By this time they had reached the Bank and were feeling the prickings of hunger, so they looked out a restaurant in Cheapside and went in for some dinner. The place was full of men, and several of them rose at once when the two girls entered. They were in their out-door hospital costume, but there was something showy about Polly's toilet, and the men kept looking their way and smiling. Glory looked back boldly and said in an audible voice, "What fun it must be to be a barmaid, and to have the gentlemen wink at you, and be laughing back at them!" But Polly nudged, her and told her to be quiet. She looked down herself, but nevertheless contrived to use her eyes as a kind of furtive electric battery in the midst of the most innocent conversation. It was clear that Polly had flown farthest in the ways of the world, and when you looked at her again you could see that the balance of her life had been deranged by some one.

After dinner the girls got into an omnibus and went still farther east, sitting at opposite sides of the car, and laughing and talking loudly to each other, amid the astonishment of the other occupants. But when they came to mean and ugly streets with green-grocers' barrows by the curbstone, and weird and dreary cemeteries in the midst of gaunt, green sticks that were trying to look like trees, Glory thought they had better return.

They went back by the Thames steamboat from some landing stage among the docks. The steamer picked up passengers at every station on the river, and at London Bridge a band came aboard. As they sailed under St. Paul's the boat was crowded with people going west to see the celebrations in honour of the birthday, and the band was playing And her Golden Hair was hanging down her Back.

At one moment Glory was wild with delight, and at the next her gaiety seemed to be suddenly extinguished. The sun was setting behind the towers of Westminster in a magnificent lake of fire, and it seemed like the sun going down at Peel, except that the lights beneath, which glistened and flashed, were windows, not waves, and the deep hum was not the noise of the mighty sea, but the noise of mighty millions.

They landed at Westminster Bridge and went to a tearoom for tea. When they came out it was quite dark, and they got on to the top of an omnibus. But the town was now ablaze with gas and electric lights that were flinging out the initials of the Queen, and Whitehall was dense with carriages going to the official receptions. Glory wanted to be in the midst of so much life, so the girls got down and walked arm in arm.

As they passed through Piccadilly Circus they were laughing again, for the oppression of the crowds made them happy. The throng was greatest at that point and they had to push their way through. Among others there were many gaily-dressed women, who seemed to be waiting for omnibuses. Glory noticed that two of these women, who were grimacing and lisping, had spoken to a man who was also lounging about. She tugged at Polly's arm.

"That's strange! Did you see that?" she said.

"That! Oh, that's nothing. It's done every day," said Polly.

"What does it mean?" said Glory.

"Why, you don't mean to say—well, this, Glory—— Really your friends ought to take care of you, my dear, you are so ignorant of the world."

And then suddenly, as by a flash of lightning, Glory had her first glimpse of the tragic issues of life.

"Oh, my gracious! Come along," she whispered, and dragged Polly after her.

They were panting past the end of St. James's Street when a man with an eye-glass and a great shield of shirt-front collided with them and saluted them. Glory was for forging ahead, but Polly had drawn up.

"It's only my friend," said Polly in another voice.—"This is a new nurse. Her name is Glory."

The man said something about a glorious name and a glorious pleasure to be nursed by such a nurse, and then both the girls laughed. He was glad they had found his tickets useful, but sorry he could not see them back to the hospital, being dragged away to the bally Foreign Office reception in honour of the Queen's birthday.

"But I'm coming to the ball, you know, and," with a glance at Glory, "I've half a mind to bring my chum along with me!"

"Oh, do," said Polly, partly covering the pupils of her eyes with her eyelids.

The man lowered his voice and said something about Glory which Glory did not catch, then waved his white-kid glove, saying "Ta-ta," and was gone.

"Is he married?" said Glory.

"Married! Good gracious, no; what ridiculous ideas you've got!"

It was ten minutes after ten as the girls turned in at a sharp trot at the door of the hospital, still prattling and chattering and bringing some of the gaiety and nonsense of their holiday into the quiet precincts of the house of pain. The porter shook his finger at them with mock severity, and a ward Sister going through the porch in her white silence stopped to say that a patient had been crying out for one of them.

"It's me—I know it's me," said Polly. "I've got a brother here out of a monastery, and he can't do with anybody else about him. It makes me tired of my life."

But it was Glory who was wanted. The woman whom John Storm had picked up out of the streets was dying. Glory had helped to nurse her, and the poor old thing had kept herself alive that she might deliver to Glory her last charge and message. She could see nobody, so Glory leaned over the bed and spoke to her.

"I'm here, mammie; what is it?" she said, and the flushed young face bent close above the withered and white one.

"He spoke to me friendly and squeedged my 'and, he did. S'elp me never, it's true. Gimme a black cloth on the corfin, my dear, and mind yer tell 'im to foller."

"Yes, mammie, yes. I will-be sure I—I—Oh!"

It was Glory's first death.



IX.

John Storm had been through his first morning call that afternoon. For this ordeal he had presented himself in a flannel shirt in the hall, where the canon was waiting for him in patent-leather boots and kid gloves, and his daughter Felicity in cream silk and white feathers. After they had seated themselves in the carriage the canon, said: "You don't quite do yourself justice, Mr. Storm. Believe me, to be well dressed is a great thing to a young man making his way in London."

The carriage stopped at a house that seemed to be only round the corner.

"This is Mrs. Macrae's," the canon whispered. "An American lady-widow of a millionaire. Her daughter—you will see her presently—is to marry into one of our best English families."

They were walking up the wide staircase behind the footman in blue. There was a buzz of voices coming from a room above.

"Canon—er—Wealthy, Miss Wealthy, and—er—the—h'm—Rev. Mr. Storm!"

The buzz of voices abated, and a bright-faced little woman, showily dressed, came forward and welcomed them with a marked accent. There were several other ladies in the room, but only one gentleman. This person, who was standing, with teacup and saucer in hand, at the farther side, screwed an eyeglass in his eye, looked across at John Storm, and then said something to the lady in the chair beside him. The lady tittered a little. John Storm looked back at the man, as if by an instinctive certainty that he must know him when he saw him again. He was engulfed in a high, stiff collar, and was rather ugly; tall, slender, a little past thirty; fair, with soft, sleepy eyes, and no life in his expression, but agreeable; fit for good society, with the stamp of good breeding, and capable of saying little humorous things in a thin "roofy" voice.

"I was real sorry I didn't hear Mr. Storm Wednesday evening," Mrs. Macrae was saying, with a mincing smile. "My daughter told me it was just too lovely.—Mercy, this is your great preacher. Persuade him to come to my 'At Home' Tuesday."

A tall, dark girl, with gentle manners and a beautiful face, came slowly forward, put her hand into John's, and looked steadily into his eyes without speaking. Then the gentleman with the eyeglass said suavely, "Have you been long in London, Mr. Storm?"

"Two weeks," John answered shortly, and half turned his head.

"How—er—interesting!" with a prolonged drawl and a little cold titter.

"Oh, Lord Robert Ure—Mr. Storm," said the hostess.

"Mr. Storm has done me the honour to become one of my assistant clergy, Lord Robert," said the canon, "but he is not likely to be a curate long."

"That is charming," said Lord Robert. "It is always a relief to hear that I am likely to have one candidate the less for my poor perpetual curacy in Pimlico. They're at me like flies round a honey-pot, don't you know. I thought I had made the acquaintance of all the perpetual curates in Christendom. And what a sweet team they are, to be sure! The last of them came yesterday. I was out, and my friend Drake—Drake of the Home Office, you know—couldn't give the man the living, so he gave him sixpence instead, and the creature went away quite satisfied."

Everybody seemed to laugh except John, who only stared into the air, and the loudest laughter came from the canon. But suddenly an incisive voice said:

"But why sharpen your teeth on the poor curates? Is there no a canon or a bishop handy that's better worth a bite?"

It was Mrs. Callender.

"I tell ye a story too, only mine shall be a true one."

"Jane! Jane!" said the hostess, shaking her fan as a weapon; and Lord Robert stretched his neck over his collar and made an amiable smile.

"A girl of eighteen came to me this morning at Soho, and she was in the usual trouble. The father was a wicked rector. He died last year leaving thirty-one thousand pounds; and the mother of his unfortunate child—that is to say, his mistress—is now in the Union."

It was the first sincere word that had been spoken, where every tone had been wrong, every gesture false, and it fell on the company like a thunderclap. John Storm drew his breath hard, looked up at Lord Robert by a strange impulse, and felt himself avenged.

"What a beautiful day it has been!" said somebody. Everybody looked up at the maker of this surprising remark. It was a lady, and she blushed until her cheeks burned again.

A painful silence followed, and then the hostess turned to Lord Robert and said:

"You spoke of your friend Drake, didn't you? Everybody is talking of him, and as for the girls, they seem to be crazy about the man. So handsome, they say; so natural, and such a splendid talker. But then, girls are so quick to take fancies to people. You really must take care of yourself, my dear." (This to Felicity.) "Who is he? Lord Robert will tell you—an official of some kind, and son of Sir something Drake, of one of the northern counties. He knows the secret of getting on in the world, though he doesn't go about too much. But I've determined not to live any longer without making the acquaintance of this wonderful being, so Lord Robert must just bring him along Tuesday evening, or else——"

John Storm escaped at last, without promising to come to the "At Home." He went direct to the hospital and learned that Glory was out for the day. Where she could have gone, and what she could be doing, puzzled him grievously. That she had not put herself under his counsel and direction on her first excursion abroad hurt his pride and wounded his sense of responsibility. As the night fell his anxiety increased. Though he knew she would not return until ten, he set out at nine to meet her.

