethe less your private life is your own—like Royalty, for example, or the big film stars. It’smy duty to provide what we call feature stories with plenty of human appeal, and when Istumbled upon the Perros romance—well, I thought it was just fine. I had no idea it wasgoing to get you mad with me. If I had I might have left it alone—duty or no duty.” He smiledat her engagingly, and she sighed—a rather tired little sigh.

“Well, I suppose it is very nice of you to apologize to me, Barney,” she conceded. “Evenif I don’t quite understand your arguments. It will always seem in bad taste to me to putintimate family matters in glaring type in any newspaper, but I suppose I’m just silly, old-fashioned. In this case you didn’t do the harm you might have done, not at the hospital,anyway. I don’t know about Garth’s other connections—”

“Well, if any of his friends drop him simply because he has a beautiful wife who is aballet dancer, and because they quarrelled and made it up again, they aren’t friends worthhaving. If society were to cold-shoulder every married couple, who had ever had

disagreements there wouldn’t be many people left to say ‘how-do-ye-do’ to!” His Irish grinwas disarming. “Come on and dance with me! Come on and say you forgive me!” he coaxed.“After all, it’s still Christmas tune, the time for peace and goodwill! I’ll leave your friendsalone in future, little Joan. You can trust me. They can stand on their heads now, the twoPerroses, if they like, in the middle of Piccadilly Circus, and I won’t whisper a word of it tothe Clarion.”

With a reluctant smile she stood up. It mattered so little suddenly about Barney, whethershe forgave him or whether she didn’t. She was limp in his arms as they circled the floor,her eyes still searching feverishly among the crowd of dancers for Garth’s broad shoulder,his dark, untidy head.

Gemma, passing on the arm of her dispenser, shot them a delighted, significant glance, andturned to whisper to her companion. They were glad, of course, because she had made it upwith Barney O’Crea. But Joan didn’t care. It all seemed most frightfully unimportant now.

Then it was midnight and supper time, and still Garth had not shown up. The ball wouldbe over by three, Joan remembered, with an intolerable tightening at the heart.

“It’s the blue frock,” she told herself childishly, “something always goes wrong with mewhen I wear this dress ... Last time it was Vera and Garth turning up at the Carchester ...”

The dancing began again, the fun grew fast and furious. Hiding herself from pursuingpartners behind a clump of potted palms, Joan looked on disheartenedly. It would have beensuch fun if one had been in the mood—this transformation of all the familiar capped andaproned figures of hospital life—stocky little staff nurses in taffeta, dancing with perspiringyoung medicals, probationers in greens and pinks and white, probationers with bareshoulders and daring backless confections prancing under the very eyes of Miss Don wholooked almost festive herself in a plum-colored net and amethyst ear-rings. Miss Darley wasregal in black velvet, not dancing very much, but standing by the door chatting to the greaterones present, members of committee, paunchy directors, an odd honorary or so.

And quite suddenly she was talking to Garth Perros! Joan gasped behind her screen ofpalms and clasped small, hot hands together. Garth looked ill, tired, dishevelled almost inspite of his formal “tails” and trim white tie. His face was grey and lined, his hair even moreunruly than usual, and there was something a little wrong about the set of his starchedwaistcoat—as though he had tumbled it on in the greatest hurry. He had been working lateprobably, on a case that worried him.

She saw him smile and bow to Matron, and pass on, his eyes searching the room. He waslooking for her. He was coming towards her corner. She stepped out from the shelteringpalms, and saw his face light up.

“Joan!” he said quickly, a strange urgency in his tone. “I was so afraid you might not behere after all, that you might be on duty or something. I’ve come for just one thing, my dear,and that is, to talk to you. Where can we find privacy?”

Her heart was beating thickly as she led the way to one of the small fitting-out roomswhich opened off the main ballroom. The first two they looked into were engaged by tendercouples. The third, a dimly-lit place, hung with cigar scented velvet curtains, was blessedlyempty. They sat down on a low couch, Garth turning about to the girl at his side with eyesblazing feverishly, eyes that scarcely seemed to see her.

“What is it, Garth?” she asked, the first wild jubilant beating of her heart subsiding, a coldsense of fear invading her. Garth was in trouble. Terrible trouble. She had never seen himlook like this before. “What is it, Garth?” she repeated.

And still he regarded her with that blank look, struggling for words that would not come,swallowing once or twice, moistening dry lips.

“It’s Vera,” he said at last. “I’ve done it again, it seems. Driven her away. She’s gone. Idon’t know where. She’s taken Ivan with her.”

