Arbor, Jane - Folly of the Heart ###

FOLLY OF THE HEART

Jane Arbor

Gillian Harlowe, staff nurse at St. Ranulph’s Hospital, had told herself over and over again that it was sheer folly for her to fall in love with that distinguished surgeon, Adrian Pilgrim, whose interest in her was obviously confined to approval of her professional skill. Worse-he seemed almost to welcome the idea that she might marry his charming, reckless young cousin Colin, While he himself was busy squiring the sophisticated (and very determined) Elspeth. Yes, she knew she ought to put him out of her thoughts. But it isn’t always possible to persuade one’s heart to listen to reason.

CHAPTER I

"WELL, Nurse Harlowe, I think you have not worked on Peterhead Ward before?" For some minutes before putting the question Sister Hugh had been fully aware that the slight figure of her new staff nurse had been drawn to attention on the far side of her desk. But to keep her juniors awaiting her pleasure was part of her studied policy in dealing with them; it taught them not to assume they were more important than they were.

It was a technique of which Marnie Chard, Gillian Harlowe's friend and already a staff nurse on Sister Hugh's ward, had warned Gillian, but it succeeded with her only too well. For all her four years' nursing experience at St. Ranulph's, she felt as insignificant as at her first interview with Matron, and the "No, Sister," of her reply came out in a kind of nervous croak.

"And you come to me from where? "

"From night duty on Casualty Ward, Sister." She hadn't a doubt that Sister Hugh knew the fact already.

"Ah, yes. Intermittent emergencies and out-patients - not the ideal training for the ordered routine of a day ward. However I am prepared to give you some grace while you adjust yourself to my methods, but I will not tolerate foolish or slipshod work at any time. I may say I put this point to each nurse who comes freshly to me, and my trust is not often betrayed. May I hope for the same trustworthiness in you, Nurse?"

"I think so, Sister."

"Good. Now I needn't tell you that Peterhead, as a surgical ward, works in the closest co-operation with our surgeons, and particularly

with Mr. Pilgrim, many of whose cases come to us. Have you any experience of working under Mr. Pilgrim, Nurse?"

"I have worked for him - in Casualty operating theatre."

"Then you'll know that his requirements of you may prove even more exacting than mine, and you'll be constantly on your guard against the kind of inefficiency which he simply will not tolerate. You know what I mean - treatment trolleys improperly prepared, patients' reports delayed -"

At that Gillian's spirit rebelled. She said quietly: "I'm 'staff', Sister. And I learnt to lay up a trolley in my first student year."

The corners of Sister Hugh's mouth drew down, accentuating the hard lines of her face. "I am fully aware of your rank," she said coldly. "Because I am, I am reluctant to believe that you could have intended impertinence -" The implied accusation hung in the air, awaiting Gillian's reply. But when, with a supreme effort at control, she made none, Sister Hugh turned back to the papers on her desk, dismissing her with: "Go and find Nurse Chard now and tell her you are to take over whatever she is doing while she goes to coffee. I shall be off duty myself when Mr. Pilgrim make his round, so one of you will make it with him. We have five admissions today - four to the main ward, one to Number Three side-ward, and the beds and lockers are to be got ready. That's all for the moment, Nurse. You may go."

So that, thought Gillian as she left the office in search of Marnie, was a foretaste of the unnecessary tyranny that reigned over Peterhead Ward! Anywhere else she would have been briefed for her duties without a patronising homily on elementary mistakes she had not yet committed. And the ability to take responsibility which she had proved during her long spell on night duty would have been valued, not belittled.

Marnie was not on the ward and Gillian found her in the forbidden refuge of the linen-room, leaning against one of the racks, expertly backing the stitches of a limp piece of knitting.

"What on earth -?" queried Gillian in surprise.

"Occupational therapy," explained Marnie cryptically.

"Yours? What is it supposed to cure you of?"

"Idiot. It's Mr. Bowson's in bed seven. He set his face firmly against making leather flowers and lampshades. But he has taken to knitting in a big way. The only difficulty is that he doesn't keep the same number of stitches on his needles for five consecutive rows, so every now and then I have to take over and track them down for him. It's a scarf for his wife's birthday, and she's going to have to pretend she loves it, poor dear. How did you get on with Sister Hugh?"

"I think she enjoyed herself. I didn't. I came away wondering what I had been doing with my time during the last four years. And I've answered back."

"Naughty. Sister Hugh neither forgives nor forgets. I warned you against letting yourself mind anything she says. I never do," said Marnie, beginning to count stitches by fours.

Gillian sighed. "I know. But it's an art. And I don't possess it. I love nursing, and I hate being misjudged when I know I'm doing my best."

"Thirty-six - forty - forty-four. You can't afford to be as easily hurt as that on Peterhead, Gilly. Not when you've got Sister Hugh to deal with and The Pilgrim. Did Sister Hugh use his name to conjure with, by the way?"

"I suppose that was what she was doing. I know I flared when she suggested I was likely to be found wanting in his scale as well as hers. After all, I have worked with him in the theatre-"

"And that wasn't too terrible?"

Gillian's lips curved into a half-smile which Marnie, still counting stitches, did not see. Too terrible? - to have shared, however briefly, the pattern of Adrian Pilgrim's skill, his coolly calculated battles against time, his utter dedication to his task? No, though she knew what Marnie meant, the description would not do. ... She knew, of course, of his reputation of intolerance of lagging abilities, of his scorn of anyone who failed him. But more than once she had surprised compassion in the keen grey eyes above the sterile mask, and had thought how confidently she would have put her own fate or that of anyone she loved into his hands.

Marnie finished counting and rolled up the dangling snake. "O.K., Mr. Bowson. Do your worst with that!" To Gillian: "What did Sister Hugh say you were to do?"

"Take over from you and send you to coffee. Somehow I don't think taking over included knitting-"

"No, well - the poor old chap begged me to do something about it, and this is really part of my coffee time."

Gillian smiled. "I know. You are a dear, Marnie. No wonder the patients think the world of you. I don't believe you've ever refused them anything you could possibly do for them."

"Oh, I have...!" Beneath her freckles Marnie's good-natured face flooded with colour. To hide her embarrassment she thrust Mr. Bowson's scarf into Gillian's hands and Said: "Take this back, will you? Did Sister say who was to do the round with Mr. Pilgrim?"

"One of us. You will, won't you - on my first day on the ward?"

Marnie grinned.. "Don't tell me Sister Hugh really scared you about him! " She dashed off then, but was back before Gillian had reached the door of the main ward. "I forgot. There's a new student nurse - name of Christie. She should be in the kitchen mixing a milk-feed. But she hasn't a clue. How she ever scraped through Prelim. Training, I don't know. See if she has fallen into the saucepan or something, will you? And then set her to laying up my trolley for The Pilgrim."

Gillian found Nurse Christie still in the kitchen, stirring hopelessly at a glutinous mass which should have been a thin gruel. She took it away from her and sent the girl back to the ward, speaking as gently as she could because she remembered only too well her own first bewildered weeks on the wards. And she had had the good fortune not to be at the mercy of a Sister Hugh!

«. The morning's work swung into its routine. The ward was tidied and dressings were done; the day's drug requirements were checked in and the patients had had their morning lunches by half-past ten. It even seemed as if that mirage of the hospital day - a few minutes' breathing space - might take shape when, unexpectedly, one of the day's admissions came in.

Marnie murmured: "Oh, dear - and The Pilgrim almost due! He hates a flap going on round him. But if you'll cope with it, Gilly, I'll be ready to do the round when he arrives. We'll manage -"

The best of Marnie's easy-going temperament, thought Gillian as she hurried to settle the new patient, was that she rarely panicked in a crisis. But when she returned to the ward she found Marnie involved in something still more unlooked-for - the arrival of Matron with two portly gentlemen, visitors to the ward.

Matron's calm, clear voice was saying: "This is our Men's Surgical Ward, and if I may I am going to turn you over to Staff Nurse Chard, who will show you everything you wish to see." She turned to Marnie. The kitchen and the ward-offices too, Nurse. And the new sun-balcony - we are rather proud of that, aren't we?"

"Yes, Matron," said Marnie dutifully, but her glance at the clock and then over the visitors' shoulders at Gillian was anxious. Matron sailed away, and Marnie set off with her charges at a good round pace after jerking her head in the direction of the clock and mouthing to Gillian: "The Pilgrim" - and something else which Gillian did not catch because at that moment the surgeon's tall figure appeared at the ward door. She looked quickly round to see that the covered treatment trolley stood ready near the steriliser where Nurse Christie had left it, and went to meet him.

He looked slightly surprised at sight of her. "Is Sister off duty? " he asked.

"Yes, Mr. Pilgrim. And Nurse Chard is showing round some visitors for Matron -"

"All right." He strode off towards the first bed. He did not need the treatment trolley at once, but when he did Gillian brought it forward and slipped off the cover.

He took a mask from the bin but before adjusting it he glanced at her face again. "Haven't you worked for me in Casualty theatre, Nurse?"

"Yes. I've just finished night duty there."

"I thought I knew you. Let's see. Nurse - Harlowe?"

"Yes:" She felt a little thrill of pleasure that he should know her name when in the theatre he had never given any sign, that he recognised

anything but the trained dexterity of her hands. She thought fleetingly, He has never guessed how important his name, his being here at St. Ranulph's, once were to me. But the pain of that was forgotten now, she believed.

She stood by, ready to anticipate his needs as he examined a dressing. The bandages were off. Swabs ... surgical scissors ... forceps - his hand was outstretched in readiness to take them from her. And there were no forceps there!

Gillian's eye searched frantically over the whole surface of the trolley. She even bent to peer at its under- tray where nothing sterile had any right to be. Adrian Pilgrim said: "Quickly, Nurse - the forceps?" and stood waiting with a kind of grim patience until she hesitated: "I - I'm afraid a pair hasn't been laid up, Mr. Pilgrim."

. His eye scanned the trolley. "Surely a very elementary omission, Nurse? Perhaps you will be good enough to fetch me a pair while I wait?"

Covered in shame, Gillian hurried back up the ward to the steriliser, knowing too late that Marnie's agitated message must have been a warning to her to check Nurse Christie's trolley, and though she promised herself a few trenchant words with Nurse Christie later, she must take the blame now.

When she returned with the forceps Mr. Pilgrim took them from her, and the round proceeded without any further incident. Before he left he asked her pleasantly enough to tell Sister Hugh that he would be visiting the patient being admitted to the side-ward later in the day, and Gillian saw that he had dismissed the matter from his mind. To him it had been a justifiable rebuke for careless work, and he could have no idea how it still rankled with her. Her only consolation was that Sister Hugh had not been there. That, after that caustic warning which Gillian had so resented, would have been the last straw!

She and Marnie superintended the patients' dinners together at noon. Then Gillian went to the dining-room for her own lunch; Marnie would follow when Sister Hugh returned to duty. Then they would both have some time off before going back for the rest of the day.

They arranged to meet in the rest-room, and it was there, an hour later, that Marnie came with her news.

Marnie said: "Poor Gilly. You're to 'special' the side-wards when you go back."

"I am? Why?"

"Well, you have taken Nurse Howard's place, and she did the side-wards. Rather you than me - there's safety in numbers on the main ward!"

"Did you give Sister Hugh the message about Mr. Pilgrim's patient?" asked Gillian anxiously.

"Yes, and he's been admitted. And who do you think he is?"

"I don't know. Ought I to?"

"I shouldn't think so. But it's a relative of The Pilgrim's—a cousin, I think."

"A - cousin?" Gillian, a little white, set down her coffee cup with more care than was necessary.

"Yes. Not the same name, though. I saw the heading on his chart on Sister's desk. Colin something - Fen- more, I believe -"

"Colin Fenmore?" Gillian's mouth had gone suddenly dry and her tongue seemed reluctant to act. "What - what is he in for?"

"I don't know. His chart wasn't entered up. Why, what's the matter, Gilly? You don't know him, do you?"

"Yes, I - That is, I did - a long time ago."

"But - a cousin of The Pilgrim's? You never said! Didn't you know?"