At a venture he took the eastward course, and passed slowly down Piccadilly. The facade of nearly every club facing the park was flaming with electric light. Young men in evening dress were standing on the steps, smoking and taking the air after dinner, and pretty girls in showy costumes were promenading leisurely in front of them. Sometimes, as a girl passed, she looked sharply up and the corner of her mouth would be raised a little, and when she had gone by there would be a general burst of laughter.

John's blood boiled, and then his heart sank; he felt so helpless, his pity and indignation were so useless and unnecessary. All at once he saw what he had been looking for. As he went by the corner of St. James's Street he almost ran against Glory and another nurse in the costume of their hospital. They did not observe him; they were talking to a man; it was the man he had met in the afternoon—Lord Robert Ure.

John heard the man say, "Your Glory is such a glorious——" and then he lowered his voice, and appeared to say something that was very amusing, for the other girl laughed a great deal.

John's soul was now fairly in revolt, and he wanted to stop, to order the man off and to take charge of the two nurses as his duty seemed to require of him. But he passed them, then looked back and saw the group separate, and as the man went by he watched the girls going westward. There was a glimpse of them under the gas-lamp as they crossed the street, and again a glimpse as they passed into the darkness under the trees of the park.

He could not trust himself to return to the hospital that night, and his indignation was no less in the morning. But there was a letter from Glory saying that his poor old friend was dead, and had begged that he would bury her. He dressed himself in his best ("We can't take liberties with the poor," he thought) and walked across to the hospital at once. There he asked for Glory, and they went downstairs together to that still chamber underground which has always its cold and silent occupant. It is only a short tenancy that anybody can have there, so the old woman had to be buried the same morning. The parish was to bury her, and the van was at the door.

He was standing with Glory in the hall, and his heart had softened to her.

"Glory," he said, "you shouldn't have gone out yesterday without telling me, the dangers of London are so great."

"What dangers?" she asked.

"Well, to a young girl, a beautiful girl——"

Glory peered up under her long eyelashes.

"I mean the dangers from—I'm ashamed in my soul to say it—the dangers from men."

She shot up a quick glance into his face and said in a moment, "You saw us, didn't you?"

"Yes, I saw you, and I didn't like your choice of company."

She dropped her head demurely and said, "The man?"

John hesitated. "I was speaking of the girl. I don't like the freedom with which she carries herself in this house. Among these good and devoted women is there no one but this—this——?"

Glory's lower lip began to show its inner side. "She's bright and lively, that's all I care."

"But it's not all I care, Glory, and if such men as that are her friends outside——"

Glory's head went up. "What is it to me who are her friends outside?"

"Everything, if you allow yourself to meet them again."

"Well," doggedly, "I am going to meet them again. I'm going to the Nurses' Ball on Tuesday."

John answered with deliberation, "Not in that girl's company."

"Why not?"

"I say not in that girl's company."

There was a short pause, and then Glory said with a quivering mouth: "You are vexing me, and you will end by making me cry. Don't you see you are degrading me too? I am not used to being degraded. You see me with a weak silly creature who hasn't an idea in her head and can do nothing but giggle and laugh and make eyes at men, and you think I'm going to be led away by her. Do you suppose a girl can't take care of herself?"

"As you will, then," said John, with a fling of his hand, going off down the steps.

"Mr. Storm—Mr. Storm—Jo—Joh——"

But he was out on the pavement and getting into the workhouse van.

"Ah!" said a mincing voice beside her. "How jolly it is when anybody is suffering for your sake!" It was Polly Love, and again her eyelids were half covering her eyes.

"I'm sure I don't know what you mean," said Glory. Her own eyes were swimming in big tear-drops.

"Don't you? What a funny girl you are! But your education has been neglected, my dear."

It was a combination van and hearse with the coffin under the driver's box, and John Storm (as the only discoverable mourner) with the undertaker on the seat inside.

"Will ye be willin' ter tyke the service at the cimitery, sir?" said the undertaker, and John answered that he would.

The grave was on the paupers' side, and when the undertaker, with his man, had lowered the coffin to its place, he said, "They've gimme abart three more funerals this morning, so I'll leave ye now, sir, to finish 'er off."

At the next moment John Storm in his surplice was alone with the dead, and had opened his book to read the burial service which no other human ear was to hear.

He read "Dust to dust, ashes to ashes," and then the bitter loneliness of the pauper's doom came down on his soul and silenced him.

But his imprisoned passion had to find a vent, and that night he wrote to the Prime Minister: "I begin to understand what you meant when you said I was in the wrong place. Oh, this London, with its society, its worldly clergy, its art, its literature, its luxury, its idle life, all built on the toil of the country and compounded of the sweat of the nameless poor! Oh, this 'Circe of cities,' drawing good people to it, decoying them, seducing them, and then turning them into swine! It seems impossible to live in the world and to be spiritually-minded. When I try to do so I am torn in two."



X.

On the following Tuesday evening two young men were dining in their chambers in St. James's Street. One of them was Lord Robert Ure; the other was his friend and housemate, Horatio Drake. Drake was younger than Lord Robert by some seven or eight years, and also beyond comparison more attractive. His face was manly and handsome, its expression was open and breezy; he was broad-shouldered and splendidly built, and he had the fair hair and blue eyes of a boy.

Their room was a large one, and it was full of beautiful and valuable things, but the furniture was huddled about in disorder. A large chamber-organ, a grand piano, a mandolin, and two violins, pictures on the floor as well as on the walls, many photographs scattered about everywhere, and the mirror over the mantelpiece fringed with invitation-cards, which were stuck between the glass and the frame.

Their man had brought in the coffee and cigarettes. Lord Robert was speaking in his weary drawl, which had the worn-out tone of a man who had made a long journey and was very sleepy.

"Come, dear boy, make up your mind, and let us be off."

"But I'm tired to death of these fashionable routs."

"So am I."

"They're so unnatural—so unnecessary."

"My dear fellow, of course they're unnatural—of course they're unnecessary; but what would you have?"

"Anything human and natural," said Drake. "I don't care a ha'p'orth about the morality of these things—not I—but I am dead sick of their stupidity."

Lord Robert made languid puffs of his cigarette, and said, in a tearful drawl: "My dear Drake, of course it is exactly as you say. Who doesn't know it is so? It has always been so and always will be. But what refuge is there for the poor leisured people but these diversions which you despise? And as for the poor titled classes—well, they manage to make their play their business sometimes, don't you know. Confess that they do sometimes, now, eh?"

Lord Robert was laughing with an awkward constraint, but Drake looked frankly into his face and said:

"How's that matter going on, Robert?"

"Fairly, I think, though the girl is not very hot on it. The thing came off last week, and when it was over I felt as if I had proposed to the girl and been accepted by the mother, don't you know. I believe this rout to-night is expressly in honour of the event, so I mustn't run away from my bargain."

He lay back, sent funnels of smoke to the ceiling, and then said, with a laugh like a gurgle: "I'm not likely to, though. That eternal dun was here again to-day. I had to tell him that the marriage would come off in a year certain. That was the only understanding on which he would agree to wait for his money. Bad? Of course it's bad; but what would you have, dear boy?"

The men smoked in silence for a moment, and then Lord Robert said again: "Come, old fellow, for friendship's sake, if nothing else. She's a decent little woman, and dead bent on having you at her house to-night. And if you're badly bored we'll not stay long. We'll come away early and—listen—we'll slip across to the Nurses' Ball at Bartimaeus's Hospital; there'll be fun enough there, at all events."

"I'll go," said Drake.

Half an hour later the two young men were driving up to the door of Mrs. Macrae's house in Belgrave Square. There was a line of carriages in front of it, and they had to wait their turn to approach the gate. Footmen in gorgeous livery were ready to open the cab door, to help the guests across the red baize that lay on the pavement, to usher them into the hall, to lead them to the little marble chamber where they entered their names in a list intended for the next day's Morning Post, and finally to direct them to the great staircase where the general crush moved slowly up to the saloon above.

In the well of the stairs, half hidden behind a little forest of palms and ferns, a band in yellow and blue uniform sat playing the people in. On the landing the hostess stood waiting to receive, and many of the guests, by a rotary movement like the waters of a maelstrom, moved past her in a rapid and babbling stream, twisted about her, and came down again. She welcomed Lord Robert effusively, and motioned to him to stand by her side. Then she introduced her daughter to Drake and sent them adrift through the rooms.

The rooms were large ones with parquet flooring from which all furniture had been removed, except the palms and ferns by the walls and the heavy chandeliers overhead. It was not yet ten o'clock, but already the house was crowded, and every moment there were floods of fresh arrivals. First came statesmen and diplomatists, then people who had been to the theatres, and toward the end of the evening some of the actors themselves. The night was close and the atmosphere hot and oppressive. At the farther end of the suite there was a refreshment-room with its lantern lights pulled open; and there the crush was densest and the commotion greatest. The click-clack of many voices cut the thick air as with a thousand knives, and over the multitudinous clatter there was always the unintelligible boom of the band downstairs.

Most of the guests looked tired. The men made some effort to be cheerful, but the women were frankly jaded and fagged. Bedizened with diamonds, coated with paint and powder, laden with rustling silks, they looked weary and worn out. When spoken to they would struggle to smile, but the smiles would break down after a moment into dismal looks of misery and oppression.

"Had enough?" whispered Lord Robert to Drake.

Drake was satisfied, and Lord Robert began to make their excuses.

"Going already!" said Mrs. Macrae. "An official engagement, you say?—Mr. Drake, is it? Oh, don't tell me! I know—I know! Well, you'll be married and settled one of these days—and then!"

They were in a hansom cab driving across London in the direction of Bartimaeus's Hospital. Drake was bare-headed and fanning himself with his crush hat. Lord Robert was lighting a cigarette.

