THE HEART OF A HOSPITAL

Anne Vinton

Popular Eve Ramsey, in charge of the men's general ward at Seafields Hospital, was loved and trusted by colleagues and patients alike. It was a great pity that her career should be endangered by her selfish, mischief-making sister, Dawn.

CHAPTER I

The dawn was grey, and with it came a fret of rain carried in on a light wind from the dark sea. This was always a bad beginning, weatherwise, to any day in the south coastal resort of Seafields, for rain of any description, from that quarto, usually lasted for twelve hours or more, and the residents accepted the fact that macs, umbrellas and gumboots were musts, and it was much better to dress for the weather than invite pneumonia, with only three weeks to go to Christmas.

At this time of year there was little to recommend Seafields as a resort; it made no pretensions to keeping up the game of money-spinning once September had seen the last of the holidaymakers away. The small amusement park had become mobile and was leading a vagabond existence holding one-night stands in small Sussex villages; the solitary fortune-teller had gone to stay with her sister in Brighton, and a news-vendor used the deserted candyfloss stand on the promenade as a windbreak. The landladies and their husbands were now able to relax and exercise their dogs on the deserted beaches, though on a day such as this promised to be, Rover would doubtless be the last to complain if he was left to make quick forays into his own back garden and be allowed to return to the rug in front of the kitchen fire and nod himself back to sleep again.

Seafields was a small town, mostly composed of a facade of hotels and boarding houses with a growth of 'desirable modern residences' behind, advertised as being within 'reach of the sea' to a depth of six miles or so up the London road.

The Cottage Hospital stood firmly on cliffs to the west of the town. Its many windows invited the sun and its acknowledged recuperative powers, but they were also firmly weatherproofed to withstand the severity of Channel gales and the squalls often hurled inland by the neap tide. It had been quite a small hospital when first it was endowed, but now it had spread various tentacles in all directions, necessity sometimes overriding the protests of the Council architect that corrugated iron and asbestos were just not good enough. These temporary appendages were still going strong twenty years later, and it was one of Matron's moans that although her nurses were housed in a fine new house, complete with tennis courts, their elders and betters, the Sisters, were still expected to sleep in a draughty wing which should have been condemned years ago.

Still, they didn't complain—much—and very rarely to her. Matron considered her senior' staff a goodly bunch, and often wondered why they didn't desert her for pleasanter spots than Seafields was on a wet December morning.

In the pantry at the end of the Sisters' wing, Blanche, the maid, was busily preparing the morning brew. Her charges expected to be roused about seven-fifteen a.m. with the cup that is supposed to cheer. Blanche now knew exactly how 'cheered' each individual was by her appearance.

"Oh, Lord!" Sister Colles would moan fretfully. "Is it time to get up already? I've only just closed my eyes! No, don't draw the curtains. If you do my poor eyes will fall out!"

Next door was Sister Prothero, senior even to these seniors. She suffered from dyspepsia and her nose would be rosy pink against the sheets. She didn't take tea. Her morning drink was hot water into which she poured oil of peppermint from a small bottle in her bedside locker.

Sisters Fisher and Day slept like tops, yet were always amazed to discover that it was morning. The former would sit up, blinking like a bird, and enquire the time in a way which didn't believe Blanche's alarm could possibly be true. The latter usually hopped straight out of bed, still half asleep, and either stubbed her toe or upset her tea before accepting the fact that another working day lay ahead.

"On my weekends off," she complained on this morning, "I'm always wide awake at six, but just now I feel as though I'll die unless I go off for just five more minutes. If I do, promise you'll wake me, Blanche!"

"Now, Sister," said the Devon wench firmly, "you know that be no good. Five minutes an' you 'ave to go through all that waking up again. You drink your tea an' get up, ray girl. I got my pantry to clean."

Last of all Blanche tapped on the door of Room Number Five where Sister Ramsey slept. Sister was fairly new at the hospital and had taken charge of Men's General during the past summer. Blanche hoped she would stay, for she was young and gentle and pretty, just the sort of girl the maid liked to read about in the paperback romances she studied so avidly and which fitted conveniently under the bib of her apron, ready for what her friend Madge called 'a quick dekko' between jobs.

Sister Ramsey stirred as Blanche tapped on the door and entered. She didn't awake, but her lips moved into a smile and she sighed two tremulous words: "Oh, Tom!"

Blanche felt intrigued. So the dear was in love with somebody called Tom. Well, good luck to her, but just now there was a day's work ahead.

"Sister, wake up!" she gently urged, and the grey eyes opened to regard her with a ready smile. That was what Blanche liked about Sister Ramsey: she always greeted one with a smile and a naturalness that was entirely wholesome.

"A poor day, Sister, I'm afraid," the maid said apologetically. "A real Scotch mist, or whatever 'e calls it. Dark too. Dark days afore Christmas, my grandma used to say."

Eve Ramsey stretched and imbibed her tea in two quick gulps.

"I'm having a bath, Blanche. I won't be long."

"You keep that 'air dry now," the other exhorted, enviously watching the long fair braid being pinned into a topknot. "Wouldn't do to go on duty, a day like this with a wet 'ead."

"I'll be careful, Blanche."

Eve Ramsey sang in the bath, a low happy contralto that told of her contentment in living. She was always a happy person, but now her happiness was crowned by the fact that she was in love, and six days ago Tom Carrington had proposed to her and she had accepted him. It was all a wonderful secret between them for the time being, for Tom was working for his M.D. and could not afford the diversion of an engagement—a public one, at least But the declaration of love was something Eve wore like an aura: it transcended every job she did, even the most menial. She liked her work immensely; she couldn't imagine life without the atmosphere of hospitals and common-room and ridiculous staff concerts, but now that she had heard Tom's whispered declarations, known the warmth of his arms, the madness of his kisses, she couldn't imagine life without those, either. At the moment she had both these joys firmly in her grasp with no prospect of immediate change in the situation. It was enough to make any twenty-five-year-old girl sing in her bath, even though outside the world was a damp and sere place and the lights would be on in the wards all day.

"If it's herrings for breakfast I shall be sick," announced Jean Colles as they sat down to breakfast in the now silent dining-room. Half an hour earlier the place had been in uproar as seventy-odd nurses saw to the needs of the inner man. The five Sisters already mentioned were the only ones in residence at the hospital. Three who had returned to duty since marrying naturally lived out, and so did Theatre Sister, who preferred her bachelor-girl flat and cooking on a gas-ring to hospital catering.

"Have two helpings of porridge, dear," advised Geraldine Day. "It is herrings. I could smell them."

Sister Prothero was having her special diet of Bengers' and rye biscuits. Her nose was still a flaming pink and she was as thin as a lath.

"How are you today, Sister?" Eve asked sympathetically. She sounded truly concerned, so the older woman discussed her symptoms animatedly and at great length.

"Sadie's off," grimaced Linda Fisher to her neighbour. "I think she enjoys her indigestion. Obviously there's a cause for it, but she won't let the doctors near her. She's no advertisement for a hospital, is she?"

"It's a miserable complaint," Eve Ramsey decided, "with Christmas coming, too. I do hope you'll be able to enjoy the turkey dinner.'"

"A day like this," said Jean Colles, tucking hungrily into the despised herrings, "and a stock-taking. I can never understand why we have to account, every year, for the same old bed-pans and air-rings, and lunch trays. Do the authorities think the patients are a bunch of petty criminals, likely to take a bed-pan home in their suitcases?"

There was some laughter and Geraldine Day said drily: "There has to be a first time, I suppose. Old Mr Oddpenny, for instance. He's sat on his air-ring all these months, as happy as a king. I'm sure he must be quite attached to it, by now. When he goes home next week I wouldn't be surprised to find it tucked between his dressing-gown and slippers in that carrier bag he brought in with him."

There was more laughter and Sister Dining-Room bustled in, urging: "Eat plenty now, Sisters, ready for a hard day's work. You're in your last five minutes."

It was surprising how much toast and marmalade was consumed by the healthy members of the party in those last few minutes, and two people even managed to clean their teeth before hastening along the main corridor off which the wards branched.'

Eve Ramsey sang quietly and happily to herself. The day was gilded because of her love for Tom. She liked the idea of the lights being on in the wards. It would all look so cosy with the darkling elements outside. Even stock-taking would be fun, though how one ever fitted in these extra jobs, along with the routine, she couldn't imagine. Having been promoted from staff status ten months ago, at her old hospital, she hadn't been required to be in charge of a stock-taking before, merely taking Sister's orders on other occasions when this annual event came around.

Her staff nurse, an alert dark-haired girl called Whitley, was awaiting her in the ward office, rushing to complete the temperature and blood-pressure charts before they would be required for the doctors' rounds.

"Carry on, Staff," Eve advised. "Is that the mail?" She sifted through it, looking to see if there was anything for her. "I'll take it round and then we can make an early start. Anything to report?"

"Not really, Sister. Mr MacPherson said he didn't sleep, but Night Sister says he didn't respond when she flashed her torch at two a.m. Grandpa Phillips is still concerned about his bowels. It was a quiet night."

"Good."

"Oh one more thing, Sister," said Staff Nurse Whitley, "we're a nurse short. Nurse Fothergill has this forty-eight hour 'flu. Matron said she would see what she could do for us."

"Can't be helped, I suppose," shrugged Eve. "Well, I'll go and do my round and then maybe we can start taking stock before any other excitement interferes."

She always felt a heart-warming sensation as she opened the ward doors for the first time each day. It was as though she loved every patient there, and they in return watched for her appearance and sent out the warmth of their loving gratitude to her. She felt bathed in benevolence as she stood by the first bed gazing down at the elderly man who was recovering from a diabetic coma.

"I have a letter for you, Mr Price. It's from Malaya. Have you a son out there?"

"It's from my granddaughter, Sister, She married a policeman. They're doing very nicely. There are such opportunities for lads nowadays if they've got the spunk and a bit of spirit for adventure. In my young days a lad had to run away to sea if he wanted to see the world."

"I've been wanting to see your bonny face, Sister," said Grandpa Phillips, in the next bed. "Don't you think I should have something for my bowels? Regular as clockwork, I was, before I come in here."

"Let us worry about all that, Grandpa," said Eve brightly. She didn't intend telling the eighty-five-year-old man that the obstruction of which he complained was probably a malignant growth. She would see to it that he was kept clean and comfortable for his remaining days; his doctors would not allow him. to suffer more pain than he could reasonably bear. "A postcard from your wife," Eve went on, knowing the old man could not read. "She says she's bringing you the apple jelly you fancied and will see you this evening, all being well."

"I like a bit of apple jelly," the Old man murmured contentedly, his morphia beginning to make him nod. "I like it on toast."

"Nah then, Sister," came a cheeky, cheery Cockney voice from the next bed. "Where's me fan mail?"

"So that's what it is, Ken," smiled Eve, handing the youth half a dozen letters. "All from pretty girls?"

"Come orf it, Sister! If I tell you all the nurses'll be jealous an' then I'll get the old blunt needle, right where it 'urts." He rubbed his thigh ruefully. "'Ow many more o' them injections I gotta 'ave?"

"About eight. You're to get up today, and have some exercises."

"Go on! I've been wanting to clinch with the smashing little red-headed physiotherapist 'oo comes round. Will she do me?"

"I shouldn't think so'," Eye teased. "Miss Cornling takes all cheeky young men under her "own personal wing. You qualify for her, my lad!"

Matron's sudden appearance at the entrance to the ward sent Eve smartly to meet her. Miss Bloomsbury rarely appeared on the wards before midday.

"Ah Sister, you have a vacant side ward, I believe?"

"Yes, Matron, I have."

"Good! I want you to prepare it for a V.I.P. No names, no pack-drill, Sister. You know better than to be inquisitive, don't you? The gentleman is on his way to us by private ambulance. He has lumbar pneumonia on top of his other troubles, poor soul. Have an oxygen tent ready."

Miss Bloomsbury turned to go.

"Excuse me, Matron," Eve wondered how she could ask the question trembling on her tongue without appearing inquisitive. "What name shall I put on the chart? Will 'Mr Brown' do?"

"Why not?" nodded the older woman. "That's a very good idea, Sister. By the way, I know you're short-staffed, and I hope to send you a relief nurse in an hour or two. Get that bed in the Side Ward made up stat, Sister."

"I will, Matron. I'll attend to it at once."

After Matron's brief visit it seemed there wasn't time to notice the weather or anything else, let alone have time to be inquisitive about an expected V.I.P. patient. As Eve prepared the side ward single handed, she did not even wonder why 'Mr Brown' was a V.I.P. what he had ever done—or been—to merit such a distinction. It was sufficient for her that he was a sick man and obviously in need of peace and quiet Matron had also hinted that the pneumonia was not his only complaint; well, that she would discover when she read his notes upon admission.

Where was Nurse Addams, the Jamaican junior? She had told her to bring two hot bottles as soon as possible. The side ward was warm, but the patient might well be half frozen on arrival. Ambulances are not the warmest of vehicles in December.

Upon investigation she discovered that Nurse Addams had left two kettles boiling merrily and gone off to answer a patient's request for a bed-pan. As Eve never allowed this request to be ignored—no matter how much the inconvenience was suffered by the staff as a result—she had to shrug and fill the bottles herself.

Now the side ward was ready for the arrival of 'Mr Brown'; the oxygen tent folded to one side, in case of need, though Eve sincerely hoped it wouldn't be necessary.

Looking down the main ward she saw Staff Nurse Whitley emerge from the screens round number ten, dragging her dressing trolley With her. Nurse Singh, a Pakistani beauty, had roped Nurse Addams in to make beds. These were all the staff on duty that day, it being the cadet nurse's day off and Fothergill having gone down with 'flu. Sister Dining-Room would be nagging for somebody to show up for coffee, a compulsory ten-minute break enjoyed by all staff at mid-morning.

There was nothing for it but to send Nurse Addams off and help with the bed-making oneself. Gone were the days when the senior in charge of a ward could afford to wear her cuffs all day long and leave the active running of things to lesser lights. Sister was nowadays more likely to be in the thick of things than not.

As she pounded pillows, changed a draw-sheet here, a top-sheet there, she wondered how the other wards were coping with the stock-taking. It looked as though the two printed sheets lying on her desk, itemising everything in use in a hospital ward, would still be lying there, still blank, when her work was officially over for the day. Ah well, it wouldn't be the first time she had worked overtime, or the last, she was sure. Tom would have to understand—this being his evening off duty—that she would be late meeting him at the Rendezvous Restaurant on the seafront for supper; she might not be able to see him at all.

'Mr Brown' duly arrived and was ensconced in the side ward. He was not an elderly man, as she had pictured, but merely in his early thirties, As he was unconscious the oxygen tent was immediately necessary and the senior resident made his examination without delay.

"Watch him yourself, Sister," he said at the finish, "until Sir Horace gets here."

"I will indeed, Doctor," she promised, "but I must have extra help before dinner-time. My nurses haven't had coffee yet."

Possibly because Doctor Widdup dropped a hint in the right quarter, Matron herself duly arrived to take over the watching brief of the new arrival.

"You go and do what you have to, Sister," she invited. "And I've brought you a spare nurse. She only started today, but she has been in training at a London hospital. I forget her name. She's waiting in your office."

Without more ado Eve went to see the new relief nurse and put her to work immediately. She stopped short in the open office doorway, however. "Dawn!" she exclaimed. "Whatever are you doing here?"

The girl in the pale lavender nurse's uniform, a stranger to Seafields Hospital, smiled and shrugged prettily.

"Really Evie, I thought you'd be glad to see me, and you're not ! I can never please you, whatever I do. can I?"

"It's not that," Eve Ramsey wondered if the denial rang true even to herself, "but I never know what you'll be doing next since you decided to go off on your own. I'm your half-sister, but that doesn't make me your keeper. What happened to the modelling career?"

Again Dawn Simmonds shrugged. How could she tell Eve, whose advice she had always rejected, that she had been wrong to throw up her nursing and follow the glamorous career of a model? Eve had said the profession was overcrowded and too competitive in these days, and how true her words had proved. A pretty face and a lovely figure were not enough to take the world of fashion by storm. There were thousands of pretty girls living in semi-starvation in London, all waiting for a chance to get one pretty toe in the doorway to a successful career.

"I tired of it," Dawn said clearly. "I also tired of Robert. I'm not engaged any more."

"Oh!" Eve said in dismay. Robert had been the boy next door when they were children. At one time Eve had adored him, until her young half-sister developed that something in her eye which proved the undoing of the most steady of young men. Robert had fallen for the spectacular young Dawn, with her gilded hair and cornflower-blue eyes, and she had been only too happy to think she was stealing something from Eve, who always wore that cloak of serenity which comes from having all one needs in the way of health and happiness. For a little while Eve had minded, she knew, but she had still managed to make Dawn look and fed small as she wished the couple all happiness when they announced their engagement a year later.

Robert took a job in the city, and because of this Eve did not object when her half-sister decided to take her nursing training at a big London hospital. Robert would keep an eye on her and soon they would be married Since her mother and stepfather had died together in a car accident, Eve had taken her guardianship of Dawn very seriously. The girl was pretty and intelligent, but She was also extremely wayward and selfish. She thought the world was her oyster and that there was never anything to pay.

The day had to break, of course, when Dawn Simmonds learned the facts of hospital life for herself. The doctors did not fall in love with her, to a man; her tutors were as unbearably disciplinarian and sarcastic as her schoolteachers had been, and though a hospital uniform is undoubtedly becoming, it is meant to be worn for work. As a probationer nurse Dawn discovered that pretty nurses were expected to work as hard as plain ones; that down the scale the most menial of the task come one's way. The Sister of the ward on which she was placed hated her, she was convinced, and because she was a notorious shirker her fellows didn't care much for her either.

Dawn's decision to throw up her hospital career was a shock to Eve, whose nature was such that she thought of all labour as a service to humanity, and so had progressed in her profession befittingly. Her half-sister had celebrated her twenty-first birthday with a small inheritance left her by her father, however, and quickly made it clear to Eve that she was both of age and independent of anybody. Hurt though she was, Eve had let her go her wayward way, squandering her money on model courses and a flat in town and generally making it clear that she intended to do exactly as she pleased and go whither she would.

Now she had turned up here at Seafields, again in nurse's uniform, and obviously uncaring that she had not written her sister for the past ten months.

"You'd better make the milk drinks, Nurse Simmonds," said Eve, as she realised there was no time for the exchanging of confidences, even if there were the inclination.

"O.K.," grimaced Dawn, to whom every task was something to be tackled ungraciously, if at all. "I suppose I can expect to be the general dogsbody."

"That's right," agreed Eve. "If you care to complete your training this time, you can expect to be something else. By the way, you'd better call me Sister, like the others."

There were only three years between them, yet Eve felt like an ageing parent as the other tossed her pretty head, looked up covertly from under incredibly long eyelashes and said demurely: "But of course, Sister. I must give you your due. Incidentally, I haven't told anybody we're related. Well leave it that way, if you don't mind."

"Very well. Go along, now."

Tom arrived to do his round as Dawn went kitchen-wards.

"Who's the little peach?" he wanted to know, with masculine interest "There are so many liquorice all-sorts in hospitals, nowadays, an English rose stands out like a sore thumb."

"That's Nurse Simmonds," said Eve, wondering whether to tell Tom of their relationship or not. Of course she must, she realised. "She doesn't want it known generally, but that's my sister Dawn. I've told you about her."

"She's a beaut," Tom decided, then looked down at the Madonna-like face regarding him, with the shining line of immaculately brushed fair hair and grey eyes. "Good looks run in the family," he thought gallantly. "But I can enlarge on that this evening when we're—alone." He winked ominously and she decided, with a glow of deep affection at her heart, not to tell him that it would be unlikely she could keep their appointment: there was always the off-chance that all the undone jobs would pass through a few willing hands as though by magic, and after the visiting hour she would be free to end the day fittingly, in Tom's arms.

The patients were either enjoying or enduring their tea, dependent upon both their physical and mental state. In the side ward Eve Ramsey looked up from her stock-taking lists, which were surprisingly beginning to look like being completed that day, in the instinctive knowledge that she was being watched.

Through the transparent oxygen tent she saw that 'Mr Brown's' eyes were wide open, that they were a deep chestnut shade and regarding her with the frank appraisal of the very ill. The lips, which Were a little less pallid than previously, moved in speech.

Smiling encouragement, Eve unzipped the flap and put her own masked mouth to it.

"Hello, Mr Brown, so you're awake? That's good, but you're not to talk just yet. You're in hospital, in case you didn't know. Sleep as much as you can, then you'll get better quickly."

"Thank you," he said with some difficulty. "I just wanted you to know, Sister, as soon as I saw you I knew I would be all right."

She zipped the flap up again, realising that this was one of those moments which made those short-staffed skirmishes of the morning infinitely well worth while.

She only hoped that 'Mr Brown's' faith would result in his getting well in fact The pneumonia was something which was likely to respond to the modern miracle drugs with which he was being injected. But he was also paralysed from the waist down, a condition following an accident three years ago.

What brilliant career or elegant life had been shattered because of this? Eve wondered.

It was not the stock-taking or the work of another which kept Eve on duty long after she should have finished. It was because 'Mr Brown's' temperature had suddenly soared to a hundred and two point five. As Night Sister Webb expressed it they were in for a very dicey night.

CHAPTER II

Christmas is a wonderful time in hospital, not only for the excellent fare and wonderful ward decorations and the good fellowship and gaiety prevalent at this time, but for the healing therapy the season appears to bring in its train. There are always numerous discharges just before Christmas, of patients who are determined to get home for the festivities, and those waiting to be admitted do not wish to be summoned until after Boxing Day, very naturally. Also the inpatients are affected and feel better and brighter and find their lost or discarded appetites in time to do justice to the feast the hospital cooks and dieticians have provided for them.

Men's General was as bright and cheerful as any other ward. There was plenty of mistletoe, provided by the more mischievous of the convalescent patients, of course; and for the main display Eve had decided on a woodland scene, a fir wood, with miniature trees well laced with antiseptic silver icicles, a goodly blanket of 'snow' on the ground. In the wood stood a log cabin created out of miniature faggots: an 'old man' chopped sticks while within an old woman peered out. Their dog, who was, incidentally, twice the size of his master, being Nurse Singh's canine pyjama case, lolled happily and comfortably in the 'snow'.

It was a very pretty display and Matron was quick to compliment Sister on it. There were so many subjects of entertainment the Sister of the children's ward could adopt, from the Three Bears to the Seven Dwarfs, but when one is decorating for a mixed bag of men, the youngest of whom is twenty and the eldest ninety-three, one must be a little more conservative and press one's imagination to the full.

On Christmas Eve, that busy yet blessed day, filled with anticipatory joys, there were only two flies in the ointment as far as Eve Ramsey was concerned. The first fly was her half-sister, Dawn, who was by no means pulling her weight in the ward: the second was really only half a fly and was regrettable rather than truly dismaying. Tom had sent word round that he was sorry but he wouldn't be able to meet her that evening as planned. He had been asked to help a local doctor, who was asthamtical, with outside calls. 'All grist to the mill, as you will appreciate,' Tom had concluded.

So that was that She Would be unable to give him the thick warm scarf she had lovingly knitted in the college colours of which he was so proud. Now the parcel would have to be delivered to his digs, but it would be good practice for him to go out visiting Dr Ashington's patients; he had done it on one other occasion and enjoyed it immensely.

"Prepare yourself for being a G.P.'s wife," he had said after that essay. "It's a grand life with plenty of variety."

Dawn was due to. go to second dinner and not return to duty until five p.m. Eve summoned her to the office, determined to have an understanding about the disposal of work once and for all.

"Yes?" queried that young lady with bored familiarity. "What now?"

Eve drew her fine brows down in disapproval. "First of all, Nurse Simmonds, you will address me as Sister and at least show outward respect. You—"

"Oh, Lord!" groaned Dawn, "you're not off on that tack again, Eve? I've known you too long to be unduly impressed by that navy-blue dress you're wearing. Sometimes I—"

"Nurse Simmonds," Eve interrupted ominously, "it was your wish that our relationship should not be made public at Seafields. Even if it were known that you were my sister. I would not tolerate your impertinence and insubordination on my ward. I didn't ask you here in order to hear you read me a lecture. I am the senior here, and you are in my charge. I expect my nurses to pull their weight, and as long as you are under me you will do so. If you fail I shall report you to Matron as I would any other slacker. Do I make myself clear?"

"Crystal clear," said Dawn, white-faced, and added sneeringly, "Sister!"

"Oh Dawn," the elder girl sighed, "why am I always on to you about something or other? Why can we never be close—be Mends?"

"Because you can't help being a prig," the other retorted promptly. "You're always so right and sure of where you're going. Black sheep such as I find you anathema." Now it was Eve's turn to grow pale. "That's an awful thing to say. I've only ever tried to help you and guide you. Why did you come to Seafields out of all the hospitals available? I had dared to hope it was because you wanted to be near me. If I'm such a bore, why seek me out?"

"I don't know," the other sulked. "I was in a spot, I had no cash and I was looking for a port in a storm. But the way you pick on me I wish—"

"I do not pick on you," Eve said promptly. "I simply don't think your heart's in your nursing. Nurse Singh is always having to finish something you've left undone, which simply won't do. If you think I'm looking for faults ask for a transfer to another ward. If Matron knew we were sisters she would separate us immediately. I think we should tell her."

"No, don't," Dawn said quickly. "Maybe I was expecting you to make things easy for me. I realise you can't No harm in trying, though, was there? As for my nursing, remember I did pass highest in my set in Prelim."

"And I was so proud of you when you did," Eve said with a sigh. "But you know as well as I do that nursing is ninety per cent practical work born of a genuine love and compassion for people. You could always pass exams on your head, Dawn, But do you honestly love the job?"

The younger girl grimaced.

"It's a job," she admitted, "but bed-bathing doddery old men isn't my idea of doing a Florence Nightingale. I've a good mind to take my finals—which, as you say, I can do on my head—and then go right on up the ladder, even past you, Sister dear. Then I shall give you pure hell for a change." She smiled to take the bitterness out of the words, though Eve had a strange conviction that her sister bore no goodwill whatsoever.

"You'd better go to lunch, now, Nurse Simmonds," she instructed as the staff nurse reported back for duty. "See that you're back on duty promptly at five to release those who want to do last-minute shopping. Let's make it a happy Christmas for everybody," she urged gently.

Somehow Dawn had managed to ruffle her serenity.

and she wondered if she was inclined to expect more of her own kin that a stranger. The ward was settling down for its afternoon nap, so she went to the one place guaranteed to smooth ruffled feelings—the side ward.

'Mr Brown' had made a wonderful recovery from his pneumonia and was now engaged on the occupational therapy of wrapping numerous small parcels —the presents provided by the ward staff for every patient.

"Ah, Sister!" greeted the patient gladly. "Where have you been hiding all morning? I missed you."

"I bet you say that to all the nurses!" she teased him.

"No," he told her frankly. "I like everybody, but I only love and miss you."

A surprised blush played on her cheek as she retrieved gay wrapping tape and placed it within Ms reach. Patients did often develop a dispassionate and pure love for a nurse, which lasted as long as the need and faded naturally upon discharge. She herself had often experienced this love from her charges. She was expert at reading the signs, the eyes that never left hers, the inarticulate groping for her hand and the short communion of taking a pulse-reading or a blood-pressure.

But 'Mr Brown' had never tried to hold her hand He simply made occasional disconcerting statements, such as this, and left her feeling shaken for a few minutes.

"That's right, the bedsocks are for Grandpa Waddell," she said, to overcome her unprofessional confusion. "He always complains that he 'can't feel his feet, this weather' even though the temperature is seventy in the ward."

"He's the oldest inhabitant, isn't he?" the other enquired with interest.

"Yes, he's ninety-three. I'll give your legs a rub while we're gossiping."

She turned up the bedclothes, removed the cage and regarded the drumsticks of atrophied limbs. Twice a day the physiotherapist came to massage the legs, but Eve believed one couldn't have too much of this when the patient was unable to exercise for himself.

"Hello, old friends!" he greeted his lifeless legs as he saw them uncovered. "It's a long time-since we played tennis together, isn't it?"

He sank back against the pillows and was silent for a moment while she massaged vigorously, picturing this man as he must have looked in tennis shirt and shorts, bronzed and handsome and fearless.

"It must be my imagination," he observed suddenly, "but for a moment I thought you tickled my foot"

"So I did," she agreed.

"But I can't feel my foot," he asserted, lifting his head to look again. "Please tickle me hard," he urged.

She did so, and he sank back with a sigh.