Joan’s heart leaped once like a startled bird under the blue foaming ruffles, then lay still.Vera was gone. It was over—the experiment so gallantly tried had failed. Vera was out of itnow. Garth was free. Free!

“Did you know she was leaving? Did you expect it?” she asked in a land of dream.

He shook his head. “We’d quarrelled today,” he admitted. “But that was nothing. We werealways quarrelling. About Ivan mostly. I’ve tried to make her see the best things to do forhim ever since she came back to me. But it was no use. She’s obstinate, stupid, almost mad, Ithink, where Ivan is concerned. Today I told her I’d arranged for him to go to a prep schoolthis month—only a daily school, an hour’s bus ride from the house. She threw herself into afrenzy.” His voice went hoarse and weary.

“About Ivan going to school?” asked Joan in surprise.

He nodded. “She wanted him to have a governess at home, she didn’t want him out of hersight. She talked about bus collisions, traffic accidents, infection from the other kids at theschool; the possibility of his being overworked. I tried to reason with her, but it was nogood. In the end I told her I would have my son educated in the way I thought fit for him. ThatI wouldn’t have him made into a clinging mother’s boy for any woman alive. I told her I’dput his name down for Harrow later on. She went very quiet. I thought I’d won the battle. Imight have known better!” He laughed bitterly.

“When I got back from hospital, round about five, I found the conventional, dramatic noteon my consulting-room table. She was clearing out, she said, because she was too unhappyto stick it another moment. I’d made life impossible for her by my attitude to Ivan—as shehad always feared I would. She ought never to have tried coming back to me. Anyway, shewas going and it was no use my looking for her, because she wouldn’t come back a secondtime. She’s through.” He paused to wipe small beads of sweat from his brow.

“Do you want her back?” Joan asked in a low voice.

“It’s not that. It’s Ivan,” he said brokenly. “She says in this letter that she has got to havefull control of him from now on. Wants me to give up all claim to him, and offers me a sortof bait for it by giving me permission to divorce her. There isn’t any man really in her life,she declares. And I believe her. But there’s a friend willing to pose as corespondent if I’llagree to the divorce.”

In silence Joan twisted and untwisted the small delicately perfumed handkerchief in herhand ... Garth’s perfume. He would turn to her now, she was thinking, he would take her inhis arms. Vera was gone and wanted him to divorce her, would give him the necessaryevidence without any trouble. It was all so easy, so clear suddenly. Garth free, without asmirch to his name, his youthful blunder wiped out. Garth, free to come to her!

But Garth did not cone. He just went on sitting at the other end of the couch staring aheadof him as though he was scarcely aware of her existence. He went on presently, still in thatdull, broken way, “She has given me three days in which to think it over. At the end of thattime I’m to insert a notice in the agony column of the Continental Daily Mail—she has evenarranged the notice for me, a cryptic agreement, of course, conveying to her that I’m ready tofall in with her plan.”

“And you’re not going to fall in with it?” Joan forced herself to ask, her heart choked nowwith its sense of outrage, disappointment, disbelief almost. It was as though Garth had neverloved her, never begged her with hot pleading to be secretly engaged to him while he put

through his divorce from Vera—a divorce which would have been so much more dangerousthan this present plan because he himself would gallantly have borne the part of the guiltyone. It was as though there had been no wild, sweet holiday at Dipley last October, no yearsof frustrated love and longing between them. As though she were the veriest stranger sittingthere listening to him, and the grief of losing Ivan was the only grief there could be. Didn’tshe come into his mind at all at this moment of upheaval? she wondered savagely. Didn’t shecount with him any more? Apparently she did not.

“Of course I’m not going to fall in with her plan,” he was saying angrily. “I’m going rightover to Paris tomorrow to start looking for her. It may be that she has gone to her friendsthere, though the Continental Daily Mail circulates in many other places besides Paris. Still,it is a forlorn hope. You see, I’ve got to find her, Joan, I’ve got to reason with her. I can’t letIvan go like this.”

“He means so much to you then?”

“Not only that, but he can’t be left to Vera’s tender mercies. I’d no idea until I lived withthem just how bad she is for him. She isn’t—well, she’s not quite normal over Ivan. She’sobsessed by him. Her emotional life is definitely warped, where he is concerned. I’mpsychologist enough to see that and to guess at the reason for it.” His tired voice halted.