"Yes, I knew. Colin told me. But that was before I was accepted for St. Ranulph's." Gillian had been fighting a losing battle against the shock of hearing and speaking Colin Fenmore's name again, and now she stood up, looking about her like a trapped animal.

But Marnie pressed her back into her seat. "Easy, Gilly. You're not due back on the ward yet. Look - have a cigarette and don't talk for a minute or two. Then you can tell me all about this - or not, as you please."

Gillian refused the proffered cigarette. Four years! Four years of work and interests and friendships which had done no timely healing if she still cared for Colin Fenmore as she had done once. Had she deceived herself when she had argued - sincerely, and only as lately as this morning at Adrian Pilgrim's side - that he meant nothing to her any more? Now she felt as unsure as she had done in the first days of her bitter realisation that, though Colin had made love, he had not loved, and that the web of her own enchantment had not ensnared him too.

At last Marnie ventured: "Gilly dear, wouldn't it help to tell me? This Fenmore was more to you than just a friend, wasn't he?"!

"Yes. More than a friend."

"You were in love with him? "

"I thought so. I've always wanted to believe so, I think. Somehow, mere infatuation sounds so - so cheap, doesn't it?" Gillian's little twisted smile was bitter.

"Gilly, don't. You aren't the sort of girl to lose your head over a man to the extent of making yourself cheap. How long did it last?"

"A fortnight three weeks, maybe. One of those holiday romances they warn' you against. I was nineteen. He was twenty-three. I -I thought it was the real thing."

"Where?"

"While I was waiting for acceptance here, I went to live with a French family for the summer, not being paid but helping with the children. All my evenings were free, and Colin Fenmore was on holiday - or rather, he had come down to Cannes for a racing-car rally, though he moved over to Cassis, where I was, after we met. We saw each other every day."

"He must have cared for you!"

Gillian shook her head. "I came back to England first, and when he didn't write or make any attempt to see me again, I had to realise that he didn't."

"He might have lost your address."

"Perhaps. But there were heaps of other ways. My hostess, Madame Prevost, would have put him in touch with me. She wrote to me to say that he had even been to see her before he went back to Cannes. She didn't say he had mentioned me, and when I wrote back I was too proud to ask. But hearing about him at least put an end to the torture of imagining him hurt or - or dead." Again Gillian's smile was bitter.

"Poor, poor Gilly. And you didn't write yourself?"

"No. And I had no English address for him. I believed implicitly that he would write first." She could still remember how she had hugged the sweet promise of the letter that would come, anticipating what it would say, framing her answer to its imagined words.

"But," Marnie puzzled, "you knew he was a cousin of Mr. Pilgrim's? He could have told you where to find your Colin. Why didn't you ask him? Or his mother, Mrs. Pilgrim? She seems awfully kind."

"I couldn't. At first, when I remembered Colin had said he had a cousin who was a surgeon at St. Ranulph's, it was a sort of spar that I clung to. But I made a kind of pride of holding out for just one day at a time - and then another. And gradually it got easier, and then I didn't need to." She could not explain even to Marnie how much it had come to matter that Adrian Pilgrim should not guess at and despise the brief madness which she now despised herself.

Marnie said thoughtfully: "But you are worried now. Why?"

Gillian made a little helpless gesture. "I feel I just can't see him again!"

"Then you are afraid you may still be in love with him," accused Marnie gently.

"No! No - I'm not. Only - can't you understand - it's like having an old, healed wound reopened - for no good reason? And if he is ill I'm afraid that simply through being sorry for him I could lose the ground I've gained. I can't face it, Marnie. I daren't -!"

Marnie said again: "Poor Gilly. And it wouldn't be so bad if you hadn't been made a 'special' for the sidewards."

"No, it wouldn't," agreed Gillian quickly. "Do you think I could possibly ask Sister Hugh to keep me on the main ward instead?"

"Not a hope. You'd only antagonise her by asking. Besides, when this Colin Fenmore is convalescent, he'll be walking about the ward. You're bound to meet."

"But I'd have gained time. Time to sort things out. Different altogether, don't you see, from being thrust headlong into having to nurse him - and on my first day on the ward! Marnie, wouldn't Sister Hugh understand?"

Marnie shook her head, "It's no sort of an idea," she said. "But you faced all the rest, and you'll come through this. I'm backing you to!" She looked at her watch. "Time to go back. Go to it, and good luck!" Upon an impulse she kissed Gillian on the cheek. Then, more robustly, she slapped her on the back and drew her towards the door.

A quarter of an hour later Gillian paused outside Colin's room, nerving herself to enter. She had had Sister Hugh's instructions about his case - multiple injuries sustained in a car accident of six months before had brought him into hospital for his cousin's observation - and had thought, So he has not changed!

His ambition had been to be a successful racing motorist, and in four years there would have been other cars, faster cars than the one in which he had thoughtlessly courted danger in the old days. Now danger had overtaken him and turned into disaster. It was all she had once feared for him. It was the sum by which pity and past love might betray her now.

There was a. mirror on the wall opposite. Reflected in it was the Gillian Harlowe she was now - slimmer than before, her dark-fringed eyes more serious than they had been four years ago, but the corners of her sweet mouth still as ready to lift into a smile. But it was another girl that her memory saw, the girl with bronzed skin and

flying hair who had lifted her lips to Colin Fenmore's in the moonlight, and had believed for so pitifully short a time that she was loved.

How would she appear to him after all this time? Probably he would make fun of the severity of the uniform in which he had never yet seen her. Or he might even claim that he would not have known her at all.

If he did, how much would she care? Oh, how could she know that until she saw him? With a little squaring of her shoulders that was her gesture towards courage she turned the handle and went into his room.

Colin was lying back against his pillows, his curly auburn hair in a disorder she remembered well. He had been staring at the door, and at sight of her he grinned infectiously as if he had been waiting to turn a smile on someone, anyone. And in the old days she had believed he had smiled like that only for her. It seemed an age before his face straightened and their eyes met, hers serious, his puzzled.

He spoke first, as lightly as she had feared he would. He said: "Well, well - after all this time! And they didn't tell me! How come, sweetheart? "

Gillian winced at the falsity of the endearment. "I told you - then - that I had applied for training at St. Ranulph's."

"Did you? Oh, yes - and I told you about my respected Cousin Adrian, didn't I? I remember thinking that having you both here would give me a sort of patron's interest in the place -"

"What happened, Colin? Were you racing?"

He frowned. "No - that's the idiotic part. I was driving a baby-type job that could barely touch forty downhill. And I was practically stationary when another car came along and simply stove me in. Since then I've been trundled from one nursing-home to another, and I don't even know what's wrong, except for a fiendish cramp in my back that grips and won't let go. Now I'm here - for Cousin Adrian's knife, I suppose -"

"Oh, not necessarily -"

He grinned ruefully. "Dutifully reassuring, aren't you? Anyway, haven't I got you to soothe my fevered brow?"

She turned aside, rejecting the flippancy that could still hurt.

"What's the matter?" he enquired, puzzled.

"You - guessed I should be here, if I were accepted, and you didn't write."

There was a pause. Then: "I lost your address. And though it turned up later, by that time there didn't seem much point -"

She turned upon him, her eyes wide with pain. "Not much point - even if you had said you never wanted to see me again? Not much point in sparing me all the excuses I made up for you, all the waiting -?" She broke off, feeling ashamed of her outburst. Colin seemed as debonair and buoyant as ever, and from now on she must be his nurse, their relationship a professional one only. It might be easier than she had hoped - Colin was saying gently: "Gillian, my dear, did you care so much?"

She saw that he was flattered by the thought that she did. He went on: "We didn't talk about marriage or being engaged. But you didn't see it as just a holiday interlude for us both? "

"That's what it was, of course." She smiled at him, her lips steady now.

"But you did care a little?" Again she saw through his male pride of conquest.

"I did-a little."

"Gillian, I'm sorry. Come here." His voice was low.

"No." She shook her head, putting her hands behind her with a childish gesture, standing her ground.

"I can't come to you. Come over here, please."

She went then, still not knowing how free of him she was. But when he took her hand in his and his clasp tightened, her pulse did not quicken. She was not afraid any more that pity for Colin Fenmore would betray her again into a love that seared and hurt. For some reason she did not understand she was armoured at last against that...

He was saying: "I didn't really forget you, Gillian. How could I? And you are just the same now - even in that starchy get-up. But your hair! And that tilted nose! I threatened to pin a clothes-peg to it to train it to grow straight o' nights. And when you smiled you always sort of flicked your lashes. Look, you're doing it now—!" Colin's persuasive voice broke off quickly, but his grip upon her hand held as she sought to withdraw it at the sound of the door opening to admit two people - Adrian Pilgrim and Sister Hugh.

Gillian wrenched free and stood back from the bed as her training dictated. But she knew her movement had appeared a guilty one, and she flushed deeply as the surgeon looked her up and down, nodding briefly as he approached the bed. It would be Sister Hugh who would rebuke her for the breach of discipline. But she cared more that

Adrian Pilgrim should have seen her hand in Colin's, however innocently it had lain there.

Sister Hugh's nostrils narrowed as she said frostily: "You may go, Nurse. I should like to see you in my room later." But before Gillian had taken the full impact of the implied rebuke, Adrian Pilgrim intervened.

"One moment, Sister. Do you mean to leave Mr. Fenmore's care to Nurse - er - Harlowe?"

Sister Hugh's brows went up at his knowledge of her new staff nurse's name. "Yes, I had meant to -" The emphasis did not escape Gillian.

"Then I'd like her to take my instructions, please. Nurse-?"

Gillian stepped forward, forcing her attention to the technicalities of Colin's treatment. She was only too acutely aware of his roguish glances, though she tried to ignore them. But she was completely unprepared for the shock of hearing him say lazily: "D'you know, for the first time I don't know that I mind staying put, so long as I've got - Gillian to look after me!"

Gillian drew her breath sharply and felt rather than saw Sister Hugh's square figure stiffen. And Adrian Pilgrim's eyes went briefly from Colin to her as he queried: " 'Gillian'? You mean - Nurse Harlowe?"

"Gillian to me," said Colin, enjoying the sensation he had caused.

"You know each other, then?"

"Indeed we do, Cousin Adrian. In fact we've known each other for years. And - very well indeed! Eh, Gillian?" Sheer mischief bubbled in Colin's voice, mocking at the rigid disapproval of Sister Hugh, ignoring the pleading in Gillian's dark eyes.

But the surgeon, making a note in his diary, said only: "Then, in the circumstances, you will have opportunity to make even greater headway with your friendship." His tone was indifferent, and Gillian felt resentment and hurt pride welling up in her. He despised her for allowing Colin to be so familiar while she was on duty, and he was judging her unheard. At the thought it was as if something deeper than her professional pride had suffered a sharp spear-thrust of pain. Even all that Sister Hugh could have to say could scarcely hurt so much.

But the interview with Sister Hugh was quite bad enough. Seated at her table with her well-kept, capable hands clasped judicially before her, she said: "I hope you have some explanation, Nurse? I may say that in view of your resentment of my advice this morning, I hardly expected to have to speak to you about something far worse than carelessness."

"What do you wish me to explain, Sister?"

"Surely you know? It is not usual, when I am attending a surgeon on his rounds, to find one of my staff nurses indulging in unprofessional intimacies with a patient."

"There had been no intimacy, Sister."

"Do you deny that you were holding hands with Mr. Fenmore when Mr. Pilgrim and I went into his room, Nurse?"

"No, I don't deny it," said Gillian wearily. "But Mr. Fenmore offered his explanation - that we were old friends. And he greeted me in the ordinary way - by offering me his hand."

"A prolonged greeting, surely? You had not just gone into his room, had you?"

"No, but his first reaction was surprise at seeing me, because we had lost touch for a long time. He - he asked me to go over to him. That was when he took my hand-"

"But you knew, from his chart, that he was to be your patient, so that you had no excuse for not having the situation well in hand before you went to him. Nothing but your nursing duty took you there. You know that as well as I do."