"It was only my damned imagination," he decided "Not that I'm grousing about that. Stevenson wrote his epics from imagination, and I can use mine to visualise a certain fair maiden in occupations alien to a hospital bed. Last evening I flew with you to Gstaad, and we skied together like two birds. You were rosy from the exercise and I—well, I kissed you, my dear."

Raising her eyes from her job, Eve said suddenly, "I am engaged—sort of—Mr Brown, you know."

"Yes, I did believe so," he said gently. "I hope I neither embarrass nor offend you with my mental peregrinations. Do you think he would mind me taking you to Gstaad without his knowledge and—kissing you?"

"Your imagination is your own to use as you will, Mr Brown," she said with an attempt at lightness in her tone. "Naturally I'm concerned with my imagined behaviour when I fly off with you, but I hope I give no cause for complaint?"

"You're always a perfect lady," he assured her. "And very kind. Do you know that the greatest of the virtues is kindness? Patience? Pah! The doers of this life can never tolerate patience. Charity is only half a virtue in that it needs a worthy recipient to practise on, but to be kind is to be charming, and to be charming is to be beloved."

"There now," Eve said quickly, replacing the bed-cage and covers without more ado. "I can't stay here chattering all day. I shall be very unkind if you don't have a nap this afternoon. You didn't sleep so well last night. I'll send Nurse in to collect these parcels and then you must rest."

It was with a glow at her heart that she left the side ward, however. Mr Brown was really wonderful. It was he who found time, amid all his own troubles, to be kind and leave one feeling uplifted.

*

Eighteen angels, a few suffering from attacks of giggles, wearing their cloaks scarlet side out and carrying lighted candles, followed Night Sister from ward to ward singing Adeste Fideles and Hark the Herald Angels Sing. It was barely six o'clock, but the hospital had been awake for a long time and every patient was bed-panned, washed, combed and dressed in either a best nightdress or clean pyjamas, and if all this had not succeeded in arousing them, they were propped up in bed with their morning cup of tea to hand in order to enjoy the beginning of hospital festivities.

The night nurses looked unfamiliar as choristers, but the old carols were enough to cause many a nostalgic tear to be piped as the procession wound its way slowly from bed to bed.

"Lovely!" was the opinion of blind old Mrs Harris, who had been admitted to have an operation for cataract in the New Year. "Nicest Christmas morning I've known since I was a child!"

Mrs Harris had been the eldest of a large family and her childhood must have been very short indeed. She had spent the last fifteen Christmases alone in a single room, preferring not to be a burden to her own children and finding them singularly co-operative in this matter, as modern families are inclined to be. The staff of the Women's General had decided this was going to be the Christmas of Mrs Harris's life, if they had anything to do with it.

The procession filed out of the last ward and paused to have a prolonged giggling fit as Night Sister stumbled down a step which wasn't there.

"All: together, nurses," this lady now firmly adjured. "We'll sing While Shepherds Watched far the Sisters. Come along now,"

Though the song lingered on, however, the listeners had fled Blanche armed with tea-tray, had found every bird flown, "Gone to watch the children open their parcels, I'll be bound!" she decided, and seized the opportunity to place a small parcel on each bed-side table before dashing off to have a peep info tibia children's ward herself. There, surely enough, were the errant Sisters, helping snail hands with knots and wrappings. Quite a few of the day nurses were present, too, having walked over from the Nurses' Home.

It was a dry, windy day and dawn broke stormily with a pink, herringboned sky.

Breakfast was in one sitting for the day staff, seniors and juniors together for the benefit of the kitchen staff who had quite a programme ahead of them. It was a wonderful breakfast with a choice of bacon or ham, egg, mushrooms and tomato.

"I'm having the lot if it kills me," said Sister Prothero with the light of battle in her watery eye.

"Good for you!" applauded Jean Colles. "What I say is you may as well have heartburn off a full stomach as not. The ham's gorgeous. What do you say, Sister Ramsey? I used to gather all the mushrooms I could eat when I was a kid. They grew in the field opposite. Now a different kind of fungus grows there—modern bungalows." She shrugged. "Isn't it funny how everything was always better when you were young?"

"What's wrong with now?" Eve asked ingenuously.

"Well, speaking for myself—fallen arches," grimaced the other ."Last night when I took my shoes off I thought I'd never be able to put them on again. Yet here I am, ready for another day of it."

"Yet such a day," smiled Eve.

"As you say, such a day, Sister. "I wouldn't miss Christmas for anything. I wonder if any of my mums are going to produce a Christmas baby for us? I slipped along to see and nobody's in labour. I told all the 'waiting' ones I'll be along with the Epsom Salts shortly. We've just got to have a baby today."

"Babies come when they are ready," said Sister Prothero lugubriously. "I don't know why you're fretting, Sister. Haven't you enough work without somebody in the labour ward?"

"All this business of Christmas started because a Very Important Baby was born," said Sister Colles firmly. "I don't mind about the extra work, but I do like my wee Carol or Nicholas to arrive on time."

"I have a cousin who was born on Christmas Day," volunteered Sister Fisher, "and she's called Ethel."

"What a waste!" snorted the midwife. "Think of all the Carols who are born in June! But to have a Christmas birthday without a Christmas name is a sin and a shame I"

Eve lost interest in the conversation as she saw a member of the medical staff hovering in the doorway. Tom appeared to be looking for someone. Her heart quickened and she made her excuses to leave the table. Out in the corridor, however, there was now no sign of Doctor Carrington. Dawn Simmonds was there hiding a package under the bib of her apron.

"Why, hello, Eve—Sister!" she greeted mischievously.

"That's all right, we're not on duty yet," Eve said quickly. "I phoned the Home last evening, but you were out Have a good time?"

"Wonderful," said Dawn. "I was dancing. Thanks for the supply of tights, Eve, I can do with them. Sorry I didn't get you anything, but I'm rather short of cash at the moment."

"Don't worry," smiled the older girl. "I seem to get far too many presents every Christmas. By the way, have you seen Doctor Carrington?"

"Why—er—no. Why should I?"

Dawn looked guilty, almost, and Eve was puzzled by her demeanour.

"I thought I saw him glance into the dining-room a moment ago and I wanted a word with him."

"Whatever for?" Again Dawn looked peculiar.

"Why not?" smiled Eve. "I have something to discuss with him."

"Not me, I hope?"

"Now why should I want to discuss you with Doctor Carrington?" Eve enquired. "Go and get some breakfast If I know you your stomach's still empty."

"Was somebody taking my name in vain a moment ago?" asked Tom Carrington, appearing from a nearby broom-cupboard. He looked past Eve at her sister, who promptly entered the dining-room. "Happy Christmas, darling'." he whispered.

"Happy Christmas!" Eve realised that all the greetings in the world would not make her as happy as she had been half an hour ago. She couldn't explain why a blanket of depression and apprehension had descended suddenly over her spirits. "Were you very busy last evening?" she asked.

He pondered her words for a moment, then exploded into speech. "Oh, rather! I didn't get to my bed until one a.m. I must be going, sweetie. When will I see you again?"

"When are you free?"

"The lord knows. Shall I give you a tinkle?"

"Yes, do that."

She walked away convinced that she had just been talking to a charming stranger, instead of the man she loved and was planning to marry.

The spirit of Christmas soon absorbed her into the jollity of the day, however. Even the routine had a touch of magic about it. The medical staff were full of bonhomie and chaff. Tom, strolling in the shadow of his 'boss,' Senior Resident Doctor Widdup, looked like his old self as he winked at Sister out of the corner of his eye and gave her a long lingering look redolent of secrets shared She began to believe she had only imagined his earlier preoccupation, and of course he hadn't really been hiding in the broom-cupboard. Maybe he kept his cigarettes there, or something. One was always coming upon a junior resident having a quick 'gasper' in all sorts of odd places.

The Mayoral visit came and passed without incident, and the staff visibly relaxed that nobody had demanded either a bed-pan or vomit-bowl while the local dignitaries were reviewing their ranks. Eve heard that Sister Colles was growing desperate that nobody looked like producing a baby for her that day.

It was almost time for the patients' dinner (a midday affair in hospitals) before Eve had time to call on 'Mr Brown' and inform him that his bed was being wheeled into the ward for a few hours.

"If it's easier for you. Sister," he told her. "But I'm not exactly an asset to a party."

"I think you are," she contradicted, "if only as an 'audience.' We have enough solo turns in there, as you'll discover. I'll just get somebody to help me."

"Just a moment, Sister," he requested. "While we're still alone .... "

"Yes, Mr Brown?" That tell-tale colour was mounting her throat and flooding her cheeks, she knew, try as she would to control it.

"In my locker," he said "Something for you with my heart's love and gratitude."

"Mr Brown, you shouldn't have done this," she said, taking a flat package out of the locker which was obviously a long-playing record. "I've done no more for you than anybody else here."

A long thin hand lay for a moment on her arm.

"You've done more for me, Sister Ramsey, than you realise. I've recaptured my lost faith in womankind, thanks to you. Your charm and modesty are only matched by your vitality and efficiency. Somebody's an extremely lucky fellow."

"I—I love Beethoven," she said, looking hurriedly at the label on the package in her hands while flicking a finger across her damp lashes.

"I know. I've conspired with the staff nurse over this." He fished under his pillow and drew out a bruised sprig of mistletoe, holding it up over his head. "Do you think he'd mind, this once?" he asked.

Eve bent swiftly and kissed him on the lips. His own trembled slightly and she became briskly efficient under his intent gaze.

"No more nonsense," she said sternly, telling herself she was not feeling emotional over one of her patients. "I must get help, and then it's the ward for you."

At three o'clock the visitors poured in, and all were invited to four o'clock tea. Apart from seeing that there were enough ham and salmon sandwiches and trifles to feed the five thousand, the members of the staff were free to relax for an hour and many seized the opportunity to look at various small parcels passed by their colleagues during the dinner break.

"I gave everybody tights, and everybody's given me the same!" sighed Staff Nurse Whitley in exasperation. "Last year I got enough eau-de-Cologne to bathe in."

"And did you?" enquired the Jamaican, Nurse Addams, with genuine interest.

Dawn Simmonds was sitting in a corner of the large kitchen covertly examining a pretty brooch.

"From the boy-friend?" asked Nurse Singh, who had an inborn interest in jewellery.

"Sort of," replied Dawn, putting the trinket away. "Hello!" she exclaimed as someone in an exquisite mink coat walked past the kitchen door. "I know her!"

"Who is, it?" asked Nurse Whitley.

"That's Vanessa Conyngham, the actress," Dawn enlarged. "When I was working in London I modelled several dresses for her. We're the same size."

"What's she doing here, then?" the other girls asked, and managed to crowd into the doorway to eavesdrop on the conversation in Sister's office, next door.

"She wants to see Mr Wylde," whispered Nurse Singh, who had the sharpest ears. "But we have nobody called Wylde on this ward."

"Oh, yes, we have!" exclaimed Dawn triumphantly. "Don't you see? Our V.I.P., Mr Brown, is really Victor Wylde, the famous Harley Street surgeon, who was injured in the car which crashed while his fiancée was driving! The engagement was broken off, owing to the state he was. in, but it's Christmas and she's come to see him. Well done, Vanessa!"

"He was the only one without a visitor," Nurse Whitley said sentimentally. "Now don't all fight for the honour, because I've decided I shall give that happy couple their tea!"

CHAPTER III

"Really, Vic," said Vanessa Conyngham shortly, "what are you doing here, of all places, and why are you using an assumed name? I've had the devil's own job tracing you. Even Horace Dacres tried to fob me off, but I was determined to look you up. But all this mystery—!" She clacked her tongue in annoyance. "Aren't you glad to see me?" she demanded.

"No," he said cheerfully, knowing that he was hurting nothing but her vanity, "and you're not particularly glad to see me, either. Your conscience decrees that you assure yourself of my continued existence periodically, and this I'm prepared to grant you, but we needn't ring the old changes, need we?"

"Don't be bitter, Vic. I couldn't help the accident, you know. You make me feel so awful, that I escaped with bruises and you—" she drew out a scrap of a handkerchief and dabbed her eyes briefly. "What's this 'Mr Brown' business?" she then demanded.

"Anonymity," he told her. "Something you've never craved, Vanessa. Horace told me I needed sea air, and it had to be somewhere cheap because I haven't earned a penny in three years, so he got me in here. I like this wee hospital and I've been well nursed and very happy. I shall be sorry to go when they kick me out. The anonymity was Horace's idea: it's hard on young internees and nurses looking after the hierarchy of their profession. I suppose I was one of the hierarchy?" he asked as though of himself.

"You were at the top of your profession," she said curtly. "I don't know why you had to be anonymous after all this time ..." she paused uncertainly.

"You mean Victor Wylde, M.A., M.S., is forgotten after three years?" he asked cynically. "I suppose you could be right Horace must have been pandering to my deflated ego."

"I didn't mean to belittle you," the actress said with a suggestion of a sneer, "but you doctors are inclined to think everybody's interested in medical subjects. I'll bet forty-five people out of every fifty have never even heard of Victor Wylde, or his surgical textbooks."

"You're probably right, Vanessa."

In the office Eve was extremely annoyed with her sister. Dawn appeared to be gifted with causing embarrassment to the ward.

"Even if you did recognise the woman, and put two and two together, you needn't have blabbed it out to the others!" she scolded. "There was obviously an official reason why Mr Wylde's identity was not revealed. Now I'll have to tell Matron the cat's out of the bag."

"Putting the blame on little me, of course?" the other sneered.

"I'll try not to. I'll simply say that Miss Conyngham was recognised and asked for Mr Wylde. She did, you know. I didn't know who she meant and she pointed him out in the ward. Everybody here will know Victor Wylde; the library is full of his books. Very well, Dawn. What's done is done. But do be more careful in future."

Matron was philosophical when she heard that the V.I.P. in Men's General had been recognised.

"It was bound to come," she shrugged. "And with famous actresses descending upon us, too. It was for your sakes we kept him dark. Nursing a famous member of one's own profession is always rather nerve-racking. Try not to let it make any difference, though you can fill his chart in correctly now."

Trying not to let it make any difference was more easily said than done, however. When she remembered it was not 'Mr Brown' who had given her the L.P. of Beethoven's Fidelia, but Mr Victor Wylde, of Harley Street, with a string of letters deservedly after his name, her very scalp tingled; and when she remembered that brief kiss under the faded mistletoe, and his voice saying "—something for you, with my heart's love and gratitude," she felt positively weak.

Eve did not see their V.I.P. again until she was taking pulses that same evening. A lingering perfume which had emanated from Miss Conyngham still hung like a presence about the room. As she sought the pulse his other hand came over and sought hers.

"Please don't, sir," she said promptly, and was aware of his sudden questioning glance.

"So it's like that, is it?" he enquired. "Vanessa has told you?"

"No, no," she said hastily. "Miss Conyngham had nothing to do with it, apart from the fact that she's easily recognisable. Have you enjoyed your Christmas, Mr Wylde?"

"Until now, Sister, yes."

"I'm sorry. What's wrong at the moment, far?"

"All this starch crackling between us. I'm not a member of the profession any longer, Sister. I am truly a 'Mr Brown'. Damn it! I liked being 'Mr Brown.'"

She closed the door quickly, feeling a little sad herself that 'Mr. Brown' had ceased to exist in the side ward.

Eve came out of the chemist's shop, faced into the teeth of the gale and decided she had never felt so cold in all her life before. According to the weather reports there was snow on the way; it had already fallen in Scotland and the north, and today a northerly wind howled, bowling ever more darkling clouds towards the south coast resort.

Because she was going back on duty she was dressed in uniform, a navy blue gaberdine coat over Tier dark dress, worn with a neat little forage cap from under which peeped her honey-fair hair. She had been shopping for sundry of her patients; pipe, tobacco for Grandpa Waddell, who was allowed to smoke for an hour after breakfast, and again after supper in the evenings; a pack of playing cards for 'Dandy' Rutherford, a new patient who was at present on the observation list; a birthday card for a 'dear wife,' were Mr Beddoes' instructions, and finally Mr Wylde wanted a collection of reliable ball-point pens. He had started writing seriously, since Christmas, and Eve hoped this meant a new book was on the way.

Having completed her shopping she crossed the promenade and made for the white facade of the Marine Hotel, where she was due to meet Tom at four o'clock prompt for afternoon tea. She hadn't been alone with him for ages, and her heart's longing was in her eyes as ,she saw his sandy-fair head bent over a book as he sat waiting at their favourite table in the nook behind a potted palm with a window over-looking the great grey rollers of the Channel.

"Darling! You look quite blue!" he said as he regarded her, briefly unwinding his legs to half rise in greeting.

"I know. I'm cold. I should have worn a cardigan. How are you, darling?"

"Fair to middling. I'm mugging this lot up, as you sec," he indicated the textbook in front of him. "Exams soon," he grimaced. "Well, what did you want to see me about?"

She looked at him blankly, blowing on her numbed fingers.

"You asked if I was free and suggested we meet here," he reminded her. "There must have been something on your mind."

The waiter arrived with the tea and hot buttered toast at that moment, so she poured as she pondered his words and her own reply.

"No nothing was on my mind, Tom. I simply wanted to see you. It's been so long."

"Less than a fortnight since we sat at this very table," he teased her, "and I went a little mad and sort of proposed to you."

" 'Soft of proposed'?" she echoed. "I understood you did it properly."

"Well—" he shrugged—"I must have been madder than I thought. Do you mind if I keep on reading, love? I can't afford to waste a moment of my free time."

She regarded his bent head with mixed feelings. The hot tea imbibed warmed her body, but her heart remained chilled. She had often sat like this with Tom while he crammed for something or other, but they had always been very conscious one of the other. Today, however, she felt he was as much aware of her as the palm which screened them from the view of others.

"Tom," she pleaded, putting her hand on his, "can't you stop reading just for five minutes? I have to go back on duty and I want to be sure—well—that you love me still."

"Eve," he said a little impatiently, "what brought this on? Have you any doubt in your mind about my love for you? If so now's the time to say so."

She drew back as though stung.

"Tom! that's unkind. You've neglected me disgracefully lately, and when I ask you to meet me here for an hour you give me to understand you're wasting your time being with me. What sort of an engagement is this? You say it must be kept a secret, but that we would know our happiness in one another. With that I was content But I can't love entirely in my remembrance and imagination. I've got to be with you as often as possible. I've been afraid you haven't —haven't cared as much, lately."

Her lashes drooped, over eyes grown dewy with tears, and his hand clasped hers with sudden ferocity.

"Eve you're not to say that You're the best and dearest sweetheart any man could ever want I'm a lucky fellow. It's just that there's so much on my mind and other things distract me. Try to bear with me and wait, Eve. Be there, waiting, when I need you." He struck the table suddenly, violently. "I've missed you, too. What can we do to make up for everything?"

She smiled suddenly, her fears allayed few the present.

"That's all right, Tom. I must be starting a cold, nr something to be so depressed. I wish we could show how we feel about one another more often, let other people know. When you come in the ward I have the dickens of a job not to shout out, 'He's here! the man I'm going to marry!' Just imagine the general reaction if I did!"

"You're sweet," he caressed her with his voice. "I want to kiss you."

"Not in here!" she panicked.

So it was that when she went back on duty her heart was lighter than it had been for a week. She and Tom had been discussing the senior staff dance and he saw no reason why they shouldn't go together, openly. Every pretty Sister and woman doctor usually had an escort in tow on this annual occasion, and Eve was pretty enough not to be neglected on this respect Still it was pleasant to know that should young Doctor Trench drop any further hints about the dance, she could tell him that she was being accompanied by Doctor Carrington and thank him very much for his kind offer.

In spite of her inward happiness, however, she noticed that Mr Wylde was not his usual bright self. He said he didn't want any supper.

"Now what's this?" she asked, taking his pulse automatically. "I thought you were feeling so well you were going home next week?"

"Home!" he exploded. "A flat with a housekeeper and a trained nurse coming in every day. Not even a decent view. I don't want to go home, Sister."

She felt a sudden wave of pity wash over her.

"Haven't you any family, Mr Wylde?" she asked.

"I have a sister, married, in Kenya, but who covets the role of burden? I'm sorry, Sister, I shouldn't allow my depression to show like this, but I do have bouts, occasionally, when I kick against fate, metaphorically speaking," he added bitterly, surveying the Cage covering his useless limbs. "It might be better for me if I ceased believing in miracles. You see I sometimes feel convinced that this isn't the end of Vic Wylde; that one day I'll actually leave my bed and walk again. Nobody has said I won't; I'm a bit of a mystery. But why doesn't it happen? Haven't I been patient enough?" His head sank wearily upon his chest. "Sister, I don't want to go home for everything to be as it was! Do you understand?"

She did an unethical thing by sitting on the edge of a patient's bed and holding his hand firmly. Famous surgeon he may have been, but at this moment he was depressed, discouraged and despairing. He heart went out to him.

"This isn't like you at all, sir," she said reprovingly. "Of course miracles happen, and I shall pray that yours is one of them. Don't lose heart. Home may seem a cold, bleak place in your circumstances, but you mustn't lose your faith."

"I could keep it better with you beside me, Sister."

"You mustn't say things like that to me, sir," she said gently. "You know why. I told you."

"That must have been in my deaf ear," he smiled suddenly, "because I also told you something. I believe in miracles. They don't always concern the halt and the lame, you know."

*

After meeting her half-aster by accident during her morning off duty, Eve treated the girl to a coffee at the Rendezvous, a less pretentious place than the Marine Hotel.

"I've seen surprisingly little of you, Dawn," said the elder girl, "apart from on the ward."

"Where we see rather too much of each other," the younger girl retorted bluntly. "I invariably seem to be on some mat or other."

'T thought we might do a cinema together, sometime? My treat, of course," Eve said hastily as the other regarded her askance.

"My dear Evie, you must be joking," Dawn grimaced. "I can't -think of anything less entertaining than going to the pictures with my own sister. I'm a big girl now, or hadn't you realised?"

"You mean you prefer masculine companionship?" Eve smiled.

"Don't you? Don't tell me you're so pi you haven't been kissed. You're not bad-looking," Dawn said this in a way which implied she considered herself the prettier, "though you're letting the years slip away. By the time I'm twenty-five I intend to be married, have produced a child and be all set to really enjoy myself."

"Then you surely shouldn't have dismissed Robert," Eve observed.

"Oh, lord, Robert isn't the only pebble on the beach. He was quite dull, really. There are some nice men here, sister dear, or hadn't you noticed?"

Eve was intrigued. "You mean you have another boy-friend already?"

"I prefer to call him a man friend. Now don't ask any more questions, or you'll only disapprove."

"I could only disapprove if your man Mend was a member of our medical staff. As you're a junior nurse they're not supposed to associate with you."

"Don't worry We'll be careful."

"You mean it is one of the doctors?" Eve was already ticking the staff off mentally in her mind. "Tell me who it is," she urged.

"No." Dawn made a moue with her doll-like mouth. "He told me not to tell anybody, and that goes for you, too, sister mine. You can't help being a wet blanket, I suppose, but you just are whenever I'm enjoying myself in my own way."

"I'm sorry. I sound a very dingy sort of person."

"Oh, I suppose you have a few good points," Dawn granted. "You're generous, and I believe you mean well."

"Please tell me one thing, Dawn, before I stop prying into your affaire. You—you wouldn't do anything really wrong with this man, would you? I mean he may be married, and—"

"He's not married, and—no, I wouldn't." The girl actually flushed for a moment "I'm really far better able to take care of myself than you are, sis. Remember I've looked after myself in London, and you really haven't been anywhere much, have you? I'll grant you're senior to me in nursing, but I'm the wise one in every other way. You haven't even been engaged yet."

Eve wanted to confide about Tom in that moment, but restrained herself.

"Well, do watch out for yourself, dear," she advised the other. "I want you to be happy. Do believe that." She looked in her purse and gave the other a pound note.

"Buy yourself some tights or something," she smiled. "And now I must go. Are you coming to the dance tonight?"

Though the dinner was for senior staff only, the junior nurses were invited to come and dance for the last two hours of the evening if they so wished.

"It all depends," said Dawn, offhandedly. "I'm seeing him after duty and we may—or may not— drop in."

"Then I'll know who he is," Eve smiled.

"Oh, no, you won't. We'll both be circulating pretty freely. Now stop fishing and go on bade to your awful old men!"

"They're not awful and they're not all old," Eve felt bound to demur, and left the cafe realising that Dawn's fair face was the empty made of heartlessness. She was so incapable of compassion she must be equally devoid of the ability to love; If she couldn't love therefore, what was her offering to any man who was attracted to her?

"She said she wouldn't do anything that was wrong," Eve pondered, yet there were many varieties of wrongdoing, and she hadn't been specific on the subject.

Behind screens in the second bed on the left side of the ward 'Grandpa' Phillips lay dying. He was not really a grandfather, but every gentleman over seventy was automatically accorded this title, the same as all the old ladies in the hospital, who were addressed as 'Granny' whether they had ever known the marital state or not.

'Grandpa' Phillips was unconscious and not suffering any pain whatsoever. His frail, gentle old wife was sitting on the chair by the side of the bed, holding one of the dry, heavily-veined hands in her own. Her eyes looked as bright as a bird's through her thick-lensed spectacles. She looked up in relief as Eve appeared and closed the screens behind her.

"Sister!" the tears came now, thick and fast, and Eve forgot about her newly clean apron as she put her arms about the old woman and held her close in comfort.

"There now, Mrs Phillips," she crooned. "Try to think the best of this—that he's not suffering and was quite cheerful until early this morning when he took a turn for the worse. Would you like a cup of tea?"

"How—how long?" asked the old woman, indicating the bed.

"Oh—it may be a matter of hours, or minutes. One can't tell. But you must keep your strength up. Ill tell Nurse to bring some tea."

"You've been so good to him," the woman went on emotionally. "He always said how good you were, all of you. But last evening he said something queer—as though he knew the end was near—he said, 'If I die, Emma, I hope Sister's there with me. Yon's a lass to give a fellow a good start on the road to heaven. She's an angel, Emma. A pure, bright angel.' Those were his very words, Sister, and you will be with him at the end, won't you?"

"Don't worry, Mrs Phillips. I'm no angel, but if it's any comfort to you I'll stay as long as I'm needed."

It was only fifteen minutes after this promise that Eve decided it was time to send for the doctor. Tom was cm duty that afternoon, she knew. By the time he arrived the faint pulse had ceased to beat under Sister's investigating finger, and Doctor Carrington breathed a sigh of thankfulness as he drew the sheet over the lifeless face. He had the doctor's dislike of hopeless medical cases, though he naturally did all he could for them.

Eve took the widow along to her office. An old lady of seventy-five, newly bereaved, is another likely candidate for hospitalisation if she is not treated with due consideration and care in those first moments of the realisation of a dread loss.

Eve managed to trace the rector of the parish where the Phillips had lived for many years, who promised to come and take Mrs Phillips home and arrange for a neighbour to stay with her as long as required This kindly deed accomplished, she left the old woman having another cup of tea, laced with brandy, and went back into the ward where Tom was talking to one of the nurses and making her laugh.

"You'd better help Staff with Mr Phillips, Nurse," she said briskly, and then addressed Doctor Carrington. "Are you wanting to see anyone else, sir?"

"No, thank you, Sister," he said coolly, then smiled a little and observed, "You oozed disapproval there, my love. Were you jealous that I was brightening another fair maiden's day a little?"

"Not at all," she replied promptly. "I thought with a death on the ward it was hardly the time for raucous jokes."

"Touché!" he bowed mockingly. "Very right and proper. By the way, darling, I'm not huffed, or anything like that, but I can't after all, take you to the dinner."

"Oh, Tom! " she almost wailed They were outside the office by now. "Why not?"

"Well—er—it's old Doctor Ashington again. He sort of relies on me nowadays. A bore, I know, but there it is. I'll look in at the do later and we'll dance the cha-cha-cha together."

Her disappointment was acute, but she had, perforce, to make the best of things in the circumstances.

It was ironical that she had refused the persistent Doctor Trench's escort only that morning, and he was now reported to be taking Sister Fisher under his wing. She dallied with the idea of not going to the function at all, but soon put this aside as unworthy. Matron and the senior medical staff really put themselves about to unbend on this social occasion, and it would be ungracious not to attend because one's personal arrangements had come unstuck. Tom had a watertight excuse; he was helping a fellow doctor, out; but the rest of the staff would be there in full force, she knew.

"Call in and see me when you're all dressed up," urged Victor Wylde after she answered the ringing of his bell for attention just after tea-time. He had heard about the dinner-dance from the staff nurse, who was his willing informant regarding the activities of her senior.

"Now why would you want me to do that, sir?" Eve twinkled at him.