“Vera’s father was killed before her eyes when she was a little girl of eight,” he went on.“She adored him. You can guess what that tragedy would do to her—a sensitive, imaginativelittle girl, and the violent shock she suffered all those years ago has hurt her vitally,fundamentally. She’ll never be able to love easily, reasonably, sanely if you like. Perhaps agrown man could manage her intensity without being injured by it—but she hasn’t ever loveda man. All her suppressed emotion has become focused on her unfortunate child. It’s aburden I can’t let him carry—wouldn’t dream of letting him carry. There’s nothing Iwouldn’t do, nothing I wouldn’t sacrifice to prevent it. I’ve got to find Vera—and—bringher home again.”

The last words sounded as though they were dragged from him. He stood up, grey andshaken.

“I’ve been milling about all the evening at home,” he said, “wondering what on earth Icould do. Then I remembered this dance, and the possibility of finding you here, Joanna—”She put out a small hand, and he took it abstractedly.

“I thought,” he said wistfully, “you might have some ideas—some advice for me, but that

whether you had or not it would be a relief to talk to you.”

She tried to be grateful for that. She said bleakly, “Advice, Garth? I don’t know.” With astab she remembered Stefan’s threatening words that day in Vera’s bedroom. Was this, then,the Russian’s scheme; that Vera should slip away with her boy, putting Garth into the portionof accepting her ultimatum or facing unwelcome publicity all over again, the publicity of adefended divorce perhaps, if Garth should ride rough-shod over her demand for her son? Oreven police court publicity! Dr. Garth Perros issuing a summons against his wife for thekidnapping of his child. Could such a thing happen? She supposed it could. But in Garth’scase it was unthinkable. All the dreary dirty linen dragged out in daylight once more, hurtingGarth’s work, breaking the hearts of the old people at Dipley, shattering their pride.

She passed a weary hand across her eyes, trying to think it all out clearly, bravely, tryingto decide whether she should tell Garth about Stefan, or not. In the end she mentioned hisname falteringly.

He nodded. If he was surprised at her awareness of Stefan’s significance to his wife hedid not show it. “I thought of Stefan Didyatski right away,” he agreed. “I rang him up thisevening and found him at home. He was polite, non-committal—obviously I couldn’t saymuch to him, but I gathered he was pretty well aware of the situation between Vera andmyself, and that he knew Vera had cleared off. But he swore he didn’t know herwhereabouts, and wasn’t likely to know. I’ve a pretty shrewd idea, all the same, that it isStefan who would be willing to be co-respondent if I agreed to this ridiculous, trumped-updivorce.”

“Then he must be in touch with her, must know where she is!”

Garth shrugged. “I couldn’t make him admit it,” he repeated.

They looked at each other dully, hopelessly. Beyond the closed door of the little room theorchestra broke into Auld Lang Syne noisily, making it sound like a “swing” tune.

“The last dance,” Joan whispered regretfully. “The party is over.” The words echoed inher heart, for indeed, she told herself, as far as she was concerned the party was mostdismally and completely over. She had not danced with Garth. He had not even seen herpretty frock. She might as well have been bundled in sackcloth for all he cared tonight. Verawas gone away, and he was broken about it as though his most precious dreams had beenshattered. Frankly, she couldn’t understand it. Though, of course, it was very sad about Ivan...

They moved towards the ballroom mechanically, and with a frantic sense that she’d beensomehow inadequate throughout the whole of this miserable discussion she clutched atGarth’s arm. “I’m sorry, my dear,” she heard herself murmur. “I’m truly sorry you are soworried, Garth. I wish I could help.”

For answer he closed his hard brown hand over her limp fingers and held them tightly.

Then they were back in the crowd again, in the lights and noise. Everyone was dancing tothe traditional air in a great untidy circle. Everyone sang. The orchestra swelled andcrashed. The fun was fast and furious. In a moment they had been seized upon, forced into theromping, laughing line, Garth between Sister Perry and a beaming Scatty, Joan betweenGemma and her young man, Alan.

A few minutes later it was all over, and she was bundling into the hired motor coachwhich would take her back to the hospital, excited, voluble probationers all about her.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