"Do you suggest, Sister, that I should have pretended I didn't recognise Mr. Fenmore? Or have treated him as a stranger when he greeted me as a friend? "

"I suggest neither, and exaggeration of that sort is out of place. But it is not the first time that a nurse has had to resist advances from a patient, and it will not be the last-"

Something a little more conciliatory in Sister Hugh's tone showed Gillian just how distasteful her fanatical devotion to duty must have found the incident, and she broke in with an impulsive: "I'm sorry, Sister. It shan't occur again -"

But Sister Hugh did not accept the olive-branch. Her voice was still edged as she said: "You may find that it has no chance to occur again. Naturally the point arises as to whether you are quite the proper person to continue nursing Mr. Fenmore. And in this connection Mr. Pilgrim has asked me to allow him to interview you here when he has had a talk with his cousin."

Gillian's chin went up. "Do you mean, Sister, that it rests with Mr. Pilgrim whether I am to nurse Mr. Fenmore or not?"

Sister Hugh rose and went towards the door.

"Only in consultation with me as Ward Sister, and he already knows my views. You will wait here to see him, Nurse."

She left Gillian feeling completely defeated. She didn't want to 'special' Colin. But to be judged as too untrustworthy to do so by Adrian Pilgrim, that was a disgrace she knew she could not bear.

CHAPTER II

WHEN Adrian Pilgrim came into the office a few minutes later his glance at her gave Gillian no clue as to what she had to expect. But to her complete surprise he pulled Sister Hugh's chair out from the table and turned it towards her.

Gillian hesitated. A nurse on duty was supposed to stand in the presence of a surgeon, and she did not take the chair until he nodded towards it and went to lean back against the table-edge himself.

"Sit down, Nurse, please. I told Sister Hugh I want to speak to you about my cousin."

"Yes, Mr. Pilgrim?"

"When Sister Hugh told me that she had made you a 'special' for the side-wards and that you would be doing most of his nursing, I decided that you ought to understand something of the aspects of his case which aren't strictly physical, because I think you may be able to help me with him by more than mere nursing. It seemed to me a very fortunate chance that you happen to know him -"

"A - fortunate chance?" echoed Gillian faintly.

"Yes. You have known him well, haven't you? He tells me that you were once very close friends and that if you hadn't lost touch, he would have asked you to marry him."

"We hadn't spoken of being engaged before we parted," said Gillian quickly.

"No? I understood my cousin differently. But of course your relationship is my concern only so far as I would like your permission to make use of it in his interests. For instance, I haven't the right to enquire about your present feelings -"

"I was - I am - fond of him," murmured Gillian. Some odd loyalty to the past seemed to owe that to Colin. But how was it possible, she wondered, that something which had once set a glory about her days could now be expressed in a few flat words?

Adrian Pilgrim said, "That makes matters easier for me. I'd better explain - You see, we have here a psychological factor - my cousin's need to lean on a prop of hope. He thinks I can work a miracle for him by a simple operation. He doesn't know that he is here only for observation and treatment over what may be a long period. So - he believes there is a swift, sure answer for him; I know there is not; even that he may never get back to his racing career. And from what you know of him, I daresay you can guess at the effect the truth may have on him? "

"He is going to lose hope."

"Exactly. He is going to create his own retarding, vicious circle, and though I'm not prepared to commit myself to a yea or nay on his case, I need help with that - the mental side of it. Which is where you come in."

Gillian was silent from surprise that was tinged with dismay. The interview had taken an entirely different turn from that which she had expected. But her forebodings went deeper now. At last she said hesitantly: "I don't think I understand what you are asking, Mr. Pilgrim. But I'll do everything that I can for Mr. Fenmore -"

Adrian Pilgrim regarded her shrewdly. "Naturally you'll be doing your duty by him - as a nurse. I shouldn't expect less. But I am asking more of you than that. I want you to convince him that you care; that when he feels he has been betrayed by me and the rest of us that there is one person's loyalty that isn't going to fail him - yours. Am I asking too much of you, Nurse?"

Gillian said: "I don't know what to say, Mr. Pilgrim. Mr. Fenmore and I have not met for a very long time. We have almost to get to know each other all over again. And it would be wrong of me to promise him any depth of - of friendship that I might find I couldn't give him. That couldn't help him in the end, could it?"

Adrian Pilgrim made a little gesture of impatience. "My dear girl, I'm not asking anything rigidly binding for you. I can't promise him the future, any more than I can patch up whatever may have parted you in the past. But I've had a talk with him about you; he tells me that he still cares deeply for you and he believes you may care for him. And I am asking only that, while he has this other trouble to face, you should let the situation stand and do nothing overt to end it on your side. In the nature of things it will blossom or die away later, but it is his need now that I'm concerned with. And it's now that you can help him, if you will. Do you see?"

"Yes, I understand -" She was wondering what he would have said if she had been able to tell him that another man had taken Colin's place with her, even that she was engaged elsewhere. Then he would have had to accept that she could not stand by Colin in the way he asked! And yet - she had a feeling that his single- minded concern for his cousin's welfare might even then have demanded that she should act this lie while Colin needed her.

She thought wildly, I mustn't agree! I must tell him now, before it is too late, that I can't pretend to a feeling for Colin that I shall never know again - But Adrian Pilgrim was already smiling and saying: "Then we understand each other, and I'm grateful to you, Nurse." He paused, then went on more briskly: "Sister will pass on to you the details of the treatment I am prescribing. Meanwhile he will have one or two diversions - my mother, naturally, will visit him and so will a friend, a Miss Paul, who is making a long stay with us and whom Colin will remember from when they were children, though I think they haven't met since." He straightened and turned towards the door,

and Gillian stood up too. As he went to open the door for them both a faint smile flickered from his eyes to his lips and back again. "This has been a somewhat unorthodox exchange, Nurse! Sister Hugh doesn't know that I meant to make this particular appeal to you. As you may know, she doesn't approve of the smallest suggestion of romance between her staff and her patients, and she didn't know that I meant to approach you in this way. So if I decide to edit my report a little for her consumption, don't give me away, will you?"

The boyishness of the appeal was so unexpected that Gillian could only smile in reply. As she watched him stride away down the short corridor she thought how utterly inadequately that smile had expressed the tumult of misgiving in her mind. For Colin's sake she had promised - what?

She did not see Marnie to speak to before they both went off duty, and after supper Marnie was having her hair set by one of the other nurses who had abandoned hairdressing for nursing, but who liked to keep her hand in. So that it was not until shortly before lights- out that Marnie, in her dressing-gown and with her hair in a net, came to sit on Gillian's bed and to hear the news of Colin.

"How did it go, Gilly?" she enquired anxiously.

Gillian told her. The story came rather hesitantly and stopped short of Adrian Pilgrim's appeal. Somehow she felt that Marnie, so staunchly ranged against Colin's betrayal of her trust, would not understand how she could have agreed not to break completely with him. Fortunately Marnie saw the funny side of Sister Hugh's and the surgeon's arriving just when they did, and her airy dismissal of Sister Hugh's rebuke went a long way towards lessening its sting to Gillian's pride.

Marnie said: "Well, thank goodness you haven't any illusions about this Colin person any more. But what about him - about his case, I mean?"

"It's serious, I'm afraid," said Gillian gravely. "He has come into hospital believing he is to be operated upon, and Mr. Pilgrim is worried about the effect upon him when he learns that an operation isn't the solution. He is as desperately keen on motor racing as ever he was, and he may never race again."

"Poor chap. How long is his treatment likely to last?"

"I don't know. Probably months, if he doesn't respond. He is so moody that every step of the way is likely to be hard for him. And he has no one of his own to fall back on. I don't remember exactly, but I believe the Pilgrims may be the closest relatives he has."

"Well, as they live right within the grounds they couldn't be more handy," Marnie pointed out. "And would you say anyone need ask for a nicer aunt than Mrs. Pilgrim?"

"No. She is good," agreed Gillian. Like Marnie, she admired and respected Adrian Pilgrim's mother at a distance. But suddenly she realised she wanted to know her very much. She went on: "Mr. Pilgrim said something about a visitor of theirs, a Miss Paul, who would be coining in to see Colin. I wonder what she is like?"

Marnie nodded sagely. "I can tell you that. I've seen her - or I think I have. Out in his car with The Pilgrim -and how!"

"Why, what is she like?"

Marnie shrugged her shoulders and pursed resigned lips. "All that we shall never be, Gilly dear. At least, you could be - in a different way. There's just no hope for me. She is slim and oh, so groomed, and her

clothes fitted - just like that, and not a bent linen button in sight. And the way she was doing her stuff with The Pilgrim!"

"But -" Gillian broke off, biting her lip.

"But you never thought it of him?" mocked Marnie. "Believe me, he was enjoying himself hugely -"

Gillian flushed. "I didn't mean that. But I thought from Mr. Pilgrim's saying that this Miss Paul and Colin met as children that it was they who were much of an age -"

"Well, so they are, I'd say. Or rather, she wouldn't be older than we are, which makes her years younger than The Pilgrim, who is reputed to be thirty-eight. But she seemed to be twisting him round her finger, for all that."

"Where did you see them, then?"

"I was waiting for a bus outside Caudle's, the fishmonger's, and they drove up and began to argue about who was to go in. He said she knew what Mrs. Pilgrim wanted for lunch; she said she had no intention of standing in the queue. They laughed a good deal, and then he went and stood in the queue, and she made fun of him until he got inside the shop. My bus came along then, so I didn't see the end of it. But can you imagine the great one doing as much for any of us?"

"No, I can't -" began Gillian. But at that moment the light over her bed dimmed warningly, and it was time for Marnie to go.

Gillian was not looking forward to going to Colin's room the next morning, and she put it off as long as possible by going to her other two side-ward patients first.

When she did go to him he was looking for her eagerly. She thought he could have no hint of what lay before him, for he was still very buoyant, and the gay impudence of his greeting told her at once that he had no conception of the trouble he had made for her with Sister Hugh. She tried not to think about the deeper trouble he had involved her in less directly.

Colin said: "Well, my starched one, where do we go from here?"

For answer she went briskly to him and slipped her thermometer under his tongue. He frowned and grumbled "Tyrant!" round it, but was obediently silent when she gestured towards his wrist in order to take his pulse.

As she made the appropriate notes upon his chart she told him: "You won't be going very far today. Only to have some X-rays taken."

Colin surveyed her with lazy tolerance. "You know I meant - where does our cruelly interrupted romance go from here? After all, we've now got Cousin Adrian's blessing on our troth -"

"Colin, please! We only met again last night!" She was torn between her reluctance to respond to him and" her promise to Adrian Pilgrim that she would force no deliberate break with him.

"What of it? As soon as I saw you again I realised I'd been an idiot to let you go. But what's four years even, so long as we both feel the same? "

She wanted to cry out, I don't feel the same. I never shall again - But her promise forbade that, and she compromised with: "The four years are there, though, Colin. We can't pretend they aren't, and they are bound to have made us different people in some ways -"

"I'm no different - about you!"

The too easy gallantry made her smile. She persisted: "Well, I'm different, and I know it. I don't want to go back to being the person I was then, and I don't think one ever can go back, anyway. Let's start again, Colin, by being friends and allowing the future just to - to happen."

"All right. So I'm just your horrid past? And you are probably telling me as gently as possible that I've been supplanted by another man?" "No, not that. There's - no one else." "... Or else that I'm not likely to have much of a future to offer any girl?" With an alarming change of mood he was slumped in self-pity, and Gillian was dismayed lest she had unwittingly betrayed the fears for him which he was not supposed to know of yet. Pity for him flooded over her. Impulsively she laid a hand over his and did not flinch when the fingers of his other hand closed about her arm above the elbow in a convulsive hold. He looked up at her as if he were challenging her to answer him truthfully.

She began quietly: "You mustn't let yourself think like that, Colin. And you and I must begin again -" But just at that moment the door opened unexpectedly and a girl stood upon the threshold, a girl whom she did not know but who, Gillian's intuition told her, must be the Miss Paul of whom Adrian Pilgrim had spoken.

She was cradling a great sheaf of gladioli in the crook of her arm, and she paused upon the threshold as if she were well aware of the attractive picture she made there.