"Because it's a long time since I saw a woman decked up for the evening, and I think you'll be good on these weary eyes."

"Very well," she agreed "Just for you. You're—er —going home tomorrow?" she enquired, knowing full well that this was true.

"Yes. But I'm adjusted to the idea now. No more weeping all over you as I once did, to my lasting shame."

"Oh that's all right, sir. It's partly why we're hereto cry on, I mean. And you didn't cry too hard, or long. I think you're—very brave."

He bit his lip. "Now that's the nicest thing you've said to me since I ceased being 'Mr Brown' Sister. I believe you do like me a little."

"I like you a lot," she corrected quickly. "You've been an ideal patient"

"Who wants to be liked as a patient!" he scorned, as she turned to make her exit. "I only took you to Gstaad in my imagination because I couldn't go on foot! If I had two good legs there'd be an old-fashioned carrying-off, my girl, white horse and all! You don't know the peril you're in, stirring emotion in this manly bosom of mine! I am still a man, you know!"

From the doorway she smiled teasingly.

"If you weren't going home tomorrow, Mr Wylde, I would request a male nurse for you. You're getting to be the terror of my ward!"

She sighed out in the corridor, however. This bantering exchange was all very well, but it "was wrong to feel so fond of a patient It would seem lonely when he had gone, no matter how busy they were on the ward. His life sounded lonely too, though she didn't doubt that he'd driven his friends away rather than endure their pity. He was that sort of a person. She was glad he had his writing to turn to. Perhaps he would write her a letter, but she mustn't answer it. It didn't do to get on personal terms with one's ex-patients.

*

Five minutes before she was due to go off duty on this special evening, there was the usual flap on the ward. An emergency accident case was being sent to them direct from Casualty as Orthopaedic Ward was full to overflowing.

"Well, that's what a general ward is for, I suppose," Eve shrugged, "bits of everything. It will be our only orthopod at the moment"

"Fractured femur," recited Staff, who had taken the message over the telephone. "So that means fracture-boards, and probably traction. Don't worry. Sister, we can manage."

"I'd better see him into bed," Eve said conscientiously. She little realised how that simple phrase would be the cause of raining her peace of mind for the duration of the evening ahead.

"A doctor—local—" Staff went on as they made up an orthopaedic bed with fracture boards and supporting beams—"Had we better screen him oft, Sister?"

"Yes, do that. Since we closed the P.P. wing, special patients, such as doctors, are granted the privacy of screens. Here comes the trolley now."

The accompanying porter handed her the new patient's notes, and Eve was surprised to see that the victim of the accident was none other than Doctor Ashington. He had his broken limb in a Thomas's splint Obviously any surgery he needed was being left until the morrow.

"Doctor," she addressed him, "I'm sorry about this. What happened?"

"Damned young cyclist using the pavement instead of the road Bowled me into my own car. A ridiculous accident. M'leg hurts like hell."

"Nurse will you give me something for the pain in an hour, Doctor. I understand you had a quarter of morphia in Casualty."

"Did I? Doesn't feel like it, Sister. I shall be a difficult patient We medicos always are."

"Thanks for the warning. Anyway, Doctor Ashington, at least there's no need to worry about your patients this evening." She smiled as she pulled the quilt over the bed-cage.

"No?" he asked. "How's that, Sister? I was out visiting when this happened They told me in Casualty they'd send a lad to take my surgery."

"But isn't Doctor Carrington taking your surgery this evening?"

"Carrington? Carrington? That's the ginger fellow who helped me out once? Not that I know of. I haven't seen him since the end of summer."

"Oh. I understood he was visiting your patients on Christmas Eve, while you had an asthmatic attack, sir?" She felt as though her very life depended upon an answer in the affirmative. Elderly gentlemen were inclined to be forgetful.

"No my dear. He must have been helping somebody out, if he says so, but not me. Touch wood, my asthma hasn't bothered me yet this winter. Can't the injection be brought forward just half an hour, Sister? Just half an hour?"

"No, sir," she heard herself denying firmly, while it seemed her heart had left her body and was lying somewhere at the end of a long metal chain, still attached to her and heavy as lead. "Mr Beauclere will be along any minute now, and you can ask him. I'm going off duty now, but the staff nurse will be on call if you want her. Try to rest, Doctor, and I'll see you in the morning. Don't worry about anything."

Don't worry about anything, she could cheerfully say to other people, yet her own world was suddenly in ruins about her ears. Why had Tom lied to her, not once, but twice? On each occasion they should have been doing something together, yet he had lied to clear her out of his way so that he could do something preferable. But what could he prefer to her company if he genuinely loved her? Was his love a word—a mood—to be enjoyed or discarded at will?

She trailed off duty still with such questions milling round in her tormented brain.

What was Tom doing now, at this very minute, which he found more to his liking than taking her to the staff dinner? If he came in later, to the dance, would he take her in his arms as though lies had not come between them and their love like maggots eating the flesh of fruit, leaving rottenness behind?

She was ignited by a sudden blaze of justifiable anger, which lit up her eyes and her countenance so that Doctor Trench, hailing her—and being ignored for his pains—in the corridor, thought with a sigh how beautiful she looked and how lucky some other guy was, did he but knew it and appreciate his good fortune.

She wanted to run headlong into Tom and explode her anger over him at that very moment, but anger which is nursed cools rapidly, and when she reached the Sisters' Block she was searching her mind for excuses to make his conduct and his lies less unpardonable.

Could it be that he was working so hard for his degree that he had to run out of the normal excuses and was reduced to telling lies to get out of something they had planned to do together?

"But I would always excuse him for studying," she decried this as she thankfully climbed into her dressing gown. "It has to be something he can't share with me; and the only thing I can imagine him keeping from me is some sordid little affair with another woman I"

Well, it was out now, and she knew this must be the truth of the matter, Tom had experienced numerous flirtations before he had declared that true love had come to him in the heaven of her 'quiet serenity and gentle woman's eyes.' She had treasured these words of his, but if he thought he could have her—and flirt with someone else at one and the same time....

Jean Colles put her head round the door.

"I wondered if you would do my hair for me? You gave me a bouffant when I was going to that wedding. Do you remember?"

"I'll do it with pleasure, Sister, I'm just going to have a quick dip. You'd better get dressed and well do the hair last of all. I'll come along to your room in about fifteen minutes."

Eve was glad of her colleagues during the next half hour of preparation. She couldn't think about Tom and his lies and possible defection while there was Sister Prothero to zip into a dress as red as her dyspeptic nose, and Sister Fisher, who was being escorted by the eligible Doctor Trench, had to be turned out like a bride, with everybody helping and lending things.

"Wear my ruby pendants," urged Sister Day, proffering a pair of lovely old-fashioned earrings. "Oh, my dear, you're not pierced! What a shame! Shall I do it for you now with a hot darning-needle?"

"Don't you dare!" warned the other. "I don't suit earrings, anyway. They make me look like a gipsy. Thanks, all the same."

"I have a pair of blue brocade shoes, the identical colour of your dress, Sister," Eve suggested. "Would they--er—"

"Fit me, dear?" smiled Linda Fisher. "I'm no Cinderella. I've taken sevens since I was thirteen, and I certainly haven't shrunk. No, I'll have to do as I am. Anyway, why did you turn my laddie down, Sister?"

"Did he tell you?" asked Eve. "How tactless of him!"

"I suppose he told me rather than that you would. He obviously doesn't know you very well."

"Sister must have another escort," teased Jean Colles.

"No, I haven't as a matter of fact," Eve said hastily. "Come on now, Sister, if I'm to do your hair!"

The whole crowd drifted into Sister Colles's room for an exhibition of hairdressing.

"You have to get yourself ready, you know," Jean said to the dressing-table mirror.

"I won't be long," Eye shrugged. "No fancy hairstyles for me."

"You don't need 'em," the other decided, "If I could swop my wire mop for your hair I wouldn't be sitting here, at your mercy, at this very moment. You're young and very pretty, Sister. Don't miss all your opportunities, as I did."

"How—how many babies have you at the moment?" Eve asked hastily.

"Twenty-four, including three sets of twins. After denying me my Christmas baby the mothers are certainly working overtime now. That's lovely ! How do you do it? Have you had hairdressing experience, Sister?"

"I used to do my sister's hair when she was going to parties."

"So you have a sister? What does she do?"

"She's a nurse, too. There! That's nice without being too fussy, Sister. Now I must go and get ready myself:"

When she eventually reappeared in a plain grey velvet dress, with lavender accessories, her hair in a loose knot at her nape, she made hear fellows feel immediately overdressed and fussy.

"You look very nice Sister," Sadie Prothero said generously. "Very nice indeed."

"Thank you. I—you shouldn't have waited for me. I'm just slipping down to my ward for a minute. I'll see you all there, at the dinner."

She opened the door to the side ward and, without looking at the man in the bed, did a mannequin turn and walked across the room and back.

"There!" she said "I kept my promise, sir. Now I must go."

"Just a minute, Sister," he said quietly. "Haven't you forgotten something?"

"Forgotten something?" she echoed, feeling at her throat, her hair. "No, I don't think so. I never wear much jewellery. Apart from not having any it doesn't suit me."

"Jewellery would be merely painting the lily," Victor Wylde decided "I didn't mean your dress lacked anything. You look superb, and tonight I shall hope to dance with you in my dreams, in that dress. I maintain the happy nymph who scorned my bed-ridden advances a couple of hours ago has suffered a sea-change in that time. What has put out the light in those lovely eyes my love? Where is that singing heart? Don't tell me you keep it stitched to your uniform?"

Eve turned on him a face so suddenly filled with anguish that he was shocked into silence.

"What are you Mr Wylde," she rounded on him, "a mind-reader? You always do go on so, like the onlooker who sees most of the game."

Biting her lip, as though afraid she would say more, too much, perhaps, she left the room and him, perched on one bony elbow staring at the door which had slammed a little after her.

"I touched her on the raw there," he pondered uneasily. "She has been hurt. But by whom? Who would dare to make that lovely girl unhappy? I'd like to thrash him. I will thrash him!" He looked down at the helpless length of him lying in the bed and beat his hands in a tattoo of frustration against the mattress.

CHAPTER IV

The dinner was almost over and the speeches were now in full swing. Normally these were of a light, spontaneous nature, and it was no hardship "either to listen or join in the toasting. The senior consultant, Sir Horace Dacres, was a recognised after-dinner wit in the profession, and was at the moment living up to his considerable reputation. Ripples of laughter were ringing round the municipal hall, which had been hired for the occasion, and only two members of those of the staff present were remotely inattentive. One of these was Sister Eve Ramsey, who acknowledged one thought milling round and round in her brain: Where was Tom Carrington at this very moment, and whose company was he enjoying? She tried to dismiss her preoccupation and take an interest in what "was going on around her, but it was no use. Her simulated laughter sounded hollow and artificial in her own ears, and when the heart does not feel mirth the whole business of laughing becomes a grimacing mockery.

The other person whose thoughts were somewhat perplexed and wandering was young Doctor Trench, houseman and assistant to Seafields Hospital's Senior Surgical Officer. His inattention was coupled with Eve's in that she had inadvertently disturbed his own evening's enjoyment After almost asking her to honour him by being his companion in these capers on occasions too numerous to mention, he had finally plucked up his courage and made the request, red-faced and almost defiant in his embarrassment. Her rejection of his offer had been phrased in so kindly a manner that he felt no hurt from it. He concluded that she must be going with a bigger noise than he could claim to be, and philosophically he had looked through the ranks of the other nursing seniors and found his invitation this time accepted with alacrity.

Now, to Doctor Trench's consternation, Sister Ramsey was sitting among her colleagues unescorted and aloof. She looked lovely and her hair was shining like an aura; he had never before seen her without the strings and frills of her Sister's cap, and the picture she made stirred him peculiarly and made him want to stare. Yet he was also conscious of feeling annoyed with her for toning him down with apparently no other motive than lack of interest in his offer. He was sure that in his dinner jacket he looked no end of a fellow, and they would have looked a handsome couple dancing together. Well—he side-glanced at his companion, who fluttered her eyelashes at him and whinnied softly—he couldn't be expected to dance with one person all evening. The men were outnumbered as it was, and when the nurses came in it would be ridiculous not to select the prettiest of the bunch and really make it a party. He didn't know yet whether Sister Ramsey would be one of the chosen; he hadn't decided whether or not to be offended with her. Perhaps it would serve her right if she was left to dance with Sister Prothero, whose company she had obviously preferred, in the first place, to his.

Eve was fated, however, not to enjoy the obscurity she sought on this particular evening. The dancing, which opened with the usual warming-up waltz, found her in the arms of Doctor Widdup, the senior physician, and for seven minutes she was so busy keeping her brocaded feet out from under her escort's determined tread that she was glad to have escaped without requiring attention from a chiropodist.

Sir Horace was the next to claim her, much to her own horror and her colleagues' envious regard. The consultant proved to be extremely accomplished in the slow foxtrot, and she would have enjoyed that brief encounter had she been capable of enjoying anything that evening. The consultant observed:

"You dance beautifully, Sister. Our mutual friend will ask me and I shall tell him of the honour you do me. Actually he's not a bad dancer himself. It was he who urged me to ask you, on his account, but I'm happy to have discovered you for myself."

"Sir," said Eve, with a deference due the great man, "I presume you're speaking of Mr Wylde?" He nodded. "You said he is not a bad dancer. Surely you mean 'was'?"

"Of course!" Sir Horace frowned. "I can never think of Vic as a helpless log, somehow. He was the soul of vitality, and that's the way I think of him, remember him."

No more was said about their patient, and after the foxtrot was concluded there was a sudden invasion of nurses, some towing their boy-friends, and Eve had time only to observe Dawn laughing in the middle of a throng of other girls and young men, when Doctor Trench was once more asking her to' do him the honour, this time by partnering him in a Quickstep.

At the same moment Tom was there, all smiles and arms held wide to enfold her. She knew Tom danced divinely, she had known ecstasy with her cheek pressed to his before tonight, but he looked so sure of himself —and her—that her outraged pride rebelled a little, even though she stabbed herself afresh in denying him. She murmured something to Doctor Trench and found herself held stiffly, as though the man had fracture-boards for arms, and together they reeled round the hall, each uncertain of what the other was going to do next.

"I—I don't dance very well," was the understatement of Jim Trench's career. "Ouch! I didn't see them coming."

"Perhaps we should sit this one out, Doctor?" Eve suggested, as she was used as a battering-ram for the third time in a minute.

"I say, would you? I—I'll get a couple of drinks. Gin do?"

"Why not?" Eve said recklessly. She had been so busy trying to keep clear of disaster on the dance floor that she hadn't had time to notice Tom's reaction to her going off with someone else. She now felt a pang as she saw him guiding Dawn expertly through the throng. Her sister was looking lovely in a dress of peach crepe, and she was talking animatedly, looking up in that way she had of making a man feel he was all that was important, at that moment, on the planet It was the last waltz before Tom approached her again, and he was still smiling. They had both proved extremely popular with other partners, and her own evening had died in a blaze of desolation long ago as she danced on feet grown strangely leaden and watched Tom, apparently light of foot and heart, so obviously enjoying every moment.

"Darling!" he said now in that-velvet voice of his. "Can I get a look in with you at last? I heard of your triumph with His Nibs. No wonder I got the frozen mitt when I tried to crash in on your evening."

"Oh, Tom," she breathed into his lapel, "it's been a horrid evening. "I'm glad it's over."

"Comet come! Cinders found her prince, albeit he's married to a Paris-style type wife already, and if she has to go back to the kitchen tomorrow, think what memories She'll have!"

This was Tom's way of teasing and amusing one. She found she couldn't raise a smile, however. They were skating—or waltzing—on the thin outer ice of a deep and dangerous pond, avoiding the middle where a false step could plunge their romance to its doom. And yet what romance that was worth its salt was afraid to take a risk and either purify or destroy itself ... ? Eve said casually, every word a sword of significance in her own ears:

"Where did you say you were going earlier this evening, Tom?"

"Oh, lord! that's a long time and a few drinks past, my sweet. I was—was—"

"Taking Doctor Ashington's surgery?" she probed, realising she didn't want to prove him a liar and yet knowing she couldn't live with the thought that he might be one.

"That's right," he agreed, squeezing her boisterously. "That old so-and-so has some patients. He must be making a packet. What's that, sweetheart? What did you say?"

"I said I don't believe you, Tom I don't believe you were taking Doctor Ashington's surgery at all."

He looked down into the steel of her eyes and quickly away again. His throat and face had coloured like a beetroot and he was trying to take umbrage, with the result that he deliberately trod on her foot.

"There's a nice thing to say!" he muttered broodingly. "If anybody saw me in the Cock, and blabbed, I was only having a cold beer after a damned long session. Are you having me watched or something?"

"No." The dance had ended and she stood back from him, unhappy, repelled and coldly angry at his continued lying insistence. "Doctor Ashington happens to be a patient on my ward, that's all." He paled in an instant, and had she not known him better she would have thought he was going to faint. "He says you didn't take his surgery on Christmas Eve, either. I don't want to know what you've been doing lately, Tom, when you obviously preferred doing it to being with me, but you're quite free, in future, to do it as often as you like. After this, I could never—never respect you the same again."

He caught at her shoulder as she would have left him.

"Eve, you cant mean that! We love each other! I—"

"You mean I loved you " she said bitterly, "which isn't quite the same thing, Tom. I'm hurt and I want to go to bed. Please let me go and—goodnight."

His laugh was hollow as he still continued to shadow her.

"A hell of a night I'll have after this! " he told her. "You can't turn against me without hearing my explanations, Eve, I do love you. You must believe that I can't bear to lose you. Don't let's speak of such things. I'm not perfect, I've been weak and foolish lately, but I've also been working damned hard, and I think that's some excuse. Look, Eve, I can't follow you into the ladies' cloakroom, so at least grant me an hour of your free time to that we can put things right between us."

Her face was unemotional as she turned to regard him.

"Very well, Tom," she granted. "I shall be at our usual table, at the Marine, on Sunday afternoon at four o'clock. Will you be free to join me?"

"I'll make it, be it through hell or high water," he told her.

She thought, with a wry, mirthless anile, that it was a bit late in the day for heroics.

*

Before an hour of that following Saturday morning had passed, it was already the longest day of Eve Ramsey's existence.

The night had brought her no respite from hear troubled thoughts, and she trailed on duty with shadows like bruises under her lovely eyes.

Tom's protestations of love had brought her no real satisfaction; had he loved her by his actions, rafter than hysterical words, she would never have doubted the depth of his regard for her in the first place.

He had been weak and foolish in some way, he had told her, and as an excuse he had put forth the pressures of his work. If his weakness and foolishness involved his being dazzled by another woman, as she had no doubt in her mind was the case, what guarantee was there that in his life ahead, when he hoped to practise as a busy G.P., he would not seek similar distractions from time to time?

Eve was well aware that there are some men whose heads are turned by the merest feminine flattery, or who are impelled to admire every pretty pair of ankles in the street, no matter what the state of their conjugal bliss. But these men had always in the past been other women's husbands, and her own ankles were trim enough to have caught many a wandering eye in their time. But she didn't care for the role of the wife who must watch her husband's head looking covertly about him for such bait; and she couldn't imagine herself forgiving his indiscretions and flirtations without callousing or breaking her own heart in the process.

This day she felt like a woman whose love affair has died in her very grasp. She would rather be mourning Tom than attempting to find excuses for him. No doubt he would put his own case when they met on the morrow, but she couldn't say she was looking forward to their meeting; in fact it was an event which she was regarding with some dread.

She made her round of the ward with the mail, trying to have her usual friendly word with everyone. Doctor Ashington stirred a knife, although he didn't know it, in her wound.

"Sister, you were asking about my surgery last evening. It was all right. Doctor King sent his junior partner to see to things. He's lending him to me for as long as I need him. Good for King, eh, what?"

"Very good indeed, Doctor," she forced herself to say. "You needn't worry about anything now."

"As you say, Sister, apart from going up to Theatre today to have my leg fixed I'm in a blue funk about it Ashamed to admit it."

"Doctors aren't automatically supermen," she told him. "You have a right to be apprehensive when something's happening to you."

How true, she pondered, as she passed on. Whether it was a trip to Theatre or a shattered romance, when it was actually happening to you it made all the difference.

Grandpa Waddell was going out today along with Mr Wylde. Although the old gentleman was ninety-three he had survived an operation for hernia and had never looked back during the whole of his convalescence. He hadn't worried, for one thing, being quite ready to meet his Maker whenever it was God's will. The quiet appearance of great age, patience and strength of character had all helped Grandpa Waddell towards this day of discharge. He had enjoyed his hospitalisation, but was quite happy to go back to the old people's home where, so he said, he would be glad of the diversion of Saturday-night Bingo and the weekly matinee at the 'pictures'.

"My granddad was out shooting rabbits at my age," he told Sister as she popped a bar of milk chocolate into the soft holdall he was packing. "He would have said old folk were soft nowadays, with all this welfare work and the Meals on Wheels . . . "

"Don't worry Grandpa, you're not at all soft, in my opinion," she told him. "I'll see you again before you go."

She deliberately dallied round the ward, taking much longer than usual, because she was dreading calling in at the side ward with Mr Wylde's mail. She had left him until the last, which was unusual, but she felt rather ashamed of her behaviour the previous evening. She was not above apologising, of course, but she was afraid of what he would read in her countenance today. Yesterday there had only been the disappointment and the dread; today there was the disillusionment and the fact.

Her good morning was therefore somewhat brassy when she finally entered the side ward and put four letters into his hands.

"The ambulance is coming for you at eleven, Mr Wylde. I'll send Nurse in to pack up for you in good time."

"Thank you, Sister."

He was apparently subdued by her remark of the previous evening and determined to keep off the grass. She felt sad that he was not only leaving her ward but leaving under a cloud, as it were. His bright conjectures had always been meant kindly, and it was not a crime if they were sometimes arrow-keen and true on the mark.

"Mr Wylde," she said in some embarrassment, "I'm sorry I snapped at you last evening. I was a little upset, not at all myself."

"I understood," he smiled quietly. "The observer does, you know, what you said, but it's ten to one he'd rather be playing. I'm afraid I metaphorically put my big foot into things. I'm sorry, too."

"Slake?" she suggested, holding out her hand.

"Very well," he agreed, "and having no mistletoe on this occasion ..."

She began to laugh weakly, because he was departing as incorrigible as he had always been, but such was the strain under which she was labouring that her laughter was accompanied by a sudden rain of tears.

"Oh my dear!" he exclaimed; "What's wrong? What have I said now?"

"Nothing, nothing," she groped for a handkerchief. "It's not you Mr Wylde. It's just life, I suppose. My life's in a mess today. It will be better by tomorrow, I expect," she decided philosophically, hating herself for breaking down in front of a patient. "Now read your letters and don't mind me."

"Tell the sun not to shine rather than that I shouldn't mind anything you do or say," he invited. "Your tears make my heart ache; your happiness is my joy. I only hope my miracle will happen to enable me to dance at your wedding, Eve."

It was the first time he had addressed her by her Christian name and she decided that Staff Nurse Whitley would miss feeding information into this kindly, voracious maw.

"Thank you, Vic," she said softly. "I shall certainly say amen to that, though my wedding seems a long way off, today."

"About as far as mine?" he queried.

"Perhaps," she smiled. "Who knows?"

There was work to be done and, feeling somehow comforted, she sailed in and did it. Dawn was positively beaming today and making the cadet nurse, Raphael, laugh a great deal while they were making beds. The two girls talked across the patients as though they weren't there, and as their talk was of the opposite sex it was extremely diverting to the listeners.

"And he kissed you?" Nurse Raphael wanted to know.

"I'll say he did!" Dawn replied. "He didn't want to stop at that, but I told him I wanted a ring or two on my left hand before we could continue that part of the conversation."

"You are a one!" the younger girl said admiringly. "I thought we weren't supposed to have anything to do with doctors?"

"Shut up, you fool! She'll hear," Dawn hissed, indicating Sister, who was doing the dressings, this being the staff nurse's day off. "We aren't supposed to, but what fun is there if one always keeps to the rides? Anyhow, it was he who made the first pass at me."

"You know what they say," said Nurse Raphael. "That Sister's got a boy-friend among the doctors."

"No!" derided Dawn. "What rubbish!"

"It's true," insisted the other. "When they look at each other you can tell. And somebody saw them walking hand in hand along the cliffs."

Dawn looked across at the screens hiding her sister from view.

"Our Evie with a secret admirer?" she smiled, "Tell me, who is the lucky so-and-so?"

"Doctor Carrington."

Dawn knocked a jug of water off the nearby locker as she swung round to face the other.

"You're a fool and a liar!" she said. "Now look what you've made me do!"

Sister's face appeared like Nemesis round a screen, took in the scene and said: "Clear the mess up immediately, Nurse Simmonds, and make a note of the breakage in the book. Mr Clare will want another jug of water, Nurse Raphael."

"Yes, Sister."

In the kitchen Dawn again tackled the younger girl.

"What a fool thing to say—Sister and Doctor Carrington, indeed!"

"Well, that's what they say," the other said defiantly.

"I haven't made it up. Why, I believe you—you—don't say you were talking about Doctor Carrington, too? Have you been going out with him, Simmonds? Well, have you?"

"I'm not saying anything more about my affairs," Dawn said grandly. "You tittle-tattle, Raphael. Well, answer Mr Wylde's bell, girl. Can't you hear him ringing?"

"You're senior to me," the other said defiantly. "You answer it."

"I'll see you hanged first," Dawn said crossly and stalked off up the ward with a mop in her hand. Nurse Raphael was glad that Mr Wylde had stopped ringing his bell so that she could march back with a jug of water in her hand and show that bossy Simmonds she wasn't taking any orders from her.

She had barely replaced the jug, however, when there was a different kind of crash from the direction of the entrance to the ward. This was followed by a peculiar human cry.

"What was that?" Sister asked. "Did I hear Mr. Wylde ringing?"

"Yes Sister," both nurses answered together.

"What did he want?"

As both faces looked stonily back at her, Eve began to run. It was as though she knew in a flash of intuition that some disaster had occurred.

As she threw open the door of the side ward her fears were realised as she saw the length of Mr Wylde, still wound in bedclothes, lying on the polished parquet floor. His eyes were wild and wide and he was making strange gasping noises. At first she thought a seizure had beset him, but he was perfectly rational as he said: "I reached too far. It was all my fault. Oh, hell!" he closed his eyes and she saw the beads of sweat standing out on his brow.

"Just a moment, Mr Wylde, I must get some help."

She rang his bell urgently and without cease until the two young nurses appeared apprehensively in the doorway.

"Help me to lift Mr Wylde back into bed," she said firmly. "You must always answer a patient's bell. Do you both understand?"

"Yes, Sister," they said meekly, in unison.

Victor Wylde groaned deeply as they lifted him, and turned a sepia eye on Eve, as though for reassurance.

"What a way for a miracle to happen!" he lamented. "Everything hurts like Hades." When she realised the significance of his observation, Eve excitedly telephoned for Doctor Widdup to attend immediately, and looked down at the figure in the bed with a wild hope surging in her breast.

"Your injection, Mr Wylde," Eve announced on the Sunday morning. "It's a quarter of morphia for the pain. Will you try to roll over a little yourself, or shall I get help?"

The dark brown eyes gazed up at her a little resentfully.

"I suppose if I say I can't move you'll dub me a softie," he said gloomily, "but the fact is it's agony to try."

"A little agony will go a long way to getting back the use of your limbs," she told him firmly. "Roll— that's splendid. Now that didn't hurt much, did it?"

A groan and the perspiration standing out on his brow told its own tale, however, but this wasn't the time to sympathise.

"Of course movement will hurt," Eve said flatly. "You're a member of the profession and you know very well that useless muscles have to be re-educated by movement You surely didn't think when your 'miracle' happened that you'd get out of bed and go for a cross-country run, did you sir?"

All this had helped to get the injection over and rattle the patient into making some effort on his own account.

"It would have been a real miracle if I had," he said sullenly. "As it is I only seem to have had half a one."

"Better than none at all," Eve pointed out "Your fall out of bed, besides getting me and my staff into hot water with Matron, succeeded in moving the small 'foreign body' from the nerves in your spine which caused your paralysis. Sir Horace—everybody—is rejoicing because at last the reason has become obvious and therefore something can be done about you. After a trip to Theatre your rehabilitation will be long and arduous, and if you're going to be a wet blanket the whole time it will be pretty grim all round."

"Nag, nag," came from the bed, then, as the morphia began to take effect, his eyes gleamed with sudden interest. "Did you really get into trouble, Sister?"