GARTH was in Paris a week, a strange topsy-turvy week for Joan, experiencing her first tasteof night duty. It was the day after the staff dance that she had found herself listed for change,whisked without warning from the pleasant atmosphere of the children’s block. In the greyJanuary mornings now she went to bed in a darkened cubicle on the top floor of the Home,away from Gemma, away from everyone but the other night probationers, shut in from thesounds of the daytime by double doored corridors and shuttered windows. For hours shewould lie awake wearily, and usually about an hour before it was time to get up she wouldfall into a heavy slumber from which it was agony to emerge. After that came “breakfast,”bacon and porridge that tasted all wrong, strong cups of tea that were the only welcome partof the untimely meal. At eight she was on duty in the men’s surgical ward, a place alreadycurtained and asleep. She learned to creep about silently in felt slippers, doing endless jobsof instrument cleaning and bandage rolling. At midnight it was her duty to descend to one ofthe vast kitchens in the hospital basement and see to the preparation of the night meal for herward seniors. At two o’clock she sat down to a pile of mending, and pricked herself with theneedle again and again in her heroic efforts to keep awake. At four they started the morningpreparations: screens and temperatures for the more wakeful patients, special treatments,general rousing for everybody and breakfasts at five-thirty, the cleaning of the kitchens andbathrooms for the day staff. Until at last it was eight o’clock and she was free to crawlwearily across the raw dawn-lit square to another meal, a walk, and finally bed.

It was like living in a leaden colored nightmare of weariness. By and by, she was told bythe more experienced nurses, she would adapt herself. She would learn to sleep by day. Butthe time dragged along, and as her weariness grew more, intense, her power to sleep seemedto diminish—save for that deadly sickening wave of drowsiness which would attack her inthe small hours of the night when she sat nodding over her pile of worn sheets and surgeons’hand-towels and pillow-slips.

Every night when she came on duty through the brightly lighted main hall her eyes woulddart to the big notice-board where, the doctors’ names were listed. For seven nights the slotbeside Garth Perros’ name bore the red tab which indicated that he was away. On the eighthnight the notice-board. said, “Mr. Garth Perros, No. 5 Theatre, 8.45.” That meant Garthwould be operating the next morning. He had got back from Paris.

For another week Joan waited for some sign from him, some message; but none came. Inthe nature of things she could not expect to run into him casually in the hospital now. Hewould be finished with his cases long before she came on duty. So that unless he rang her upor wrote to her the entire three months of her night duty might easily go by without any sightof him. She could not imagine him allowing that to happen, but as the days went by without

any word from him, her heart grew cold and hot alternately.

Sometimes she was angry with him, furiously angry. It was mean of him, it was cruel,having told her of his anxiety and trouble not now to tell her how his visit to Paris had gone.It was thoughtless, it was unkind. It meant this and it meant that... finally she told herself, inan access of misery, that what it really meant was that he was finished with her, that even asfriend and sympathizer he had no more use for her. He was so obsessed with his concern forhis son that he had no room any more to be concerned about Joan Langden, who, after all,just stood for another possible complication in an already overcomplicated life.

In a way this was true. Garth was deliberate in his avoidance of his Joanna, Sick at heartat the fruitlessness of his Paris expedition, he had decided to keep out of her way. Therecould be nothing but worry for her and perhaps really serious and sordid trouble if theirassociation were too marked at this time. He had nothing to offer her, nothing to say. He wasshackled to Vera, and Vera had vanished. With more honor than imagination, with an utterdisregard of what she might be likely to feel about it, he cut Joan right out of his life andheart for the time being. It was, he felt, the only decent thing to do. It had even occurred tohim that Vera, in her frantic desire to end their marriage and secure full power over Ivan,might have him watched. It would be tragedy upon tragedy if, through any indiscretion of hisjust now, Joan should become involved.

But all unaware of this excellent and commendable train of reasoning, Joan went aboutthose dark January days and nights feeling as though a leaden weight had settled upon herforever. She was unhappy now in a hopeless, lifeless way that made her feel physicallynumb and stupid. She was tired out after three weeks of night-work and sleeplessness, and adull resentment of many of her tasks pervaded her.

Why on earth should they have to sew of all things? she asked her staff nurse in indignationone night. It wasn’t as though it were of any use to the patients. It was simply a job inventedby Matron to keep them going on their on-duty times, and surely it was unnecessary.

“Why couldn’t we have a couple of hours off in turn instead like the day staff do? Whycouldn’t we go to sleep even?” she asked.

The staff nurse looked shocked. “Night-nurses never have had any time off during theirtwelve-hour stretch in the whole history of nursing,” she pointed out. “We’re supposed tosleep enough by day, and if we don’t, we have to put up with it.”

“But it’s so illogical, so useless,” Joan protested, and the staff nurse had to admit that it

was, but that there was nothing to be done about it. Hospitals were like that. For a worn-outnight-nurse to be given time to sleep at night was unthinkable!

After a month of this torment there was a luxurious two nights’ holiday. On the first nightJoan went to bed and slept the clock round. Then late in the afternoon she staggered halfdrugged down to the nurses’ recreation-room and found a note from Barney O’Crea. He haddiscovered from Gemma Crosbie that she was having some free time and wanted to take herout somewhere. Wouldn’t she have dinner with him?