For her beauty, Gillian thought with a stab of envious admiration, was all that Marnie had hinted at. She was very fair indeed, with silvery blonde hair drawn back from her brow into a heavy swathe. Her skin was flawless and her make-up a delicate merging of pale coral and cream. She was dressed in a slim-fitting brown dress with demure white collar and cuffs, a little cape flying from her shoulders and a pill-box hat set far back on her head. Momentarily Gillian's

fancy put her into the stark uniformity of her own linen and print - and rejected the picture at once. There was no comparison possible between them-none at all....

At sight of the girl in the doorway Colin's hold upon Gillian's arm relaxed and he sat upright against his pillows, staring. He murmured: "Elspeth! By all that's wonderful!"

"Remember me?" There was an intriguing "breaking" quality in Elspeth Paul's voice. She came forward to the foot of Colin's bed, laying the gladioli upon it and subtly contriving to ignore Gillian as she did so.

"Of course I remember you - but not like this! I haven't seen you since you had your hair in plaits, and my one clear memory of you has always been that you snaffled the last- egg sandwich at a picnic when I had my eye on it. Come to think of it, young Elspeth, you always did take what you wanted - But it's fun seeing you again."

As he spoke Colin's eyes were taking in every detail of his visitor's appearance, and Gillian thought detachedly: "If I still cared for him I'd have been disturbed by the way he's looking at her, even if I hadn't felt actively jealous." But now she could only feel relief that he had recovered his spirits. She remembered that his moods had always veered as swiftly. How incalculable and unstable he was! And how, loving him, she would always have been buying ecstasy at the price of a constant distrust of her fate. She had been right when she had said she was a different person now. Now she longed to lean upon a strength of character which Colin had never possessed; to know her own qualities of character valued and to achieve the deep conviction of loving and being loved that would always drive out the pettier distrusts and jealousies and fears.

'Elspeth Paul was laughing and explaining that she had had to nag Adrian into allowing her to visit Colin so soon after his admittance to

hospital. "But when I said I was going to cut a date with him in order to come, he saw that I was serious and gave in." She looked about her, though still managing not to include Gillian in her glance at the austerity of Colin's room. She went on: "All this is pretty grim for you, isn't it? It's fortunate that Adrian means to get you out of it and across to the house as soon as he can."

"That'll be after my op. I suppose I shan't take long to convalesce, and then I shall begin to go places."

"After your -? Oh, yes -" Elspeth broke off, and to hide her confusion, asked if she might smoke.

"I don't know. May she?" As Colin deferred to Gillian she saw that his eyes were wary and suspicious.

"Yes. You may too until the surgeons' rounds, if you like," Gillian told him, taking the flowers from his bed. She turned to Elspeth with a smile. "You'd like us to arrange these for Mr. Fenmore, wouldn't you?"

"Yes, do that, please." Elspeth's tone was imperious. "But do them decently, won't you? Don't just dump them into a jam-jar, for goodness' sake."

Gillian bit her lip at the gratuitous rudeness. But all she said was: "They're so lovely that they'd grace even a jam-jar - if we used jam-jars for vases on the ward!"

Colin chuckled from the bed. "Good for you, sweetheart. And checkmate for you, young Elspeth! By the way, have you two met? Gillian Harlowe - Elspeth Paul. Come to think of it, you are both my Past - with a capital P."

The two girls nodded to each other and Gillian thought that Elspeth looked affronted at being introduced to a mere nurse. Before she had left the room and was out of hearing Elspeth was asking Colin: "But I thought she was just nursing you? Do you mean that you know her as well?"

Gillian did not stay to hear Colin's answer. She found she did not want to think about what he would tell Elspeth about their relationship. For she guessed that Colin's vanity would not be able to resist some embroidery of the truth. Besides, Elspeth's puzzled question showed that, in talking of Colin's case in his own home, Adrian Pilgrim had evidently not mentioned her name. Considering the trust he had appeared to put in her overnight, Gillian was hurt by that.

Adrian Pilgrim saw Colin later that morning, and afterwards Gillian was summoned to the office.

This time he did not invite her to sit down. When she entered he was standing with his back to the door, looking out of the window. And as he turned to face her she saw that his eyes were cold and the set of his jaw was grim.

Without preliminaries he said: "Nurse Harlowe, when I took you rather fully into my confidence yesterday I gave you no permission to forestall me in the . news I had to give my cousin about his treatment. Why did you do so?"

The colour ebbed from Gillian's cheeks. "I have not discussed his case with him, Mr. Pilgrim," she said quietly.

"Then how do you explain the fact that this morning he knew, without my having to tell him, that I planned no operation for him? Now he believes himself to have been deliberately deceived."

"I am sorry, Mr. Pilgrim, but I did not tell him."

"Well, I must believe you. But did he give you no hint that he knew the truth? Was he still cheerful and confident this morning?"

"Yes, quite. Except that -"

"Yes?"

"Well, he did suggest that there might not be much of a future before him -"

"Looking to you to confirm or deny that? Well, don't you see that your reply, if it were ill-guarded, could have told him what he wanted to know?"

"It could have. And I remember seeing the danger of it and wondering what to say. But at that minute Miss Paul came to visit him and bring him some flowers. He introduced us, and I stayed a few minutes longer."

"And he asked no more questions about himself? Nothing more was said?"

"No. Nothing -" But the slight check on the word caused Adrian Pilgrim to demand sharply: "Nothing more? Are you sure?"

"Yes, I'm sure." Gillian's voice was steady. She had remembered Elspeth's confusion when Colin had mentioned his coming operation and his answering glance of ready suspicion. But the girl had certainly said nothing definite to arouse his doubts, and it would be unfair to implicate her. Gillian added: "I left them laughing and

talking together, and while I was there certainly nothing more was said."

"Very well. I accept that. But it hasn't made our task any easier, Nurse. You are going to find him a very difficult patient to deal with for some time to come, I'm afraid."

"I understand, Mr. Pilgrim." Something more approachable in his manner emboldened Gillian to add: "Do you think perhaps that Mr. Fenmore has never needed telling the truth? That he may have known it - intuitively, I mean - all along? And that his cheerfulness up till now could be a sort of - front of courage that he has put up? "

Adrian Pilgrim looked at her thoughtfully. "It's a point of view," he allowed. "But somehow - not quite in character for my cousin, would you say?"

He did not appear to expect an answer. But she knew he was right. Colin's courage was of a different sort - a physical fearlessness, even a foolhardiness. It was not the courage of the spirit .that he would need to carry him through the dark time ahead. Suddenly she felt proud and glad that Adrian Pilgrim should have believed that he could call upon her strength to help Colin. It was going to be difficult, as he said. But - and not only for Colin's sake - she must not fail!

When next she saw Colin she found that his destroying self-pity, which at least had not been directed against anyone, had flared into a resentful anger against Adrian, against Gillian, against anyone at all whom he could hope to goad into equally resentful retort. And, placed as she was, Gillian found herself particularly at his mercy.

Adrian had drawn up a course of exercises for him, and on the first morning he was to do them under Gillian's direction he flatly refused to co-operate, declaring roughly that he had already had months of that sort of nonsense, and that nothing would induce him to begin it all over again.

Gillian felt helpless, but knew it was important he should not realise it. She could not force him; she could only hope to appeal to the reason and adult good sense which he seemed to have abandoned for the time being. And the time which should have been spent in making a start on the exercises was given instead to a gentle, tireless argument on her part and a baffling obstinacy on his. She believed that at last she was making headway when Sister Hugh came in.

"Come, Nurse," she ordered crisply. "You must not dawdle with Mr. Fenmore if he has finished his exercises for today."

"I haven't begun them, if you must know," put in Colin rudely, while Gillian sighed for her lost ground.

"Dear me. Nurse, you understood Mr. Pilgrim's wishes for his patient?"

"Yes, Sister."

"So did I. But that's not to say I'm going to carry them out," came from Colin.

"I can't believe that, Mr. Fenmore. It would be very foolish of you to refuse, and I can only suppose that Nurse Harlowe hasn't explained their necessity properly."

"She didn't need to. I've done enough silly exercises for a lifetime, and I'm not doing any more. Meanwhile, I'd be glad if you'd leave me alone - both of you."

"You realise, don't you, that I must report your refusal to Mr. Pilgrim?"

"Report away." Colin closed his eyes and turned his head aside, and after a moment's hesitation Sister Hugh signalled Gillian from the room.

Outside she turned upon her junior. "Nurse, I'm afraid I must regard that scene as your fault. Have you any explanation?"

"Only that, though I had a great deal of difficulty earlier, I believe I was on the point of persuading him when -"

"When I came in to find you had achieved nothing? Surely your very earliest training taught you to handle your patients with firmness? And what chaos do you suppose would result if such indiscipline were multiplied all over hospital? "

"But is it possible to 'multiply' dealings with individual patients, Sister?" Gillian surprised herself by asking. "Surely Mr. Fenmore's obstinacy over his exercises is only his way of expressing his discouragement about himself? I believe Mr. Pilgrim was fully prepared for it to take some form that we should find difficult to deal with. Otherwise -"

"Otherwise he would not have taken the unusual course of discussing Mr. Fenmore's, case with you? You really must not take importance to yourself over that, Nurse, and it does not entitle you to express your opinions to me. Now you had better go to your other patients while I" - Sister Hugh gave a heavy emphasis to her pause - "must do your work for you with Mr. Fenmore."

*

A day or two later the ward telephone rang, and Gillian went to answer it.

"Peterhead Ward here -"

"Is that Sister Hugh? Good morning, Sister. Harriet Pilgrim speaking -"

"Oh, good morning, Mrs. Pilgrim," Gillian broke in upon the pleasant voice of the surgeon's mother. "Sister has gone to her lunch, I'm afraid. I'm Staff Nurse Harlowe. May I give Sister Hugh a message?"

"Thank you, Nurse. But I only wanted to ask if I might visit my nephew, Colin Fenmore, this afternoon?"

"Yes, I'm sure you may. Perhaps you would have tea with him, Mrs. Pilgrim? He'll be having it at half- past three."

"I'd like that. Tell him I'll be there." There was a little pause. Then: "I expect, Nurse, that you are my nephew's rediscovered old friend of whom Adrian has told me? You are nursing Colin, aren't you?"

"Yes, I am." So Adrian Pilgrim had mentioned her name, after all!

"Then do you think Sister Hugh would allow you to have tea with us? Dare we ask her, do you think?" If a voice could be said to twinkle, Mrs. Pilgrim's did. Sister Hugh's reputation for severity carried far. But it was a request which even she could hardly refuse a visitor, so Gillian agreed that she would be glad to join Mrs. Pilgrim and Colin for tea.

When she carried in a tea-tray daintily laid for the three of them she glanced anxiously at Colin and was glad to see that his aunt's visit seemed to have induced the return of some of his fleeting good spirits.

Mrs. Pilgrim impulsively held out her hand as Gillian set down the tray upon the bed-table.

"My dear," she smiled, "I'm so glad to meet you. Colin has been telling me about you, and though I know I must be very correct and address you as 'Nurse Harlowe' in hospital, may I begin now to call you 'Gillian' in private? You see, I hope that Colin is going to allow me to get to know you very well! "

Gillian flushed at the warm, sincere tone. She said: "Do please call me by my Christian name, Mrs. Pilgrim. I should love it." She realised that she must appear to be promising an intimacy with Colin which must not exist after he left hospital. But the older woman's overture had been too friendly to resist.

She asked Mrs. Pilgrim to act as hostess and to pour out, and the three of them chatted until Mrs. Pilgrim turned to Gillian to say: "I'm wondering if you will help me? I think you have met our young friend Elspeth Paul, who is staying with us while her father, Professor Paul, is on an archaeological expedition to Iraq?"

"Yes, I have met her."

"Well - she is making a long stay, and I am anxious that she shouldn't be completely idle. After all, everyone who is young and healthy should be of some use to the community -"

"You're hearing Aunt Harriet's creed for the first of many times!" Colin broke in to inform Gillian. "She'd have been a wow at overseeing a treadmill."