"What do you think? We don't usually go around bouncing our patients on the floor."

"Actually I couldn't reach my writing pad," he told her. "I rang—nobody came—so I reached out and— bingo! I thought I'd broken every bone in my body."

"As long as you're on my ward please ring until someone does attend to you, Mr Wylde."

"As long as I'm on your ward . . . " he echoed. "Why? Am I being moved?"

"I suppose you'll go to the orthopaedic ward now. Sir Horace has placed you under our Mr MacMillan."

"I don't want to go. He can attend to me here."

"Now Mr Wylde ... " she frowned in warning.

He glanced up at her.

"You've turned into a nurse-militant overnight," he grumbled, "and it doesn't become you one bit Whatever has happened to upset you, don't take it out on your patients."

"Mr Wylde! How can you—?"

"I can say a lot more if it will stop you turning into a frigid martinet of a creature. Remember I know you for what you are, a lovely, soft-hearted and very feminine young woman. On a matter of principle I shall insist on staying here to keep an eye on you. If you want to know why I was in such a hurry to write a letter yesterday, it was because I wanted to write all you would never allow me to say. I was going to leave it under my pillow."

"Oh, sir," she said suddenly at a loss, "whatever am I going to do with you?"

"I know what I hope you're going to do with me one day," he said naughtily. "Make all my dreams come true."

"I can't stay chattering," she said, to hide her confusion. "Rest while you have the chance. The physiotherapist will be along later. She's coming specially to see you."

As he groaned in anticipation she made her escape.

In a way she hoped Mr Wylde would be removed to the orthopaedic ward as soon as possible. One should be on an efficiently impersonal basis with all one's patients, but it was impossible to remain impersonal in Victor Wylde's company for long. She found herself grimacing at his pain, though it was necessary for him to go through this stage as" the nerves of his limbs began to react and feel again. She also liked him as a person; if he saw her as lovely, soft-hearted and very feminine she could not for the life of her feel offended. Another had humiliated her lately; Mr Wylde provided the balm, the reassurance. She now entered the side ward with the assurance that she was visiting a Mend. It simply wouldn't do to go on like this. No patient had ever affected her so deeply before. She even regretted that the letter he spoke of had never been written. What would it have told her that she didn't know already?

Of course he didn't love her; all this love talk was a game. But he cared about her, and she about him. He made her feel precious. For this she would always be grateful, as one remembers kindly the one bright star in a darkling sky.

Tom looked like a man who hasn't slept for two nights. He said he hadn't.

"You frightened me the other evening, darling," he said in a kind of panic, putting her hand up to cup his face. "Didn't I shave? Maybe not I don't know what the hell I've been doing all day."

"Let's be sane about this, Tom," she said gently.

"Sane?" he took her up sharply. "I've been half demented ever since that damned dance. I love you, Eve. You're my girl. I can't imagine not having you around. Yet you as good as said ..."

This was the old Tom she had known and loved, made a little helpless and desperate by his regard for her. She warmed towards him, thinking there might be yet enough to be retrieved of the situation.

"Tom, you're trembling," she told him. "Do calm yourself. Shall we go for a walk instead of sitting here?"

"Oh, yes!" He looked round the hotel lounge with an intense dislike. "I'd rather be doing something."

It was a cold, clear, clean day and the air was fresh and invigorating. As they walked briskly along the cliffs, scrambled down to the cove and then kissed, long and lingeringly, Eve felt as though she was at last awakening from a troubled dream.

"Oh, Tom!" she breathed against his lapel. "I thought there was someone else. I thought—"

He kissed her again, and the physical excitement carried her away for a moment.

"You see, we—ought to be married," he said gruffly.

"I know, I know," she agreed.

"Then there'd be no more misunderstandings," he went on. "You'd be my wife and that would be that."

Perhaps it could have been expressed more romantically, but with hearts thudding one against the other words were an alien means of communication.

"So let's do it and hang the criticism!" Tom went on, almost fiercely. "I'd rather go through fire and water than face two days , of uncertainty such as these have been."

She laughed shakily. "Darling, marriage isn't going through fire and water exactly, you know."

"Wait until I tell Widdup I'm thinking of one woman to the exclusion of all the others and their wretched complaints! He'll be overjoyed."

"Then let's wait until the summer, as we planned."

"No," he was adamant "I want to marry you as soon as possible. Next week."

In the midst of all the enchantment an alien, disturbing thought suddenly intruded. "He's asking you to marry him in an awful hurry, yet, when he was taking Doctor Ashington's surgeries he hadn't a thought in his head for you."

"Tom, you can't rush into these things," she said aloud. "I don't want to be married on the principle of what's done can't be undone. We're being ridiculous."

He sighed.

"I suppose we are. Actually I wanted to be able to tell someone I'm getting married."

"You mean the other girl you've been seeing lately?" Eve asked with a strange calm. It was funny how a moment ago her body had burned with a fierce, urgent excitement which had controlled—or rather decontrolled—the situation. Now her mind surfaced and bade passion be still.

"Yes, well, I wanted to tell you about that business. There was this nurse—" he regarded her anxiously— "I won't tell you her name because it wouldn't be fair. Some of the lads were having a bit of a ball at the roadhouse out Penton Way. You were working and I went along for the beer. I met this girl. She Was pretty, attractive, sexy, obvious ..." he shrugged. "You know the type. We danced, and somebody provided champagne. I never could mix my drinks and I began to feel rotten. I remember staggering out into the air and then I must have passed out." He side-glanced to see what effect the story Was having on his companion. So far she looked quite unmoved. "When I came round this girl was with me and she maintains I kissed her. Well—" he spread out his hands—"there's; only her word for it, and a sick man doesn't usually go around kissing anybody. But she seemed to think I was gone on her and—"

"You mean she has held this situation at your head?" Eve demanded.

"Well—sort of. She suspected I was hooked—er— engaged, and she said if she found out the lady's name she would tell her a thing or two. It sounded as though she was only fooling, but a girl like that can do plenty of damage in a catty sort of way. There was another party on Christmas Eve and she asked me to go with her. I—I went to keep her from finding out about us."

"The sort of situation I could better understand in reverse," Eve said wryly. "It was surely more important to keep me from finding out about her?"

"I did try, darling. I was between the devil and the deep blue sea."

"Am I the devil, or the sea?" she enquired, and as he didn't answer: "I suppose on the night of the dance there was yet another party?"

"Yes," he acknowledged. "I've been a fool allowing it to go on and on. I'm glad you know and that you don't hate me. You don't, do you, Eve?"

"Hate you?" she asked tiredly. "I couldn't do that, Tom. It just seems that you've been silly and gambled with our happiness."

"If we can't be married immediately then I want us to be engaged," be said, gathering her to him roughly and again pressing his lips to hers.

"Tom!" she struggled for breath. "I've decided not to rush at anything. We can go on as we were. Some damage -must have been done, though when I'm actually with you, you can so easily persuade me all's as it was with us. You must tell this girl of the situation and she must accept it I won't have anybody thinking they can threaten my peace of mind with a scandalous word. Well Tom?"

"I'll tell her, dearest I shall probably tell her to go to hell."

"You probably will do no such thing when the time comes. Pretty, attractive, sexy young women wield a certain power over grown men."

"You're a wicked witch yourself," he caressed her.

"Heavens! I'm going to be late!" she suddenly panicked.

It was only when she got back on duty and entering the side ward to take Mr Wylde's temperature that she realised she never wanted him to know of the afternoon's compromise. Somehow she could imagine him saying, "You, being content with less than a whole love? I'm surprised and ashamed of you. You and I know better what we want from life."

But he didn't know and he didn't speak and Tom had only been a little human and weak. He wasn't a criminal. Love wasn't a rod you could use on someone's shoulders. Love was love and spilled over the erring as the just. She was glad to have retrieved her love. Everybody wasn't as fortunate.

CHAPTER V

Suddenly it was spring, and the flowerbeds dotting the lawns of the Cottage Hospital shone with the bright corollas of daffodils. How they danced in the breeze blowing freshly from the sea! But it was a breeze without a bite in it which told of a sun beginning to climb to its northern meridian; a breeze with a promise of summer roses in it, occasionally, though it was but March going out like a lamb.

If it wasn't one thing it was another, Eve Ramsey decided, along with her colleagues. The more persistent sun showed up the shabby places in the ward, singled out the dangling cobweb which had only been woven overnight, yet sent the ward-maid, Carrie, in search of either a short ladder and a long brush, or a long ladder and a short brush, with which to remove the offender before Matron's eagle eye should see it and cause to be read one of her lengthy lectures, the theme of which was dirt means danger.

According to Matron there wasn't such a thing as a clean spider-web, and it was useless to quote statistics at her, that a normal spider, for instance, consumed five hundred times its own weight in flies during its lifetime, and that this meant a lot of real dirt made far less dangerous. Matron would ask, in that scathing way of hers, if one had heard of D.D.T. in much the same way she would question one's knowledge of the diesel engine in relation to steam.

The patch of wall where Nurse Clements had spilled the flavine now looked particularly offensive, and if one moved Mr Hood's bed to hide it, when the sun was on his side of the ward, he couldn't reach the headphones of his radio, and Eve had discovered he was an avid pop fan.

Of course the days insisted on flying past, and a large slice of every day seemed to be given over to Mr Wylde, who had got his own way in being allowed to remain on the general ward while the orthopaedic team were like the mountain coming to Mahomet, just as he had willed. Though Eve often started to keep a diary, it usually petered out into an appointments book, but the Day Book, which she was forced to keep, kept track of Mr Wylde's progress of rehabilitation, that determined yet often moody and alarmed pilgrim.

Mr Wylde dangling his thin legs over the edge of the bed, triumphantly wriggling them in independent movement: Mr Wylde giving himself his first bed-bath, frowning at the nurse who was instructed to keep an eye on him and growling, "Is there no privacy around here? "despite the fact that the same nurse had washed him from top to toe only two days previously! Mr Wylde triumphantly demonstrating his redeveloping biceps after a few weeks of being allowed a pulley over his bed: Mr Wylde sitting out of bed in a wheel-chair and wheedling a trip down the main ward where he was as excited as a small boy at a party: Mr Wylde going in the same chair on regular trips to the physiotherapy department, instead of the physiotherapists coming to him, and one day coming back and demanding Sister's attention immediately.

"Really, Mr Wylde, I'm so busy," she protested. "Must you—?"

"Come here!" he demanded imperiously, from the chair where he was sitting. "It won't wait. They want to put me back to bed."

They' were the two male nurses borrowed on occasion from the orthopaedic ward.

"Stand close by me," he said, "and lend me your arm. Are you strong?" I wanted to know.

"I'm no weight-lifter, if that's what you mean," she smiled. "Now what are you up to?"

"Just lend me your arm and stand still," he commanded. "The brake's on the chair. Shan't need it much longer. Now!" She saw the familiar beads of sweat form on his brow as he made a tremendous physical effort Then he suddenly shot upright and looked down on her with undisguised triumph.

"Mr Wylde, you can stand up!" she forestalled him.

He lifted his dressing-gown aside to reveal twin knee calipers.

"Had these fitted this morning," he announced, "and I stood up with the aid of the bars. I wanted to do it for the first time without them—with you. And I've done it."

"Well done!" she said sincerely, and the moment drew out into a length of peculiar significance. Perhaps it was because, standing upright, he looked less like a patient and more like a man.

"You're a mere dot, really, aren't you, Sister?" he asked, as though forcing his tone back to its usual lightness. "All this time, when you've loomed over me, I thought you were as tall as a tree. But without that saucy cap you'll barely be five foot four in your socks."

"I'm five foot four and three-quarters," she told him, "and I shall have to wear my high heels from now on, I can see. You must be six foot, Mr Wylde."

"And three-quarters," he added blandly, sighing suddenly. "Well, it's been nice seeing you from a new angle, Sister, but I must sit down, methinks. These contraptions hurt and pull and chafe. Why can't one just get up and walk without having to drag a ball and chain around!"

When his progress was swift and adventurous he went along with it, taking all in his stride, but when he was required to exercise patience, or nothing new happened to him for a week, he was quickly depressed and often intolerant and unreasonable. At these times he would pick quarrels with whomsoever was to hand.

One day he complained that the bread served with breakfast was stale, and refused to eat anything. At dinner-time he rejected his meal with the message that it was a disgrace to serve up watery cabbage and corned beef to someone who was trying to 'get strong and be shot of this damned place'.

Sister contained herself with an effort and decided to let him go hungry. Vanessa Conyngham had been to see him the previous day, not during normal visiting hours, which had riled her somewhat, and left him loaded with chocolates and fruit The chocolates he had given the night staff, she knew, but a couple of oranges and some grapes would keep him from starving until tea-time. Her natural irritation with her 'awkward' patient died during her two hours off duty that afternoon, and she called in at a pastrycook's and had a few delicacies made up for him, including new rolls with butter and home-made fruit cake.

The tray came out of the side ward untouched, however.

"He says he's not hungry for hospital stodge," said Nurse Singh. "He is naughty, that Mr Wylde, today."

Eye saw red, and instead of counting to ten, as she perhaps should have done, she sailed into the side ward with sparks shooting from her normally calm grey eyes.

"Are you on hunger strike, Mr Wylde?" she demanded.

He viewed her as though she was a stranger to his eyes.

"You can call it that, if you wish," he said with deceptive calm in the teeth of her obvious wrath. "It's time somebody rebelled against the tasteless, unimaginative slosh we patients are expected to eat and enjoy. I for one have had enough."

"I recommend that you ask to see the Catering Manager," she said sharply. "There's always a remedy for discontent which doesn't entail sending impertinent messages to me via my staff."

He shrugged. "Very well. I hope the Catering Manager can spare me ten minutes next time he's around I shall make out a list in the meantime of my pet horrors, gastronomically speaking. Potato mash. Ugh! I shall be ill if I see any more of that stuff. Cabbage is always bad enough, but when it's served without gravy it's quite inedible. Also there is never any seasoning in anything, and stale, pre-sliced bread is the last straw. I—"

"Just a moment, Mr Wylde," Eve interrupted him. "I've heard all this before, you know, and it's always the long-term patients who grumble, and most particularly orthopaedics, who are normally fit and well in other ways. You may prefer your potatoes roasted or french fried or made into savoury straws, but we have to work on a budget, and the dieticians are put to it to provide three square meals per day, plus tea and extra drinks, when they are only allowed forty pence per day, per patient, on which to do it. If you have a mathematical brain you may be able to work out how one can plan and prepare several different diets, including the high-protein for post-operatives; the reducing diet, which must have extra vitamins; the special diet for the sick and the aged; this includes minces, chicken and the like; and the normal diet about which you complain and so do the staff. We have the same food you do, and we work jolly hard, but we're hungry enough to eat it Of course we grumble, but we appreciate the difficulties, too."

There was a moment's quiet from the bed.

"I've been a naughty boy and you've slapped me down good and hard, Sister," he said at length. "I— I didn't know about the measly forty pence per head. I suppose I didn't think."

"Then it's as well to start, Mr Wylde," she said, relenting just a little. "In a private clinic I suppose one can afford to complain about the catering, but we don't even have private patients in this hospital."

"Oh, damn!" he suddenly exploded. "It's not the food, really. I've been looking around since I woke up this morning for something to vent my spleen on, and the monotonous stodge seemed to be a ready-made target. I'm not really ungrateful and I hope I'm not unmindful of the difficulties of others. I'm ashamed to admit I was temporarily wrapped up—like a cocoon —in my own. As to sending impertinent messages to you—Eve, how can you think I would do any such thing! I was sending my messages to Authority."

Trying not to. soften too much, she said: "You must call me Sister, Mr Wylde, and I am the authority on this ward."

"You're rubbing my nose in dirt," he said humbly, "and I expect I deserve it."

"I'm only going to say a little more before we drop the subject," she went on. "I thought you might be feeling the monotony of the diet and I went out this afternoon to procure something really temping for your tea. I don't believe you even looked at the tray I sent in."

His eyes looked as humble as those of a dog which has been chastised.

"Did you?" he asked. "I didn't notice. I was in a foul mood and so hungry I wanted to punish everybody. Please may I have my tea now? Not the treat, of course, I don't deserve it Just a slice of ordinary bread, without jam, and a cup of the usual cold treacle which passes for tea."

As usual he was her undoing. She began to laugh.

"Mr Wylde, I'm very angry with you. Stop looking at me like that this instant!"

"How else can I look at a girl who has been shopping for something for my tea other than with complete devotion? You made me feel like one of a happy couple for a moment there: you shopping and I coming home tired from the Street to eat what you've prepared with your fair hands."

"I'm not going to listen to any more of your nonsense," she said in some confusion. "I'll send your tray in with a fresh pot of tea. As you say, you don't deserve it, but the treat still stands. I—I hope you enjoy everything."

"God bless you!" he saluted her, and because he was much happier, she went away happier, too.

CHAPTER VI

Tom was now beginning to plan the writing of the thesis required by the Medical Council for the degree of Doctor of Medicine. He changed his mind half a dozen times regarding the subject he would select for this work, and each time Eve pointedly took interest and encouraged him and remembered this or that about some patient of hers who had been admitted with the disease or complaint to her ward.

They had investigated Parkinsonism, Diabetic Coma, Muscular Atrophy and Multiple Sclerosis very seriously, and made quick forages into Diathesis and Psoriasis.

"They've all been done to death before,'' Tom complained, in sudden depression. "My mind's becoming more and more confused and I feel like chucking up the whole blooming business. Why bother with an M.D.? There are plenty of perfectly good G.P.'s flourishing without it."

Eve was silent at this so he said, rather peevishly: "You disapprove of give-uppers, don't you?"

"I disapprove of you giving up, Tom. If your health was poor and you couldn't stand the strain then that would be a different matter. But to give up simply because things are looking difficult, after all this time, isn't the answer."

"You want me to go ahead?"

"I want you to want to go ahead," she said carefully, "but the decision must be yours. I won't harp on it, Tom."

"Give me a kiss," he said quickly, and, as she complied, "a proper One." He pressed his lips down hard so that they hurt. She was looking at him with tears pricking her eyes as he left her and smiled sardonically.

"You don't try very hard nowadays, do you?" he asked. "I always feel I'm kissing a mm; invading sanctuary; stepping on the grass, or whatever you care to call it."

"That's unfair," she flashed. "One minute you tell me to help you keep your mind on the job, like a boxer in training, and the next I'm expected to respond to your sudden demands like any normal woman in love."

"I think any normal woman in love would," he taunted her. "So what does that make you Evie?"

"Why do you call me that?" she suddenly demanded.

"Call you what?"

"Evie. You never did it before."

"It's a pleasant little diminutive."

"Dawn always calls me that," she said simply.

"Oh, does she?" He bent suddenly and took her in his arms. "You're being a little heroine with me lately, my sweet. I'm a bear with a sore head and in a perverse way I try to upset you, too."

"That's all right, Tom. I do understand this is a bad time for you. When you go up to London it will be better for you because you can write in peace without being expected to work a long day as well."

"Bless you, Eve. What shall I write about, though?"

"Why not go back to your original idea, Anodynes and Analgesics? You made an interesting collection of notes, I remember, and interviewed a number of patients regarding their sensations while under the effects of drags."

"Do you suppose I could really write enough to please the wallahs?"

"You would have to work and work and keep single-minded to that end. Mr Wylde could tell you quite a lot about his own experiences. Naturally he always took a clinical interest in himself."

"I believe you're a bit sweet on this Wylde fellow."

"Tom! Don't be absurd!"

"Well, he's keen on you. It's common knowledge. Your staff nurse is always quoting him."

"You know what patients are. It's like a shipboard romance. At the end of the voyage it's all over."

"He's next in line to a baronetcy. Did you know? How would you like to be the next Lady Wylde?"

"The question doesn't arise. You might as well ask me how I'd like to be Queen."

"Hoity-toity! This hasn't been the happiest of meetings, has it? We're like two people with corns. Well, I must go and look up my notes on Anodynes, etcetera."

'Like two people with corns,' she pondered acidly as she prepared for bed after that meeting. They were supposed to be two people in love, and yet this unflattering description really did fit them most of the time, nowadays.

She knew that Tom suspected her of harbouring suspicions since the Christmas episodes, but she didn't consciously suspect In fact she sometimes bent over backwards trying to believe his excuses when he couldn't keep a planned appointment with her. She really tried not to think the worst, that this was yet another lie and a nail in the coffin of their romance.

Perhaps the present trouble was that they were both trying too hard. A conscious effort can never quite replace the spontaneity of absolute trust. Stored away in her subconscious mind, whither it had been dismissed to disturb the serenity of her dreams, was the vision of some other woman—or girl— who had charmed to try to steal one who already was pledged. Shadows stored away where they can haunt us are far more damaging to our morale than the trouble with which we can grapple in the flesh.

All might be better when they were separated for the six weeks Tom planned to be away. At the moment they were offending and taking offence where none was intended It was difficult to decide, while they were treading so carefully, where love and need actually came into things.

Dawn, too, was soon to go away from the Cottage Hospital to take some training and a course of lectures at a larger municipal hospital about thirty miles away. Seafields was not a teaching hospital, and accepted young nurses only for short periods to give them experience in a variety of fields before they moved on again.

Eve would not be sorry to see her sister go. She was an unsettling influence on the ward and would make a crony of one nurse or patient with whom she would discuss the rest detrimentally.

"I told that nice-lookin' nurse," one laddie said to Sister one day, "that you weren't no 'ag. I 'eard 'er tell 'er mate, while they was doin' the beds that you was a two-'eaded 'ag, today. She said you was suffering from frustration, bein' an old maid an' all that. I said 'if she's an old maid, I'm the Duke of Wellington', I said, an' I was that mad wiv 'er for discussin' you like that"

Loyalty from a patient, disloyalty from one's own kin. How could one condone such a thing? Though of course a patient's views were not accepted as evidence against a member of the staff.

Dawn had dropped an outsize hint that she was seeing young Jim Trench on occasions, and Eve was happy to think they might fall in love. If only they would be discreet until Dawn was State-Registered, they could come out into the open and acknowledge their feelings for one another.

Dawn Simmonds was well aware that she was popular with the opposite sex for the wrong reasons at this present time. She was extremely pretty and attractive, with a certain femme fatale allure about her. When a man grew to know her better, however, he usually lost interest very quickly. It was as though he had seen the shop window beautifully displayed, had stepped willingly inside only to discover an empty shop. She was mentally ill-equipped to hold on to what she sought so eagerly. She was intelligent enough, but men are inclined to distrust erudite women, and she made the mistake of pretending to ingenuousness in which the sharp stabs of her native, venomous wit stood out like rapiers, a quickly disillusioning characteristic. Also she had not learned to lose with a good grace. If any man bestowed an initial favour upon her she expected more and more until it was she who tired of him. She did not intend to be the one who was dismissed herself, and she was a bad and vicious enemy, as some of her colleagues at the hospital had already found to their cost. Having discovered Achilles' vulnerable heel she did not stab quickly and fatally, preferring to prick and threaten and draw out the agony as long as she could gain any personal satisfaction from the process.

Doctor Carrington had been in his cups when he had first paid compliment to her beauty, though his eyes had done this on a couple of occasions previously, which she was not slow to observe. When he was sober, therefore, and they met at another party, she was not slow to remind him of their former dalliance, which she suitably enlarged and embroidered when she realised he apparently remembered nothing of it.

Tom had spoken the truth when he told Eve how his defection began. He hadn't been quite so honest in describing its progress, for it was with a certain delicious and fatalistic horror that he concluded that his fiancée's own half-sister was obviously expecting him to be her partner in an affair. This situation was made the more piquant in that he knew of the relationship between this attractive girl and his love, whereas she wasn't aware that his affections were already engaged in the family.

After a couple of meetings, for the shear devilment of it, he fancied her pursuit of him was growing a little warm for comfort, so he decided to cool things down by stating a few facts. He told Dawn, who was putting on her sweet-little-girl-in-love-with-the-great-big-doctor act, that he was already engaged, unofficially, and expected to be married in the summer: he also added, for good measure, that he must watch his Ps and Qs and work, but that it had been nice knowing her.

Dawn grew up immediately and asked what the hell he meant by leading her up the garden in the first place. He told her that she had been up that same garden, as he recollected, ahead of him, and wished her goodnight. Dawn had responded with tears and tears are always an embarrassment to a man, who immediately feels a bit of a cad and so wrong-foots himself.

"I—I've told everybody I'm going to the Robinsons' with you, Tom," she wept. The Robinsons were local business people and inveterate party-givers. They were having an inevitable party on the evening the hospital was holding its residents' dinner. "Take me, just this once," she wheedled, "and give me time to realise we can't—go on—seeing each other."

What could he do but comply ?

At the Robinsons' party he was happy to see Dawn being admired by a grey-at-the-temples banker type, and later on he heard she was going out with young Trench Well, that was all to the good, for Eve had by now smelt a rat, and he didn't want to lose the solid gold of a girl like Eve for the gold-leaf of her half-sister. He dared to think he was well out of the morass into which he had trodden when, the evening he was due to leave for London, he was having a drink at the Cavalier, the hospital's local when he espied Trench and Dawn having shandies in the saloon bar.

After the usual greetings he strolled over.

"Can I buy you two a drink?" he asked kindly.

"Thank you," Dawn said promptly, while Trench blushed and coughed in some embarrassment.

"As a matter of fact it's my night on until eleven," he explained, "and I'd lost track of time as it is. Would you look after her for me, Carrington? See her home and—and all that?"

"If you can trust such a fair parcel to these clumsy arms," Tom said.

When the other had gone he ordered drinks, observing that this was no occasion for shandy. '

"Well, he couldn't afford anything more," Dawn said sharply, "and he doesn't think nice girls drink anything stronger. Oh! he's such a bore!"

"I thought you were getting along like two houses on fire," Tom said ruefully.

"Well, you were wrong, Doctor Carrington. Jim Trench is just a damp squib as far as I'm concerned. I prefer to think you are more my type; physically exciting, not over scrupulous ..."

"Yes, well, I told you ... " he, too, left his sentence in mid-air and regarded her. What was she up to? What was she plotting at that very moment? For Dawn Simmonds and plots were as synonymous as love and marriage, he was discovering. "You didn't tell me Sister Ramsey was your girlfriend," Dawn said, as she sipped her Martini.

"Who told you?" Tom demanded, without thinking such a question was an admission of the fact.

"Ha, ha!" Dawn sneered. "Lovers make me a little sick. You can't keep secrets in a hospital, or hadn't you discovered that? You and she have been seen in various compromising situations all over the town and countryside. You and I have been similarly observed. How long, I wonder, before somebody tells her she may have a rival for your affections? It's the sort of thing certain people enjoy doing."

"I can't imagine anybody who knows her wanting to hurt Eve," Tom said promptly, to his credit "and she certainly has no rival for my affections."

"Well, let's say you were rather more liberal with your attentions, then," Dawn struck back. "You're the sort who both wants his cake and eats it. I think she ought to know about me."

"As a matter of fact," he said slowly, articulating every word as though it was a matter of life and death to him, "she does know. I told her and it's all over— with you, I mean."

"Really?" Dawn looked her most innocent when she was preparing to move in for the kill. "I am surprised. Sister Ramsey is a great disciplinarian. I would have thought she'd haul us both over the coals for breaking hospital rules, at the very least. She hasn't said a word to me."

"I didn't mention your name," he said uneasily. "I simply said I'd been seeing another girl, an—"

"Oh!" Dawn smiled. She perceived she now held a trump hand. "Then shall We see how she takes it when she does know the identity of the girl you've been seeing?" Tom paled. "You see, Doctor Carrington," Dawn went on sweetly, "I don't like being made to look a fool, and that's what you've tried to make of me. A girl has her pride."

"Look!" he said placatingly, "I think you're a very nice girl, Dawn, but I love my fiancée. I'm no angel and I admit our flirtation was unwise, but that's the kind of effect you have on a bloke. You go to his head like—like old wine. You'll go to somebody else's head, like that, and hell be free to marry you."

"They never are, I find, the interesting ones," Dawn said coldly. "Which is why you found me here being bored to tears by Trench."

"Let me buy you another drink and we'll bury the hatchet," he suggested. "I have to drive up to London tonight and I promised to take you back home first."

She accepted a second Martini with a growing conviction that she was fighting a losing battle. Her vanity had unfortunately compelled her to name Tom Carrington to her cronies as one who was 'keen' on her. First one and then another had said: "Really? I thought he was keen on Sister Ramsey."

"That affair will fizzle out, you'll see," Dawn had foretold, while seething inwardly when Doctor Carrington apparently lost interest in her company in the midst of all the conjecture.