Still feeling half asleep Joan went to the telephone and called Barney to say that shewould love to dine with him. There was really nothing else to do, and it would be nice to getaway from the atmosphere of St. Angela’s for a few hours.

He came for her at seven, smiling and handsome and sure of himself. He took her to theCarchester and feasted her royally. He told her amusing stories about his newspaper life, helet her grumble to her heart’s content about hospital and night-work and was altogethercharming and sympathetic and big-brotherly.

After they had eaten he asked her what she would like to do next. There was no hurrytonight, no foolish eleven-thirty pass. The hours were her own. They went to a night clubcalled the Cat’s Whiskers, and danced. Then they got into a taxi and Barney said they wouldgo to a French place called Le Diable Rouge. It was new and amusing, and there wassomething rather strange there he wanted to show her or rather someone strange, “The exactdouble of your friend Mrs. Vera Perros—Petrovna that was,” he said with a grin. “I’venever seen so extraordinary a resemblance. If I didn’t know Petrovna had given up the stage,and that anyhow this kind of show is not her sort, I’d have staked my life she andMademoiselle Lucinde were one and the same person.”

In the dimly-lit cab Joan looked at him with eyes that were suddenly afraid. “What kind ofshow?” she asked hesitatingly. Supposing it were Vera, supposing she were right here inLondon living under an assumed name, working under it. And of course she would have towork at something. She had no other way of keeping herself and Ivan ... unless Stefan ...Joan’s thoughts raced on.

Mademoiselle Lucinde, it appeared, gave an exposition of the Can-Can. Not very welldone, Barney added, but daring and amusing, and quite good enough for a night club in thesmall hours of the morning.

In a gaudily-lit room a few moments later Joan sat breathlessly at a small marble-topped

table and waited. The cabaret was in full swing. At an upright piano a wishy-washy youngman with a chalk-white face sang wishy-washy songs in Montmartre argot. Joan couldn’tunderstand a word of them, and felt it was probably just as well. He was really rather ahorrible young man. Then the lights were lowered, a purple spotlight danced ... and Verawas there!

Yes, it was Vera. There was no mistaking her. Joan’s heart thumped with excitement asshe watched those queer slanting eyes and pouting red mouth. It was Garth’s wife, here inthis doubtful place, thin and worn and haggard in spite of her grease-paint. She looked wild,Joan decided, a little mad even, her great eyes moving restlessly from face to face in theblurred audience as though she were afraid of what she might find there, her smile too fixed,too strained. Mechanically she carried out her performance and then vanished.

Joan stood up and clutched at Barney’s arm. Her breath was like a knot in her chest, herhands trembled. “Barney,” she whispered, “we’ve got to follow her—Lucinde, I mean!We’ve got to find out where she goes when she leaves here. Where is the stage-door—theback, I mean. How does she get out? Oh, do get your bill and come on quickly!”

Barney did not argue. He was too good a newspaper man for that. He did not show anysurprise.

With a flick of his finger he called the head waiter and there was the flutter of a crisp noteexchanging hands. In a moment he had learned that Mademoiselle Lucinde would be leavingthe place when it closed at three o’clock. She was due to dance again before then, but ifMonsieur wished to speak to her...?

“No, no,” Barney put in quickly. “But perhaps as she is leaving I might have a word withher. Or if you could tell me where she lives—”

The man grinned meaningly. Unfortunately, no. He could not do that. Mademoiselleresided somewhere in the country, he believed, and drove away every night in her own smallcar, a Horace, which was kept parked in a back street at the rear of the building.

Barney thanked him with a nod of dismissal. After that it was all like a rather feverishdream to Joan, rushing back to Barney’s garage to get out his car, explaining as much as shedared about Vera’s disappearance, begging the young reporter to have mercy on the Perrosesthis time, to leave this dramatic development of their story alone.

He was glad enough to promise that he would for he had wanted just such an opportunity

of winning his way back into Joan’s good graces. “I’ll prove to you that a newspaper mancan have a heart,” he said, adding in an undertone, his hand closing over her own, “far toomuch heart, my dear, at times, to be truly comfortable!”

She ignored the sentimental implication, hardly, indeed, conscious of it. She was in aturmoil in case they should miss Vera, in case she should be gone by the time they got back tothe street of Le Diable Rouge.

“We’ve simply got to follow her, Barney,” she kept on explaining, “no matter how far shegoes. We’ve got to find out where she lives.”