"Pshaw! What a stifling den! Did you ever hear such a clitter-clatter? A perfect Tower of Babel building company! What in the name of common sense do people suppose they're doing by penning themselves up like that on a night like this? What are they thinking about?"

"Thinking about, dear boy? You're unreasonable! Nobody wants to think about anything in such scenes of charming folly."

"But the women! Did you ever see such faded, worn-out dummies for the display of diamonds? Poor little women in their splendid misery! I was sorry for your fiancee, Robert. She was the only woman in the house without that hateful stamp of worldliness and affectation."

"My dear Drake, you've learned many things, but there's one thing you have not yet learned—you haven't learned how to take serious things as trifles, and trifles as serious things. Learn it, my boy, or you'll embitter existence. You are not going to alter the conditions of civilization by any change in your own particular life; so just look out the prettiest, wittiest, wealthiest little woman who is a dummy for the display of diamonds——"

"Me? Not if I know it, old fellow! Give me a little nature and simplicity, if it hasn't got a second gown to its back."

"All right—as you like," said Lord Robert, flinging out the end of his cigarette. "You've got the pull of some of us—you can please yourself. And here we are at old Bartimaeus's, and this is a very different pair of shoes!"

They were driving out of one of London's main thoroughfares, through a groined archway, into one of London's ancient buildings with its quiet quadrangle where trees grow and birds sing. Every window of the square was lighted up, and there was a low murmur of music being played within."

"Listen!" said Lord Robert. "I am here ostensibly as the guest of the visiting physician, don't you know, but really in the interests of the little friend I told you of."

"The one I got the tickets for last week?"

"Precisely."

At the next moment they were in the ballroom. It was the lecture theatre for the students of the hospital school—a building detached from the wards and of circular shape, with a gallery round its walls, which were festooned with flags and roofed with a glass dome. Some two hundred girls and as many men were gathered there; the pit was their dancing ring and the gallery was their withdrawing room. The men were nearly all students of the medical schools; the girls were nearly all nurses, and they wore their uniform: There was not one jaded face among them, not one weary look or tired expression. They were in the fulness of youth and the height of vigour. The girls laughed with the ring of joy, their eyes sparkled with the light of happiness, their cheeks glowed with the freshness of health.

The two men stood a moment and looked on.

"Well, what do you think of it?" said Lord Robert.

Drake's wide eyes were ablaze, and his voice came in gusts.

"Think of it!" he said. "It's wonderful! It's glorious!"

Lord Robert's glass had dropped from his eye, and he was laughing in his drawling way.

"What are you laughing at? Women like these are at least natural, and Nature can not be put on."

The mazurka had just finished, and the dancers were breaking into groups.

"Robert, tell me who is that girl over there—the one looking this way? Is it your friend?"

Lord Robert readjusted his glass.

"The pretty dark girl with the pink-and-white cheeks, like a doll?"

"Yes; and the taller one beside her—all hair, and eyes, and bosom. She's looking across now. I've seen that girl before somewhere. Now, where have I seen her? Look at her—what fire, and life, and movement! The dance is over, but she can't keep her feet still."

"I see—I see. But let me introduce you to the matron and doctors first, and then——"

"I know now—I know where I've seen her! Be quick, Robert, be quick!"

Lord Robert laughed again in his tired drawl. He was finding it very amusing.



XI.

When Glory learned that all nurses eligible to attend the ball were to wear hospital uniform, being on day duty she decided to go to it. But then came John Storm's protest against the company of Polly Love, and she felt half inclined to give it up. As often as she remembered his remonstrance she was disturbed, and once or twice when alone she shed tears of anger and vexation.

Meantime Polly was full of arrangements, and Glory found herself day by day carried along in the stream of preparation. When the night came the girls dressed in the same cubicle. Polly was prattling like a parrot, but Glory was silent and almost sad.

By help of the curling tongs and a candle Polly did up her dark hair into little knowing curls that went in and out on her temples and played hide-and-seek around the pretty shells of her pink-and-white ears. Glory was slashing the comb through her golden-red hair by way of preliminary ploughing, when Polly cried: "Stop! Don't touch it any more, for goodness' sake! It's perfect! Look at yourself now."

Glory stood off from the looking glass and looked. "Am I really so nice?" she thought; and then she remembered John Storm again, and had half a mind to tear down her glorious curls and go straight away to bed.

She went to the ball instead, and, being there, she forgot all about her misgivings. The light, the colour, the brilliance, the perfume transported her to an enchanted world which she had never entered before. She could not control her delight in it. Everything surprised her, everything delighted her, everything amused her—she was the very soul of girlish joy. The dark-brown spot on her eye shone out with a coquettish light never seen in it until now, and the warble in her voice was like the music of a happy bird. Her high spirits were infectious—her lighthearted gaiety communicated itself to everybody. The men who might not dance with her were smiling at the mere sight of the sunshine in her face, and it was even whispered about that the President of the College of Surgeons, who opened the ball, had said that her proper place was not there—a girl like that young Irish nurse would do honour to a higher assembly.

In that enchanted world of music and light and bright and happy faces Glory lost all sense of time; but two hours had passed when Polly Love, whose eyes had turned again and again to the door, tugged at her sleeve and whispered: "They've come at last! There they are—there—directly opposite to us. Keep your next dance, dear. They'll come across presently."

Glory looked where Polly had directed, and, seeing again the face she had seen in the window of the Foreign Office, something remote and elusive once more stirred in her memory. But it was gone in a moment, and she was back in that world of wonders, when a voice which she knew and yet did not know, like a voice that called to her as she was awakening out of a sleep, said:

"Glory, don't you remember me? Have you forgotten me, Glory?"

It was her friend of the catechism class—her companion of the adventure in the boat. Their hands met in a long hand-clasp with the gallop of feeling that is too swift for thought.

"Ah, I thought you would recognise me! How delightful!" said Drake.

"And you knew me again?" said Glory.

"Instantly—at first sight almost."

"Really! It's strange, though. Such a long, long time—ten years at least! I must have changed since then."

"You have," said Drake; "you've changed very much."

"Indeed now! Am I really so much changed for all? I've grown older, of course."

"Oh, terribly older," said Drake.

"How wrong of me! But you have changed a good deal, too. You were only a boy in jackets then."

"And you were only a girl in short frocks."

They both laughed, and then Drake said, "I'm so glad we've changed together!"

"Are you?" said Glory.

"Why, yes," said Drake; "for if you had changed and I hadn't——"

"But what nonsense we're talking!" said Glory; and they both laughed again.

Then they told each other what had happened in that infinite cycle of time which had spun round since they parted. Glory had not much to narrate; her life had been empty. She had been in the Isle of Man all along, had come to London only recently, and was now a probationer-nurse at Martha's Vineyard. Drake had gone to Harrow and thence to Oxford, and, being a man of artistic leanings, had wished to take up music, but his father had seen no career in it; so he had submitted—he had entered the subterranean catacombs of public life, and was secretary to one of the Ministers. All this he talked of lightly, as became a young man of the world to whom great things were of small account.

"Glory," said Polly, at her elbow, "the waltz is going to begin."

The band was preluding. Drake claimed the dance, and Glory was astonished to find that she had it free (she had kept it expressly).

When the waltz was over he gave her his arm and led her into the circular corridor to talk and to cool. His manners were perfect, and his voice, so soft and yet so manly, increased the charm. In passing out of the hot dancing room she threw her handkerchief over her head, and, with the hand that was at liberty, held its ends under her chin. She wished him to look at her and see what change this had made; so she said, quite innocently:

"And now let me look at you again, sir!"

He recognised the dark-brown spot on her eye, and he could feel her arm through her thin print dress.

"You've told me a good deal," he said, "but you haven't said a syllable about the most important thing of all."

"And pray what is that?" said she.

"How many times have you fallen in love since I saw you last?"

"Good gracious, what a question!" said Glory.

His audacity was delightful. There was something so gracious and yet so masterful about him.

"Do you remember the day you carried me off—eloped with me, you know?" said Drake.

"I? How charming of me! But when was that, I wonder?" said Glory.

"Never mind; say, do you remember?"

"Well, if I do? What a pair of little geese we must have been in those days!"

"I'm not so sure of that—now,'" said he.

"You didn't seem very keen about me then, as far as I can remember," said she.

"Didn't I?" said he. "What a silly young fool I must have been!"

They laughed again. She could not keep her arm still, and he could almost feel its dimpled elbow.

"And do you remember the gentleman who rescued us?" she said.

"You mean the tall, dark young man who kept hugging and kissing you in the yacht?"

"Did he?"

"Do you forget that kind of thing, then?"

"It was very sweet of him. But he's in the Church now, and the chaplain of our hospital."

"What a funny little romantic world it is, to be sure!"

"Yes; it's like poetry, isn't it?" she answered.

Lord Robert came up to introduce Drake to Polly (who was not looking her sweetest), and he claimed Glory for the next dance.

"So you knew my friend Drake before?" said Lord Robert.

"I knew him when he was a boy," said Glory.

And then he began to sing his friend's praises—how he had taken a brilliant degree at Oxford, and was now private secretary to the Home Secretary, and would go into public life before long; how he could paint and act, and might have made a reputation as a musician; how he went into the best houses, and was a first-rate official; how, in short, he had the promised land before him, and was just on the eve of entering it.

"Then I suppose you know he is rich—enormously rich?" said Lord Robert.

"Is he?" said Glory, and something great and grand seemed to shimmer a long way off.

"Enormously," said Sir Robert; "and yet a man of the most democratic opinions."

"Really?" said Glory.

"Yes," said Lord Robert; "and all the way down in the hansom he has been trying to show me how impossible it is for him to marry a lady."