She had continued to retail mythical meetings and developments, however, to her chosen audience, and for Eve to go ahead and marry the man, after all, would be to make her, Dawn Simmonds, the laughing stock of her set. For anyone to prefer Evie to her was a sufficient challenge. Once before she had stolen her sister's boy-friend, and she was convinced that, given enough time, she could do it again. But the creature was going off to London, and when he returned Evie would probably announce both her engagement and the wedding date.

She looked up at him, and studied him. He wasn't bad-looking and he was tremendously attractive to women: at least she found him attractive, and the fact that he belonged to someone else made him doubly so in her sight.

If she told tales to Evie she would not only lose him for ever, but her sister was morally magnanimous enough to forgive him all over again. She had done so once and could be said to be in practice.

What wouldn't Evie forgive? It would have to be something far more terrible than had already occurred. Supposing . . . ? Just supposing . . . ?

"Come on, my dear," Tom Carrington's voice broke into her thoughts. "I think you should go back now. My car's in the park outside."

"There's no need to come with me, Tom," she told him. "You have a long journey ahead of you. The short walk will do my doldrums good."

"As you wish, of course, old thing," he said in some relief, and felt somewhat shy as she reached to kiss him. "I—I'll get some cigarettes from the chappie behind the bar," he said, to hide his confusion, and when he turned back, pocketing his change, she had gone.

He had only had a pint of mild himself, and he always enjoyed driving when the roads were clear enough for him to put his foot down. The miles sped by and he switched on the radio to keep him company. Now that he thought about it he felt he had all the ingredients of a truly interesting and original thesis. Of course one never knew how the examining body would react to anything; they had probably taken their medical training during the days of the hansom cab. Still, he felt more confident than he had for months, thanks to Eve and her encouragement, bless her!

The radio announcer bade him goodnight and he switched off, automatically checking his watch as he did so. It was eleven-thirty, and in another hour he should reach his destination.

He lit a cigarette next, and inhaled pleasurably. With an M.D. he could command a better job at a higher salary, buy better cigarettes. He had always fancied De Vitres; a red and Hack box of those in the glove compartment would be a status symbol to him.

An approaching car racing towards him suddenly lit up his face and the dark interior of the car behind him. He thought it was a trick of the light which made him imagine he saw another face than his own reflected briefly in the rear view mirror. When he looked again it wasn't there, but the hair in his nape had raised like a hackle, and when he finally heard a suggestion of a sniff he was more relieved than otherwise.

"All right," he invited, slowing down to a stop and switching on the interior lights. "Come out, whoever you are!"

"Dawn!" he exclaimed the very next minute. "How the heck?"

His frown of comprehension suddenly terrified her. She had done a lot of thinking crouched down on the back seat, and had just realised the enormity of her action.

"I'm sorry, Tom. I was so unhappy. I—"

"Why, you rotten little trollop!" he said fiercely. "How could you be such a devil to your own sister!"

"You know Eve's my sister?" she queried.

"She told me the day you arrived. Oh, lord, what a day that was to be regretted! What's your game? What am I to do with you?"

"Well, I thought if I was out with you all night you would have to marry me."

He laughed mirthlessly.

"My dear kid, I would as soon wed with a tarantula as you. There's nothing to be lost in this night's work but your reputation, not mine. I intend to thumb a lift back to the coast for you, and carry on as planned. Now, will you get out of my car?"

All crying and pleading failed to move him. She had made a fool of herself, and to no avail. Now she began to wonder what she could say when she returned to Seafields. Home Sister would have locked up by now and probably informed Matron that she was missing. She hadn't saved any money or she would have considered running away. Now she would be hard put to it to save her face. When Matron requested that one of her Sisters should call at her office, it usually meant one of two things; either a promotion, or trouble—for somebody.

Eve was not contemplating or expecting promotion; she hadn't been at the hospital a year yet, and was quite satisfied with, her position and her ward She therefore wondered what trouble was afoot, as the last time she had been requested to pay the august one a visit it had meant an accounting for Mr Wylde's fall out of bed. despite its happy results. Sister was always to blame for any catastrophe on her ward; it was then up to Sister to forward the guilt and punishment to the genuinely guilty party.

As far as she knew, however, there was no catastrophe of which she was unaware; her nurses were not looking sheepish, as honest girls will when they are expecting trouble, and the routine was well forward with dinner served on time, hot and now cleared away. After her interview with Matron, Eve would go to second dinner herself, comfortable in the assurance that the staff nurse and Dawn would by then be replacing the two nurses who were off for the afternoon.

She knocked on Miss Bloomsbury's door, was asked to enter and invited to sit down. Obviously Matron was in no hurry.

"I am aware that you haven't had dinner, Sister," Matron began, "but I phoned Sister Dining-Room to keep your food hot. I'm afraid one of your nurses may be in some kind of trouble. She was out all night."

Eve swallowed her shock. Of course it must be Dawn; no other girl of her small flock was remotely capable of such conduct; but what could she have been up to?

Not that! not that! she pleaded, without being really sure of the thing she feared.

"Yes, Matron?" she responded dutifully, without realising how pale she had turned. "Who was it?"

"I think you must know it was Nurse Simmonds, Sister. An extremely pretty girl but lacking in certain qualities, I would assume. I believe her kind is known as a 'good-time' girl, and often the good time is the be-all and end-all of existence, until there's a reckoning, of course."

"Matron," Eve said unsteadily, "I think before you say any more you'd better know that Nurse Simmonds is my half-sister. My mother married again when I was a small child and Dawn was born a year later. It was her wish that our relationship should not be advertised. I believe she had some idea of standing on her own feet and—and merits. Perhaps it was unfortunate she was placed on my ward."

Matron's face was a study for a moment, then she smiled a little wryly.

"Rather unfortunate, too, that I expressed a few remarks which could, perhaps, be construed as detrimental to your—sister's character. I'm sorry, my dear."

"Matron, I know Dawn's; character," Eve said quickly. "She's headstrong, rebellious, when she can afford to be, and she regards being of age as being free of any restraint by me. What was she doing last night? Did she say ?"

"No. she rather defiantly demanded admittance at the Nurses' Home at five-thirty this morning, and said something about a car having run out of petrol. But that's a very old one, and as she refused to name the driver of the car we are naturally viewing her statement with some suspicion. If these girls would only tell the simple truth when there's trouble, it's often very much better for all concerned."

"You would like me to talk to her, Matron?"

"For her own sake, yes, Sister, If there's some man concerned; if the girl could , have got herself into 'trouble,' and we both know what I mean by that, then the sooner we know, the better."

"Very well, Matron."

"I wouldn't disturb her just now, Sister. The girl is naturally exhausted. I have sent you Nurse Rainham in her place."

"Thank you, Matron."

Another knock interrupted them as Eve wondered if she was dismissed or not.

"Yes?" Matron invited. "Come in."

Young Doctor Trench stood revealed in the doorway, his hair dishevelled, his stethoscope more out of his coat pocket than in.

"Excuse me, Matron, About Nurse Simmonds ..." He looked uncertainly from one to the other of the two women, "May—may I see you alone for a moment?" he requested.

"You can speak of Nurse Simmonds quite freely in front of Sister," Matron said blandly. "They are related —half-sisters, did you say?"

Eve nodded, then looked down at the modern geometrical design on the green carpet covering the room.

"I say, I didn't know," Doctor Trench said guiltily, blushing up to his eyebrows.

"Do go on, please" Matron urged him.

"Yes, well, it's quite true my car broke down and we were stuck, ten miles from anywhere. I know ten miles isn't all that far, but we kept expecting something to come along, and then we lost each other looking for a phone-box, and—oh, lots of things. But—" he told Eve, beetroot-faced, "Nothing happened. I mean nothing wrong happened. I wouldn't. I mean—one respects a girl and—and all that."

Matron was wearing an acid little smile. Eve felt a wild surge of relief, after which the mercury dropped again, degree by degree.

"Why didn't Nurse Simmonds tell us this herself?" Miss Bloomsbury demanded.

"Because—well—" the young man was completely confused by now—"I suppose she wanted to protect me, or something."

"What a good thing you did come forward," Matron decided. "For her sake, at least. Things may not be so good for you, Doctor. You know hospital rules, and Nurse is still a junior."

Jim Trench then made a very gallant statement.

"Unfortunately, Matron, the heart observes its own rules. I love Nurse Simmonds."

"Obviously," the older woman agreed. "I only hope—" she changed her mind in mid-sentence and finished somewhat lamely—"that everything turns out well for you. Thank you, Doctor. That will be all."

"She—she won't get into trouble, will she?" he enquired from the doorway.

"The punishment will fit the crime," Matron told him. "Nurse won't exactly get a medal for last night's work." As the door closed on him she smiled with greater warmth. "Well, that must be a relief to you, Sister. That's a nice young man. He wouldn't hurt anybody."

"I know, Matron," Eve said dutifully, but she did not feel either relieved or happy at the apparent outcome. It wasn't like Dawn to protect anybody if she could save her own neck by sacrificing somebody else's name and reputation. Also, Eve remembered that Doctor Trench had been on duty in Casualty last evening, and it must have been eleven before he was free. Was it likely that he had an assignation with Dawn at that hour? The latest of late passes, for nurses, expired at eleven-thirty, and Matron had made no mention of Dawn having asked for a late pass.

It was possible that Jim Trench had been asked to support Dawn's story without any real thought of what it might involve. Dawn could be so sweet and persuasive when she chose, and if a young man was already attracted then he would be required to prove his devotion.

So what had Dawn really been up to? Eve still wondered.

CHAPTER VII

The letter from Tom was brief and to the point He always protested that he was a poor lover, on paper, and would crave her indulgence until their merry meeting. His promise of a daily epistle had deteriorated, by the second week, to a total of two. Nevertheless Eve read avidly and felt strangely shut away from him in all his new excitements.

The thesis, he told her, was now almost ready in its entirety, apart from a few ragged edges. By Wednesday he hoped to submit it to a typist and then it would be a case of waiting and hoping and keeping one's fingers crossed.

"The most fantastic coincidence!' he went on. 'I was at the Great Imperial—where we examinees are always welcome to pick a few brains and act as dressers—when I ran into Betty Gribbon. Betty and I took our medicine together and were a bit—well, you won't want to know about that old thing! Anyway, Betty is still a good looker in a Spanish brunette way (which makes a change from blondes), and I'm keeping really close to her because her father already has a considerable practice in the Midlands.

'Besides Betty there's another partner, who may be shoving off back to Ireland, and this looks like a ready-made niche for yours truly. How'd you like to live in Warwickshire, darling? It's not all grim ...' Eve pondered that such an appointment would mean her not only living with Tom, but the glamorous Betty, too. She wondered if Tom, in 'keeping close' to his old friend, had yet mentioned her. Knowing Tom's caution when dealing with plans for his future, she had her doubts.

Her spirits felt dulled today, and she was glad to busy herself on the ward and escape her thoughts.

Vic Wylde was helping with the mid-morning drinks. Both legs were supported by calipers and he used one stout stick, but still he managed to carry a cup without slopping the liquid into the saucer. This was a matter of pride with him. He was cheerful, witty, and his courage had astounded everybody. When convenient he was moving on to the famous orthopaedic hospital at Stoke Mandeville, where it was now expected he stood a good chance of being completely rehabilitated.

Helping on the other side of the trolley was Kim Cornell, a twenty-year-old who had been admitted to hospital or observation after collapsing in the roadway and being unconscious for the best part of a week. ‑'

Kim was popular with the nurses in that he was an up-and-coming pop singer. Nothing spectacular had happened to him to date, but he had a good agent who had managed to book his act for the coming summer at Seafields Pier Pavilion. Kim had been surveying the territory when he had collapsed, but he was now singing blithely, as he spooned sugar into the Ovaltine and catered for his side of the ward, leaving the orderly free to pour out.

"Two ahead of you, Doc," he now boasted. "Get them tin legs moving !"

"I'll move one on to your behind, my lad, before much longer," Vic boasted, and winked at Eve. "Care to bet, Sister?"

"On a sure thing, Mr Wylde?" she smiled. "I hope my sporting instinct rises above that."

"I was crying—crying—'" Kim sang on, " 'All over your hair when we said Goodbye . . . "'

Nurse Clements let loose a squeal, and sister immediately frowned her into silence, before smiling again.

"Thank you, fan," Kim called cheerily. "Free stalls for you an' the boy-friend when we open. Now, where was I?" he stood holding his brow in a sudden puzzled fashion. "What the—?"

Eve noticed that he had grown very pale and the cup in his hand was rattling in the saucer.

"My 'ead's going blooming mad," he observed, and then fell down with a crash into the trolley, sending cups, jugs, hot milk and all flying.

Eve summoned the staff nurse and together they put the young man back into bed.

He was still unconscious when she came off duty that evening, but by then an X-ray taken of his skull, in a certain position, had revealed the source of the trouble. A small malignant tumour was spreading its tentacles pitilessly into the brain. It was obvious that Kim would be unable to take up his singing appointment that summer, and perhaps preferable that his present sleep should end only in death.

Feeling depressed as she always did when one of her patients was hopelessly ill, Eve sat in her room writing to Tom and telling him about Kim. The telling made her feel a little better, and just then Sister Colles tapped on the door and entered.

"I wonder if you'd care to come to a film Sister?" she invited. "There's one of those Carry On comedies at the Plaza. They always make me laugh. I identify the actors with people I know."

"I—I would rather not," said Eve, indicating her letter. "One gets so little time. But if you're going alone . . . ?"

"That's all right. I'm not," Sister Colles assured her. "Fisher's going. We thought you'd maybe like the change. Did you hear about young Trench?"

"What about him?" Eve demanded.

"Well—being a sort of friend of his—even though it was all on his side, I thought you'd be sad to hear that he's been suspended. Fisher's raving."

"Suspended?" gasped Eve. "What has he done?"

"Aha!" Sister Colles wagged her finger. "Apparently it's a case of still waters running deep. He kept a certain fast young junior out all one night, and the S.M.O. decided to make an example of him. He's suspended for a month while the baggage gets off with a fine. As Fisher says, if there was the same shortage of doctors as nurses, it would rightly have been the other way round. That young man is the three wise monkeys roiled into one. No evil in him. Well—so long!"

Eve brooded on the matter for some time. Dawn, when she had been tackled by her sister, had said, very simply,

"Why don't you leave things alone, Evie? If you go ferreting you might not like what you find. I did nothing wrong that night. Chance would have been a fine thing," she had added bitterly.

Because she didn't want to discuss Betty Gribbon with Tom she told him about Jim Trench's suspension and the reason for it.

"I only hope that young man's career isn't damaged because of it,'" she concluded. "'I'm beginning to think Dawn scars whatever she touches.'"

Vic Wylde said casually, "You know, of course, that I'm going to Stoke on Monday?"

"I had heard," Eve acknowledged, writing busily in the Day Book and wondering how she could bring herself to tell such a very charming patient that he was not supposed to sit on a corner of her desk while she tried to catch up on written work. "It's a great step forward, of course."

"So they tell me, but I'm now impatient for full freedom of life and limb. It's galling simply to be changing hospitals."

"They're all specialists at Stoke Mandeville. You'll be in good hands, and I sincerely hope Sister is firmer with you than T have been."

"You're joking, of course," he smiled. " 'As others see us,' indeed! I've seen you as a regular little termagant."

"And I see myself as a regular little heroine, I believe I've endured your distracting presence on my very docile ward for almost six months?"

"Sometimes it seems longer than that," he pondered. "I woke up in an oxygen, tent, I remember, and I thought, 'Well, this is it, Vic, my boy, you're in heaven; a peculiar, antiseptic sort of heaven; but there's an angel to prove it'"

"And now you've lived to believe you woke up in the other place, eh, Mr. Wylde?" she joked. "The trouble with you is that you never treat my remarks seriously, young woman. I am by nature the saturnine, serious type. I assess and then I conclude. I made my conclusions regarding you long ago."

She didn't take him up on this, so he went on, in a lighter tone : "I thought I might hire some transport and take you out for a drive tomorrow. It would do us both good. Before you start bringing out a dozen excuses I'll eliminate the obvious ones by saying I know it's your Sunday off duty and that you've already told somebody you have no definite plans."

Eve flushed.

"When Staff asked what I was doing tomorrow I didn't realise she was your spy," she said sharply. "Sometimes I think you know more about me than I do myself, sir."

"So about a drive?" he asked.

"Thank you, but we're not allowed to—to make arrangements with patients."

"Are you refusing because I'm a patient, or me?" he enquired. "I've secured Matron's blessing to take you Off. So if you still want to refuse, do so boldly. I shan't mind."

For the first time she sensed a note of masculine authority in his mien.

"I—I would love to go, in that case," she said shyly. "As I have mail to attend to and a few odd jobs, such as mending, I would prefer it to be an afternoon trip, if you don't mind?"

"I'm delighted," he smiled, easing himself on to his feet once more. "I must go and do some telephoning. Shall we say two p.m. at the main gates?"

"That will be quite convenient," she told him, as he limped away. "There's one other thing, sir. I can drive a car, if you would like me to, rather than hire a chauffeur as well."

"Three is a bit of a crowd," he agreed, which left her blushing, for she hadn't intended to suggest-that they would be happier on their own. The expense angle was all that had really concerned her.

Kim died that same evening, never having recovered from his trip to Theatre. It had been feared he might linger on for weeks—even months—in a coma, but his parents were, comforted to know that on his last conscious day he had been so happy, busy and full of Cockney confidence.

"You never know 'ow they'll be tiken, do yer, Sister?" Kim's mother asked, after all was over. "Kim was goin' to buy me a new 'ouse, a detached 'ouse, with his earnin's. 'When I get me golden disc it's 'Ampstead Garden Suburb fer you, Ma,' e'd say. Bless 'im! I'm 'appy enough in me top-floor flat in Brixton, though I'll miss me boy singin'."

They came, they went, and sometimes they died, Eve pondered, as she looked round the ward with her cloak already about her shoulders after the evening's visitors had departed. Every hospital, she concluded, had a heart; you could almost hear it regular rhythmic beat; when death came calling that great heart was always a little saddened, that it hadn't been able to do more—enough.

The two night nurses were fresh and crisp at this hour, like young lettuces, though perhaps their bustling was for her benefit.

"Mr Crisp is on half-hourly pulse and B.P. readings," she reminded the senior nurse, "but he's the only one that should cause any anxiety tonight. Remember never to be both out of the ward at the same time; let the phone ring until there's somebody available. Goodnight, Nurses, everyone."

The warm response sent her off to supper feeling very much happier.

CHAPTER VIII

"Phone for you, Sister!" Blanche announced as Eve darned a long ladder in a pair of thin black tights with a thread that was no more than a strand of cobweb silk. "It's from London," she added for good measure.

Eve felt no surging of a wild excitement, and was somewhat perturbed by this lack of emotion. Did one grow out of such things, with passing time, as one grew out of comics and fairgrounds, and the despairing hero-worshippings of adolescence?

"Hello!" she greeted the black mouthpiece. "Eve Ramsey here."

"Hello, Eve!" came Tom's bright voice. "Aren't you surprised?"

"Not really," she had to admit "When Blanche said I had a call from London. I naturally expected it would be you. How are you? Is everything still going Well?"

"Absolutely tops, love. But do shut up and listen. These trunk calls are murder on one's pocket. I received your letter by late post yesterday. I had to contact you. Seafields Hospital doesn't really concern me any more, but I was shocked to hear about young Trench. He shouldn't have been suspended, you know. He's carrying the can for somebody else."

She was astounded by this information.

"How—how do you know ?" she asked.

"Because that little tramp of a sister of yours stowed away that night in my car, and we were nearly in London before I spotted her. I tore a strip off her and spent ages trying to get her a suitable conveyance back again. I was in one hell of a temper, I can tell you. Finally I stopped a lorry driven by a decent-sounding young Scots lad. He said he would drop Dawn on the outskirts of Seafields before going on to Brighton."

"You mean you gave Dawn into the charge of a complete stranger at that time of night—or morning?"

"My dear Eve, your baby sister would be safe in the company of a Bluebeard. She has a built-in mechanism for looking after Number One."

"But why should she stow away in your car?" The light broke suddenly and calamitously over her. "It was Dawn you've been seeing, who has been threatening you? she asked.

"Yes, but . . . "

"I—I see."

There was a painful pause while the pips went for time, then she heard him haranguing the operator for an extra minute and finally inserting more coins.

"Tom," she was waiting for him, "I suppose I'm shocked, and I shall certainly see to it that Doctor Trench is cleared, but I'm sure you and I aren't really in love any more. I—I would rather be free to think about things. You, too, might prefer your freedom."

"Now look here, Eve," he protested lamely, "don't let's be hasty."

"Yes, let's be just that," she contradicted "We're both dragging on hoping for a repeat of that first fine careless rapture, Tom, and it isn't going to happen— not to us. God bless you, and let's leave it at that"

"If you'd rather," he wavered, then added with belated gallantry, "I shall probably be the one to regret this day's work, Eve, but I'm not going to hang on to you if you really want to get away. Take care of yourself, and watch, out for that sister of yours!"

"Goodbye, Tom. All the best."

She hung up, returned to her room and waited for the tears to well up and fall. Surprisingly enough there were none. She thought they might come later. But for the moment she was conscious of a sense of release and relief. After a few minutes she began to wonder how she could have been such a fool as not to suspect Dawn in the first place. Tom was obviously initially attracted by her pretty face and the girl was only too ready to capitalise on any masculine regard where it pleased her to do so.

Eve thought a little better of Tom for having spoken up on Doctor Trench's behalf, but on the whole she despised him for his double dealing. He had known they were sisters and yet he had allowed the one to steal from the other; even an hour's pleasurable dalliance spent here or there was larceny when it took from love. Now she really knew herself again; of course she couldn't have been happy taking only what Tom was prepared to give her. She would give her whole, complete self, body and soul, in marriage, if she ever did marry after this first fiasco, and no less would satisfy her, and well she knew it.

Having made the decision and decided it was irrevocable, no matter what pangs might beset her as a result, she must now set to rights other things that were wrong, with Dawn's willing co-operation, or not.

*

As she stepped down the long drive, between beds of velvet-headed wallflowers, as strongly scented as they were many-hued, Eve thought her morning's work well done despite Dawn's protests that sleeping dogs were best left lying.

'"Lying' is the operative word here," Eve had flashed "You can't sacrifice Jim Trench as you were prepared to sacrifice me. Isn't it time you matured sufficiently to pay your own piper, Dawn? If you had a thought in your shallow little mind when you stowed away in Tom's car, it must have occurred to you that somebody would suffer for your night's work. Well, why shouldn't it be you, for a change?"

"I have suffered. I've been fined."

''But you had to drag someone else in more deeply, hadn't you? That's so typical of you it's pathetic."

"You my own sister, to talk to me like this?"

"You haven't wanted to acknowledge me as your sister in public, and I'm beginning not to care to be reminded of our relationship in private. What has it ever meant to me apart from progress from seeing my dolls broken to having you attempt to break everything else? You took Robert, and when you tired you tossed him aside; you tried to take Tom, but he wasn't as easily swayed; nevertheless, I've now finished with Tom—thanks to you. Please yourself whether you come along with me to see Matron or not. If you don't I shall tell her the simple truth. But if you come you can tell her whatever you like, as long as you clear Doctor Trench. Please yourself."

Dawn had decided to go along, seething as she was.

In Matron's private sitting-room, whither that good lady had betaken herself for the afternoon, Dawn behaved quite creditably, however, and cleared everybody but herself of intrigue.

"I was fed up and I just decided to go along for the ride," she said, somewhat defiantly. "I soon became frightened at what I'd done, and Doctor Carrington was furious when he discovered me. Actually I thought he'd have found out about me much sooner, before any real harm was done; then I was afraid to speak in case I startled him and we had an accident. He made me hitch-hike back, and told me to make a clean breast of everything to you, but it all seemed so ridiculous that I didn't think you'd believe me. Actually it was sweet of Doctor Trench to speak up as he did. He's very gallant because I hardly know him at all. I—I'm extremely sorry for everything."

"Well—" Matron was always undone by true confession, however, and could not whip up her wrath at secondhand—"you young gels are sometimes quite inexplicable, I must say. You wouldn't care to have us believe, Nurse, that such a pretty gel as you needs run after a man? To all intents and purposes you unsuccessfully tried to involve one who wanted nothing to do with you, and showed it quite clearly. Well, flat may be punishment enough, but I think a week on fatigue duties will put you in a fitting state of remorse. Naturally I will have the gallant, foolish Doctor Trench recalled, and ask him to pay more attention to his work and less to damsels in distress, in future. Thank you Sister—Nurse. That will be all."

"Satisfied?" Dawn asked defiantly, as they crossed the lawn behind the senior residents' wing.

"It's not for me to be satisfied or otherwise, is it?" Eve countered. "My conscience wasn't involved."

"About the only thing that wasn't," her sister lashed. "Anyway, this may not have your blessing, but Jim Trench happens to like me, more than a little, and after what he did for me I feel the same way about him. Some good may come out of all this, though I don't suppose you can credit me with one unselfish thought Am I stealing Doctor Trench from you, too?"

"No," Eve actually smiled. "I think I shall wait until you're safely married off before I rebound into another love affair. Fortunately I'm well content with my work."

But it was pleasant to be free of that same work and anticipating a pleasant afternoon as she saw the sleek green limousine outside the gates, the tall figure of Vic Wylde apologetically tucked up inside the passenger seat.

"Sorry I can't greet my fair guest in the usual way," he said, leaning across to open the driver's door for her, "but getting me in this thing was like getting the last sardine into the can, and my escorts couldn't stay with me while I observed the gallantries."

"Not another word, sir. I'm rather late. My word! I never drove anything as grand as this before! I hope I can manage it"

"I was told the controls were responsive to the lightest touch," he told her, "And I had to get a big one to fit around my various contraptions. Anyway, I trust you."

"Thank you," she bowed feeling suddenly more light-hearted than she had dared to hope of this day. "Where would you like to go, sir?"

"One moment," he said severely, and waved in the direction of the hospital. "For the first time in our acquaintance we're clear of that place. No formal titles, if you please. You have a choice between addressing me as Victor or Vic, but I shall, with the greatest of pleasure, call you Eve. May I?"

"Certainly," she agreed, realising that members of their profession who clung tenaciously to titles when off duty rapidly became bores. "I'll take you up on the Downs, Vic, and there's a lovely little village called Upper Titterington where we can have a farmhouse tea. Mrs Winkle will bring it out on a tray if we can't untangle you without difficulty."

As the car started without trouble and purred away, he sank quietly back in his seat and murmured, as though to himself: 'I wonder if you realise what all this means to me, Eve, after all this time? You can't. It's too personal a thing. I'm going to be silent to savour and enjoy. The views both in and out of the car I find eminently satisfying."

With a deep, deep sigh he looked from her face, intent on the traffic all about, to the everyday face suburbia wore even on Sundays, and, true to his word, said no more for almost half an hour.

On the lower slopes of the South Downs, which stretched almost to the sea in these parts, May was dressed in her loveliest garments. She wore her usual many-hued green, though its colours were fresh as from the cleaner's, audit was pied, where there were fields, with daisies and cowslips. Instead of walls and fences there were hedges of pink and white hawthorn, from which the month takes its name, and in the hamlet villages through which Eve drove her appreciative passenger, the gardens were filled with fading lilac giving way to the golden ringlets of laburnum and the white waxen perfection of mock-orange blossom.

Upper Titterington sat in a fold of the Downs a thousand feet above sea level, though no one would have guessed this, so snugly enclosed was it from all cool winds. Five hundred feet below nestled Lower Titterington, exposed to both traffic and the elements, so that the cousins nowadays had little in common.

Mrs. Winkle is the only person who makes teas in this village," said Eve, as they pulled up in the tiny village square near the Saxon church of St. Ethelbert, "and even then she doesn't advertise. Would you care to try to get out, Vic?"

"I'll do it somehow—on my own," he said, with a show of independence. "You go ahead and order—or powder your nose, or something."

She obligingly went towards the nearest cottage, drenched in wallflowers, tapped on the door and was admitted. Mrs. Winkle might have stepped out of Dickens. She was round and rosy, wore an apron and mob-cap and had a voice so redolent of Sussex her dialect could have been cut with a knife.

"Mak 'e tea wi' pleasure, Nurse," she now said gladly. "You wan'it 'igh or sweet?"

"Oh—er—sweet, I think," said Eve, who had earned this lady's everlasting regard by nursing her husband through bronchiectasis the previous summer. "May we have it in your garden?"