"Well, at least treadmills cultivated the habit of work," retorted his aunt briskly. "But to return to Elspeth. ... She isn't trained for anything, and she could hardly take a paid job for a matter of months. So I thought she might take her Home Nursing and First Aid

examinations through the local classes and so qualify for some part-time nursing. And if you, Gillian, would tell her about the work, she could judge if she would like it. Would you do that? "

"Of course, Mrs. Pilgrim," agreed Gillian. - "Then I'll hold you to that. Will you come across to the house one day and talk to Elspeth? What about next Sunday?"

"Yes, I shall be free."

"Then come along to tea, and bring one of your friends, if you'd care to. Sunday is specially suitable, because I make it a sort of At Home day, and people drop in upon us if they've nothing better to do. It's one day, you see, when I can hope - though I can't expect - that Adrian won't be called out on a case. And from the way he spoke of you I'm sure he would like to know you better - for Colin's sake."

CHAPTER III

GILLIAN was in no doubt as to whom she would take with her to Mrs. Pilgrim's house, and Marnie accepted the invitation with alacrity, though they both had doubts of the success of their errand. They agreed that they somehow could not picture Elspeth Paul buckling down to the sort of work they did on the wards. But perhaps, Gillian suggested, that was self-righteous of them, and Elspeth might soon prove just how wrong they were.

They were not left long in doubt. Almost as soon as Mrs. Pilgrim left the three girls together Elspeth flung out her own challenge of: "I ought to warn you that it was only Mrs. Pilgrim's notion that I should be lured into making a temporary career of nursing. It doesn't appeal to me in the slightest, so I'm merely wasting your time. My idea was that I might help in the library, perhaps. Or I wouldn't mind some clerical work, if it wasn't too boring. What do you think?" she asked Gillian.

Gillian wasn't sure. Though the library was run by voluntary workers she did not think it was short of staff, and the work called for a considerable knowledge of books and authors and an exceptional memory for patients' likes and dislikes. And, boring or not, the keeping of clerical records for the hospital was bound to be highly skilled. "But I could enquire for you," she told Elspeth, adding impulsively: "You know, it is actually on the wards that the real crying need is. There is so much you could do, if you would consider training for part-time work -"

Elspeth shook her head. "Not me, I'm afraid. I suppose I must find some niche, in order to satisfy Mrs. Pilgrim's busy-bee complex. But of course there's no hurry. I don't need to work at all. That makes a difference, doesn't it -? Oh, hullo there, Adrian! Coming over!"

She rose from her chair in a single graceful movement and left them to join Adrian Pilgrim and a broad- shouldered young clergyman on the terrace beyond the open window.

"What did I tell you?" asked Marnie. "And wasn't that last remark designed to put us in our places as poor little wage-slaves to be pitied and despised? "

Gillian nodded. The oblique insolence in Elspeth's tone had not escaped her either. But Adrian, Elspeth and the clergyman were coming over for introductions to be made.

"Our new hospital padre, Mr. Sheppey," Adrian told Gillian and Marnie, adding to Gillian: "He'll be coming in to visit my cousin in a day or so. He won't mind my telling you that he is an Oxford Rugger Blue, and he wangled his vacation this year to fit in with the Le Mans car-race. I think he and Colin will have a lot in common."

"I'm so glad," said Gillian. She had taken to David Sheppey at sight, admiring the strength implicit in those broad shoulders, liking the frankness of his eyes. He was not much older than Colin, she judged, though his face already held more character. She hoped he and Colin would become friends.

When Mrs. Pilgrim came in with some more ladies more introductions followed, and then tea was brought in. People settled in ones and twos about the pleasant, gracious room, and when the padre went to join Marnie, from whom Gillian had become separated, Gillian found herself alone on the wide, cushioned window- seat.

Behind her was the intimate chink of the tea-things and a rising and falling cadence of talk. Beyond the window the secluded garden brooded in the sunshine, and she could amuse herself by counting the many peacock butterflies hovering about a buddleia bush just outside.

Engrossed, she had almost turned her back upon the room when she heard Adrian Pilgrim's coolly interested voice stating: "You are watching the peacocks?"

"Yes, I was-"

He stood beside her, one knee bent to rest upon the window-seat. "You were wondering why they should remain so faithful to the buddleia while it's in bloom?"

"Yes. I've been trying to count them."

"How many?"

"Seventeen at a - a sitting, as it were."

He rewarded the whimsical idea with an amused glance. "You visualise there being a queue for places then?"

Gillian's sweet mouth quirked into a smile. "Perhaps. And with so short a life before them it seems a pity if they shouldn't manage to get one!"

"It's nice of you to be concerned. But their life isn't so very short - as insect life goes."

"I thought butterflies lived only for a day?"

"Oh, no. A fallacy, that. Their average life on the wing is three weeks, while a comfortably hibernated butterfly can survive for nine months or more."

"I'm glad of that. They're so beautiful, aren't they?"

"Who are beautiful, Adrian?" It was Elspeth Paul's voice, gay and feminine, behind them.

Adrian turned. "Nobody you need be jealous of. We were admiring the peacock butterflies on the buddleia."

"Oh - butterflies." Elspeth's little gesture dismissed them. "I thought perhaps you had retired into a corner to talk shop. You are both so terribly earnest about your work." Her eyes remained to challenge Gillian's as she added: "Did you know, Adrian, that your mother had roped in Nurse Harlowe to persuade me to discover I had a vocation for nursing?"

"What do you mean?"

"Well, you know her theories about 'idle hands'. She thought that some trotting round with medicines was the answer to keeping me occupied while I'm here -"

"But - nursing? For you? I had no idea Mother was thinking of such a thing." He sounded annoyed, and Gillian read into his irritable tone his dismissal of her profession as being beneath the elegant Miss Paul's notice. She was hurt and surprised. The attitude seemed unworthy of him. He, if anyone, should know that the best surgery and medicine in the world were of no use without nurses! Her conviction was so strong that unthinkingly she broke in with: "I think Mrs. Pilgrim may realise how cruel the need is, and that just one more pair of hands on any ward would make all the difference!" Then she waited for Elspeth to ridicule her argument and for Adrian Pilgrim to tear it to ribbons.

But though Elspeth looked taken aback she did not speak. And Adrian's glance went appraisingly from one girl to the other as he said coolly: "Exactly. But nursing calls for certain talents. And yours, Elspeth, happen to lie in quite other directions. Oil and water don't mix -"

With that he held out a hand for her empty cup and took Gillian's from her, saying he would get them filled. When he had gone Elspeth gave a little shrug. She said lightly: "Well, it's obvious which of us Adrian would prefer to have on a ward -" Then she frowned and added: "I suppose he said that because he is still angry with me for letting slip what I did to Colin Fenmore -"

Gillian stared at her. "So you did tell him that Mr. Pilgrim wouldn't operate? "

"Well, he asked me - which showed he had his own suspicions before that. And you knew I'd told him - you told Adrian so!"

"I did nothing of the sort! I wasn't even there!" "Oh, well - you still must have given Adrian the hint that made him suspect me. It's natural, of course, that you should want to keep in his good books. But of course I forgot - you are practically engaged to Colin, aren't you? So you wouldn't need to indulge in any ideas about Adrian as well - would you?"

The insolence in Elspeth's tone was edged, direct, intended. And it came to Gillian as a shock and a warning - a warning against the secret hope which, until that very moment, she had not admitted willingly even to herself. Adrian Pilgrim had bound her in loyalty to Colin. But it was love of Adrian himself that had crept up upon her unawares.

Did Elspeth know? If so, what experience, what in tuition could have told her? Or could she have guessed, just from seeing them together, that for Gillian, Adrian Pilgrim had become the all-in-all to her whole existence?

She had not wanted to know it, did not want to face it now as anything but what it must remain - her hungry heart's escape into the folly of dreams never likely to come true. Yet if she had betrayed it

to Elspeth Paul she must fear lest it lay bare for anyone to see. For anyone.... For Marnie. For Colin. Even - for Adrian himself.

She did not have to reply to Elspeth because just then the surgeon came back, bringing their tea. He handed hers to Gillian and her fingers had closed upon the saucer when Elspeth, in a singularly inopportune movement, took her mirror from her bag and held it high in order to examine her make-up. As she did so her elbow caught Gillian's arm, jerking it awkwardly.

"Oh -!" Gillian stared in fascinated dismay as the delicate china cup rolled over in its saucer, fortunately not falling but spilling its contents over the sleeve of Adrian Pilgrim's coat. He uttered an annoyed exclamation, set down Elspeth's cup which he still held and began to brush his coat with his handkerchief.

"Mr. Pilgrim, I'm so sorry -" began Gillian, glancing quickly at Elspeth, expecting the girl to join her apologies to hers, since it had been her unguarded movement which had caused the trouble. But Elspeth only tittered: "Heavens! Aren't you thankful it was only a cup of tea instead of something hideously important in hospital? Why, Adrian might have scalped you-!"

Was it possible, Gillian wondered, that she did not realise that it had been her fault? But a glance at Elspeth's narrowed eyes provided the answer. The awkwardness had not been unguarded. It had been deliberate. And suddenly Gillian was sure that she had made an enemy in Elspeth Paul.

With a muttered apology for leaving them, Adrian went to change his coat, and Gillian, feeling miserable and unwelcome, hoped that Marnie would be as ready to leave the party as she was.

Marnie was still talking to the padre, but she told Gillian she would come in a minute or two, and while she was waiting Gillian went to say good-bye to her hostess.

Mrs. Pilgrim, regal and gracious behind her tray of silver tea-things, whispered: "You must come again soon, dear," adding with a smile, "Meanwhile, I'll have . to say good-bye for you to Adrian. Someone gave him a tea-bath, and he's gone to change."

Gillian smiled ruefully. "I'm afraid I did that, Mrs. Pilgrim," she admitted. "I hope his suit isn't ruined?"

"Ruined? A linen jacket? Of course not, my dear. And his cleaning bills are colossal, anyway. Don't think another thing about it. And give my love to Colin, won't you? Tell him I'll send Elspeth in to see him again tomorrow and I'll pop in myself during the week."

But Elspeth did not go to visit Colin the next day. Instead she sent a laconic message to say that she had gone riding with Adrian and hoped Colin wouldn't mind. Conveying the news to Colin, Gillian wished that people could only realise how eagerly, almost childishly, the interest of hospital patients pin-pointed upon such little importances as visits, attractive meals and thoughtful gifts, however modest. She could never grow used to being the messenger of disappointment, nor to watching the defeat which it brought with it.

Fortunately that day, Elspeth's defection was made up for by the new padre, David Sheppey, making his first visit to the ward. Gillian went off duty at noon and had to hear about it from Marnie at supper-time.

"Did you see anything of Colin before you came off?" asked Gillian. "Or did Sister take charge of the 'specials'?"

"Sister wasn't there. She accorded Mr. Sheppey a gracious 'welcome to our new padre' in her office, and then swept off duty, leaving me to trot him round."

"Did he see Colin? How was Colin afterwards?"

"Demanding a drawing-block, tracing paper and hard pencils."

"A drawing-block? What on earth -?" puzzled Gillian.

"Seems he and padre Sheppey between them evolved an idea for a racing-car engine that's going to wipe the floor with all the others, if it doesn't put 'em right out of production. So far as your Colin Fenmore is concerned, it's practically in the blueprint stage already. He can't wait to get it on to paper, that is."

"He was cheerful, then? Oh, thank goodness. I didn't even know he had ideas about engine design. I thought he just wanted to drive the things faster than anyone else." She felt a little ashamed for not having known.

"Well, if he hadn't ideas before, Mr. Sheppey has inspired him. I told him the shops were shut and he'd have to manage with a writing-pad and a ball-point till tomorrow. He said, 'Tchah!' or words to that effect, pretty forcibly. But he settled down to scribbling and sketching happily enough before I left."

"Well, bless Mr. Sheppey, say I," sighed Gillian.

"He's rather nice, isn't he?" asked Marnie offhandedly.

"I liked the look of him yesterday. You had tea with him, didn't you?"

"Yes. And again today. I was having a cup just as he was leaving, so I asked him to have one too. We- talked quite a lot."

"He is assisting at St. Anselm's, isn't he? Is this his first appointment since he was ordained?"