"Now why did you tell me that I wonder?" said Glory, and Lord Robert began to fidget with his eye-glass.

Drake returned with Polly. He proposed that they should take the air in the quadrangle, and they went off for that purpose, the girls arm-in-arm some paces ahead.

"There's a dash of Satan himself in that red-headed girl," said Lord Robert. "She understands a man before he understands himself."

"She's as natural as Nature," said Drake. "And what lips—what a mouth!"

"Irish, isn't she? Oh, Manx! What's Manx, I wonder?"

The night was very warm and close, and there was hardly more air in the courtyard. The sound of the band came to them there, and Glory, who had danced with nearly everybody within, must needs dance by herself without, because the music was more sweet and subdued out there, and dancing in the darkness was like a dream.

"Come and sit down on the seat, Glory," said Polly fretfully; "you are getting on my nerves, dear."

"Glory," said Drake, "how do the Londoners strike you?"

"Much like other mortals," said Glory; "no better, no worse—only funnier."

The men laughed at that description, and Glory proceeded to give imitations of London manners—the high handshake, the "Ha-ha" of the mumps, the mouthing of the canon, and the mincing of Mr. Golightly.

Drake bellowed with delight; Lord Robert drawled out a long owlish laugh; Polly Love said spitefully, "You might give us your friend, the new curate, next, dearest," and then Glory went down like a shot.

"Really," began Drake, "it's not hospital nursing, you know——"

But there were low murmurings of thunder and some large splashes of rain, and they returned to the ballroom. The doctors and the matrons were gone by this time; only the nurses and the students remained, and the fun was becoming furious. One young student was pulling down a girl's hair, and another was waltzing with his partner carried bodily in his arms. Somebody lowered the lights, and they danced in a shadow-land; somebody began to sing, and they all sang in chorus; then somebody began to fling about paper bags full of tiny white wafers, and the bags burst in the air like shells, and their contents fell like stars from a falling rocket, and everybody was covered as with flakes of snow.

Meantime the storm had broken, and above the clash and clang of the instruments of the band and the rhythmic shuffle of the feet of the dancers and the clear, joyous notes of their happy singing, there was the roar of the thunder that rolled over London, and the rattle of the rain on the glass dome overhead.

Glory was in ecstasies; it was like a mist on Peel Bay at night with the moon shining through it and the waves dancing to a northwest breeze. It was like a black and stormy sea outside Contrary, with the gale coming down from the mountains. And yet it was a world of wonder and enchantment and beauty, and bright and happy faces.

It was morning when the ball broke up, and then the rain had abated, though the thunder was still rumbling. The men were to see the girls back to the hospital, and Glory and Drake sat in a hansom-cab together.

"So you always forget that kind of thing, do you?" he said.

"What kind of thing?" she asked.

"Never mind; you know!"

She had put up the hood of her outdoor cape, but he could still see the gleam of her golden hair.

"Give me that rose," he said; "the white one that you put in your hair."

"It's nothing," she answered.

"Then give it to me. I'll keep it forever and ever."

She put up her hand to her head.

"Ah! how sweet of you! And what a lovely little hand! But no; let me take it for myself."

He reached one arm around her shoulder, put his hand under her chin, tipped up her face, and kissed her on the lips.

"Darling!" he whispered.

Then in a moment she awoke from her world of wonder and enchantment, and the intoxication of the evening left her. She did not speak; her head dropped; she felt her cheeks burn red, and she hid her face in her hands. There was a momentary sense of dishonour, almost of outrage. Drake treated her lightly, and she was herself to blame.

"Forgive me, Glory!" he was saying, in a voice tremulous and intense. "It shall never happen again—never—so help me God!"

The day was dawning, and the last raindrops were splashing on the wet and empty pavement. The great city lay asleep, and the distant thunder was rolling away from it.



XII.

The chaplain of Martha's Vineyard had not been to the hospital ball. Before it came off he had thought of it a good deal, and as often as he remembered that he had protested to Glory against the company of Polly Love he felt hot and ashamed. Polly was shallow and frivolous, and had a little crab-apple of a heart, but he knew no harm of her. It was hardly manly to make a dead set at the little thing because she was foolish and fond of dress, and because she knew a man who displeased him.

Then she was Glory's only companion, and to protest against Glory going in her company was to protest against Glory going at all. That seemed a selfish thing to do. Why should he deny her the delights of the ball? He could not go to it himself—he would not if he could; but girls liked such things—they loved to dance, and to be looked at and admired, and have men about them paying court and talking nonsense.

There was a sting in that thought, too; but he struggled to be magnanimous. He was above all mean and unmanly feelings—he would withdraw his objection.

He did not withdraw it. Some evil spirit whispered in his heart that Glory was drifting away from him. This was the time to see for certain whether she had passed out of the range of his influence. If she respected his authority she would not go. If she went, he had lost his hold of her, and their old relations were at an end.

On the night of the ball he walked over to the hospital and asked for her. She had gone, and it seemed as if the earth itself had given way beneath his feet.

He could not help feeling bitterly about Polly Love, and that caused him to remember a patient to whom her selfish little heart had shown no kindness. It was her brother. He was some nine or ten years older, and very different in character. His face was pale and thin—almost ascetic—and he had the fiery and watery eyes of the devotee. He had broken a blood-vessel and was threatened with consumption, but his case was not considered dangerous. When Polly was about, his eyes would follow her round the ward with something of the humble entreaty of a dog. It was clear that he loved his sister, and was constantly thinking of her. But she hardly ever looked in his direction, and when she spoke to him it was in a cold or fretful voice.

John Storm had observed this. It had brought him close to the young man, and the starved and silent heart had opened out to him. He was a lay-brother in an Anglican Brotherhood that was settled in Bishopsgate Street. His monastic name was Brother Paul. He had asked to be sent to that hospital because his sister was a nurse there. She was his only remaining relative. One other sister he had once had, but she was gone—she was dead—she died—— But that was a sad and terrible story; he did not like to talk of it.

To this broken and bankrupt creature John Storm found his footsteps turning on that night when his own heart lay waste. But on entering the ward he saw that Brother Paul had a visitor already. He was an elderly man in a strange habit—a black cassock which buttoned close at the neck and fell nearly to his feet, and was girded about the waist by a black rope that had three great knots at its suspended ends. And the habit was not more different from the habit of the world than the face of the wearer was unlike the worldly face. It was a face full of spirituality, a face that seemed to invest everything it looked upon with a holy peace—a beautiful face, without guile or craft or passion, yet not without the signs of internal strife at the temples and under the eyes; but the battles with self had all been fought and won.

As John Storm stepped up, the old man rose from his chair by the patient's bed.

"This is the Father Superior, sir," said Brother Paul.

"I've just been hearing of you," said the Father in a gentle voice. "You have been good to my poor brother."

John Storm answered with some commonplace—it had been a pleasure, a happiness; the brother would soon leave them; they would all miss him—perhaps himself especially.

The Father resumed his chair and listened with an earnest smile. "I understand you, dear friend," he said. "It is so much more blessed to give than to receive! Ah, if the poor blind world only knew! How it fights for its pleasures that perish, and its pride of life that passes away! Yet to succour a weaker brother, or protect a fallen woman, or feed a little child will bring a greater joy than to conquer all the kingdoms of the earth."

John Storm sat down on the end of the bed. Something had gone out to him in a moment, and he was held as by a spell. The Father talked of the love of the world—how strange it was, how difficult to understand, how tragic, how pitiful! The lusts of the flesh, the lusts of the eye—how mean, how delusive, how treacherous! To think of the people of that mighty city day by day and night by night making themselves miserable in order that they might make themselves merry; to think of the children of men scouring the globe for its paltry possessions, that could not add one inch to the stature of the soul, while all the time the empire of peace and joy and happiness lay here at hand, here within ourselves, here in the little narrow compass of the human heart! To give, not to get, that was the great blessedness, and to give of yourself, of your heart's love, was the greatest blessedness of all.

John Storm was stirred. "The Church, sir," he said, "the Church itself has to learn that lesson."

And then he spoke of the hopes with which he had come up to London, and how they were being broken down and destroyed; of his dreams of the Church and its mission, and how they were dying or dead already.

"What liars we are, sir! How we colour things to justify ourselves! Look at our sacraments—are they a lie, or are they a sacrilege? Look at our charities—are we Pharisees or are we hypocrites? And our clergy, sir—our fashionable clergy! Surely some tremendous upheaval will shake to its foundations the Church wherein such things are possible—a Church that is more worldly than the world! And then the woman-life of the Church, see how it is thrown away. That sweetest and tenderest and holiest power, how it goes to waste under the eye and with the sanction of the Church in the frivolities of fashion—in drawing-rooms, in gardens, in bazars, in theatres, in balls——"

He stopped. His last word had arrested him. Had he been thinking only of himself and of Glory? His head fell and he covered his face with his hand.

"You are right, my son," said the Father quietly, "and yet you are wrong, too. The Church of God will not be shaken to its foundations because of the Pharisees who stand in its public places, or because of the publicans who haunt its purlieus. Though the axe be laid to the rotten tree, yet the little seed will save its kind alive."

Then with an earnest smile and in a gentle voice he spoke of their little brotherhood in Bishopsgate Street; how ten years ago they had founded it for detachment from earthly cares and earthly aims, and for hiddenness with God; how they had established it in the midst of the world's, busiest highway, in the heart of the world's greatest market, to show that they despised gold and silver and all that the blind and cheated world most prizes, just as St. Philip and St. Ignatius had established the severest of modern rules in a profane and self-indulgent century, to show that they could stamp out every suggestion of the flesh as a spark from the fires of hell.