"Why, cert-ny you may," the good woman agreed.

"And how is Mr Winkle?"

"Foine. 'E be foine. Well, you go an' get your friend an' Oi put kettle on."

"Half an hour will be fine, Mrs Winkle. I would like to show my companion your, wonderful garden and maybe take him down the pasture to the stream. You see he hasn't walked for—for three years and there's so much to be seen."

"The poor, poor soul!" Mrs Winkle was all sympathy. "Now Oi know why Oi baked yesterday. Winkle said 'Why be you bakin' again Pes?' Now Oi know it was for your friend, Nurse, and everything turning out that light and good."

As there was still no sign of Vic Wylde, Eve went rather anxiously in search of him. The car was empty, so she looked up and down the short, deserted street. From the church came the sound of children's voices raised in hymn-singing. She knew that was where he would be, and surely enough he was seated in the back row, listening to the Sunday lesson with a rapt attention it was impossible to command from the children while strangers were present.

"I think we're distracting them, Vic," she said gently, at last.

"Yes, of course." He pulled himself to his feet and shuffled out into the sunlight once again. "I used to sing in a choir, you know, when I was a boy. Not that I was a goody-goody little boy. I truly lived up to my grandmother's assertion that God made boys into such little devils that He gave them the voices of angels to make up for it."

Eve smiled.

"Your grandmother obviously knew little boys." she said. "I was in charge of a children's ward once, and I came to the same conclusions, but my boys couldn't even sing to make up for the rest."

"Now you deal with men," he pondered. "I suppose they all love you, sooner or later?"

"No, indeed," she laughed again. "The gentle passion and three-hourly injections do not go happily together. Sometimes somebody imagines he's in love with one or another of us, but he soon comes to his senses."

"Invariably?" asked Vic Wylde.

"Invariably," she assured him.

They were now wandering down the Winkles' garden path between rows of scarlet tulips and blue forget-me-nots. The many scents occupied him for some minutes, then she led him through a gate into a small paddock where a nanny-goat and two growing kids were grazing.

"In six months I haven't," he now volunteered.

"Haven't what?" she asked, being occupied in keeping the inquisitive nanny from coming too close to her companion.

"Got over being in love with you."

She looked at him quickly to assure herself there was no teasing twinkle in his eyes.

"You will," she told him, hoping he could not see how the colour had rushed to her cheeks. For a long time he hadn't said such things, and she had fancied the subject—and its entertainment value—exhausted.

"I should have given up hope, of course, when you told me there was someone already in your life," he said wryly, "but hope is a persistent bloom, and when one is in a fairly hopeless plight it perversely becomes a thriving evergreen."

"Vic," she said, as they paused by the stream and threw twigs into the water, "I could easily succumb to both sympathy and flattery today. You see I—I haven't got someone in my life any longer. Things have been uncertain for some time between us. This morning I—we decided not to go on together."

"Oh," he said flatly. "Any broken pieces? Tell me to mind my own business if you want to."

"I don't think there are any broken pieces," she replied. "But at the very least one is in a state of limbo at such times. I feel rather lost, as though I'd forgotten my handbag, or something."

"I understand," he said softly. "I feel just the same whenever I forget mine."

He had succeeded in making her laugh again and she was grateful to him.

"t think tea will be ready," she said. "I asked for it to be served in the garden. I hope you're enjoying this trip, Vic?"

"Enjoying it?" He was incredulous. "I daren't say how much or I'll break into poetry."

"Why not song?" she asked.

"No," he said regretfully. "The boyish treble did not develop into an operatic tenor, much to my mama's sorrow. She would have liked a Caruso in the family. Doctoring meant nothing to her. She was an incurable romantic and would have preferred her son to starve in some studio in Chelsea than enjoy moderate success in Harley Street."

Mrs Winkle had excelled herself on this occasion. There were sandwiches made from home-cured ham and the milky-white bread which she baked herself; scones and sponges and shortbread and preserves in which the strawberries were as huge as tomatoes and the loganberries wine-purple and rich with goodness. Added to this the flavour of hot tea poured from an old brown pot and a jug of cream to round off the refreshing infusion.

"I suppose you're now thinking about getting back to Harley Street, Vic?" Eve asked as he offered hear a cigarette and took one himself.

"Harley Street?" he grimaced. "I sold my practice —had to. Just as well, I suppose. To be three years behind the times, in surgery, is to be a menace. I've kept up with developments, in theory, but that's not enough. I shall do general medicine somewhere, I suppose, and pick up what I can, when I can. Ill get by."

She did not follow up. Obviously Vic Wylde was not a wealthy man, and his future was something which concerned him and nobody else. She wondered if Vanessa Conyngham had any part in his plans. The actress had visited him assiduously since his condition had improved. Eve believed that Vanessa was accompanying him to Stoke Mandeville on the morrow. After tomorrow, of course, he would soon forget everybody at Seafields. He would be joking with a new Sister and, if she was young, making her blushes flow and ebb like sweet tides of embarrassment Stoke's gain would be her loss—she would miss her favourite patient and freely admitted it today, looking across at him with his patrician, dark good looks and thoughtful, easily amused eyes.

All too soon they had to leave Mrs Winkle to her washing-up and went back to the car laden with bags of this and that which they had particularly enjoyed.

"A taste for everybody in the ward," said Vic. "I would like to organise an expedition to Upper Titterington for every long-term patient at the hospital. That's the sort of therapy they need."

She drove the car carefully back against a stream of traffic returning north from the coast.

"The day trippers are with us again," she said "That means summer's almost here."

"I'm more interested in next summer," he said tersely. "I know I have at least a year's work ahead of me before I can throw off my wretched shackles."

"You've done so very well, Vic," she said reprovingly. "Don't be impatient."

"I want to say things," he told her, "but my tongue must remain shackled, too. Tell me, Eve, what will you do —now?"

"Work," she told him, "long and hard and satisfyingly."

"Will you stay at Seafields?"

"I expect so. I may get the wanderlust. I don't know."

"If you go away," he said quietly, "please let me know. I don't intend to bore you by persisting with an acquaintance best left to languish, but I shall sometimes think of you, and if you move on I would like to know."

"Very well," she told him, while feeling a little hurt that he considered their acquaintance should be allowed to languish. Still, that was life, and it was unlikely that, should she move on to other work, she would remember to remind Victor Wylde of her existence.

"Please turn in here," he requested, and she obediently steered the big car into a quiet little cul-de-sac short of the hospital. "I know what it will be like tomorrow. You'll have suffered a metamorphosis by donning your uniform and with it the authority to discharge me, without a pang, from your care. I want to say goodbye, now, here. Thank you for everything, Eve, and most especially for today. You may have been hiding an aching heart, but I was not made aware of it. I've enjoyed every minute. May I—kiss you goodbye?"

She was strangely loth to make physical contact with him, and when their lips met she knew why. Vic Wylde kissed with the no-nonsense concentration of a man who knows exactly what he is doing and why. It was a masculine kiss, and she would have been less than a woman if she hadn't melted under the onslaught and felt peculiarly lightheaded and rather primeval.

"We'd—better get back," she said, not looking at him, feeling her hair to be tousled and her whole appearance shouting the news that she had just been embraced.

The engine coughed and stalled.

"Oh, dear!" she said, using the choke. "I hope we're not going to have trouble!"

She knew he was laughing silently and hated him for it.

"You know," he said ominously, in her ear, as the car started forward again, "I think we're going to have plenty of trouble, one way and another, don't we?"

CHAPTER IX

For the first time in her nursing career Eve Ramsey was conscious of a sense of inadequacy in herself. She Worked hard, but not hard enough to keep trespasser thoughts from intruding. She would remember how happy she had been just to see Tom enter the ward, such a little while ago, and now there was no member of the medical staff at Seafields who could ever recapture that joy for her. She could not honestly regret Tom or. wish him back, but she did regret that she lacked someone to take his place in her life. A hospital was a world, and if there was no one special it could be a lonely world, for all its busyness.

Mr Saddler, who now occupied the side ward, was a constant reminder (by uncomplimentary comparison) of Vic Wylde. The old gentleman was forever complaining about something or other, and kept the staff on the run, mainly for trivialities. He was that black sheep of any hospital, a patient who behaved as though he was the only pebble on the beach, and his only excuse was that he had been very ill, though he refused to admit that he was any better when his charts showed otherwise.

Eve was persistently tolerant towards Mr Saddler, if only because her inclination was to be otherwise. She reasoned with herself that it was easy to be nice to patients blessed with pleasant dispositions, and therefore all the more important to put real effort into making difficult subjects feel happy.

"It's easy to have favourites," she told her nurse. "but it isn't fair on the others. There's often a story behind a disagreeable patient. He may be unwanted at home or unhappy. He may think the whole world's against him, including you. He may not care much about anything, least of all your feelings. But you must never cease to care about his. That's what is really important in nursing, and especially on this ward. We rarely get film stars or glamour boys at Seafields."

"Mr Wylde was nice, wasn't he; Sister?" asked Nurse Raphael, who was the only nurse not to have changed wards at the beginning of the month of June in the bi-annual reshuffle which had taken place.

"He was very nice, of course," Eve said primly, feeling strangely disturbed at the mention of his name.

Since he had left Seafields she had not heard one word from or about him. This was as he had hinted it would be, but one could not remain purely impersonal about the fate of someone when one's last remembrance was of a kiss meaningfully shared. That had been no avuncular salute Vic Wylde had given her; it had stirred depths she could now well have wished unexplored, since there was apparently to be nothing more to the affair. She blamed herself for looking for more. Was not Vic Wylde well aware that she had been in that state of vulnerability wherein she was likely to rebound into any intriguing situation? He had kissed her, found her responsive, and decided discretion was the better part of valour. It was one thing to dream dreams about another man's girl; when the lady became available then it was time to wake up and watch out.

Cynicism did not sit well on Eve Ramsey's young shoulders. Sometimes she looked at herself in the mirror as at a stranger. Her fellows noticed the change in her, too, and one day Sister Colles spoke out,

"Sister, about that trip to Minorca. If you haven't made plans for your leave yet, that plane ticket and hotel booking are still available. My sister can't make it and I should hate to go alone."

"I'm sorry, Sister," Eve said, with a quick toss of her head, "but I'm really not interested. I'm going to Scotland."

"Whereabouts in Scotland?"

"Turnberry," said Eve, making her mind up in a flash. "I shall play golf."

"Alone?"

"Yes. I like being alone," Eve said enthusiastically.

Sister Colles drew her lips into a pucker.

"Well, sorry I intruded, of course. It's a good thing you enjoy your own company. As one grows cider one gets more and more of it, you'll find."

Eve pondered the other's words after she had gone. Sister Colles had meant her gesture kindly, and she had snubbed her for her pains. Sister was middle-aged and the senior midwife of Seafields Hospital, but this did not stop her from being lonely. They were both taking their annual leave m the first three weeks in September, and as Eve had insisted that she had made no plans, it was only natural that Jean Colles should think of her when her own sister was unable to accompany her on the trip to Minorca, which had been arranged away back in January.

Having allowed the business to lie heavily on her conscience all night, Eve went along to see Sister Colles first thing in the morning. That worthy was sitting up in bed, her hair full of old-fashioned curling pins. The part that showed above the bedclothes looked exactly like an unexploded mine.

"Sister," Eve began, "about the trip to Minorca ... "

"I phoned a cancellation through to the agency after I spoke with; you last evening," said the other. "They said they could dispose of two seats better than one."

"Oh!" said Eve. "I'm sorry. I was hoping we could go together after all."

"What about Turnberry?" enquired Sister Colles.

"Well, will you consider going with me to Scotland?"

"I don't play golf," said the midwife. "It's all right, Sister. You don't have to spend your time with an old fogey like me. I quite see your point."

"You're not an old fogey, and as we both have the same time off I think we should link up together. I'm not as fond of my own company as I thought I was."

The other began to thaw a little.

"It's awfully late to make: plans," she pondered, then she confided; "actually I haven't returned those tickets to the agency yet I said I would send them off today. I suppose I could change my mind ...?"

"Do," urged Eve. "The more I think of it the nicer it all sounds. It can be cold in Scotland in September, but Minorca should be heavenly. Can we say it's decided, then, Sister?"

"Bless you, yes. You've saved my holiday for me. I'm one of those dreadful people who can't even enjoy a film unless I have somebody to nudge and say 'Isn't it sad?' or 'Isn't it lousy?' I must have been given an overdose of the herding instinct."

"Nudge me all you wish," Eve invited, as she turned to go back to her own neglected cup of tea.

She felt happier that she had made this gesture to dear old Colles. Where she went for her annual leave somehow didn't matter very much. She had no sense of purpose left in any matters not concerned with her work. She supposed this was due to some inner mechanism which had shut down once that her future with Tom had seemed assured. Now the absolute blank which faced her occasionally looked frightening. She saw herself in various stages through her colleagues in the present: at thirty she would be like Linda Fisher, clinging desperately to her youth in matters of dress and developing a decidedly girlish giggle and a predilection for the company of younger doctors: at forty she might resemble Geraldine Day, who had turned her back on mankind and become somewhat mannish herself : at forty-five she would probably be extremely efficient at her job, maybe a specialist like Jean Colles, yet have lost her individuality in her demanding career, so that she could no longer endure her own company: at fifty-five she would have given up worrying and questioning, like Sister Prothero, and live a day at a time, happily insignificant and anonymous.

It was only occasionally she suffered from glimpsing a characterless future. At other times she seriously considered taking a new job in a different hospital, possibly overseas. There was so much to nursing that one could never settle down to being a vegetable—at least she couldn't. All she asked was time to recoup her forces, overcome her disappointments, and then go forth again the wiser but not the harder for her experiences.

Dawn had moved to Dobham Municipal Hospital to study for examination, and wrote her half-sister desultorily but quite happily.

'It's much more lively here,' she wrote on one occasion. 'There's a social club and every facility for sport Have you a tennis racquet you aren't using?'

Eve had promptly sent her one and only racquet to Dawn, who hadn't even acknowledged it.

'I may decide to stay on for my Finals,' Dawn went on. 'I realise one has to do something, and even if one marries, two incomes are decidedly better than one until the children arrive, and even then one can afford help if one is qualified and prefers to work.'

Which showed that Dawn had her own future all cut and dried, at least.

Tom had never written, though Eve saw in the paper that he had acquired his M.D., and telegraphed her sincere congratulations. She felt a little sick and queer when, one day late in August, someone showed her a copy of the local paper in which a paragraph was outlined in ink.

Doctor weds doctor, she read.

The paragraph explained that Doctor Thomas Ivan Carrington, a popular member of Seafields Cottage Hospital staff for two and a half years, had recently married Doctor Betty Gribbon at the parish church of St. Mark in Westlands, Warwickshire. The two doctors would continue to serve as partners with Doctor Felix Gribbon, the bride's father, who had been established in Westlands for half a century.

"Are you all right, Sister?" asked Sister Prothero. "You look pale."

"It's so hot today," Eve said, fanning herself with the paper. "I wish it would thunder."

"You need your leave," the other said kindly. She knew very well that rumour had linked Sister Ramsey's name with Doctor Carrington's and she had preferred to show her colleague the news item rather than someone with less finesse. Now, if the wedding was mentioned, she would have overcome any shock she might have felt and be able to make a suitable rejoinder.

Sister Prothero was loyally convinced that if nothing had come of the affair between Doctor Carrington and the Ramsey girl, it was because she willed it so to be.

Sister Ramsey was a genuine prize, and let no man say otherwise in Sadie Prothero's hearing.

Now that the holiday in Minorca was only days away, the two Sisters achieved a certain notoriety among the senior staff. For one thing they had shopped extensively in a London West End store, and while their wardrobes were considerably enriched, they were decidedly the poorer for the excursion.

"Sister says I must swim, so I bought this," Jean Colles held up a plain blue and white striped swimsuit with a blue bolero and white wrap-round skirt for beach wear. "Six pounds," she grimaced, as though it pained her to think of it, "but it makes me feel so dashing it's worth every penny. Then there are two evening gowns for use in the hotel. They have a get-together dance and a goodbye ball. I'll tell you what happens in between."

There was a roar Of laughter in which Eve joined. She was discovering that Jean Colles's sense of humour was a real gift; one could not be depressed in her company for long.

She was glad they had both shared the same weekend off duty so that she could supervise her elder's purchases. Sister Colles, who had flaming red hair, had hitherto indulged in a taste for reds and mauves whenever she wore mufti. The scarlet lining of her hospital cloak always shouted a protest to the roll of carrot beneath the starched Sister's cap, and when, in the West End store, Jean had made a beeline for the cherries and magentas, Eve had a word with the assistant assigned to them, and together they managed to flatter Jean into a selection of blues and greens which did more for her ego, eventually, than a raise in salary.

"It's much more fun going off with somebody young," said Jean, on their last working morning, as she called in on Eve to ensure that they had a goodly supply of pesetas and traveller's cheques. "Elspeth, my sister, is nearly sixty and wouldn't have approved of me wearing beach clothes, let alone swimming. I think I'm getting the best of this arrangement, Sister."

"Rubbish!" said Eve. "I'm looking forward to it all tremendously. Why shouldn't you swim? You have a very nice figure."

"Thank you. A young man once told me that, and whenever I could eat another cream cake or an extra chocolate, I always remember. Speaking of young men, Sister, if—er—if anybody wants to date you, while we're away, I'll—er—understand You're not to go everywhere with me, like my shadow."

"Holiday romances are not in my line, really," Eve smiled wryly.

"Well, let's say it cuts both ways, eh?" the other insisted. "If I meet a nice, middle-aged old dear who wants to discuss his rupture with me, I shall expect you to have a previous engagement at extremely short notice."

"I'll remember," Eve promised, rather hoping a situation would arise which would require a tactful withdrawal on her part.

It was a Friday, and the day before one's annual leave is always inclined to offer more than a little in the way of distractions. Eve heard that Sister Colles was expecting triplets on her ward, and it was only natural that she would wish to see them a fact before the day was over.

She herself had a visit from Staff Nurse Whitley, who had been up in Theatre for the past three months. She came with the news that she was to be Acting Sister of Men's General while Eve Was away.

"Well done, Staff!" said Eve gladly. It was rarely that any girl who rose to Acting Sister was asked to step down again. Possibly she would be required to relieve in half a dozen places before the honour was finally and irrevocably awarded. Whitley was a good nurse, conscientious and kind. She could not have wished her ward in better hands.

"There's only one patient who needs to be watched, Staff," warned Eve. "He's an ambulant, too free with his hands, foul tongue, name of Cudby. He's under observation, stomach pains. Watch the junior nurses with him, and don't hesitate to report him to both Matron and Doctor Widdup. The rest are lambs."

Henry Cudby was one of that band of brothers referred to collectively as 'spivs'. He liked 'easy' money, an 'easy' touch, 'easy' women, the gaudier the better: he was a migrant visitor to Seafields, laden with nylons, painted ties and other merchandise which found a ready market among holidaymakers at their 'easiest'. Nothing was returnable simply because Henry took care never to be in the same place twice. When he had been admitted to hospital suffering from stomach pains, he had ascribed his symptoms to food poisoning. Since knowing the fellow, however, the junior staff of Men's General mentally substituted 'wife' for 'food', certain that Mrs Cudby could stand Henry no more than they. Eve privately considered that Henry's business was concluded in Seafields, and that he was looking {or cheap accommodation for a few weeks. His 'pains' were never troublesome at meal-times and he slept like a top. He could always be counted on, however, to have a severe attack whenever a doctor was in evidence.

Eve didn't often actually dislike a patient, but she both disliked and distrusted Henry Cudby, She hoped, today, to secure a promise of his early discharge.

She was pretty outspoken, therefore, when Doctor Widdup made his round at a little after ten. Henry was writhing in the bed clutching his middle and emitting groans.

"I really think Mr. Cudby is teasing us, Doctor," she opined. "He hasn't had any pains since you were here yesterday."

Henry opened one eye to regard her malevolently.

"How d'you know what I suffer in silence, Sister?" he demanded. "I been awake half the night. Wouldn't do to make a row an' disturb the others, though, would it?"

"Well, why not suffer in silence now, Mr Cudby?" she enquired. "You really make plenty of noise for Doctor Widdup, don't you?"

"Why you smarming little—!"

Eve winced as the epithet rang out like a pistol-shot.

"That'll do, Cudby," said Doctor Widdup sharply. "Sister's only stating facts. Your X-rays are clear; your appetite's good and pulse and B.P. normal. There's really no point in your occupying, a bed here. If you come to my surgery in Outpatients at two p.m.

I'll give you some medicine which will help. Now read your paper, and after dinner get dressed and come and see me."

The look Henry Cudby sent after the doctor's procession boded ill for somebody. His pathetic bluff had been called and he was spoiling for trouble. He brooded about his imagined injury for more than half an hour, then he donned his gaudy dressing-gown, wriggled his thin feet into mules and trailed down the ward in search of either diversion or—revenge.

Matron was staring short-sightedly down the main corridor when she suddenly blinked and said; "Isn't that-Nurse Simmonds?"

Dawn paused, then she admitted, "Yes, Matron, it is. I have a day off and I wanted to see my sister."

"Of course. She is going off tomorrow, you know, on leave. I was about to call on her myself, but you could spare me the journey. Doctor Widdup walked off with her keys to the drug cupboard. She has been telephoning for their return. Perhaps you would hand them over? You know the drill, of course."

"Certainly, Matron." Dawn grimaced after the departing grey-haired figure. Actually she had called to see Jim, not Evie, and now her sister would want to know this and that, and time would simply fly.

She went off to Men's General clutching the keys in her gloved hand. There was nobody about at the entrance to the ward, though a couple of nurses were bed-making out on the veranda. Nobody was in the office, either, and she fumed silently. Jim was meeting her at the gates in less than five minutes. Oh! drat Matron and Evie and the blessed drug-cupboard keys.

Though it was against all the rules she put the keys on the blotter and scribbled a note.

'Dear Evie,

Matron asked me to give you these, but I really cant wait. Have a good time in the Med. Sorry I'm not coming with you.

Love,

Dawn.

Out in the corridor her conscience troubled her a little, then she told herself Eve couldn't be far away. A man came out of the bathroom and surveyed her with lascivious interest. Dawn was used to such things and smiled.

"Do you happen to know where Sister Ramsey is?" she asked.

"No," replied Mr Cudby. "I expect she's gone to coffee."

"Oh. Well, if you see her will you tell her to look on her blotter? You look a reliable type," Dawn flattered, and flashed a dazzling smile. "She's my sister and the message is important."

"You can count on me," said Henry, and watched Dawn from her slim hips to her high heels, go on her way.

The office door was shut, but Henry, knowing no one was inside, opened it and beheld the keys lying on the blotter together with Dawn's note. The keys were clearly labelled Sister—Men's General and Henry Cudby knew they were the keys to the drug cupboard. They were usually attached to a belt Sister wore round her slim waist; he had seen them often; he also knew the drug cupboard was next door, in the clinical room.

When Eve returned from her coffee break she announced the fact to her nurses, who were now in the main ward trying to complete the bed-making round before dinner. She then entered her office, utterly astounded to see Henry Cudby sitting in the visitors' chair.

"Mr. Cudby," she asked, "what are you doing here? Patients are not allowed—"

"I know all about that, Sister," he said ingratiatingly, "but I come to apologise for calling you what I did. It wasn't right, but I was not myself for the moment I hope you'll forgive me, seeing that I'm leaving and all that?"

"Certainly, Mr Cudby. No hard feelings," she assured him, holding open the door vary pointedly so that he could go back to the ward.

"There was one other thing, Sister, a message from a young lady. Your sister, she said she was, a very attractive piece, if you'll forgive the expression ... "

"Dawn—here?" Eve was startled.

"She didn't tell me her name. She simply said you was to look on your blotter an' that it was important So long, Sister."

Eve's horrified gaze saw the missing keys before she had time to read the note. How stupid of Dawn, who was a nurse and should know better, not to give the keys into her own hand! Surely she wasn't in such a hurry that she couldn't spare the time to avoid the trouble which might be caused by somebody else discovering the unattended keys?

She remembered Henry Cudby sitting as nice as pie within eighteen inches of both note and keys, and her heart felt suddenly cold. Just, supposing—?

She dashed into the clinical room and opened the drug cupboard. Everything looked all right She checked the poisons and the soporifics, then the pain killers and the ether jar. All was in order. Sighing with relief, she mentally apologised to Mr Cudby and fastened the key-ring to her belt She had already destroyed Dawn's note.

At that moment the inter-com phone rang out in the corridor. The caller was Miss Bloomsbury.

"Oh, Sister, did you get your keys?"

"Yes, Matron, thank you," she was able to admit.

"Nurse Simmonds gave them to you, then? I expect you were surprised by her visit?"

Expressed in this way, Eve was able to admit truthfully, that she had been surprised indeed.

She wondered what Dawn was doing in Seafields. Doctor Trench was looking quite happy these days, if that affair was still on.

At six p.m. the last of three girl triplets was born in Maternity and Sister Colles was happily content especially when the mother, asking her name, said that the four-pound fragment would be named Jean.

"When I was expecting twins," she said, "I had chosen Josephine and Jacqueline for two girls. Now that I've got three, Jean will do very nicely."

Sister Colles's 'baby' was the toast of the dining-room that evening. Sister herself now had plans to procure a real Spanish shawl for her namesake, and it was happily she pinned up her hair that night, and sank into her pillows with the assurance that when she awoke she would be on leave, with magical plans ahead of her.

CHAPTER X

They laughed a lot, the two nursing Sisters and they lazed a great deal on the white-sanded beach near their hotel on the outskirts of Ibiza, the principal town of the Balearic island of Minorca. They swam when it grew too hot for comfort, for it was a warm September even for this latitude, and it was as though the blue Mediterranean soaked into their very bones and made them feel they belonged and had already been in Ibiza for a lifetime instead of only ten short days.

"If only I could tan like you," sighed Jean Colles as she peeped at her companion warily from under the awning they had hired.

Eve was lying on her stomach out in the sun, her back now golden brown and gleaming with sand particles. Her fair hair was loose, obviously drying after the latest dip and the older woman sighed that some people were born to look like nymphs, or creatures cast up by the tide, while others, like herself, merely looked hot and bothered and creased in the afternoon heat.

The majority of their party had left by launch, just after breakfast, to circumnavigate the island, calling at other interesting places en route. Eve would have gone along too, but suspected that her holiday companion was feeling both the pace and the heat after the first hectic week. She had therefore suggested they spend the day quietly, catching up on mail, etcetera, and Jean had readily agreed.

The latter lounged in a low deckchair, a basket table at her elbow on which stood a glass of lime juice with the ice-cubes rapidly melting in it. Her writing pad and a few view cards lay beside the glass, but so far she hadn't written one word.

"Your unknown admirer is watching you again," she now observed, with some satisfaction. "He just smiled at me. I suppose he thinks I'm your mother."

"Oh, Sister, you and your romantic notions!" Eve replied sleepily. "What makes you imagine he's my admirer? There are dozens of lovely girls all over the place."

"He always sits in the same place, near the breakwater, where he can see us."

"Maybe he thinks we always sit where we can see him," Eve rejoined. "I'm going to have a nap, admirer or no admirer."

"He must be somebody," Jean droned on, "to be staying at the Hotel Madrid. Our holiday is costing enough, but theirs has a private beach and they have a swimming pool on the roof. It must be nice to be able to afford these swish places and gaze haughtily down one's nose at the tourist hordes in the public places."

Eve opened one eye.

"What's wrong with our bit of beach?" she wanted to know.

"Nothing I suppose," Jean admitted. "I'm exactly like that horrid old woman in the story who started off by wishing for a new bucket and finished by wanting a palace. Our little hotel is marvellous, even though it hasn't a swimming pool on the roof, or anywhere else, and the public beach is equal to the Madrid's private stretch any day, though of course it does get a little more crowded. Oh! I say"

"What now?" Eve asked sleepily.

"Your admirer appears to have a girl-Mend, a very glamorous piece with hair—not my shade—a copper-beech colour."

"There, you see?" Eve murmured. "Now perhaps you'll stop trying to make up a romance between us."

"I'd like to see him without his sun-glasses," the other persisted "I bet he's a real good looker. He's well thatched, anyhow. Blade. He's probably a Spanish marquisite." ^;

"A what?" Eve laughed.

"Well, something like that, Sh! he's looking. He heard you laugh."

"Is there any law against laughing?" Eve asked, forbidding her own eyes to seek out the subject of her friend's interest.

"She's going off to swim," Jean reported "Now I come to think of it he does nothing but sit there and look around Perhaps he's a cripple or something."