Barney said crisply: “We will!”

In the shadow of a closed warehouse door they waited close to the shabby little Horacecar, Joan shaking in her thin evening cloak, her teeth chattering with excitement and cold.Then the clocks of the sleeping city struck three and presently there were footsteps in thequiet back street, waiters and scullions huddled in their worn coats, musicians with musiccases under their arms, all pouring out of the back entrance of Le Diable Rouge.

At last Vera appeared wrapped in a long black coat, quite unmistakable with heruncovered golden head and lithe, graceful movements. Joan gripped Barney’s arm and heldher breath. Vera got into the Horace, threw in the clutch and started a little jerkily.

“Let her get away first,” Barney whispered to his too eager companion. By the time theywere gliding along in Barney’s open sports car the tail-light of the Horace was alreadyrounding the bend ahead of them.

But it would be easy to follow at this time of night, Barney assured Joan again and again.There was practically no traffic on the road. The difficulty would be to keep the car in frontunaware of their existence.

In a daze, Joan crouched in her seat, huddling away from the icy wind. It ruffled herbrown-gold curls, whipping them against her cheeks, it cleared her head a little, making hersuddenly doubt the wisdom of this wild thing she was doing. For a moment she wasdistracted with indecision, wondering whether she should tell Barney to turn back. PerhapsGarth knew by this time that Vera was Mademoiselle Lucinde, knew where she was living,where she had hidden Ivan! It might even be he had come to some agreement with her. Itmight be ... oh, anything ... she was so utterly in the dark these days, so out of his confidence.Since the night of the dance she hadn’t as much as set eyes on him, and anything might have

happened in his domestic crisis in the long interval.

They were coming to the suburbs now, the long tree-lined streets, the darkened houses.And for the life of her Joan couldn’t tell Barney to turn back. Something stronger than anydoubt held her silent—sheer, primitive curiosity perhaps. But at all events, she consoledherself, no harm need be done by tonight’s escapade. She needn’t even tell Garth about it if itcame to that.

Watching the wavering little red light ahead of them, she settled down drowsily. Veradrove badly, Barney was saying; Vera drove abominably. He wondered how she got awaywith her life—but the angels, it seemed, were kind to. fools and drunkards and women on theroads.

The houses thinned out. There was a by-pass full of glaringly-lit factories. There werehedges and ditches suddenly and the sharp, clean scent of the country.

Joan was almost asleep when it happened, the great truck lurching out of a side turning, thered tail-light of the Horace wobbling ineffectively along the wrong side of the road. Then thecrash, the ear-splitting, heart-tearing crash!

For a moment she was aware of the tiny fluttering of her heart. Then she fainted blanklyinto darkness.

When she came to she was lying alone on the grass verge of the road, the sky, with its palestars incredibly high above her. With a groan she sat up as recollection returned. Barney andan A.A. man were coming towards her. There was the truck, still halfway across the road,and the little crumpled Horace beneath it.

The A.A. man was stooping over her now. Barney was asking her if she were all right.The A.A. man pressed a pungent flask of smelling salts into her face, making her sneeze. Shetried to stand up and found herself in Barney’s arms. He was holding her very close, but nomatter how tightly he held her she could not control her shaking. He was telling her that shewould have to be brave. There was the sound of an ambulance bell clanging. Peopleappeared from somewhere miraculously at this dead hour—people in cars and on foot, apoliceman or two, fussy and authoritative.

Barney said, “She was killed outright, Joan. She didn’t suffer at all. She wouldn’t evenknow about it.”

Then Joan fainted again.

This time the faint persisted in a most troublesome fashion because it was not so muchfaintness as a general collapse, brought on by over-tiredness and weeks of worry and this icytwenty-mile drive in an open car. Also it was the onset of the most serious illness Joan hadever had in her healthy young life. They called it influenza at the hospital, but it was muchnearer to double pneumonia.

So that she didn’t know anything clearly about that dreadful night until days afterwards,And she never knew how splendid Barney was, getting her bark to the Nurses’ Home,handing her there to the Sister-in-charge with the most tactful of explanations. (As ithappened the temperature which the Sister’s thermometer registered just afterwards was allthe explanation that was needed.) Nurse Langden had been stricken down by a particularlyvirulent form of influenza with the characteristic suddenness of that disease in the midst of aparty to which her friend had taken her. Of the wild drive and the tragic accident they hadwitnessed Barney said never a word. And it was directly thanks to Barney, too, that Mrs.Garth Perros’ death was reported in the next day’s papers without one sensational or gossip-stimulating detail.