And then he lifted his cord and pointed to the knots at the end of it, and told what they were—symbols of the three bonds by which he was bound—the three vows he had taken: the vow of poverty, because Christ chose it for himself and his friends; the vow of obedience, because he had said, "He that heareth you heareth Me"; and the vow of chastity, because it was our duty to guard the gates of the senses, and to keep our eyes and ears and tongue from all inordinateness.

"But the lawful love of home and kindred," said John; "what of that?"

"We convert it into what is spiritual," said the Father. "All human love must be based on the love of God if it is to be firm and true and enduring, and the reason of so much failure of love in natural friendship is that the love of the creature is not built upon the love of the Creator."

"But the love—say of mother and son—of brother and sister?"

"Ah, we have placed ourselves above the ordinary conditions of life that none may claim our affections in the same way as Christ. Man has to contend with two sets of enemies—those from within and those from without; and no temptations are more subtle than those which come in the name of our holiest affections. But the sword of the spirit must keep the tempter away. There is the Judas in all of us, and he will betray us with a kiss if he can."

John Storm's breast was heaving. He could scarcely conceal his agitation; but the Father had risen to go.

"It is eight o'clock, and I must be back to Compline," he said. And then he laughed and added: "We never ride in cabs; but I must needs walk across the park to-night, for I have given away all my money."

At that the smile of an angel came into his old face, and lie said, with a sweet simplicity:

"I love the park. Every morning the children play there, and then it is the holy Catholic Church to me, and I like to walk in it and to lay my hands on the heads of the little ones, and to ask a blessing for them, and to empty my-self. This morning as I was coming here I met a little boy carrying a bundle. 'And what is your name, my little man?' I said, and he told me what it was. 'And how old are you?' I asked. 'Twelve years,' he answered. 'And what have you got in your bundle?' 'Father's dinner, sir,' he said. 'And what is your father, my son?' 'A carpenter,' said the boy. And I thought if I had been living in Palestine nineteen hundred years ago I might have met another little Boy carrying the dinner of his father, who was also a carpenter, in a little bundle which Mary had made up for him. So I felt in my pocket, and all I had was my fare home again, and I gave it to the little man as a thank-offering to God that he had suffered me to meet a sweet boy of twelve whose father was a carpenter."

John Storm's eyes were dim with tears.

"Good-bye, Brother Paul, and God send you back to us soon!—Good-bye to you, dear friend; and when the world deals harshly with you come to us for a few days in Retreat, that in the silence of your soul you may forget its vanities and vexations and fix your thoughts above."

John Storm could not resist the impulse—he dropped to his knees at the Father's feet.

"Bless me also, Father, as you blessed the carpenter's boy."

The Father raised two fingers of his right hand and said:

"God bless you, my son, and be with you and strengthen you, and when he smiles on you may the frown of man affect you not!—Father in heaven, look down on this fiery soul and succour him! Help him to cast off every anchor that holds him to the world, and make him as a voice crying in the wilderness, 'Come out of her, my people, saith our God.'"

When John rose from his knees the saintly face was gone, and all the air seemed to be filled with a heavenly calm.

While he had been kneeling for the Father's blessing he had been aware of a step on the floor behind him. It was his fellow-curate, the Reverend Golightly, who was still waiting to deliver his message.

The canon had been disappointed in one of his preachers for Sunday, and being himself engaged to preside over the annual dinner of a dramatic benevolent fund to be held on the Saturday night, and therefore incapable of extra preparation, he desired that Mr. Storm should take the sermon on Sunday morning.

John promised to do so; and then his fellow-curate smiled, bowed, coughed, and left him. A small room was kept for the chaplain on the ground floor of the hospital, and he went down to it and wrote a letter.

It was to the parson at Peel.

"No doubt you hear from Glory frequently, and know all about her progress as a probationer. She seems to be very well, and certainly I have never seen her look so bright and so cheerful. At the moment of writing she is out at a ball given by some of the hospital authorities. Well, it is a perfectly harmless source of pleasure, and with all my heart I hope she is enjoying herself. No doubt some form of amusement is necessary to a young girl in the height of her youth and health and beauty, and he would be only a poor sapless man who could not take delight in the thought that a good girl was happy. Her fellow-nurses, too, are noble and devoted women, doing true woman's work, and if there are some black sheep among them, that is no more than might be expected of the purest profession in the world.

"As for myself, I have tried to carry out-my undertaking to look after Glory, but I can not say how long I may be able to continue the task. Do not be surprised if I am compelled to give it up. You know I am dissatisfied with my present surroundings, and I am only waiting for the ruling and direction of the pillar of cloud and fire. God alone can tell how it will move, but God will guide me. I don't go out more than I can help, and when I do go I get humiliated and feel foolish. The life of London has been a great and painful surprise. I had supposed that I knew all about it, but I have really known nothing until now. Its cruelty, its deceit, and its treachery are terrible. London is the Judas that is forever betraying with a kiss the young, the hopeful, the innocent. However, it helps one to know one's self, and that is better than lying wrapped in cotton wool. Give my kindest greetings to everybody at Glenfaba—my love to my father, too, if there are any means of conveying it."

The letter took him long to write, and when it was written he went out into the hall to post it. There he saw that a thunderstorm was coming, and he concluded to remain until it had passed over. He stepped into the library and selected a book, and returned to his room to read it. The book was St. John Chrysostom on the Priesthood, and the subject was congenial, but he could not keep his mind on the printed page: He thought of the Father Superior, of the little brotherhood in Bishopsgate, and then of Glory at the hospital ball, and again of Glory, and yet again and again of Glory. Do what he would, he could not help but think of her.

The storm pealed over his head, and when he returned to the hall two hours later it was still far from spent. He stood at the open door and watched it. Forks of lightning lit up the park, and floods of black rain made the vacant pavements like the surface of the sea. A tinkling cab slid past at intervals, with its driver sheeted in oilskins, and now and then there was an omnibus, full within and empty without. Only one other living thing was to be seen anywhere. An Italian organ-man had stationed himself in front of a mansion to the left and was playing vigorously.

John Storm walked through the hospital. It was now late, and the house was quiet. The house-doctor had made the last of his rounds and turned into his chambers across the courtyard, and the night-nurses were boiling little kettles in their rooms between the wards. The surgical wards were darkened, and the patients were asleep already. In the medical wards there were screens about certain of the beds, and weary moans came from behind them.

It was after midnight when John Storm came round to the hall again, and then the rain had ceased, but the thunder was still rumbling. He might have gone home at length, but he did not go; he realized that he was waiting for Glory. Other nurses returned from the ball, and bowed to him and passed into the house. He stepped into the porter's lodge, and sat down and watched the lightning. It began to be terrible to him, because it seemed to be symbolical. What doom or what disaster did this storm typify and predict? Never could he forget the night on which it befell. It was the night of the Nurses' Ball.

He thought he must have slept, for he shook himself and thought: "What nonsense! Surely the soul leaves the body while we are asleep, and only the animal remains!"

It was now almost daylight, and two hansom-cabs had stopped before the portico, and several persons who were coming up the steps were chattering away like wakened linnets. One voice was saying:

"Mr. Drake proposes that we should all go to the theatre, and if we can get a late pass I should like it above everything." It was Glory, and a fretful voice answered her:

"Very well, if you say so. It's all the same to me." It was Polly; and then a man's voice said:

"What night shall it be, then, Robert?"

And a second man's voice answered, with a drawl, "Better let the girls choose for themselves, don't you know."

John Storm felt his hands and feet grow cold, and he stepped out into the porch. Glory saw him coming and made a faint cry of recognition.

"Ah, here is Mr. Storm! Mr. Storm, you should know Mr. Drake. He was in the Isle of Man, you remember——"

"I do not remember," said John Storm.

"But you saved his life, and you ought to know him——"

"I do not know him," said John Storm.

She was beginning to say, "Let me introduce——" But she stopped and stood silent for a moment, while the strange light came into her gleaming eyes of something no word could express, and then she burst into noisy laughter.

A superintendent Sister going through the hall at the moment drew up and said, "Nurse, I am surprised at you! Go to your rooms this instant!" and the girls whispered their adieus and went off giggling.

"What a glorious night it has been!" said Glory, going upstairs.

"I'm glad you think so," said Polly. "To tell you the truth, I found it dreadfully tiresome."

The two men lit their cigarettes and got back into one of the hansoms and drove away.

"What a bear that man is!" said Lord Robert.

"Rude enough, certainly," said Drake; "but I liked his face for all that; and if the Fates put it into his head to stand between me and death—well, I'm not going to forget it."

"Give him a wide berth, dear boy. The fellow is an actor—an affected fop. I met him at Mrs. Macrae's on Thursday. He is a religious actor and a poseur. He'll do something one of these days, take my word for it."

And meanwhile John Storm had buttoned his long coat up to his throat and was striding home through the echoing streets, with both hands clinched and his teeth set hard.



XIII.

"Martha's.

"Oh, Lord-a-massy! Oh, Gough bless me sowl! Oh, my beloved grandfather! John Storm has done for himself at last! That man was never an author of peace and a lover of concord; but, my gracious, if you had heard his sermon in church on Sunday morning! Being a holy and humble woman of heart myself, I altered the Litany the smallest taste possible, and muttered away from beginning to end, 'O Lord, close thou our lips'; but the Lord didn't heed me in the least, with the result that everybody on earth is now screaming and snarling at our poor Mr. Storm exactly as if he had been picking the pockets of the universe.