At last Eve raised herself on her elbows and, across the breakwater upon which were notices in Spanish, French and English saying that the beach was private henceforward, met the gaze of interested eyes hidden by large-sized sun-glasses.

A blush mounted her cheek with a readiness for which she couldn't quite account, then the glasses were removed, a smile lit up the bronzed countenance and Eve exclaimed: "It's Mr Wylde! Oh Jean, whatever shall I do?"

"Who on earth is—? Oh! you mean the Wylde? The surgeon?"

"Yes. He was on my ward. He's recognised me, so I suppose I must go over to have a word with him."

"Of course you must," Jean agreed, wondering at the other's absolute confusion as she drew on a beach wrap and tried to smooth her hair with her fingers. "You look fine. This is a beach, not the foyer at Covent Garden."

With sand trickling through her rope-soled sandals Eve stood on her own side of the breakwater and said: "Hello, Mr Wylde! How are you?"

"Very well, Sister," he replied formally. "And you?"

"I'm very fit, as usual. I see you're not wearing calipers. Does this mean more progress than you had dared hope for?"

"I left all such aids behind at Stoke Mandeville. I'm afraid I was a very trying patient, and you should know just how trying I can be. Now I'm living in my own place again with a male nurse who both bullies me and insists an a programme of manual manipulatio. He's an excellent masseur."

"So you can walk now?"

"Let's say I've improved. I'm not yet able to rise unaided from these infernal contraptions of chairs, otherwise I would have bowed to beauty."

"That's quite all right," she assured him, thinking how very polite they were both being in an impersonal way. She was thinking of the day she had taken him out, the day which had ended in a kiss she couldn't forget. Had he forgotten? Or, worse still, was he embarrassed by the remembrance?

"Well—" she half turned away—"I'm glad you're doing so well. It must be very encouraging for you."

"One moment," he stayed her. "Now that we've met again, in Minorca, of all places, you must come and have dinner with me one evening. Your friend, too," he added, as she hesitated. "How about this evening?"

"We—er—have several invitations and so little time left," she hedged, knowing that had he asked her tête-à-tête she would have accepted with alacrity for some mysterious reason.

"Then how about inviting me to luncheon with you, or even morning coffee?" he insisted, that familiar teasing smile lighting his countenance.

"Very well," she told him. "My friend has a hairdressing appointment tomorrow morning. If you come to our side of the breakwater I'll have two chairs and coffee ordered at eleven sharp. Can you manage that?"

"I would have preferred Mrs Winkle's garden," he told her, "but first fine careless raptures are unrepeatable, so I'm assured. I'll be there, and thank you, Eve."

He had remembered that expedition and he had called her by her name. She felt ridiculously sentimental all of a sudden. It must be this place, tins holiday atmosphere, which made her imagine she could so easily fall in love again, impossibly, with an ex-patient.

To bring her quickly to a state of sanity again, however, a female voice broke complainingly into her thoughts.

"I've hurt my foot on a stone, Vic. It's really very rough hereabouts. Hello! who's this?"

Vanessa Conyngham gazed challengingly in Eve's direction.

"You know Sister Ramsey, Vanessa? I was in her ward at Seafields."

"Oh, yes, that dreadful little hotch-potch hospital on the coast. It was always a frightful journey from town. I never understood why Horace sent you there in the first place."

Vic Wylde's smile never faltered, though Eve inwardly seethed.

"Isn't it a coincidence that I should meet Sister out here like this?" he asked.

"Well this is the tourist season, darling," Vanessa said promptly, "as I pointed out to you when you would insist on coming here in September. It's much quieter—and the climate's better—in the spring, then one is much less likely to bump into hordes of people."

"If you'll excuse me," Eve said, biting back an angry retort, "my friend is waiting".

"Let's go back to the hotel, Jean," she amazed Sister Colles by saying. "I—I think I'm going to cry."

"You know, Vanessa," Vic Wylde was saying to his companion, "each succeeding day I know you I would be less and less amazed to see you ride off on a broomstick,"

"Well, I like that for gratitude! After I come to a dead-and-alive hole like this with you where the temperature has consistently been in the upper eighties. You know what these small-hospital nurses are, Vic. They hang on to their distinguished patients as long as they can claim acquaintance. They're pathetically inhibited, poor dears. She couldn't sheer off fast enough when I came on the scene."

"One wonders, naturally, if your charming observations had anything to do with that."

"Now don't be sarcastic with me, Vic. Surely this Sister Ramsey isn't going to cause us to quarrel? She's not that important"

"To me she happens to be the most important person in the world," he said slowly.

"What?" Vanessa's laugh of derision turned to a grimace on her face. "You don't mean to tell me that passion you developed for her when you were helpless has persisted? Why, it's laughable!"

"Is it?" he asked quietly. "I'm glad it amuses you."

"I do believe you're serious," she said reluctantly, then added with an edge to her voice, "Did you drag me out here knowing full well she was staying at Ibiza?"

"I was furnished with a detailed plan of her itinerary, though she doesn't know that," he admitted. "I'm so much in love with her, Vanessa, that even to see her is better than nothing. As to dragging you out here, I seem to remember that when Bullivant and I were fixing up to come you decided you were 'resting' and would like to join us."

"I didn't know about her," Vanessa said fiercely.

"You didn't need to know." he reminded her "You and I lave long been divorced from the tenderer emotions, and neither of us nurses the least regret, as well you must agree."

"I suppose I'd better fade out for the big love scene?" Vanessa enquired bitterly.

"You must please yourself, of course," he said levelly. "I thought a certain Austrian Baron was providing you with sufficient pleasurable diversion to make your stay here worth while? Go with Ernst on his yacht whenever you wish, Vanessa."

"I will. He asked me to go on to Sardinia. Now that I know about your tawdry little affair with this— this person. I can't get away quickly enough."

CHAPTER XI

Eve sat up in bed reading Dawn's letter with a furrowed brow. It was the longest letter to pass between the sisters for a long time and, as usual, it hinted of trouble and more trouble.

'I had to go to Seafields,' Dawn wrote in her fine Italic hand, 'because there was a bit of a flap on over a missing jar of morphine. At least the jar wasn't missing, but the morphine was; it had been filled up with water (the jar had!). I know all this must sound incoherent, but I'm in the most awful tizzy what with one thing and another.

'Matron wanted to know if I had given the drug-cupboard keys to you in person, that day. I said yes', well, I did, didn't I? I really can't remember because I was so excited about my own affairs. Anyway, I don't suppose that had anything to do with the missing morphine. I suspect your replacement had an accident and was scared to admit it. Please don't let me be involved because I could be in enough trouble, and so could Jim, if things leaked out. You see we got married, secretly, last Wednesday, and we're not telling a soul so that we can carry on with our jobs and I can sit for my Finals in the summer.

'You wouldn't understand about being desperately in love, Evie; you're not as intense as I am. But I hope you will find somebody who will make you happy one day. Meanwhile, have a good holiday and remember I did give you those keys, if you're asked....'

Eve folded the letter, the happiness she had known during her leave now shattered. What was this about a missing quantity of morphine and the jar being filled up with water? Although Dawn didn't actually say so, the deceit must have been perpetrated on her ward, Men's General, and no matter how much Dawn might attempt to denigrate Acting Sister Whitley's character, that girl would readily admit to any accident she might have with dangerous drugs in her charge, and take the consequences philosophically.

She showered and dressed without joy, and during breakfast Sister Colles noticed her preoccupation.

"Still fretting about your admirer's girl-friend?" she asked. "I wouldn't give her another thought."

"I haven't," Eve said promptly. "I—I have a headache. I shall spend today very quietly."

"Do," urged the other. "I wouldn't overdo this sitting in the sun, if I ware you, or that may be just sour grapes advice on my part At least you look as though you've been in the Med. Nobody will believe me."

A waiter approached and said, "A man to see Miss Ramsey, please. His card."

Though Eve did not understand much Spanish, it was simple to read that Senor Juan Alvarez was a Detective-Inspector attached to Interpol, the international police organisation.

"I—I'll see him at once," Eve said, her heart descending into her shoes. As Jean Colles was regarding her questioningly she said, "I think there's been some trouble on my ward back at the hospital, Jean.

in tell you about it later."

The detective was awaiting her out on the terrace where, at this hour, a cooling breeze blew in from the sea.

"Senorita Ramsey?" he asked, holding out his broad, brown hand. "Perhaps you do not know why I am hoe? Please do not worry. I am sure all can be explained. It is just that eight grammes of Morphine has disappeared from your ward at Seafields Cottage Hospital. No one knows where it has gone and now many people are wondering if there is a crime, perhaps. Your help is needed. Perhaps you can throw some light on the matter?"

"What rotten luck!" said Jean when she eventually heard the story. "But leaving your keys about was a bit dim-witted of you, old thing. You think this Johnny in your office had something to do with it?"

"I think he would have relished getting me into trouble about that time. But it's all only conjecture, which is why I must get back to Seafields straight away. Eight grammes of morphine in the wrong hands could do untold harm."

She had told Jean the story without involving Dawn, and hoped, she could continue protecting her sister without telling any direct untruths. The main thing was to find out what part Henry Cudby had played in all this. She had given the detective Henry's name and described how he was found in the office with the keys, before she had put them back on her belt. Now Inspector Alvarez was arranging for her to catch the afternoon ferry across to Palma, and from Palma she would be squeezed into the next flight for London and rushed down to Seafields to account for such criminal carelessness as made her immaculate nurse's heart shrink in anticipation.

"Would you like me to come with you?" Jean asked as she helped her friend pack.

"No. You make the most of these last few days. I—I'm glad and grateful I had what I had. It's been most enjoyable, Jean."

"We must do it again," the other said kindly.

Eve smiled wryly. "After I come out of Holloway, you mean? Oh, dear! Is that eleven already?"

"Yes. I'm late for my appointment."

"Then rush," advised Eve. "You and I don't need goodbyes. I can manage."

She, too, was late for an appointment, she realised. She didn't want to walk down the beach and drink coffee with Vic Wylde as though nothing had happened. Possibly he wouldn't be there, in any case, but she could not bear to be the one who was at fault. She hadn't ordered the chairs or the coffee, of course, and the beach was crowded today. She saw him walking quite well, with the aid of a stick, among the crowded deckchairs and hordes of children. She suddenly wanted to tell him that she was sick at heart, ask him to excuse her, but having made her presence known she immediately said the wrong thing.

"I'm late. I'm sorry. As a matter of fact I was busy and I forgot."

"Oh," he said thoughtfully, while she bit her lip at what must sound like rank ungraciousness. "I hope I'm not interfering with jollier plans?"

"Of course not," she said somewhat curtly, annoyed at herself. "We must find somewhere to sit. Will the breakwater do?"

"I presume this is to be a brief encounter?" he queried. "If so, I suppose it will."

They perched uncomfortably and when their eyes met it was by accident.

"How—how are you?" she finally demanded, unable to find her natural tone or feel at ease. "You look wonderful"

"The superlatives have always been my prerogative," he reminded her. "I'm well and getting better. Let's not waste precious time on discussing my health. You're on holiday. Remember?"

"I'd almost forgotten," she said flatly.

"You mean I remind you of hospitals and your work?" he wanted to know.

"Yes, I suppose so," she admitted, never having known a conversation so difficult to maintain. "After alt you were my patient for a very long time."

"You always think of me as your patient?" he asked, offering her a cigarette. "When you approached me yesterday it was to see how your 'patient' was getting on, eh?"

"I was amazed to see the improvement in you," she said with enthusiasm, glad of the cigarette, which afforded some distraction. "I'm sure Miss Conyngham would disapprove if she could see us now."

"Why?"

"Because she thinks, quite rightly, that nurses should be kept locked up in hospitals and not allowed to mix socially with their patients."

"There's that word again!" he sighed. "Eve, I'm a person. I've ceased to be anybody's patient, including yours."

"I'm glad" she said brightly. "But I don't know you in any other context, do I? The hospital was our common ground."

"—And Mrs. Winkle's garden?"

He saw that she remembered and her colour rose and fell beneath her golden tan.

"Yes, well," she fidgeted, "I really must go now. You see, I'm leaving for home today. There's a lot to be done."

"Oh. I didn't know," he said quietly. "Thanks for sparing me this crumb of your time."

It was all so horribly constrained, and yet she failed to find the right words to put him at ease, to let him know that she couldn't ask for a companion more to her liking than he, if only her day hadn't been clouded by the dark promise of trouble lying ahead.

"Well—er—goodbye, Vic," she said, tentatively offering her hand.

"I didn't tell you about Vanessa," he said grimly. 'She's gone off to Sardinia, with a good-looking Austrian. We had a row about you."

"About me?" she frowned, then smiled as she remembered. "Oh you shouldn't have quarrelled. She simply reminded me I belonged on this side of the breakwater. I was angry at the time, but she was right according to her own lights. You really needn't have come here in the tourist season."

"You're right, of course," he said expressionlessly. "It was a whim I indulged. I was looking backstage."

"I beg your pardon?"

"When I was a small boy I was enchanted by a performance of Peter Pan. Unfortunately I made the mistake of asking to be taken behind the scenes. One should never insist on being disenchanted. Do you agree?"

She tried to understand the parallel he must be drawing, but failed.

"You must make it up with Miss Conyngham," she advocated. "Now, if you'll excuse me ... ? I have to catch the ferry."

"Of course. Bon voyage, Eve."

She wanted to look back at him, yet dared not It had been a mistake to meet him again, and most awfully disillusioning. She now knew, beyond doubt, that the affection she had felt for Vic Wylde when he was her patient could so easily evolve into love, but apart from that one surprise allusion to Mrs. Winkle's garden, it was doubtful if he remembered their precious friendship when circumstances had thrown them so closely together that each had looked forward to the day's first meeting as to the shining of the sun.

Well, it was just another sharp lesson against becoming socially involved with one's patients. It never did work out No matter how sweet and charming they were as patients, they were different people when about their daily rounds and common tasks, or even vacationing, and though they were equally sweet and charming they obviously hadn't as much time for a nurse as when they had needed her ministrations.

It was sentimental and ridiculous to remember fondly someone who was happily going along his way without a single backward glance in her direction.

CHAPTER XII

Eve scarcely knew what to expect when she returned to Seafields. She had tried to keep her mind a blank during the journey back by boat, plane and, most significant of all, a police car for the last leg; but it was virtually impossible not to be somewhat apprehensive about her future career.

Everything looked very normal about the 'hotchpotch hospital,' as Vanessa Conyngham had called it, but the manner in which she was whisked along to Matron's office, without being allowed to greet a single soul, was not normal at all. She was obviously regarded as a criminal, and yet she readily agreed that somebody who could be so careless as to allow a quantity of morphine to escape into the public's hands was indeed criminal in act, if not in intent.

Miss Bloomsbury was obviously most ill at ease when she eventually arrived on the scene. Eve pondered that though she had been away from the hospital only twelve days, it was as though eternity already stretched between her and her work on the ward.

"Fortunately, Sister," Matron began, "your frank statements to the police have enabled us to get to the bottom of this sorry business. Our main concern was that a quantity of morphine should fall into the wrong hands, but now our fears are allayed on that score, at least."

"I'm glad," Eve said fervently. "Did it turn up?"

"Ye-es," Miss Bloomsbury nodded. "The man Cudby was immediately traced, and he was so scared he promptly admitted everything; that he had found the keys on your desk, decided to give you a bad scare, opened the drug cupboard, poured out the first jar he saw into a medicine bottle, filled up the jar with water and then hid the bottle in your locker in your office."

"Oh!" exclaimed Eve, putting her hands to her face in relief. "And that's where you found it?"

"Exactly. The identical quantity that had been missing. The police asked if we wanted to charge Cudby with an offence, but—well, you see—actually—" Matron gave up, looking helplessly at the other.

"You mean that had I not afforded Mr Cudby the opportunity, the offence would never have been committed?" Eve came to her rescue. "I quite see that"

"How could you do such a thing, Sister?" Miss Bloomsbury asked "You've always been so absolutely reliable. I know you must have been excited at the prospect of your leave, but one cannot excuse such carelessness in a senior nurse. As it turned out this man Cudby used your carelessness to perpetrate a vicious prank, which fortunately, harmed no one in the end. But we must, as a body, take the pessimistic view. Somebody else may have used those keys— somebody who was either depressed or suffering from drug-addiction. Think what might have been on your conscience in either eventuality, Sister. It is even possible," Matron lowered her voice, "that you could have made yourself responsible for—for murder. There is no end to such conjecture."

Eve was pale, but she spoke clearly. "I need no further illustrations, thank your Matron. I realise the enormity of the crime. What is going to happen to me?"

"Now that," said Miss Bloomsbury uncomfortably, 'is the point. You are officially on leave, of course, until the twenty-sixth. After that you can either answer to the Board, in a court of enquiry, or—or resign."

"Oh!" Eve felt as though icy water had been dashed in her face. She was almost breathless from shock. "I suppose it would be better if I submitted my resignation in writing?"

"It might be less painful for you, Sister."

Eve wanted to say that she didn't mind the painful course of action, at this stage. She knew that if she faced a court of enquiry, however, she might not be able to shield Dawn. She certainly wouldn't perjure her '»lf for her wayward sister.

"I think I would prefer to resign," she said. "Will I be able to continue nursing elsewhere, do you think?"

"Oh, my dear, I hope so. I'm afraid tins business must be mentioned, of course, but nobody is going to hold one mistake against you for life. Your record is otherwise quite immaculate. I shall be happy to write you a reference myself."

"Thank you," Eve said, feeling suddenly numb. "May I collect my belongings together?" ;

"Of course. Visit your old ward—your friends— do anything you fancy. Would you like to occupy your room for a night or two?"

Matron was suddenly being so nice that she couldn't know how some of her invitations wer like rapier thrusts. 'Visit your old ward,' for instance, made Eve feel an outsider indeed.

"I would rather not, thank you," she said chokily.

"I have nothing on the ward, but I would like to go to my room and pack. I think a clean break would be best all round, otherwise it will mean explanations."

"I understand," Matron said softly. "Of course this business hasn't been made absolutely public. Only those who could help in our enquiries have been told, and they have been requested not to gossip. Where will you go, Sister?"

"Probably to London, Matron. One can live fairly anonymously in a big city. I'm sorry I—let you down."

"Goodbye, my dear. Do let me know if you have any trouble getting employment. My sister has a private nursing home in Essex. I'm sure I could explain the situation to her—"

Eve could bear no more. She turned away before she could disgrace herself by bursting into tears and went by a devious route to the Sisters' block. The corridor was deserted, so she made herself a cup of tea and took it to her room where she looked round helplessly, wondering where she was to go from here. Just in case Dawn was sparing her a thought, she took writing materials from a drawer and wrote a very telling letter.

'Dear Dawn,

'I have today returned from leave to face the music occasioned by the missing morphine. Fortunately this has been recovered, which is more than I can say for my reputation.

'I'm tendering my resignation and leaving Seafields for good. Where I will be working in future, I didn't know, but I will not be sending you my address. I think I can be excused for thinking that where you can reach me, you can hurt me, and now that you have a husband to look after you I can be excused from my self-imposed guardianship.

'So this is goodbye and may God bless you both. This is no time for recriminations; what has been done is over and done with as far as I'm concerned

'Make Jim a good wife and be happy.

Love,

Eve.'

She wept a little as she sealed the letter, remembering all the times Dawn had been sweet and charming and endearing, but her future was so uncertain that she would be better travelling it alone.

Next she wrote a letter of resignation and expressed her regrets to the Hospital Board for an 'unfortunate incident.' Try as she would she couldn't put her imagined guilt into writing. Let them all think her guilty, but the one star shining in her dark sky was her own knowledge of her absolute innocence. If Dawn had any conscience she would suffer, but Eve didn't really believe her sister would lose any sleep over the fact that somebody else was shouldering the blame for her careless action.

Finally she put one letter in the pigeonhole allotted to the hospital's secretary, posted the other, phoned for a taxi and prepared to shake the dust of Seafields from her feet forever.

Jim Trench light-heartedly anticipating a weekend off duty, embraced his wife and then perceived that she had been weeping.

"What's up, old thing?" he asked gently. "Trouble at the hospital?"

"Oh, no," Dawn said quickly, trying to brighten up. "I just had a little black mood. I got my pass without any bother, really. I said I was visiting a relative." She giggled. "Well, you are a relative, aren't you? Sister would have a fit if she knew, of course."

"Are you happy?" Jim asked, investigating her countenance.

"Of course I am, silly! I'm ecstatic. I had a little weep for joy, if you must know. Now what can I cook my hubby for his supper?"

"I thought we might go out. We can afford it with both of us working." He looked round the living room of the tiny flat with appreciative interest. "It's good of Harry Thwaites letting us rent this place, isn't it? I must remember to give him a cheque. Would you like to ask Eve over one Sunday?"

"I—I don't want to see Evie, thank you. We're only half-sisters, after all. She doesn't care about us."

"Now that's not very nice sweetheart. I gained the impression that your sister cared a good deal about you, one way and another. By the way, when is she due back from her leave?"

"She's back," Dawn said in staccato tones. "Don't let's spend all our time talking about her. Anyway, she's leaving Seafields."

"Never!"

"I tell you she is!"

Jim knew that Dawn was lacking in strength and beauty of character. He also knew that he loved her in spite of her faults and not because of them. He had no intention of allowing her to behave like a fishwife towards him.

"Dawn," he said very firmly, "it was written all over your face when I arrived here that something was wrong. Now I think that something, is wrong between you and your sister. I want to know what it is. Tell me now and get it over with. We don't want to quarrel with the prospect of two whole days ahead of us. Now sweetheart, come clean."

Dawn hesitated only another minute, then she handed over Eve's very telling letter. Jim read it in silence and then read again. So well had the upset at the hospital been confined to those concerned in it that he hadn't heard -a whisper of anything being amiss.

"What's all this about?" he wanted to know, drawing Dawn on to the settee beside him.

Dawn told him briefly.

"But what does she mean by saying this is no time for recriminations? Have you anything to do with the business?"

"Jim, I—I—what make you ask a stupid thing like that?"

"You look guilty, that's why. Had you anything to do with it?"

"Oh damn you! Have I married a husband or a private detective? If you must know, Matron asked me to give Eve the keys to her drug cupboard; I was in a rush to meet you and I left them on her desk with a note."

"And somebody else found them and—?" Jim Trench's eyes were wide in disbelief.

"Yes. It was all very unforseeable and unfortunate."

"And you lied, of course, and Eve is now carrying the can for you?"

"Very well expressed," Dawn sneered. "Actually I lied to keep us both out of the picture. I could see the balloon going up about everything if I became involved."

"Can't you understand simple ethics?" Jim demanded sharply. "I despair of you, Dawn. Put your coat on."

"What are you going to do?" she asked fearfully.

"Do?" he gave a twisted smile. "I'm no wife-beater, Dawn, though you deserve a hiding if anybody did. We're going to see somebody and tell them it wasn't Eve's fault That's what we're going to do, my girl. If you care to make it a solo affair I'll think all the better of you, but we couldn't live with injustice, now could we?"

Dawn, who had existed with one injustice after another all her spoilt young life, was ashamed into silence and humble acquiescence. It began to look as though Jim Trench's wife must suffer a sea-change if she was to remain an acceptable companion for him after the first raptures of the honeymoon were over.

CHAPTER XIII

Sir Horace Dacres glanced at the old-fashioned timepiece which had ticked on the club wall for as long as he had been a member, compared it with his own watch and frowned a little. It wasn't like Vic to be late for a luncheon appointment They both knew how precious were the hours of the working day, that at two-thirty prompt Horace had a clinic at Green Gate Hospital, and that it was a rule of honour never to be late for a National Health Clinic.

At that moment, however, just as Sir Horace was considering ordering his own luncheon, Vic entered the club dining-room looking flushed and breathless.

"Sorry for keeping you, Horace," he said with a smile. "As a matter of fact I thought I had allowed myself plenty of time to get here. I passed my driving test yesterday, and decided to drive myself here. You can guess what happened All kinds of one-way systems have evolved since I last drove a car in London, and I've been directed miles out of my way. But better late than never, I hope."

"Did you have to take another driving test, then?" Sir Horace asked, beckoning one of the ancient waiters to their table.

"I thought I owed it to humanity and to myself," Vic said bluntly. "Now honour is satisfied, Don't forget I've had the bitter experience of knowing what motoring accidents can account for. I don't want to be involved in another."

"How are the legs?" Sir Horace asked, as they started on turtle soup.

"They ache. I call this my growing pains. But I'm not grumbling. I'm getting better and better and although I don't suppose I'll ever play tennis again, there's no reason why I shouldn't take up golf in good time."

"You're a very lucky fellow, Vic."

"I know. I can't thank God enough for rescuing me from that living death."

"So life's pretty good, eh?"

"Yes. Now that I'm working again there's not much left to desire. But of course one is never wholly satisfied"

"Human nature, Vic, my boy. Supposing you could stretch your imagination into thinking of me as your fairy godfather; what would your three wishes be?"

Vic laughed at the very idea and made a joke of his companion's request.

"By no stretch of imagination, Horace, could I picture you as anything as ephemeral as a fairy ! As for wishes, they might as well be horses, as you know."

"Then I'll guess. Taking your age and natural virtuous disposition into account, I would say an attractive wife was high on the agenda."

Vic said shortly, "No. You're wrong I don't want to marry."

"You sound very sure about it As a happily married man myself, I resent any bachelor's self-sufficiency. Was your experience with Vanessa so soul-destroying that you can't bear the company of women nowadays?"

"I get on very well with the female medical staff at the clinic, and the nurses. I suppose I haven't got around to thinking of romance."

"You know, Vic, I thought at one time you had found it. I did, really."

"Whatever do you mean, Horace?"

"That little fair girl at Seafields; Sister—er— Ramsey. I thought you were more than a little keen on her."

Vic Wylde had grown a little more thoughtful, a little more interested in his glass of portado which went so well with a rare steak.

"Sister Ramsey," he echoed. "Do you see her? Is she well?"

Sir Horace decided his shot in the dark had found its target Vic was all ears despite his apparent diffidence.

"Sister Ramsey left Seafields under unusual circumstances," he now explained. "Didn't you know?"

"How the heck should I know?" the younger man now impatiently declaimed. "What happened to her? What do you mean by 'unusual circumstances'?"

Sir Horace Dacres recounted the story of the missing morphine, the rascally Cudby and the sequel of Sister's shortened leave and resignation.

"So that's why she was going home in a hurry, was it?" Vic asked himself, seeing the light suddenly regarding that painful last meeting on the beach at Ibiza. "She had this awful business on her mind"

"I take it you have seen Sister Ramsey since your hospitalisation?"

"I met her in Minorca last September," Vic said candidly. "Oh damn it, Horace, I followed her there! You're right I was awfully attracted to that girl. I can't forget her. But she didn't exactly encourage me when we met. She had to catch a ferry, a plane, she said, I thought she was simply trying to get rid of me. I didn't know she was in real trouble. What happened?"

"I told you. She resigned."

"And now?"

"Nobody knows.' We did try to find her. You see, it was somebody else's fault all the time, and the person came forward and spoke up. The Board wanted to reinstate Sister Ramsey, apologise to her and everything. But the forwarding address she had given was only temporary; she collected one lot of mail and then disappeared, it seems, into the blue. Apparently she isn't working because she never wrote the hospital asking for references she would have needed when applying for another job."

Vic laughed cynically.

"The references given to somebody who has resigned after apparently committing criminal carelessness would scarcely aid in gaining other employment," he opined. "I don't wonder she didn't bother. The poor girl's probably starving somewhere by now." He bit his lip. "How does one find a person?" he pondered "Now that I know all about this I want to find Eve Ramsey stat"

"That's what agony columns thrive on," said Sir Horace.

"No. She wouldn't answer one of those appeals. I know Eve," Vic said tenderly. "She's proud If she's in trouble she would rather nobody knew."

"A private detective?"

"You'll suggest tracker dogs next," Vic said harshly. "I'll think of something. Obviously I start from Seafields, find out all they know. She had a sister, a very pretty blond nurse ... "

"She was the guilty party in the business of the keys," Horace said succinctly. "The sister was left no wiser than the hospital. The Ramsey girl severed herself completely."

"You're not much help, are you?" Vic remarked bitterly. "Well, thanks for the lunch, Horace, and for —for telling me what you did. I can count on you to let me know if you hear anything further about Eve? She may not want me but, by heaven! I want her."

"I'll keep my eyes and ears open."