"Oh, no. He's been out to a mission-station in India for three years. He only came home because he wanted some experience in England before he gets the East End parish he hopes for eventually. When I asked . why East End, he said he was surprised! didn't appreciate that a London parish would be handy for getting to Twickenham to see the rugby internationals -"

"He was joking!"

"Yes, of course. I caught his eyes twinkling, and he confessed then that he wanted a crowded parish with lots of work and plenty of people's real problems to cope with. And when I said that some clergymen, to judge by their sermons, didn't always understand ordinary folks' problems, he said he usually preached at St. Anselm's on Sunday nights, and would I go along and hear him sometime."

"And are you going?"

"Some Sunday night when I'm off duty I probably shall." There was no indication in Marnie's studiedly casual tone that she knew nothing would keep her away. And she changed the subject from David Sheppey's personal confidences to say: "There was one odd thing this afternoon. Mr. Sheppey said he was puzzled by the feeling that he had seen Sister Hugh before, but couldn't remember where."

"Why should it be odd?" queried Gillian. "They could have met almost anywhere, couldn't they? Even in the street?"

"Yes. But he said it wasn't that sort of a recollection. It was a memory of having seen her when she was much' younger, only a girl, in fact. But we agreed that that wasn't very likely, because when Sister Hugh was a girl he wouldn't have been far out of the nursery -"

"You make Sister Hugh appear in her dotage," protested Gillian. "She can't be fifty yet."

"Well, she isn't exactly in her first youth, is she?" retorted Marnie. "Gilly, do you think that if we don't marry, we shall get that way?"

"Which way?" asked Gillian, though she knew what Marnie meant.

"Well, sour and narrow and critical, with nursing at our fingertips and nothing else that's human about us at all."

"I don't think one need," returned Gillian slowly. It was not the first time she had faced the thought of her own probable future. "Some women never would. Mrs. Pilgrim wouldn't, if she hadn't married. It's kindest, I suppose, to believe that the others were badly hurt by life and they feel they have a grudge that they must pay back."

"Or they were born like it, as I daresay Sister Hugh was," suggested Marnie lightly.

"Yes. Perhaps." But long after Marnie had forgotten the discussion and what had given rise to it, Gillian was haunted by a curiosity about the girl Sister Hugh once had been, whom David Sheppey believed he had known. Had she ever loved or been loved? And if so, what tenderness, what understanding might she have overspent then, that she seemed to have none to spare now?

As the autumn drew in after a lovely summer the many gratuitous kindnesses of the public to the staff of St. Ranulph's began to change their character. Now there were no more gifts of baskets of fruit or free launch-cruises on the river; instead Matron was asked to distribute complimentary tickets for exhibitions and to accept blocks of seats for West End shows. The privilege of using them was shared

out ward by ward, and they were always eagerly snapped up by the staff.

On the occasion of an offer to Peterhead Ward of six dress-circle seats for the musical show Caravan In The Desert it was Marnie who first spotted the notice of it which Sister Hugh had pinned to the board without comment to her staff.

Remarking," 'Who runs, may read' - and Sister Hugh couldn't care less if nobody did," she invited Gillian to write both their names in the space provided, as she had lost her fountain-pen.

"What have you done with it?" asked Gillian.

"Idiotic question. How should I know? It's around somewhere -" said Marnie vaguely, leaving Gillian to reflect ruefully that her own fountain-pen would only have had to be missing from its clip on her apron-bib for five minutes before its absence would have been reproved by Sister Hugh!

On the day of the show Marnie was off duty from noon. Though she had omitted to check times with Marnie, who had ordered the two taxis the party had clubbed together to share, Gillian believed she would have plenty of time to change when she went off duty herself at six. But on her last duty before going off she went into the sluice-room, to find the student nurse, Nurse Christie, almost in tears at the sink.

"Hullo, what's the matter with you?" asked Gillian briskly.

Nurse Christie bent lower over the lake of none too clean water in the sink. She gulped twice before replying: "Sister says the sluice is a disgrace and I'm to clean it thoroughly before I go off."

Gillian looked about her, noticing the spattered floor, the unstacked kidney bowls, the test-tubes awry in their stands or lying about loose. She said: "Well, you'll admit that in calling it a disgrace, Sister has got something! How does it come to be in such a mess so late in the day? And why don't you begin by cleaning out your sink?"

Nurse Christie swabbed ineffectually at the gently heaving lake and dropped a tear into it. "I've been helping with admissions all afternoon. And - and the sink is stopped up, I think -"

"Let me have a look." But after a minute or two Gillian said: "Well, it's no use wasting time with it. We'll get the plumbing service. Go and ring through on the house-phone, will you?"

But Nurse Christie did not stir. "Please, Nurse Harlowe, I - I don't know how to use the house-phone!" she stammered.

"Oh, for goodness' sake—!" Gillian, jealous of her precious time, spoke more sharply than she had intended and was dismayed by the sudden crumpling of the younger girl's face. She went on hastily: "I'm sorry, Christie. I hadn't realised that you probably wouldn't understand the various switches, if you haven't used the phone yet. I'll do it myself. Meanwhile, there's no cause to weep, you know. You'll get done well before you are due off."

"But I'm due off now," wailed Nurse Christie.

"Now? But you're not in the party for the theatre, are you?"

"No, Nurse. But my mother has been ill, and she's leaving our local hospital today. Matron gave me a night-pass and I'm off duty all day tomorrow. But my home is in a little village in Hertfordshire, and if I don't catch one bus which connects with two others I -I can't get home tonight."

Touched by the little tragedy, Gillian asked: "Did you explain this to Sister?"

"No, I -" It was clear that the child had been too petrified to do so.

"All right." Gillian glanced about her again and took a swift decision. "You should have explained to Sister. But you'd better run along now as fast as you can scuttle. I'll go and ring for someone to do the sink, and meanwhile I'll clear up here for you."

"Oh, thank you, Nurse!"

"Go and catch your bus, do!" Gillian turned her about and gave her a little push. As she hurried to the house telephone Gillian was calculating that if she were very quick and the plumber was prompt in answering her call, she would still be in time to join Marnie and the others.

But before she could lift the receiver the telephone rang and Marnie's voice came agitatedly: "Peterhead Ward? Oh - is that you, Gilly? Look, my pet, what are you up to? We're waiting!"

Gillian gasped: "Waiting? But you can't be. It's only just past six!"

Marnie, who was given to self-adjurements in moments of stress, murmured: "Patience, Miss Chard!" To Gillian she said: "Well, we are waiting. The taxis are here, and we ought to be off. Gilly, you hadn't forgotten that Caravan is a twice-nightly show, and our seats are for the first house?"

"Oh, Marnie, I had forgotten, even if I ever knew. How silly of me! I'd asked to come off at six, thinking I should have plenty of time. And I can't come now for a little while. Besides, I shouldn't have changed -"

"But it's past six. Is Sister Hugh badgering you?" demanded Marnie.

"No, she's not here, but I can't come yet. I'll explain later. I mustn't keep you now. You go on with the others and I'll come on by Underground or somehow, if there's time."

"I feel horrid doing it," murmured Marnie.

"But you've got to consider the others," Gillian reminded her. And when Marnie agreed reluctantly that she supposed she had, Gillian rang off and dialled for the hospital plumber before returning to the sluice and rolling up her sleeves preparatory to tackling its disorder.

The plumber took his time to answer her summons, and when he arrived she had had to give up all idea of joining the theatre party for the show, which would almost certainly have begun at half-past six or seven at latest. She wondered what was on television. If there were nothing that interested her she supposed she might as well take a leisurely bath and go early to bed.

"Ought to be all right now, Nurse," said Jones the plumber, preparing to pack his tools.

"If it had been designed by a woman it probably wouldn't have gone wrong," retorted Gillian. It was a time-honoured taunt which Jones would have been disappointed not to hear.

She signed his time-sheet and left the sluice with him, meaning to fetch her cloak. But as she emerged on to the corridor Adrian Pilgrim came through the swing- doors leading to the ward. As usual, her heart missed a beat at sight of him, but she was surprised when he signalled that he wanted to speak to her. She waited, and when he approached she saw that he was offering her a fountain-pen.

"Is this yours? I'm afraid I've had it for two or three days."

Gillian shook her head. "No, I have mine. Oh - it could be Nurse Chard's. I know she has lost hers."

"Of course. I remember now that I borrowed it from her. Is she on duty still?"

"No. She is at the theatre tonight and I may not see her until the morning. But I could give it to her for you, Mr. Pilgrim."

"If you would, then?" He handed over the pen and watched as she clipped it for safety beside her own. There did not seem any more to say until - surprisingly-he said it.

"You aren't going to the theatre yourself? I suppose you couldn't get off duty in time?"

"No. It was a ward theatre-party for the first house of Caravan in the Desert, and I shouldn't have been in time to join it." He would not be interested in the circumstances which had kept her.

"You are going off now, though?"

"Yes. I have to get my cloak -"

He nodded and walked on, and she expected he would be gone when she came out with her cloak flung round her shoulders. But he had stopped at the outer doors to light a cigarette, and after opening the door for her he fell into step beside her.

He said: "I happen to have a couple of stalls for tonight for Penthouse at the Duke Theatre. I suppose it would be too short notice for me to ask you to accept one of them and join me in seeing it?"

He was asking her to go to the theatre with him - to see the most talked-of comedy in town, which starred a famous husband and wife team and which she knew was booked up for months ahead! Surprise

and gratification kept her silent for a moment or two, and she heard him saying: "Of course - if you've seen it - or you may have an engagement?"

In his tone there was a hint of the unexpectedly boyish diffidence she had heard once before. It made it easier for her to assure him eagerly that she hadn't seen the play, that she wanted to very much indeed, that she had no prior engagement....

"I'll call for you, then. The curtain doesn't go up till the comparatively civilised hour of eight. Can you be ready by half-past?"

For Gillian, enchantment began from that moment. . . . Why had he invited her? her whirling thoughts questioned as she ran up to her room in the Nurses' Home. Sober common sense suggested that it was because by some chance he found himself with a theatre ticket not being used and he had asked her upon impulse when the merest chance had put her in his way. But with the prospect of the evening spread before her imagination like a magic carpet, she could not listen to common sense, nor spoil the savour of his having asked her by speculation as to the why and wherefore.

What would he want to talk about? Would he mention Colin? Would he discuss the play they were seeing? Other plays? Oh, but it was useless to plan conversations beforehand. They never went the way you expected they would or had planned that they should!

Her thoughts darted excitedly as she went about her dressing. The last touches now. Bag. Gloves. A touch of perfume here - and here - Now she was ready. With a finger on the light-switch she smiled at the Gillian Harlowe in the mirror and whispered to her: "You're going out with him - just once!"

Then she flicked off the light and went out to meet the promise of the evening.

CHAPTER IV

As she stepped into Adrian Pilgrim's car outside the Nurses' Home she was wondering how many curious eyes might be watching, how many questions she would have to answer tomorrow.

She planned to say that she had been invited at the last minute to fill in a gap, to make even numbers in a party. It would be far better to belittle the occasion than to have the ready tongue of hospital gossip busy with her name. ("Have you heard? The Pilgrim asked Harlowe to go out with him!" No, she could not bear that.) Perhaps she would not tell even Marnie the truth. For it was not likely to happen again, and Marnie might wonder why. Yes, she would keep this, her one evening with him, for herself alone.

On the journey in to the West End, Adrian Pilgrim made it easy for her to overcome her shy diffidence with him by beginning to talk at once of plays and the theatre. Here she was on sure ground. The generosity of theatre managements had made many hospital theatre parties possible; if necessary, she never minded going to a play alone, and gradually play-going had become one of the absorbing interests which had filled the gap Colin had left in her life.

Adrian held his own opinions, which did not always coincide with hers. For instance, when they talked of Shakespeare, he claimed that The Taming of the Shrew was nothing but a wild riot of fun which always made him laugh- But Gillian, though admitting the fun, could still pity poor Katharina's subjection by Petruchio.