"It was all about the morality of men. The text was as innocent as a baby: 'Put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh to fulfil the lusts thereof.' And when he began in the usual way, the dear old goodies in glasses thought he had been wound up like the musical box and had just turned on the crank, so they cuddled in comfortably for forty winks before the anthem. There were two natures in man, and man's body might be good or bad according as spiritual or carnal affections swayed it, and all the rest of the good old change-for-sixpence-and-a-ha'penny-out, you know. But the lesson had been from Isaiah, where the unreasonable old prophet is indignant with the ladies of Zion because they don't want to look like dowdies, you remember: 'Tremble, ye women that are at ease, strip you and make you bare and gird sackcloth upon your loins.' And off he went like a comet, with the fashionable woman for his tail. If matrimony nowadays didn't always mean monogamy, who was chiefly to blame? Men were generally as pure as women required that they should be; and if the lives of men were bad it was often because women did not demand that they should be good. Tremble, ye women, that are at ease, and say why you allow your daughters to marry men who in fact and effect are married already. Strip you, and be ashamed for the poor women who were the first wives of your daughters' husbands, and for the children whom such men abandon and forget! In leading your innocent daughters to courts and receptions you are only leading them to the auction-room; and in dressing and decorating them you are preparing them for the market of base men. Last week some titled philanthropist had hauled up a woman in the East End of London for attempting to sell her daughter. How shocking! everybody said. What a disgrace to the nineteenth century! But the wretched creature had only been doing the best according to her light for the welfare of her miserable child; while here—with their eyes open, with their cultured consciences—the wives of these same philanthropists were doing the same thing every day—the very same!

"Having gone for the mammies like this, he went for the dear girls themselves one better. Let them gird sackcloth on their loins and hide their faces. Why did they suffer themselves to be sold? The woman who married a man for the sake of his title or his position or any worldly advantage whatever was no better than an outcast of the streets. Her act was the same, and in all reason and justice her name should be the same also.

"Hey, nonny, nonny! I told you how he broke down before; but on Sunday morning, in spite of mine own amended Litany, I had just as much hope of the breakdown of the Falls of Niagara, or a nineteen-feet spring tide. You would have said his face was afire, and those great eyes of his were lit up like the red lamps on Peel pier.

"Pulpit oratory! I don't know what it is, only I never heard the like of it in all my born days. I begin to think the real difference between preachers is the difference of the fire beneath the crust. In some it burns so low that it doesn't even warm the surface, and you couldn't get up enough puff to boil the kitchen kettle; but in others—look out! It's a volcano, and the lava is coming down with a rush.

"Mercy me, how I cried! 'Oh, my daughter, oh, my child, what a ninny you are!' I told myself; but it was no use talking. His voice was as hoarse as a raven's, and sometimes you would have thought his very heart was breaking.

"But the congregation! You should have seen the transformation scene! They had come in bowing and smiling and whispering softly until the church was a perfect sheet of sunshine, an absolute aurora borealis; but they went out like a northeast gale, with mutterings of thunder and one man overboard.

"And John Storm having put his foot in it, of course Glory Quayle had to get her toe in too. Coming down the aisle some of the dear ladies of Zion, who looked as if they wanted to 'swear in their wrath,' were mumbling all the lamentations of Jeremiah. Who was he, indeed, to talk to people like that? Nobody had ever heard of him except his mother. And in the porch they came upon a fat old dump in a velvet dollman who declared it was perfectly scandalous, and she had come out in the middle. Whereupon Glory, not being delivered that day from all evil and mischief, said, 'Quite right, ma'am, and you were not the only one who had to leave the church in the middle of that sermon.' 'Why, who else had to go?' said this female Pharisee. 'The devil, ma'am!' said Glory, and then left her with that bone to gnaw.

"It turns out that the old girlie in the dollman is a mighty patron of this hospital, so everybody says I am in for nasty weather. But hoot! My heart's in the Hielan's, my heart is not here; my heart's in the Hielan's, sae what can I fear!

"John Storm is in for it too, and they say his vicar waited for him in the vestry, but he looked like forked lightning coming out of the pulpit, so the good man thought it better to keep his rod in pickle awhile. It seems that the Lords of the Council and all the nobility were there, and it is a point of religious etiquette in London that in the hangman's house nobody speaks of the rope; but our poor John gave them the gibbet as well. It was a fearful thing to do, but nobody will make me believe he had not got his reasons. He hasn't been here since, but I am certain he has his eye on some fine folks, and, whoever they are, I'll bet 'my bottom dollar' they deserved all they got.

"But heigho! I haven't left myself breath to tell you about the ball. I was there! You remember I was lamenting that I hadn't got the necessary finery. In fact, I had put in a bit at the end of my prayers about it. 'O God, be good to me this once and let me look nice.' And he was. He put it into the heads of the nabobs of this vineyard that nurses should 'appear at the Nurses' Ball in regulation uniform only.' So my cloak and my bonnet and my gray dress and my apron covered a multitude of sins.

"You should have seen Glory that night, grandfather. She was a redder young lobster than ever somehow, but she put a white rose in her carroty curls, and, Gough bless me, what a bogh [* Dear] she was, though! Of course, she made the acquaintance of the 'higher ranks of society,' and danced with all the earth. The great surgeon of something opened the ball with the matron of Bartimaeus's, and she went round on his arm like a dolly in a dolly-tub; but he soon saw what a marvellous and miraculous being Glory was, and after I had waltzed so beautifully with the ancient personage I had the hearts of all the young men flying round at the hem of my white petticoat—it was a nice new one for the occasion.

"But the strangest thing was that somebody from the Isle of Man flopped down on me there just as if he had descended from the blue. It was that little English boy Drake, who used to come to the catechism class, only now he is one of the smartest and handsomest young men in London. When he came up and announced himself I am sure he expected me to expire on the spot or else go crazy, and of course I was trembling all over, but I behaved like a rational person and stood my ground. He looked at me as much as to say, 'Do you know you've grown to be a very fine young woman, and I admire you very much?' Whereupon I looked back as much as to reply, 'That's quite right, my dear young sir, and I should have a poor opinion of you if you didn't.' So, being of the same opinion on the only subject worth thinking about (that's me), I behaved charmingly to him, and even forgave him when he carried off my white rose at the end.

"Mr. Drake has a friend who is always with him. He is a willowy person who owns sixteen setters and three church livings, they say, and wears (on week days) a thunder-and-lightning suit of clothes—you know, a pattern so large that one man can't carry the whole of it and somebody else goes about with the rest. His name is Lord Robert Ure, and I intend to call him Lord Bob, for, since he is such a frivolous person himself, I must make a point of being severe. I danced with him, of course, and he kept telling me what a wonderful future Mr. Drake had, and how the Promised Land was before him, and even hinting that it wouldn't be a bad thing to be Mrs. Joshua. Fancy Glory making a tremendous match with a leader of society! And if I hadn't gone to that hospital ball no doubt the history of the nineteenth century would have been different!

"They are going to take me next week to something far, far better than a ball, only I must not tell you anything about it yet, except that I keep awake all night sometimes to think of it. But thou sure and firmest earth, hear not my steps which way they walk!

"It's late, and I'm just going to cuddle in. Good-night! My kisses for the aunties, and my love to everybody! In fact, you can serve out my love in ladles this time—being cheap at present, and plenty more where this is coming from.

"Oh, I forgot to tell you what happened when we returned to the hospital! It was shockingly late, and the gentlemen had brought us back, but there was our John Storm with his sad and anxious face waiting up to see us safely home. He was angry with me, and I didn't mind that in the least; but when I saw that he liked me well enough to be rude to the gentlemen I fell a victim to the crafts and assaults of the devil, and couldn't help laughing out loud; and then Ward Sister Allworthy came along and lifted her lip and showed me her tusk.

"It was a wonderful night altogether, and I was never so happy in my life, but all the same I had a good cry to myself alone before going to bed. Too much water hadst thou, poor Ophelia! Talk about two natures in one; I've got two hundred and fifty, and they all want to do different things! Ah me! the 'ould Book' says that woman was taken out of the rib of a man, and I feel sometimes as if I want to get back to my old quarters. Glory.

"P.S.—I'll write you a full and particular account of the great event of next week after it is over. Be innocent of the knowledge, dearest chuck, till thou applaud the deed. You see I don't want you to eat your meal in fear—or your porridge either. But I am burning with impatience for the night to come, and would like to run to it. Oh, if it were done, when 'tis done, then 'twere well it were done quickly! See? I am going in for a course of Shakespeare!"



XIV.

A week later Glory made her first visit to the theatre. Her companions were Drake, who was charmed with her naivete; Lord Robert, who was amused by it; and Polly Love, who was annoyed and ashamed, and uttered little peevish exclamations.

As they entered the box which they were to occupy, the attendant drew back the curtain, and at sight of the auditorium she cried, "Oh!" and then checked herself and coloured deeply. With her eyes down she sat where directed in one of the three seats in front, Polly being on her right and Drake on her left, and Lord Robert at the back of the lace curtain. For some minutes she did not smile or stir, and when she spoke it was always in whispers. A great awe seemed to have fallen upon her, and she was behaving as she behaved in church.

Drake began to explain the features of the theatre. Down there were the stalls, and behind the stalls was the pit. The body? Well, yes—the body, so to speak. And the three galleries were the dress circle, the family circle, and the gallery proper. The organ loft? No, there was no organ, but that empty place below was the well for the orchestra.

"And what is this little vestry?" she said.

"Oh, this is a private box where we can sit by ourselves and talk!" said Drake.

At every other explanation she had made little whispered cries of astonishment and delight; but when she heard that conversation was not forbidden she was entirely happy. She thought a theatre was even more beautiful than a church, and supposed an actor must have a wonderful living.

The house was filling rapidly, and as the people entered she watched them intently.

"What a beautiful congregation!" she whispered—"audience, I mean!"

"Do you think so?" said Polly; but Glory did not hear her.