As he slid into the driving seat of his car Vic Wylde had forgotten the ache in his redeveloping muscles. He had only one dreadful concern now, to find Eve and assure himself that all was well with her. But where did one start in seeking one individual in a city of teeming millions? Though she had said she would probably work in London she might have been driven further afield in her search for employment. Though he had scathingly declined to notify the newspapers and detective agencies, he might well be driven to using their resources, and if they still drew a blank he might never find Eve, and then he would always wonder what had become of her and carry his haunted, troubled, impossible dreams with him to the grave.

*

Only one person could volunteer information about Eve Ramsey in the whole of Seafields Hospital. This was Sister Prothero, who suddenly found herself notorious because of a casual, coincidental meeting with her ex-colleague during a rare weekend trip to the metropolis.

The elderly nurse, her nose a brighter pink than ever, had been summoned to Matron's room to report on the meeting, and listening avidly to her account was a handsome young man who was introduced to her as Sir Victor Wylde.

Sister Prothero had never been at such close quarters with a baronet before, and though she knew the young man had been a patient in the hospital a year ago. before he had succeeded to the tide, she was somewhat overawed by that brief appellation which made all the difference, in her circle, between a man and a nobleman.

She found herself fumbling for the most commonplace of words; she repeated herself; her colour mounted to match her cheeks with her dyspeptically hued nose; yet in the end she managed to tell her story, which we will put into a neatly varnished little nutshell for the benefit of our readers.

It appeared that Sister's excursions to London were usually of a window-shopping nature, unless there happened to be a good exhibition on or something equally entertaining and inexpensive. On this occasion there was nothing to take her mind off the shops and so she had wandered the length of Oxford Street, of Regent Street and Bond Street without spending a peony. Coming upon a health food store, however, she did contemplate purchasing a jar of that delicious, vitaminised marmalade which didn't give one acidity as the ordinary kind was inclined to do: it was then someone came out of the store whom she recognised as Sister Ramsey, wearing mufti. Sister looked very well; she always was so pretty: (here Sir Victor nodded a fervent agreement) and she immediately suggested they go somewhere for tea. Sister Ramsey insisted on playing hostess, and while they were drinking tea she asked after everybody at the hospital. She seemed hungry for news, Sister Prothero expressed it. About herself, however, she volunteered little, saying only that she was staying with a relative who was ill and needed nursing.

"I didn't mention that awful business," Sister said finally, "because I didn't know the full facts and I was afraid of offending her."

Vic Wylde was excited at hearing this story and told Miss Bloomsbury that Nurse Simmonds would surely know which relative her sister was nursing.

"Nurse Simmonds is now Mrs. Trench," Matron said caustically. "That young lady certainly leads a very lively and unconventional life. She is still working at Dobham Municipal, luckily for her; I wouldn't have her back here at any price; but whether she can help you remains to be seen. The last a heard Sister Ramsey had cut her sister off—and can you wonder? But, as you say, she will know what relatives they have. If you do find Sister Ramsey please convey this hospital's most humble apologies for what happened. We should all have known she wasn't capable of criminal carelessness. She isn't the type."

Dawn, however, was unable to volunteer much more information than Vic already possessed.

"It stands to reason I would have traced her myself if I could, doesn't it?" she demanded. "I really miss Evie. When she was available I did lead her a dog's life, but, in my own way, I loved her. I want nothing of her but to have her forgive me—for everything. You must believe that. We have very few relatives; our parents didn't keep in touch with those we had, unfortunately. There is one great-aunt Evie always kept in touch with, though; I believe she is her godmother; they exchange Christmas and birthday greetings; and so on, and Evie looked her up whenever she went to town. I can't tell you the old dear's address, but I know her name, and as it's rather unusual it may be some help. Great-Aunt Edwina married a Spaniard, Rodriguez. After she was widowed, however, she re-adopted her maiden name by deed-poll. She is now Mrs. Edwina Rodriguez-Forrester, hyphenated. I'm afraid that's all the light I can throw on matters, though. If you find Evie please ask her to forgive me. Tell her Jim's leading me a dog's life because of—everything."

"Do you really want me to say that?" Vic enquired.

Dawn had the grace to blush.

"No. It's the wrong approach. I don't want to appeal to either her loyalty or her emotions. I simply want us to be sisters again with me pulling my true weight in the relationship. I really do miss her."

"So do I," Vic Wylde said, as though to himself, refusing to despair and yet finding little encouragement in his search for the girl who had become the light of his very existence.

The encounter with Sadie Prothero had shaken Eve Ramsey not a little. She was surprised to find how hungry she was for hospital gossip and how bleak did her own days appear now that she was reminded of the bustle of the life she had once led.

She wondered if, perhaps, it might not have been better to have faced the Hospital Board and pleaded for mercy. Was it not pride which had made her summarily resign and walk away from all hope of the hospital's forgiveness? She knew that if she had been guilty she would never have hesitated in approaching the governing body and submitting a plea for the survival of her chosen career; but being innocent had made her shy of either asking or accepting favours.

When Miss Bloomsbury had asked for a forwarding address she had given the name of a small sub-post office she had used during her hospital training days, and from this address she had collected not only her employment and National Insurance cards but two private letters; both of which she chose to ignore, though it cost her something to do so.

The first was a tearful plea, from Dawn begging her forgiveness and asking her to lift the ban on their meeting immediately.

'You can't just disappear, Evie. What have I done to you that you cant even bear the sight of me any more? I feel so ashamed about my behaviour and Jim is ashamed of me, too. I want to put everything right again . . . '

"Her last letter to me put everything so wrong," Eve sighed after she had read it. "I seem to be anathema to my young sister. For everybody's sake I'd better stay 'lost' though I'll miss her, of course."

The second letter, from the secretary of the Hospital Board had requested her presence at the next meeting of the Board in view of certain 'developments'. What these might be were not elucidated and she chose to think that the best which could have happened was that the hospital may well have decided to 'forgive' her 'error'. To be forgiven something of which one was innocent in the first place? To face the explanations, satisfy the curiosity of the uninformed . . . ? This would not only be difficult but immoral, too. To accept forgiveness would be to pretend guilt; she would be living a lie. Then, truly, in such an atmosphere might her nursing suffer and her friendships, too. Would anybody really trust her with keys again? Might she not imagine authority's lack of confidence in her, even though this did not exist?

She had made the break. It was better not to look back, she told herself. First of all she would call on Great-Aunt Edwina and ask if she might leave her surplus luggage with her while she looked around for employment.

It was a year since she had seen the old lady, who was now seventy-nine. Her own troubles fled into the background as she was admitted to the dingy Victorian house and observed that Aunt Edwina had suddenly aged and shrunk and sallowed into senility. She was a mere shadow of the old lady who, twelve months ago, had insisted on taking her goddaughter to a matinee at Sadlers Wells. Also she was living alone, though she had a companion on Eve's last visit.

"Where's Miss Marchant?" Eve enquired, as her great-aunt made a beeline back to the sitting-room and huddled over a gas fire which was pathetically inadequate in heating the large, cheerless room.

"She died," the old woman said, without emotion. "A mere youngster compared to me, but—" she smiled and shivered and drew her shawl around her thin shoulders.

"And there's nobody except you in this great house?" Eve asked, feeling shocked "Why didn't you let me know? "

"I didn't want to inflict my troubles on you, dear. You'll find you have your share in this life. I did advertise, but nobody wants to care for old people nowadays. I'm afraid I've had to ignore upstairs. Goodness knows what's going on up there ! I have my bed in the corner here, and I live in this one room. I'm all right, dear. Don't concern yourself over me. I have my radio and Tomkins, the cat, and I had very good health until recently. I can't grumble."

"And what has been wrong with you recently, dear?" Eve persisted.

"Oh nothing. I get a little pain in my tummy sometimes. Now's let's cheer up and have a cuppa, shall we dear? What time is your train back to the hospital?"

Eve said: "I'm not going back, Aunty. Especially not now. Will you let me stay and organise you for a little while?"

"But darling, the hospital. . . your job . . . "

"I've resigned," Eve admitted, without going into explanations. "I was going to look for a new job here in London. There's no desperate hurry, though. May I stay?"

"I should be so glad of your company, dear." admitted the old woman, "but I don't want to be a burden on you. What about sleeping? The beds won't be aired."

"Leave all that to me. I'm young and strong and I shall start the boiler going and warm the house through. Then, this evening, we're going to talk about you and this pain you get I'm really very cross with you for not telling me when Miss Marchant died. You always promised you would send for me if you were ever in trouble. Now I'll make some tea and get to weak."

*

Sometimes Eve thought the whole sequence of recent sorry events was all part of a fate which drove her into investigating Great-Aunt Edwina's plight; especially when she had a chat with the old lady's doctor and had her own fears confirmed that her relative's pain was due to a malignant, inoperable tumour.

"Does she know?" Eve asked when she could control her own distress.

"Yes. She insisted on being told.. I wanted to get her into a nursing home, but she was worried about her wretched cat and refused. What can one do? The old are much more independent than youngsters nowadays. I'm certainly glad you turned up, Sister. She wouldn't give me your address."

"I'm glad, too," Eve said from her heart. "Ill look after her as long as she needs, me, Doctor. Fortunately I have some savings and don't expect to starve."

After Great-Aunt Edwina knew that her goddaughter had seen the doctor, they both dropped the subject of her illness by tacit agreement. Fortunately the pain was, as yet, occasional; as and when it became less tolerable Eve would inject alleviating morphia. She had told Doctor Flynn about the trouble at the hospital and her resignation, but he shrugged and said: "So what? One mistake in an otherwise flawless career . . . ? I wish I could say the same. Anybody in our profession who's infallible deserves canonisation. Call me whenever you need me."

Gradually Eve's organising ability brought order to the neglected house. She hired a char and together they cleaned and redecorated the upstairs rooms. The downstairs front room, which had once been the 'parlour,' was painted throughout in pastel shades and changed into a bedroom. As and when Aunt Edwina became bedridden Eve determined that she should have both a view of the outside world and a large open fire. Towards the middle Of November this sad eventuality took place. The old lady no longer had the strength to get up and dress, so Mrs. Mitten and Eve carried her into the bright, warm room which had been prepared for her. She exclaimed in delight as she was tucked into bed and saw that Tomkins was already ensconced on the rug before the fire.

"You're a dear, dear girl,'' she told her great-niece. "God will bless you in His own way. Now you're not to sit with me and brood I'm quite happy to lie and remember all the happy times I've had, when I'm not weeping. You must go out more. Eye. You're looking pale. Mrs. Mitten will keep an eye on me, I'm sure."

Now that the hours they could spend together were numbered, however, Eve felt strangely loth to leave her relative even for shopping expeditions and walks round the nearby park. This was an extremely limited existence after hospital bustle, and yet she felt strangely content in a sad way. A nurse needs a patient, and she had one. When the patient is someone whom one has always regarded with the deepest respect and affection, then no task is too laborious nor sleep so all-important but that one can cast it aside at will, like a cloak.

Doctor Flynn remarked one day, about a week before Christmas, that he would have two patients on his hands unless she eased up.

"Rubbish, Doctor," she told him. "I'm remarkably resilient and I want to do all that is humanly possible for Aunt Edwina."

"Well, lassie, take tomorrow off. I can let you have a relief nurse, who specialises in this sort of thing, if you'll promise to get right away to a—a show, Or something."

"Very well," Eve agreed, without telling the doctor that it was most unlikely she could walk into any worthwhile current show without an advance booking.

"I'll do something completely different"

Up in her bedroom were two small cuttings culled from a newspaper and a medical magazine, respectively. The first was an announcement that, owing to the death of his uncle, Sir Tristan Wylde. the new baronet was Sir Victor Wylde, a man of many letters and honours in the surgical field of medicine.

Eve was happy and yet pained to read this news of Vic. It removed him from her even further than events had done, for now it was her turn to exist with him in a romantic dream world of her own. His courage, his humour, his gentle regard, his very personality were now the ideal by which she measured the husband for whom she longed and yet would probably never know. He might or might not have been serious in his appraisal of her virtues and charms while they were together as Ward Sister and patient, but much water had flowed under many bridges since then, and her own disgraceful exit from Seafields Hospital would scarcely commend her in his sight if he had heard of it.

The second item of news which she had cut out and treasured was an announcement that Sir Victor Wylde, M.A., M.S., who had suffered a serious accident four years ago, was now recovered and a member of the famous surgical team at St. Griselda's Clinic, W.3. Students and other members of the medical and nursing professions were welcome to watch this team at work, from the gallery, every Thursday.

Tomorrow being Thursday, Eve found herself intending to spend her free day at St. Griselda's, and though she would be mightily interested, as any nurse is, in the operating list, she would be that much more interested in seeing Sir Victor operate, and perhaps she would remember him as plain 'Mr Brown,' seeking her eyes for reassurance through the transparent plastic wall of an oxygen tent.

Wearing her uniform, Eve had no difficulty in being admitted to the gallery round the domed glass roof of St Griselda's theatre. The benches were full, mostly with young medical students, and a great deal of professional interest was evinced as the surgeons performed one operation after another mostly of a minor character on this particular day.

"Here's Wylde now," volunteered one young man, who apparently worked at the clinic and was keeping the rest of the watchers briefed. "He's doing an emergency tracheotomy—it's not on the list—on a child choking with asthma. If you remember he advocated a tracheo for asthma in one of his books; said it allowed relaxation and sometimes precluded further attacks. I saw this child when he was admitted, poor little soul! He's had these attacks since he was four."

Eve thrilled as she recognised Vic Wylde even under the levelling garb of theatre green. He was the tallest person present for one thing; and the set of his head was proud and familiar. She jumped as she suddenly heard his voice; he must have requested that the microphone be switched on above the operating table.

"Ladies and gentlemen in the gallery," he addressed them, "I am about to perform a tracheotomy on a nine-year-old boy who is averaging five attacks of asthma per week and was admitted in a state of suffocation during a most severe bout I have told him I will help him. You may think operation is not the answer to a complaint which has its root in the nervous system. To that I can only answer that I have had both successes and failures in this field. In this case I am naturally hoping for a success. I would like to say, finally, that you are all welcome to follow up and may see the child's notes, by request, for the duration of his stay here."

"Well, that's fair enough," said one young man as the microphone was switched off again.

Eve leaned forward as the patient was wheeled into the theatre and transferred to the operating table. She was so interested that her hand automatically reached out as the surgeon requested this instrument or that. It was as though they ware the only two people, apart from the unconscious child, in the whole world.

Sir Horace Dacres was visiting the clinic that day, though only as an observer. He was watching his young colleague operate, marvelling at his manual dexterity and skill in surgery. He watched the patient's colour change from a purplish shade to a pale, healthy pink as the tube was inserted in the throat and fresh, sweet air filled the lungs once more.

"Well done, Vic!" he said from behind Theatre Sister's shoulder. "I don't agree that a tracheo is the answer for asthmatics, but like that bunch up there I'd like to follow up. Have you finished now?"

"Yes. I have a lecture in ten minutes. I don't risk standing too long at the moment fear the patients' sakes."

"Then can you stand a bit of a shock?"

The boy was being transferred to the trolley and the theatre staff were clearing and preparing the table for the next operation.

"What sort of shock?" Vic asked.

"I've seen your sweet little lady—Sister Ramsey."

"Where? You haven't!"

"She's up in the gallery. No, don't look up. You can't go all lovesick in a hospital theatre, of all places. I was prowling about up there myself and she's there, sure enough. You'd better clean up and go and do something about it."

"Thanks, Horace, I will." Eve had observed that swift upward glance of the surgeon's, and her heart contracted with a kind of pleasurable pain. He hadn't seen her; he couldn't have done, for the gallery was dark, overhanging the fierce brightness of the theatre, and yet she felt as though in that dark-eyed regard, brief as it was, love had winged between them.

"If I'm imagining such things I'll obviously have to take myself in hand," she told herself sharply. "Vic is leading the fife he wants to lead again, and he has forgotten me along with everybody else at Seafields Hospital. He was grateful, and gratitude is all I can ever expect, but even that is in the past"

She stood up and pulled on her gloves as the next patient was wheeled into the theatre.

"You going?" asked a young man next to her. "It's not over, you know."

"I can't spare any more time," Eve fibbed. She didn't want to admit that after seeing Vic Wylde leave the theatre her interest had waned She was shocked and angry with herself that this should be so. Where was her pride? In an effort to regain some shreds of this she trailed out of the clinic and decided to hail a taxi and put as much distance as possible between St Griselda's and herself.

Which was why Vic Wylde hurtled through the wide doors of the clinic and saw a taxi disappearing into the distance and nothing more. Horace could have been mistaken, of course, but one of the students upstairs had volunteered that a nurse had just left the gallery after raying she was pressed for time.

If it was Eve, he had lost her again, it seemed. He did not dare to imagine why she should come to St. Griselda's. She certainly wouldn't come in order to see lam, or would she? No, he wasn't such a bighead as all that He supposed he had better come down to earth and do something about the lecture he was due to give. Those lads from medical school hadn't travelled across London in order to hew a disappointed lover's repinings; they wanted facts; cold, unemotional, surgical facts. He hoped be could both satisfy them and curb his own eager seeking heart in the process.

Mrs. Rodriguez—Forrester died in her sleep during the evening of Boxing Day. Eve could feel no real sorrow in the occasion, for, as a nurse, she knew that the end had brought release from what had become interminable pain. She was glad she had been able to be of service and would have wished herself nowhere else during the past three months but here in this over-large, gloomy Victorian house.

Now she wondered what would happen to the house, but as Aunt Edwina had sent for her lawyer some weeks ago, she presumed that gentleman would settle all such affairs and that they were no concern of hers. Her own future was still to be settled, and as her savings had dwindled away more rapidly than she had intended, it was imperative that she should seek employment without more ado. But first there was the funeral, and because Dawn was related to the old lady as much as she was, she telegraphed her sister the news, the time and place of the funeral and left it to the new Mrs Trench whether she attended or not.

The day of the funeral, a bitterly cold Thursday with a squally wind and showers of biting hail, found Eve, Mrs Mitten and Mr Hodge, the lawyer, assembled at the house waiting for the undertaker to arrive. Doctor Flynn had wished to pay his respects, too, but had been called away to a confinement at the last moment.

"I 'ope a black 'at will do, Miss Eve," the char said hoarsely, in deference to the dead. "I couldn't afford the 'ole lot."

"You're fine, Mrs Mitten," Eve assured her. "Thank you for coming. It's very kind of you."

"You'll be coming back to the house afterwards, I trust?" asked Mr Hodge.

"I must, to pack my things," Eve told him. '"I'll move out as soon as I can."

'That's quite all right, quite all right No hurry, no hurry," said the lawyer fussily.

Eve's heart missed a beat as she recognised Dawn and her husband waiting at the graveside. So they had both come. It made her feel better to have someone of her own kin present and when it all was over Dawn approached, not gushingly, but with her hand outstretched.

"Evie, I'm so sorry. You were always fond of Aunt Edwina, Weren't you? I neglected her shamefully, but I'm glad you relented sufficiently to give me this opportunity of paying my last respects. I'm honestly more glad of seeing you, though. You—you don't know how you hint me going off as you did!"

There were tears in Dawn's eyes.

Eve reached and kissed her suddenly.

"Perhaps I was precipitate," she admitted. "Do forgive me, dear." She smiled at Jim Trench and held out her hand. "I haven't shaken hands with you since you became my brother-in-law, have I? Come back to the house, won't you? It's such a dreadful day and I can at least make you a hot drink."

So they all sat in the room which,, under Eve's direction, had been made attractive and homelike, A roaring fire blazed in the grate and reflected in Great-Aunt Edwina's rich mahogany furniture while Mrs Mitten plied everyone with scalding coffee and paper-thin sandwiches.

A little later Mr Hodge took Eve aside and told her she was her great-aunt's sole beneficiary under the terms of her will.

"Oh, dear!" she said, a little startled. "Whatever will I do with a house?"

"There's more than a house, young woman. My client had considerable holdings in Spanish mines, through her husband and about eight thousand pounds in sterling. You can sell the house very easily, you know. It's about the only one in this street not converted into flats."

"I—I'll think about that," Eve said, still feeling dazed. "I always thought Aunt Edwina lived on her pension."

"She wanted to be appreciated for herself," the lawyer explained gently, "and from what I hear you did just that."

"I want my sister to have something," Eve said impetuously. "She's newly married and can use a little financial help, I feel sure. I don't care how you do it, Mr Hodge, but please make it appear to come from Aunt Edwina."

"You're a generous person, Miss Ramsey. I'll see what I can do after probate has been granted. Meanwhile you can continue to live in the house, of course, while you make your plans."

When the lawyer had left and she was chatting once more with Dawn and her husband, the former said suddenly: "I owned up, you know, about the morphine. Jim made me see I couldn't allow you to carry that for me. Why didn't you go back to Seafields, Evie? It's not like you to be unforgiving."

"I—I didn't know you'd done that," Eve admitted. "Thanks a lot. It's nice to know I can apply for a job without having that business on the debit side. As to not going back to Seafields, I found Aunt Edwina ill and neglected, so of course I stayed to look after her."

"And have you seen anybody you—used to know?"

"Only Sister Prothero. We met in the West End and had tea and a chat I was glad to see her."

The doorbell rang suddenly.

"Mrs. Mitten will go," said Eve, as her sister looked startled for a moment and turned to her husband.

"We must be going, really, Evie," she now announced, standing up. "Well miss our train if we delay a moment longer."

"Oh, dear," Eve said regretfully, "I could have put you up for the night."

"No, no," Dawn insisted. "We know where to find you now, and you must come down and see us."

Eve wondered at her sister's apparent eagerness to depart, and followed the couple out into the hall, packing all she could into the last moments of leave-taking. Mrs Mitten was awaiting her with another shock.

"A gentleman to see you, Miss. I thought it was all right to ask 'im in."

Eve didn't say a word. She gazed as though transfixed up into the warm dark eyes of Vic Wylde.

Afterwards Eve could never actually recall the Trenches leaving. They must have stolen out quietly while she was struggling with the emotions the newcomer aroused in her breast.

When she was capable of thought once more she realised that Dawn must have been the active agent in this reunion, that she had supplied Vic with the knowledge of her whereabouts, but in those first moments of meeting it was sufficient that he was there and that she crept into his arms like a homing bird and wept away all the griefs of the past months in a few moments of welcome abandon.

"How foolish you must think me!" she said at last as they sat before the fire imbibing yet more hot coffee. "I haven't cried like that for years."

"I hope when you do, it will always be on my chest," he invited. "I've been searching everywhere for you, Eve. I even tried the newspapers. Don't you read agony columns?"

"I haven't done lately," she smiled mistily. "What did you want with me?"

"You can ask that?" he enquired. "I haven't changed, Eve. I fell in love with you when you already had a sweetheart, remember? In the kindest way possible you told me to abandon all hope. But I never did. I'm a hopeful chap, you see. Now I understand you have no sweetheart?"

"No," she admitted breathlessly.

"Unless," he said, "you care to call me that, my darling girl?"

He felt he had been patient enough and took her in his arms. He mouthed a vehement "Blast!" as Mrs Mitten bounced in cheerfully with a plate of hot muffins.

"Now, where were we?" he asked with interest when she had bounced out again, very pointedly closing the door with ceremonial thoroughness.

For an answer Eve placed her lips voluntarily upon his and felt his joyous acceptance of her tribute carrying her away into realms as yet unrealised.

"Vic," she said self-consciously, at length, "you must think I'm an extremely forward sort of person. I don't know what's come over me."

"Don't you?" he asked, lifting up her chin to gaze into the wide grey eyes. "I hope you're regarding me as other than your patient for once?"

She smiled. "I haven't thought of you in that way for a long time," she admitted.

"Since when?" he insisted.

"Since you were my patient," she dimpled. "I was relieved to see you go, and yet afterwards it was so lonely. And you didn't write ..." she accused him.

"I know. I wanted to, but you hadn't exactly given me a leg to stand on, had you? Also I wasn't then my ninety per cent self, and I didn't want you marrying a cripple. You're the sort of girl who would—out of pity."

"Do I gather you are your ninety per cent self now?"

"That, my girl, you will discover at leisure, as Lady Wylde."

She withdrew from him a little.

"Oh yes. Your title," she grimaced.

"I agree these things are a bit of a bind," he nodded, "but as it's come all the way from the Crusades I suppose we'd better take it a bit further."

That 'we' warmed her heart Whether he was a baronet or a bartender he was still Vic, the man with whom she had discovered the miracle of true and lasting love. To make him understand her feelings she placed her cool cheek against his and sighed with happiness.

He asked quietly: "Do you believe in long engagements, my darling?"

"No," she told him frankly.

"Nor I. I thought we might get married next Monday . . . ?"

Seafields Hospital was holding its annual residents' dinner-dance once again. The Sisters had been busily darting in and out of one another's rooms, fixing hair-pins and borrowing and lending items of jewellery.

"Don't I look awful?" enquired Sister Prothero. "Thank goodness this is the last of these affairs before I retire! I don't think I should have had this short hair-cut after all. Whatever is it going to look like under a cap?"

"My zip is sticking," complained Jean Colles, "right over a bulge in my roll-ons. I've put on weight ever since my leave. It was all that rich Spanish food."

"Who mentioned rich Spanish food?" asked a new voice from the doorway. "May I come in?"

"Sister Ramsey!" exclaimed the newest Sister, who had been Staff Nurse Whitley.

"Mrs. Wylde!" squeaked Prothero.

"Milady!" gasped Jean Colles. "Do come in! Welcome back."

"And none of that 'Milady' business," said Eve, mock-severely. "I came to see if I could be of any help."

"My hair ..." said Prothero.

"This zip ... " urged Jean.

"Are my seams straight?" asked Sister Day.

Laughing, joking and remembering, Eve flitted from one to the other.

"And how's married life?" asked Linda Fisher, who had once again managed to procure an escort for the evening ahead an elderly pathologist, this time.

"I should think it's pretty wonderful," Eve admitted "But after only three days I'm hardly out of the clouds yet."

"I believe you're going off to Greece?" Jean asked.

"Yes. We waited so as to come here first."

"As honoured guests," murmured Sister Prothero. "How really wonderful it all is! Just like a fairy story with a happy ending."

"And it couldn't have happened to a nicer fairy,'' Jean smiled broadly as her zip rocketed past the bulge and locked.

"Thank you all very much," smiled Eve. "I think we ought to be getting across to the hall now."

"We must, not you," said Sister Day, and then put a hand to her mouth.

"What she means is that you'll be going in to dinner with your handsome husband," Jean explained, grimacing at her colleague with one side of her mouth. "You go in the main entrance where the photographers are snapping the V.I.Ps. We sneak in by the side door."

"I don't understand," said Eve. "We all went in the same way last time."

She thought her ex-colleagues were drawing a subtle dividing line between them now that she was Lady Wylde, wife of an eminent surgeon and writer, but shrugged this off as she saw Vic looking for her , anxiously from the Town Hall steps.

"Come on darling! " he said, as she took his arm. "Everybody else has gone inside."

She felt a little shy as she saw the assembled gathering and a footman removed her mink wrap, a wedding present from her husband. Her dress was of turquoise satin with a draped overskirt of pink chiffon; her hair was smooth and shining under the lights, caught into a chignon at her nape. Sir Horace Dacres and Matron were beckoning them towards two chairs at the centre of the main table.

"My dear—" greeted Miss Bloomsbury, and then her words were drowned by a chorus which began at the Sisters' table and spread like wildfire through the whole assembly.

"For she's a jolly good fellow,

For she's a jolly good fellow,

For she's a jolly good fellow,

That nobody can deny."

It went on and on until Eve put up her hand and stilled the rumpus.

"Thank you. Thank you all very much indeed," she said simply, and she was aware once again of that giant heart which beats in every hospital; which sorrows for its dead, rejoices in the victory over pain and despair and finds time to be jubilant when one of its number is bound for happiness ever after.

There were toasts and counter-toasts and speeches with a typical hospital flavour and humour. Through it all Eve was conscious of Vic's hand raised alongside hers, and Vic's voice, confident and happy, joining in some raillery or other.

It was such a memorable, wonderful evening, and yet only twelve months ago the world had fallen apart as though a hydrogen bomb had disintegrated it. Could all this have been in some benign mind at the time of her weeping and bewailing?

"A penny for them, darling!" Vic joked in her ear.

"No," she forbade gently. "I was thinking of the past, but I don't want to go back, Vic; only on, with you."

Somehow they managed to drink the next toast with hands held firmly under the folds of the tablecloth.

It is thus that we will leave them, Victor and his lady, honoured guests of the hospital where, such a little while ago, devotion to duty sowed the seed which has harvested into this, a well-deserved and truly happy ending.