In the weeks to come Joan would thank Barney for that amazing night’s work of his, but onthe frosty February afternoon when she opened her eyes to see the red sunset light splashingthe white walls of her small hospital ward it was not Barney she was thinking of but her ownracking, tormenting pain. For aeons now, every time she roused herself out of her hotnightmare drowsiness there was always this pain. Her bones and her head, her legs and herback, her very soul seemed to be steeped in it. Even in the nightmare drowsiness she wasaware of it.

She was in a side ward in the isolation block of St. Angela’s. She knew that. Isolationbecause the influenza was of an epidemic nature. Other nurses were down with it. Patientsdeveloped it by their dozens. The distracted probationer who brought her ice-cold drinks atintervals told her they were rushed off their feet. In a dim way Joan tried to take that in. In adim way she thought about Vera and the wild night ride, too stupid with fever to wonderwhat the outcome of that tragic death had been. Too stupid to feel its full horror.

Then on a sunny, almost spring-like morning about a week later her temperature wasnormal, and she was propped up on pillows for a little while to admire the vases of flowersBarney had sent her. “Flowers from Mr. O’Crea every day,” the overworked probationertold her with a romantic little sigh. “And telephone calls and enquiries!”

Two days later Barney himself was admitted. He was very tender and gentle, notmentioning Vera’s death until Joan herself insisted upon it, plying him with questions. Theyhad found her address, he said, in a pocket-book in her handbag—a cottage not a mile awayfrom the scene of the accident. Ivan, he understood, had been taken to Dipley to hisgrandparents, Garth had sailed a day or two ago for America, where he had been invited topreside at some important medical conference.

“We made as much as we could of that in the Clarion,” Barney went on virtuously,“stressing his pluck in fulfilling this public engagement in spite of his deep personal grief—you know the kind of thing. I haven’t let one word slip out that might have hurt him, Joan!”

“I’m glad,” Joan murmured weakly, thinking that Garth had gone away without trying tosee her, without sending her one word of a message. And somehow she didn’t care. She wasall burned up inside, as though the fever had literally devoured her, leaving her nothing butan empty, shrivelled husk for a heart. It was comforting in a way. Because too much hadhappened, too much that could hurt and sear. The very thought of Garth and his love now waslike ashes in her soul.

When Barney was gone she lay thinking about Vera. It was very pathetic, if one were ableto feel pathos; the poor girl with her mind half crazed at last, hiding her son in that poverty-stricken cottage, changing her name, losing connection with everyone she knew, even thepursuing Stefan, working in that awful Diable place, half starving herself, driven on by thenameless fears which were a legacy from her terrible, tragic childhood. Life hadn’t beenmuch of a party for Vera Petrovna when you came to think of it!

For a while Joan pondered this miserably, even weeping weakly a little. Then overcomeby fatigue she sank into a heavy slumber.

They were dreary days that followed in the small side ward but at last the meaning arrivedwhen she was all bundled up in her fur coat and shaken and tottery found herself beinghelped downstairs to the comfortable hospital ambulance for the forty-mile drive to St.Angela’s Nurses’ Convalescent Home.

They were very good to her there. For hours at a time she lay on a balcony overlooking thesea, reading or dozing in the thin spring sunshine. She ate and she drank. She went for shortwalks obediently. She retired to bed at the ridiculous hour of six o’clock. And all the timeshe was dead inside, with a tired, endless sort of deadness. There wasn’t anything shewanted particularly, nor anything she didn’t want. She just existed.

Even when on a certain Sunday afternoon a familiar brown car drove up beneath herbalcony her heart stirred only a little. But it was good to see kindly Mrs. Perros once more,to hear her speak of Garth’s triumphs in New York, to watch her face light up as she spokeof her grandson who was thriving in Dipley’s bracing air. “Thriving and bonny,” she said.

“Joan, you’ve got to come back with us,” she announced at last. “That’s what we’ve comefor. We’ll be sorely hurt, the doctor and I, if you refuse to do this. After all, we’ve driven thebest part of two hundred miles to fetch you, and we’ve persuaded your Matron here to letyou go. She says it will be at least another fortnight before you are fit for duty at St. Angela’sand you might just as well spend that time with us. It will be much more cheerful for you thanthis nursing home atmosphere.”

Her persuasions were unending in their eloquence. So that at last Joan gave in for peace’sake. Because after all it didn’t matter very much where she was and Dipley couldn’t hurther. Even Garth couldn’t hurt her any more, and anyway Garth was away.