It was delightful to see so many lovely faces and listen to the low hum of their conversation. She felt happy among them already and quite kind to everybody, because they had all come together to enjoy themselves. Presently she bowed to some one in the stall with a face all smiles, and then said to Polly:

"How nice of her! A lady moved, to me from the body. How friendly they are in theatres!"

"But it was to Mr. Drake," said Polly; and then Glory could have buried her face in her confusion.

"Never mind, Glory," said Drake; "that's a lady who will like you the better for the little mistake.—Rosa," he added, with a look toward Lord Robert, who smoothed his mustache and bent his head.

Polly glanced up quickly at the mention of the name; and Drake explained that Rosa was a friend of his own—a lady journalist, Miss Rosa Macquarrie, a good and clever woman. Then, turning back to Glory, he said:

"She has been standing up for your friend Mr. Storm this week. You know there have been attacks upon him in the newspapers?"

"Has she?" said Glory, recovering herself and looking down again. "Which pew—stall, I mean——"

But the people were clapping their hands and turning their faces to the opposite side of the theatre. Some great personage was entering the royal box.

"My chief, the Home Secretary," said Drake; and, when the applause had subsided and the party were seated, the great man recognised his secretary and bowed to him; whereupon it seemed to Glory that every face in the theatre turned about and looked at her.

She did not flinch, but bore herself bravely. There was a certain thrill and a slight twitching of the head, such as a charger makes at the first volley in battle—nothing more, not even the quiver of an eyelid. This was the atmosphere in which Drake lived, and she felt a vague gratitude to him for allowing her to move in it.

"Isn't it beautiful!" she whispered, turning toward Polly; but Polly's face was hidden behind the curtain.

The orchestra was coming in, and Glory leaned forward and counted the fiddles, while Drake talked with Lord Robert across her shoulder.

"I found him reading Rosa's article this morning, and it seems he was present himself and heard the sermon," said Drake.

"And what's his opinion?" asked Lord Robert.

"Much the same as your own. Affectation—the man is suffering from the desire to be original—more egotism than love of truth, and so forth."

"Right, too, dear boy. All this vapouring is as much as to say: 'Look at me! I am the Hon. and Rev. Mr. Thingamy, nephew of the Prime Minister; and yet——'"

"I don't at all agree with the chief," said Drake, "and I told him so. The man has enthusiasm, and that's the very salt of the earth at present. We are all such pessimists in these days! Thank God for anybody who will warm us up with a little faith, say I!"

Glory's bosom heaved, and she was just about to speak, when, there was a sudden clap as of thunder, and she leaped up in her seat. But it was only the beginning of the overture, and she sat down laughing. There was a tender passage in the music; and after it was over she was very quiet for a while, and then whispered to Polly that she hoped little Johnnie wasn't worse to-night, and it seemed wicked to enjoy one's self when any one was so poorly.

"Who is that?" said Drake.

"My little boy whose leg was amputated," said Glory.

"This Glory is so funny!" said Polly. "Fancy talking of that here!"

"Hush!" said Lord Robert; "the curtain is going up." And at the next moment Glory was laughing because they were all in the dark.

The play was Much Ado about Nothing, and Glory whispered to Drake that she had never seen it before, but she had read Macbeth, and knew all about Shakespeare and the drama. The first scene took her breath away, being so large and so splendid. It represented the outside of a gentleman's house, and she thought what a length of time it must have taken to build it, considering it was to last only a single night. But hush! The people were going indoors. No; they preferred to talk in the street. Oh, we were in Italy? Yes, indeed, that was different.

Leonato delivered his first speeches forcibly, and was rewarded with applause. Glory clapped her hands also, and said he was a very good actor for such a very old gentleman.

Then Beatrice made her entrance, and was greeted with cheers, whereupon Glory looked perplexed.

"It's Terry," whispered Polly; and Drake said, "Ellen Terry"; but Glory still looked puzzled.

"They are calling her 'Beatrice,'" she said. Then, mastering the situation, she looked wise and said: "Of course—the actress—I quite understand; but why do they applaud her—she has done nothing yet?"

Drake explained that the lady playing Beatrice was a great favourite, and that the applause of the audience had been of the nature of a welcome to a welcome guest, as much as to say they had liked her before, and were glad to see her again. Glory thought that was beautiful, and, looking at the gleaming eyes that shone out of the darkness, she said:

"How lovely to be an actress!"

Then she turned back to the stage, where all was bright and brilliant, and said, "What a lovely frock, too!"

"Only a stage costume, my dear," said Polly.

"And what beautiful diamonds!"

"Paste," said Lord Robert,

"Hush!" said Drake; and then Benedick entered, and the audience received him with great cheering. "Irving," whispered Drake; and Glory looked more perplexed than before and said:

"But you told me it was Mr. Irving's theatre, and I thought it would have been his place to welcome——"

The vision of Benedick clapping his hands at his own entrance set Lord Robert laughing in his cold way: but Drake said, "Be quiet, Robert!"

Glory, like a child, had ears for no conversation except her own, and she was immersed in the play in a moment. The merry war of Beatrice and Benedick had begun, and as she watched it her face grew grave.

"Now, that's very foolish of her," she said; "and if, as you say, she's a great actress, she shouldn't do such things. To talk like that to a man is to let everybody see that she likes him better than anybody else, though she's trying her best to hide it. The silly girl—he'll find her out!"

But the curtain had gone down on the first act, the lights had suddenly gone up, and her companions were laughing at her. Then she laughed also.

"Of course, it's only a play," she said largely, "and I know all about plays and about acting, and I can act myself, too."

"I'm sure you can," said Polly, lifting her lip. But Glory took no notice.

Throughout the second act she put on the same airs of knowledge, watching the masked ball intently, but never once uttering a laugh and hardly ever smiling. The light, the colour, the dresses, the gay young faces enchanted her; but she struggled to console herself. It was only her body that was up there, leaning over the front of the box with lips twitching and eyes gleaming; her soul was down on the stage, clad in a lovely gown, and carrying a mask and laughing and joking with Benedick; but she held herself in, and when the curtain fell she began to talk of the acting.

She was still of the opinion that Leonato was excellent for such an elderly gentleman, and when Polly praised Claudio she agreed that he was good too.

"But Benedick is my boy for all," she said. In some way she had identified herself with Beatrice, and hardly ever spoke of her.

During the third act this air of wisdom and learning broke down badly. In the middle of the ballad, "Sigh no more, ladies, sigh no more," she remembered Johnnie, and whispered to Drake how ill he had been when they left the hospital. And when it was over, and Benedick protested that the song had been vilely sung, she sat back in her seat and said she didn't know how Mr. Irving could say such a thing, for she was sure the boy had sung it beautifully.

"But that's the author," whispered Drake; and then she said wisely:

"Oh, yes, I know—Shakespeare, of course."

Then came the liming of the two love-birds, and she declared that everybody was in love in plays of that sort, and that was why she liked them; but as for those people playing the trick, they were very simple if they thought Beatrice didn't know she loved Benedick. Claudio fell woefully in her esteem in other respects also, and when he agreed to spy on Hero she said he ought to be ashamed of himself anyhow.

"How ridiculous you are!" said Polly. "It's the author, isn't it?"

"Then the author ought to be ashamed of himself, also, for it is unjust and cruel and unnecessary," said Glory.

The curtain had come down again by this time, and the men were deep in an argument about morality in art, Lord Robert protesting that art had no morality, and Drake maintaining that what Glory said was right, and there was no getting to the back of it.

But the fourth act witnessed Glory's final vanquishment. When she found the scene was the inside of a church and they were to be present at a wedding, she could not keep still on her seat for delight; but when the marriage was stopped and Claudio uttered his denunciation of Hero, she said it was just like him, and it would serve him right if nobody believed him.

"Hush!" said somebody near them.

"But they are believing him," said Glory quite audibly.

"Hush! Hush!" came from many parts of the theatre.

"Well, that's shameful—her father, too——" began Glory.

"Hush, Glory!" whispered Drake; but she had risen to her feet, and when Hero fainted and fell she uttered a cry.

"What a girl!" whispered Polly. "Sit down—everybody's looking!"

"It's only a play, you know," whispered Drake; and Glory sat down and said:

"Well, yes; of course, it's only a play. Did you suppose——"

But she was lost in a moment. Beatrice and Benedick were alone in the church now; and when Beatrice said, "Kill Claudio," Glory leaped up again and clapped her hands. But Benedick would not kill Claudio, and it was the last straw of all. That wasn't what she called being a great actor, and it was shameful to "sit and listen to such plays. Lots of disgraceful scenes happened in life, but people didn't come to the theatre to see such things, and she would go.

"How ridiculous you are!" said Polly; but Glory was out in the corridor, and Drake was going after her.

She came back at the beginning of the fifth act with red eyes and confused smiles, looking very much ashamed. From that moment onward she cried a good deal, but gave no other sign until the green curtain came down at the end, when she said:

"It's a wonderful thing! To make people forget it's not true is the most wonderful thing in the world!"

Lord Robert, standing behind the curtain at the back of Polly's chair, had been laughing at Glory with his long owlish drawl, and making cynical interjections by way of punctuating her enthusiasm; and now he said, "Would you like to have a nearer view of your wonderful world, Glory?"

Glory looked perplexed, and Drake muttered, "Hold your tongue, Robert!" Then, turning to Glory, he said shortly: "He only asked if you would like to go behind the scenes; but I don't think——"

Glory uttered a cry of delight. "Like it? Better than anything in the world!"

"Then I must take you to a rehearsal somewhere," said Lord Robert; "and you'll both come to tea at the chambers afterward."

Drake made some show of dissent; but Polly, with her most voluptuous look upward, said it would be perfectly charming, and Glory was in raptures.