She said: "I think it was cruel of him to carry her off without letting her enjoy her own wedding-feast. Then she was really hungry for the meat he threw away, saying it wasn't fit to eat. And she wanted that gown with its sleeves 'carv'd like an apple tart' -"

"But she was happy in her submission in the end. Remember -? 'Thy husband is thy lord, thy life, thy keeper; thy head, thy sov'reign, one that cares for thee,'" quoted Adrian with a smile. "Or don't you agree that the man who knows what he wants and finds it in just one woman is justified in fighting for it as Petruchio did, or using any other means that seem best to him?"

But by now they were in their seats in the stalls, the house-lights were lowered and the curtain was going up, so that Gillian did not have to reply.

In the intervals between acts they went to mingle with the crowds in the foyer, and Gillian enjoyed doing a little eavesdropping on the informed - and not so informed! - stage gossip going on around them. She noted with pleasure too that, though about half the stalls audience was in day-clothes, the people in evening dress looked more groomed and at ease, and she was glad she and Adrian were among their number.

During the second interval he went to get sherry for them both, but had to wait for it, making them late back to their seats. As she felt his hand beneath her elbow, guiding her down the darkened aisle, Gillian thought headily, I must remember this. It will not last, and it will not happen again. By that time there was so little of her evening left!

When they went out to his car Adrian said: "By the way, my mother was called today to some business in Kent, and as I have to meet her at our local station after I've taken you back, we shan't have time to go on to supper anywhere. I asked instead for sandwiches and coffee to be ready for us at home. I hope you don't mind?"

"Of course not." She had not dared to hope for the intimacy of a meal alone with him.

"Good. We must do it again some time." He paused, then added: "Later on, when Colin has come to us, we might make a party of it as soon as he is fit enough - you and Colin, Elspeth Paul and myself -"

"Thank you. That would be nice." She gulped down a fleeting disappointment that he had not meant that he and she should "do it again" alone.

He turned the car westward towards St. Ranulph's and did not speak again until they were clear of the worst of the theatre traffic. Then he said: "I want to congratulate you on the progress Colin is making. It is due, in a large part, to what you have done for him."

Wryly Gillian cast a backward look over the many days of struggle with Colin's will, with his incalculable caprice, with his recurring bouts of despair. But the bad times were more widely spaced now and at last he was beginning to help himself.

She disclaimed quickly: "Mr. Sheppey has done a lot for him too."

"I appreciate that, but he couldn't have got to the point he has without your help."

"If he goes on as he has done lately, is there a chance that he may be able to drive again?" asked Gillian in a low voice.

"He is already on the way to being cured for ordinary activities, but about the other I can't say yet. I shall want him out of hospital and under my observation for a good while first."

"He is living for the time when he will race again." The concern in her voice caused Adrian to turn to look at her.

"You mustn't let yourself care too much if he doesn't," he told her. "There are other things in life than the attainment of one ambition.

For Colin there might be an alternative career in design, and if he has to face that I know I needn't ask you not to fail him."

"I do want to help him -"

"Yes. And I think you've accepted that Katharina's ideal of 'thy head, thy sov'reign' doesn't apply to your relationship with Colin. You know, don't you, that he may always lean upon you more than you can hope to lean on him?"

"He has come to depend on me, I know."

"Without your ever having been able to rely on him?" put in Adrian quickly. "He let you down badly before, didn't he?"

"I suppose he did. But I didn't know you knew that, Mr. Pilgrim?"

"He admitted it to my mother. But you forgave him that, didn't you?"

"Yes, I forgave him -"

"And you didn't come to me, when I could at least have given you news of him, even if I'd had to advise you of the unwisdom of trying to force matters. Why didn't you come?"

Gillian's chin went up in an involuntary gesture that might have been either of pride or of defence. "I knew you might have told me where I could get in touch with Colin," she said. "But I didn't want to 'force' anything, and I preferred not to ask you."

He glanced at her again. "I think that some women, in your place, would have turned their world inside out for less cause than you had for feeling aggrieved," he commented. "But you have your reward now in his very real need of you. And if you are content to have it so, you will find that your friends are very glad for you."

With the words he seemed to be tying her irrevocably to the promise she should never have given but which she could not repudiate now without sacrificing his regard and Colin's need. Besides, his reference to her friends had sounded as though he counted himself among them. And that, though it was so little a thing to cherish, was all of him that she was likely to have....

Until Adrian threw open the door of the softly- lighted lounge, asking her to go in while he went to the kitchen to announce their arrival to Anna, Mrs. Pilgrim's housekeeper, Gillian had forgotten that Elspeth Paul would probably be there. And at sight of the girl, looking lovely and relaxed in the light of the fire, she felt a little stab of dismay. After their last encounter in this house Gillian knew she would never feel at ease with her again.

"Oh - hello," said Elspeth without marked enthusiasm. She did not rise but stretched her hand to a cigarette-box and offered it to Gillian, the side sleeve of her brocaded housecoat falling back in graceful folds from her arm as she did so. She had unpinned the heavy knot of her hair and wore it tied at title nape of her neck with a ribbon. Like that she appeared very young and untouched. And yet there was about her an awareness, a calculation of effect that was not of youth at all.

When Adrian came back with the coffee he said to Elspeth: "I expected you might be in bed. How is the threatening cold?"

"Clearing up, I think. You were so right to advise me to stay in this evening." Elspeth slid an oblique look in Gillian's direction. When Adrian came to stand between them, leaning an elbow upon the low mantelshelf as he sipped his coffee, Elspeth went on wistfully: "All the same, I did want to see Penthouse. Was it all that is claimed for it?"

"It was very good. Don't you agree?" Adrian turned to Gillian.

"Yes, indeed. And beautifully cast." She hesitated, then went on: "The only thing I found unreal was the acceptance by the other characters that the love-affair between the young heroine and a man of the hero's age and standing could be sincere and deeply felt. In real life wouldn't people have contrived to cheapen it for them by sneering at it as - as infatuation?"

"You don't agree then that 'all the world loves a lover'?"

'"It depends. Not always. There are a lot of - of despoilers about," she said in a low voice.

Elspeth was smiling brilliantly up at Adrian. "This sounds intriguing. Tell me more! What was the difference in these people's ages?"

"Oh - a matter of fifteen years. Marta, the heroine, in her early twenties, the hero on the wrong side of forty. But for myself I found the treatment quite acceptable. After all, Marta, young as she was, had a great deal to bring to Richard - freshness, beauty, a native charm that would take her a long way - oh, yes, it could well happen in real life. In fact, it frequently does."

A strange note of intensity had crept into Adrian's voice, and glancing up at him as he ceased speaking Gillian saw that he was watching Elspeth's pale gold head as if he were challenging the girl to raise her eyes to meet his. And between the three of them there was a silence that was broken only by the tick of the sunburst clock at Adrian's elbow, by the faint hiss from a log in the grate.

Momentarily Gillian closed her eyes, then opened them, grateful for the light and warmth that were still physically round her, even though nothing could disperse the cold, muffling cloud of despair about her spirit.

She should have known! She should have realised that that early intuitive guess of Elspeth's at her own feeling for Adrian had not arisen from an idle curiosity but from something more primitive - Elspeth's jealous need to guard a love of which she might not then have been sure.

But she can be sure now. He could not look at her like that if he did not love her, if he were not using our talk of the play to tell her so. The thought was a searing, numbing agony, and it dulled only slowly to the bitterness of: As if, once he had seen her, Elspeth Paul could have had anything to fear from me!

Elspeth was looking up now, meeting Adrian's eyes with a sparkle in her own. She said: "But of course you are right, Adrian. It could be an ideal match - so long as the people concerned have much the same background at the outset. I think Nurse Harlowe is speaking of something quite different. I mean, isn't it only when it is one-sided and rather hopeless that it appears besotted and incredibly foolish to other people? One sees that happening in real life - and how I should hate it to happen to me! "

To that Adrian said tolerantly: "I shouldn't worry, Elspeth. It's not likely to -" and changed the subject to ask if Anna had taken any telephone calls for him.

Elspeth started guiltily. "Oh, yes, there was one -"

Adrian frowned. "There was? Anna should have told me."

"She didn't know. I asked her to switch the telephone in here. You'd said I was to keep out of draughts, and I was expecting a call from Claude Perivale. There's a note of your call by the phone."

"Claude Perivale?" Adrian's echo came sharply, but he made no comment. With the note of the incoming call in his hand he said: "I'll

take this from my study," adding to Gillian: 'Then I'll see you to your quarters, if I may."

As the door closed behind him, Elspeth stretched luxuriously. "You wouldn't credit that I scarcely know Claude Perivale. How foolishly easy it is to make a man jealous! " she murmured.

"Easy, perhaps. But how - wise?" queried Gillian drily.

"Well, of course you must watch your timing, but that's part of the fun -"

"Mightn't it become a two-edged weapon?"

"You mean a man could use it too? But they don't often. Not just for the fun of it. Only when they are really sore, or if they are disappointed in something they've set their heart on. Look at Adrian this evening! He'd got tickets for Penthouse, without telling me, and then felt, because of my cold, that he owed it to me to advise me to stay indoors. But I suppose he'd planned our evening out down to the last detail and couldn't take the disappointment of not having it. He wouldn't go to the theatre alone - men never will, they'd rather go with just anyone, I think - so he asked you instead. It was as simple as that. I was quite amused."

Gillian asked unevenly: "You mean that I was taking your place this evening?" Too late she realised that, in self-defence, she should have pretended that she knew she had been a mere substitute, the "just anyone" of Adrian Pilgrim's haphazard choice.

"Yes. But you mustn't think that I mind, you know. I'm surprised that Adrian didn't explain to you."

"He didn't," said Gillian shortly.

"And you are hurt because he didn't give you a chance to refuse to play second fiddle to me! Well, that's the sort Of pride I can understand. But I think you should be grateful to him for not telling you. There are a lot of men to whom it wouldn't occur to save a girl's face in that way. And when Adrian was so careful to say nothing, it was idiotic of me to blurt it out. And how glad you must be for a chance to get out of that hideous uniform -" Elspeth's glance made a tawdry thing of Gillian's dress. "Oh here's Adrian coming back. You'll be leaving -"

Hurt and humiliated, and ashamed and angry with herself for the pettiness of her mortification, Gillian said good night and went out with Adrian for the short drive between his house and the nurses' quarters nearer the main building.

In her room she sank down upon the edge of her bed and stared unseeingly at a drawer that had not closed properly, at her powder-puff tipped sideways in its bowl. She had left them like that, gaily, carelessly. And between then and coming back to set them to rights her world had tilted, gone awry.

She knew that lives were not permanently broken by humiliation, by the kind of trivial malice to which Elspeth Paul had subjected her. She would get over having been for Adrian Pilgrim the casual stopgap who had consoled him for Elspeth's absence.

But there still remained the core of despair, the thing that was not to be shrugged off or lived down. Tonight she felt sure that she had been the unbidden third in a love-scene that had been not even of words, only of a look - but a love-scene, no less. And her only pride was that, in that moment of revelation, she had sat rigidly, making no sign. ...

The next morning, after a restless night, Gillian decided to go to Marnie's room before breakfast in order to return her fountain-pen to

her. Marnie might already have heard that she had been out with Adrian Pilgrim, and Gillian preferred to make her explanation in private rather than in the publicity of the staff dining- room. And now there was no point in hedging with 'Marnie. For the story she had planned to tell - that she had merely filled a last-minute gap in the surgeon's plans for the evening - was now the unpalatable truth.

Marnie was already dressed and was donning her cuffs and the navy petersham belt which marked her rank when Gillian entered.

"Hello," Marnie greeted her gaily. "I didn't look in on you last night when we got back, because I thought you would be asleep. Caravan was a lovely show. What a pity you didn't manage to make it after all."

"I couldn't. I'd set my hand to the plough of clearing up the sluice for Nurse Christie who wanted to get home to her sick mother, and I didn't finish until at least half an hour after you rang the ward. I knew I should be too late. Meanwhile" - Gillian held out Marnie's pen - "I've retrieved this."

"My pen? Oh, thanks. Where did you find it? Masquerading as a test-tube in the sluice?"

"Mr. Pilgrim came back to the ward to return it to you last night. He'd expected you'd still be on duty, but he found only me. You'd lent him the pen some days ago."