The next morning early she was bundled once more into her fur coat and packed into theback of the family car with Mrs. Perros and an assortment of rugs and hot water bottles.

After that it was in the garden of the old white house at Dipley that she did herconvalescing, lying by the hour in a big basket chair on the loggia, watching the sun shiningon the brave daffodils and on the new spikes of grass and the tender budding trees. In theforenoons after his session at the local private school Ivan would come to her, bringing hisjig-saw puzzle, or the Mr. Dippy of whom now he was beginning to be secretly ashamed. Hewould prattle away to her excitedly of his experiences in the fascinating new world ofschool where he was for the first time having contact with children of his own age.

The doings of someone called Podgy Smith and another boy named Ernest were ofimmense and most thrilling importance to him. “Podgy Smith threw ink right across the floortoday wif his pen!” he would relate breathlessly; or, “Ernest has a muscle on the top of hisarm that sticks out like this!” He would hold up his own skinny arm for inspection.

And Joan, watching him, playing with him, after a while going for short rides with himwhen he cantered on his small pony beside her, found something gradually stirring to life inher once more—something she had thought, had hoped was dead. She would catch herselfwaiting for that trick the child had of twisting his mouth a little when he smiled—Garth’strick! She would wait for the glance of his direct grey eyes, listen with a stab at her heart ashe turned to her boastfully to call, “See that, Joan!” when he had performed some feat ofmild daring with the fat, good natured pony. It was Garth all over again! It was the boy

companion of her own childhood come back in this dear old place that had always beenhome. That was home now, poignantly, unbearable, in spite of everything that had happenedto make each memory bitter.

And then one golden March evening when they came back to the house after a long canterover the flat, salty marshes when the whole green world was shining like crystal in the clearradiance of the setting sun, Garth was there. Quietly and without any warning, he steppedout from the loggia to meet them, seeing the boy glowing and sturdy walking up the drivewith the pony-reins slung over his arm, the girl beside him tall and slender, her warm, brighthair in rings about her pale, uplifted face.

With a shout of joy Ivan ran to meet him, but the man’s steady gaze was still fixed on thegirl as he raised the child to his shoulder. A serene look it was, filled with a strange sweetpeace and deep contentment.

“Garth!” Joan said shyly. “Garth!”

He did not touch her, did not speak for a moment, just stood there looking at her as thoughhe could never be done looking. Then he said with a sigh that was sheer relief: “I’ve comehome to you, Joanna, home to you all. It’s good!”

They turned to the house together and Mrs. Perros was there, and the doctor, fussing andglowing with delight over Garth’s unexpected arrival. There was a cosy English tea, and apleasant English fire roaring in the old-fashioned grate. There were small sweet woodviolets in a crystal bowl on the table. Violets, Mrs. Perros pointed out, Joan had gatheredonly that morning in the woods behind the house.

After a hilarious bedtime romp with Ivan in which they all joined more or less, Joan andGarth found themselves on the loggia once more, a twilit loggia now touched by the rays of arising, golden moon. Late birds sang, thrushes and blackbirds and small, sleepy sparrows,and Garth took out his pipe and regarded it contentedly.

It was a wonderful relief to him, he said, to find how quickly Ivan had adapted himself tohis new life, how completely he seemed to have become accustomed to the absence of hismother.

It was the first mention of Vera’s death, and in the silence that followed Joan could hearthe quick throbbing of her pulses.

“And you, Garth?” she found herself asking presently, in a strangely shy voice.

His hand was warm and reassuring finding her own in the twilight. “You know how it iswith me, Joanna,” he said softly. “You don’t have to ask.” His eyes were alive suddenly,very young, very eager in his tired, lined face. He said, “There hasn’t been one moment ofthe long journey home I haven’t been thinking of you, Joanna. Not one moment but my hearthas been hurrying on ahead of me! I couldn’t believe it when I found you here—like this—with Ivan! It was wonderful.”

The last words were spoken in a whisper, almost as though to himself. Then he turned toher again, his fingers tightening on her firm, cool little hand. “I’ve been a fool in the past, mydear. I’ve spoiled things for you over and over again. I know that—bitterly. But there’snever been a day I haven’t been loving you, longing for you. I wonder if you can believe thatand forgive me for—the rest?”

For a while she was silent, watching the moon as it rose behind the veil of young springtrees, hearing the last drowsy twitter of the birds, the far-off cry of curlews out on the widemarshes.

She was smiling at last, turning to him. “You know how it is with me, too, Garth,” she saidquietly. “You don’t have to ask.”