The girls, by their own choice, went home without escort by the Hammersmith omnibus. They sat on opposite sides and hardly talked at all. Polly was humming idly. "Sigh no more, ladies."

Glory was in a trance. A great, bright, beautiful world had that night swum into her view, and all her heart was yearning for it with vague and blind aspirations. It might be a world of dreams, but it seemed more real than reality, and when the omnibus passed the corner of Piccadilly Circus she forgot to look at the women who were crowding the pavement.

The omnibus drew up for them at the door of the hospital, and they took long breaths as they went up the steps.

In the corridor to the surgical ward they came upon John Storm. His head was down and his step was long and measured, and he seemed to be trying to pass them in his grave silence; but Glory stopped and spoke, while Polly went on to her cubicle.

"You here so late?" she said.

He looked steadily into her face and answered, "I was sent for—some one was dying."

"Was it little Johnnie?"

"Yes."

There was not a tear now, not a quiver of an eyelid.

"I don't think I care for this life," she said fretfully. "Death is always about you everywhere, and a girl can never go out to enjoy herself but——"

"It is true woman's work," said John hotly, "the truest, noblest work a woman can have in all the world!"

"Perhaps," said Glory, swinging on her heel. "All the same——"

"Good-night!" said John, and he turned on his heel also.

She looked after him and laughed. Then with a little hard lump at her heart she took herself off to bed.

Polly Love, in the next cubicle, was humming as she undressed:

Sigh no more, ladies, sigh no more, Men were deceivers ever.

That night Glory dreamed that she was back at Peel. She was sitting up on the Peel hill, watching the big ships as they weighed anchor in the bay beyond the old dead castle walls, and wishing she were going out with them to the sea and the great cities so far away.



XV.

John Storm was sitting in his room next morning fumbling the leaves of a book and trying to read, when a lady was announced. It was Miss Macrae, and she came in with a flushed face, a quivering lip, and the marks of tears in her eyes. She held his hand with the same long hand-clasp as before, and said in a tremulous voice:

"I am ashamed of coming, and mother does not know that I am here; but I am very unhappy, and if you can not help me——"

"Please sit down," said John Storm.

"I have come to tell you——" she said, and then her sad eyes moved about the room and came back to his face. "It is about Lord Robert Ure, and I am very wretched."

"Tell me everything, dear lady, and if there is anything I can do——"

She told him all. It was a miserable story. Her mother had engaged her to Lord Robert Ure (there was no other way of putting it) for the sake of his title, and he had engaged himself to her for the sake of her wealth. She had never loved him, and had long known that he was a man of scandalous reputation; but she had been taught that to attach weight to such considerations would be girlish and sentimental, and she had fought for a while and then yielded.

"You will reproach me for my feebleness," she said, and he answered haltingly:

"No, I do not reproach you—I pity you!"

"Well," she said, "it is all over now, and if I am ruined, and if my mother——"

"You have told her you can not marry him!"

"Yes."

"Then who am I to reproach you?" he said; and rising to his feet, he threw down his book.

Her dark eyes wandered about the room, and came back to his face again and shone with a new lustre.

"I heard your sermon on Sunday, Mr. Storm, and I felt as if there were nobody else in the church, and you were speaking to me alone. And last night at the theatre——"

"Well?"

He had been tramping the room, but he stopped.

"I saw him in a box with his friend and two—two ladies."

"Were they nurses from the hospital?"

She made a cry of surprise and said, "Then you know all about it, and the sermon was meant for me?"

He did not speak for a moment, and then he said with a thick utterance:

"You wish me to help you to break off this marriage, and I will try. But if I fail—no matter what has happened in the past, or what awaits you in the future——"

"Oh," she said, "if I had your strength beside me I should be brave—I should be afraid of nothing."

"Good-bye, dear lady," said John Storm; and before he could prevent her she had stooped over his hand and kissed it.

John Storm had returned to his book and was clutching it with nervous fingers, when his fellow-curate came with a message from the canon to request his presence in the study.

"Tell him I was on the point of going down," said John. And the Reverend Golightly coughed and bowed himself out.

The canon had also had a visitor that morning. It was Mrs. Macrae herself. She sat on a chair covered with a tiger skin, sniffed at her scented handkerchief, and poured out all her sorrows.

Mercy had rebelled against her authority, and it was entirely the fault of the new curate, Mr. Storm. She had actually refused to carry out her engagement with Lord Robert, and it all came of that dreadful sermon on Sunday. It was dishonourable, it was unprincipled, and it was a pretty thing to teach girls to indulge their whims without regard to the wishes of parents!

"Here have I been two years in London, spending a fortune on the girl and trying to do my best for her, and the moment I fix her in one of the first English families, this young man—this curate—this—— Upon my honour, it's real wicked, it's shameful!" And the handkerchief steeped in perfume went up from the nose to the eyes.

The canon swung his pince-nez. "Don't put yourself about, my dear Mrs. Macrae. Leave the matter to me. Miss Macrae will give up her objections, and——"

"Oh, you mustn't judge her by her quietness, canon. You don't know her character. She's real stubborn when her mind's made up. But I'll be as stubborn as she is—I'll take her back to America—I'll never spend another penny——"

"And as for Mr. Storm," continued the canon, "I'll make everything smooth in that quarter. You mustn't think too much about the unhappy sermon—a little youthful esprit fort—we all go through it, you know."

When Mrs. Macrae had gone, he rang twice for Mr. Golightly and said, "Tell Mr. Storm to come down to me immediately."

"With pleasure, sir," said the little man; and then he hesitated.

"What is it?" said the canon, adjusting his glasses.

"I have never told you, sir, how I found him the night you sent me to the hospital."

"Well, how?"

"On his knees to a Catholic priest who was visiting a patient."

The canon's glasses fell from his eyes and his broad face broke into strange smiles.

"I thought the Sorceress of Rome was at the bottom of it," he said. "His uncle shall know of this, and unless I am sadly deceived—but fetch him down."

John Storm was wearing his flannel shirt that morning, and he came downstairs with a heavy tread and swung himself, unasked, into the chair that had just before been occupied by Mrs. Macrae.

The perpendicular wrinkles came between the canon's eyebrows and he said: "My dear Mr. Storm, I have postponed as long as possible a most painful interview. The fact is, your recent sermon has given the greatest offence to the ladies of my congregation, and if such teaching were persisted in we should lose our best people. Now, I don't want to be angry with you, quite the contrary, but I wish to put it to you, as your spiritual head and adviser, that your idea of religion is by no means agreeable to the needs and necessities of the nineteenth century. There is no freedom in such a faith, and St. Paul says, 'Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty.' But the theory of your religion is not more unscriptural than its application is unwholesome. Yours is a gloomy faith, my dear Storm, and what did Luther say of a gloomy faith?—that the devil was very apt to be lurking behind it. As for himself he married, you may remember; he had children, he played chess, he loved to see young people dancing——"

"I don't object to the dancing, sir," said John Storm. "I only object to the tune."

"What do you mean?" said the canon, not without insolence, and the perpendicular wrinkles became large and heavy.

"I mean, sir," said John Storm, "that half the young people nowadays—the young women in the west of London especially—are asked to dance to the Dead March."

And then he spoke of the infamous case of Mercy Macrae, how she was being bought and sold, and how scandalous was the reputation of the man she was required to marry.

"That was what I was coming down to speak about, sir—to ask you to save this innocent girl from such a mockery of holy wedlock. She is not a child, and the law can not help her, but you can do so, because the power of the Church is at your back. You have only to set your face against this infamy, and say——"

"My dear Mr. Storm," the canon was smiling condescendingly and swinging his glasses, "the business of the Church is to solemnize marriages, not to make them. But if the young lady comes to me I will say: 'My dear young lady, the conditions you complain of are more common than you suppose; put aside all foolish, romantic notions, make a nest for yourself as comfortably as you can, and come back in a year to thank me.'"

John Storm was on his feet; the blood was mounting to his face and tingling in his fingers.

"And so these men are to make their wives of the daughters of the poor first, and then ask the Church to solemnize their polygamy——"

But the canon had lifted his hand to silence him.

"My dear young friend, a policy like yours would decimate the House of Commons and abolish the House of Lords. Practical religion has a sweet reasonableness. We are all human, even if we are all gentlemen; and while silly young things——"

But John Storm was out in the hall and putting on his hat to see Glory.

Glory had not yet awakened from her trance. While others were living in to-day she was still going about in yesterday. The emotion of the theatre was upon her, and the world of reality took the tone and colour of drama. This made her a tender woman, but a bad nurse.

She began the day in the Outpatient Department, and a poor woman came with a child that had bitten its tongue. Its condition required that it should remain in the house a day or two. "Let me put the pore thing to bed; she's allus used to me," said the woman piteously. "Are you the mother?" said the Sister. "No, the grandmother." "The mother is the only person who can enter the wards except on visiting day." The poor woman began to cry. Glory had to carry the child to bed, and she whispered to the grandmother, "Come this way," and the woman followed her. When they came to the surgical ward, she said to the nurse in charge, "This is the child's mother, and she has come to put the poor little thing to bed."

Later in the morning she was sent up to help in the same ward. A patient in great pain called to her and said, "Loosen this bandage for me, nurse; it is killing me!" And she loosened it.

But the glamour of the theatre was upon her as well as its sentiment and emotion, and in the space before the bed of one of the patients, at a moment when the ward Sister was away, she began to make imitations of Beatrice and Benedick and the singer of "Sigh no more, ladies." The patient was Koenig, the choirmaster of "All Saints'," a little fat German with long mustaches, which he waxed and curled as he lay in bed. Glory had christened him "the hippopotamus," and at her mimicry he laughed so much that he rolled and pitched and dived among the bedclothes.