"Of course. I remember now." Marnie clipped it to her apron-bib, and Gillian waited for the interested question which would almost certainly come next.

But none did. Marnie went to fling wide her window, asked: "Ready, Gilly?" and talked about last night's show all the way down to the dining-room. And Gillian, though she felt she could have answered

Marnie's questions, found that her tongue simply would not volunteer the story. If Marnie had not heard it in the common-room on the theatre party's return last night, the chances were that nobody knew. So why revive, even for Marnie's friendly curiosity, a memory that could have been precious but was now only a humiliation? Nothing in Adrian Pilgrim's manner on the ward was likely to reveal that they had shared that one evening's intimacy, so that if she said nothing to Marnie or anyone else, nothing more would be heard of it.

There she was wrong. When Sister Hugh came on duty she sent for Gillian to tell her that she was to report to Matron's office at once.

"Yes, Sister." Useless to search her superior's face for a clue to the reason for the unexpected summons. Sister Hugh's silence was a dismissal, and as Gillian went to change her apron and cuffs - a rule when called before Matron - she put her whole recent conduct in review, wondering what she had done wrong.

One always did that, of course. Summary interviews with Matron were rare and usually to be dreaded. And for all the bland invitation of the notice on Matron's door - "Kindly knock and walk in" - one always did so with trepidation.

Matron was alone and waiting for her. Without preliminaries she said: "Nurse, Sister Hugh tells me that last night she saw you going out, presumably on a social occasion, with Mr. Pilgrim." In Matron's even tone the words were a statement, not the accusation Sister Hugh would have made of them.

"Yes, Matron. I did go to the theatre with Mr. Pilgrim," agreed Gillian steadily.

"And I think he called for you in his car at the Nurses' Home?"

"Yes, he did. I ought to explain, Matron, that I had no appointment with him - no previous appointment, that is. He called in at the ward just as I was going off duty, and he asked me to substitute for a theatre guest who had had to fall out at the last minute."

"I see." Matron accepted that and paused. When she looked up again at Gillian the shadow of a smile was playing round her mouth. She said: "Well, Nurse, you find me in a somewhat difficult position in this matter -"

At that Gillian was encouraged to smile back shyly, and Matron went on: "You see, my own thought about this is liberal, I hope. I see no reason why, in their off duty, my nursing staff shouldn't mix socially with our medical men. But - I have to remember that among my senior staff there are those who think differently, and Sister Hugh is one of these."

"But surely, Matron, Sister Hugh would accept my explanation of Mr. Pilgrim's invitation?" asked Gillian respectfully.

Matron shook her head. "I think Sister Hugh is not concerned with explanations but only with the fact - which she finds subversive to her discipline on her ward. And I must respect that. Do you understand, Nurse?"

"Yes, Matron."

"Then you'll appreciate that I must ask you to see that the same thing doesn't occur again; that you are not called for again at the Nurses' Home by Mr. Pilgrim or any other member of our medical staff? "

"I'll see that it doesn't happen, Matron." How cruelly true that it would not!

"Good." Matron stood up, indicating that the interview was at an end. But, surprisingly, she went with Gillian to the door. There she said quite kindly: "The essence of good manners, Nurse, is never wantonly to offend other people's scruples, and I think this is merely a matter of the good manners you owe to Sister Hugh. Apart from that, you may take it that I understand quite well how you were placed, and you will hear no more about it from me."

"Thank you, Matron." Gillian escaped in a glow of gratitude for the older woman's liberal, kindly dealing. And she had even put Sister Hugh's case in a way that Gillian could appreciate. If only Sister Hugh did the same for herself, what a much happier place Peterhead Ward would be!

Apparently Sister Hugh was satisfied by having made her protest to Matron. For when Gillian returned she neither made any comment nor appeared to expect a report of the interview. Gillian went about her work as usual, and the morning passed in its normal rush of "getting done."

On non-visiting days the ward was "closed" - by means of screens placed across the entrance - during the early afternoon. Until tea-time all but the most necessary traffic in and out was discouraged; the patients were supposed to rest and those who were able to walk went to take their baths.

That afternoon Marnie went to wrestle with the heavy screens, while Gillian made a round of the ward to see that the probationers had cleared every trace of the patients' dinners. She became aware of the altercation at the main doors only when she saw Marnie's sturdy figure, arms akimbo, barring the way to someone who wanted to come in. As Gillian approached she heard Marnie say: "Well, I can't help that, Miss Paul. It's a rule of the ward, and nobody from the library has wanted to break it before. The patients aren't expecting to change their books until after tea. You'll have to come back."

Gillian's heart sank. The last person she wanted to see today was Elspeth. The girl had gone to help temporarily in the library, but as her ward-round would normally be made today at a time when Gillian would be off duty, she had not expected they would have to meet. Now, though Marnie was certainly right in refusing Elspeth entry, she hoped she would not be drawn into the argument.

But as she drew near Marnie appealed to her: "We can't take a library round now, can we, Nurse Harlowe?"

Before Gillian could reply Elspeth's cool voice cut in: "There's no need to consult Nurse Harlowe. I've already explained that I've got an engagement later, and if I can't do the round now your ward won't get its exchange at all today."

"And I've told you," said Marnie, now really on the warpath, "that you can't make it during the closed hour for the ward. If you won't take Nurse Harlowe's word or mine, you'd better go to Sister when she is on duty - which she isn't now." As Marnie spoke she began to open the wings of a screen at the same moment as Elspeth tried to ease her trolley of books past it. Marnie, balancing the screen's swaying weight, called sharply: "Look out!" but the wheels of the trolley had already run against its base and she lost control of it.

For a moment it teetered, then fell towards Elspeth who, to avoid it, sought support by reaching for the handle of her trolley. But only the tips of her fingers touched it. As the screen crashed the trolley slid forward over the parquet floor, and Elspeth, completely off-balance, stumbled and fell. Her hands, outstretched unguardedly, took the full jarring weight of her fall.

"Oh, dear!" Marnie's exclamation of concern was excusably a little irritable too. But Gillian sprang forward, helping Elspeth to her feet and noting with concern the limp droop of the girl's right wrist.

Marnie hooked a chair forward and Gillian put Elspeth in it. Marnie began awkwardly: "I say, I'm awfully sorry -" but was cut short by Gillian's crisp whisper: "Marnie, she's hurt that wrist badly. It may be only a sprain, but it could be a Colles's fracture. You know they're awfully similar. Get the necessary, will you? I'll first-aid it, and take her down to Casualty."

Elspeth said nothing, but sat nursing her wrist and biting her lip. Gillian knew she must be in pain and kept a close eye on her until Marnie came back with a cold compress, splints and a triangular bandage which Gillian deftly made into a large arm-sling. Throughout the proceedings Elspeth's sole comment was: "What a curious way you have of ensuring quiet for your patients! " - to which Marnie would have made flaring retort if she had not caught Gillian's warning glance.

Her emergency work on the injured wrist done, Gillian said quietly: "I'd like to take you down to Casualty now, Miss Paul."

"That's not necessary! Adrian will see to it for me-"

"Please!" Gillian was on firm professional ground, and knew it. "I have only given you first-aid, and your wrist must be X-rayed and properly set. We should be very much to blame if we didn't advise you so. Will you come?"

For a moment Elspeth hesitated, then turned and swept off the ward, passing Marnie without a glance. Gillian followed her out to the lift and took it down to the Casualty Ward floor without a word being exchanged between them.

On duty in Casualty was a young house-surgeon whom Gillian knew well from her spell of night-duty there. He greeted her with: "Well, Harlowe, what can we do for you? Have you come to beg for your old job back! 'Cos you can have it - and mine too if you like!

I haven't even had any lunch yet."

"Poor Dr. Dundrear! As if you ever called it a day while there was still a patient in the waiting-room or until you were thrown out! " was Gillian's mock commiseration. She went on quickly: "Look - I've brought down Miss Paul. She's had a nasty fall on Peterhead, and she may have fractured her wrist. Can you see her at once?"

"If he can't, I shan't wait." Elspeth had come to the door of the surgery behind Gillian. "I'd rather take my wrist straight to Mr. Pilgrim, if you don't mind," she told Dr. Dundrear.

"Then now is your time. He happens to be here." Dr. Dundrear stood aside to enable both girls to enter as Adrian came down from the far end of the L-shaped surgery. At sight of Elspeth's bandaged arm he put a chair for her and stood over her as she sat down.

"What have you been up to?" he asked.

"Oh" - Elspeth shrugged - "a clumsy nurse on Peterhead Ward pushed a screen in my way and I fell-"

"It was an accident, Mr. Pilgrim, not Nurse Chard's fault," put in Gillian's clear voice. "Miss Paul fell on her hands, and I thought her wrist should be X-rayed, in case it was a Colles's fracture."

"Let me look -" Already his hands were at the knot of the sling, and as he loosened it he glanced at Gillian. "Whose first-aid? Yours?"

"Yes, Mr. Pilgrim." Between them there was no flutter of recognition that, last night, they had shared that pleasant interlude. They were surgeon and nurse again. That was all.

"Good work - though I don't think we've got a Colles's to deal with. However, an X-ray will show -" He put a hand gently beneath

Elspeth's sound elbow and signed to the surgery nurse to take her to the radiography room.

Over her shoulder Elspeth asked: "Will you be here, Adrian, when I come back? "

"Yes. I'll wait to dress it for you."

She made a little face at him. "It makes nonsense of our date, doesn't it?"

Adrian smiled. "I'm afraid so. Even if it is only a sprain, ice-skating wouldn't be wise. Were you looking forward to it very much?"

"Of course -"

"Then we might take in a film instead. But run along now for X-ray. I've a couple of out-patients to see, but I'll be here when you come back." And he strode away, leaving Gillian and Dr. Dundrear together.

Dr. Dundrear cocked a speculative head. "Don't tell me. Let me guess. Our Pilgrim of the armour-plated heart is falling at last - no? "

Gillian said quickly: "I must get back to the ward -"

"Not entering Our Grand Guessing Contest? Positively your Final Chance."

"Not today." She smiled at him and he let her go, though she knew he thought her dull. As she hurried to the lift she was thinking, I must learn to do better than that. When it became news, perhaps when the engagement was announced, all over hospital there would be similar good-natured jokes to be met and parried, and she would be thought singular if she didn't play up. She had better practise by thinking up some jokes of her own....

But she knew that she could not. The courage to laugh at your own dreams came slowly, painfully, as she knew only too well. It was too soon to expect it yet.

CHAPTER V

DURING the weeks of Colin's stay in hospital the friendship between him and David Sheppey ripened considerably. The padre came to see him always on his regular visits to the ward and contrived to look in on other days as well. And though perhaps only Gillian knew at first how closely Colin's "good times" coincided with the prospect of David's visits, it became increasingly clear that he gained real strength and confidence from the friendship.

Colin was able to walk about the ward now, and sometimes, when Sister Hugh was off duty, the four of them snatched a few minutes for talk and a cup of tea in her office. As Marnie claimed blandly, David could expect to be offered tea when he came to the ward; it was the place of the senior nurse to give it to him; neither she nor Gillian was really senior to the other, which entitled them to share the task; and if there was another cup of tea in the pot, why should not Colin have it?

Although Marnie had been prickly and suspicious with Colin at first, Gillian noticed that when he began to get about and make friends with Marnie's own patients she succumbed a little to his easy charm and did not now wear an air of protecting Gillian from him. If she ever wondered about Gillian's continuing friendship with him she never questioned it - a fact for which Gillian was thankful. She felt it might be difficult to justify to Marnie the pledge which she had given to Adrian Pilgrim for Colin's sake.

Meanwhile Marnie teased and joked with Colin - but fell in love with David. And the coming of love to Marnie was a miracle that Gillian counted herself privileged to see.

It had begun shyly at Mrs. Pilgrim's house where they had first met David. It had continued with Marnie's diffident promise to go to hear David preach at St. Anselm's. Since then she had gone many times

and had given hours of her precious free time to helping with the Youth Club which David had started. When David could snatch an hour or two from his own duties they went walking over the Surrey hills, whatever the weather. For all weather was alike to them. They were in love.

Marnie puzzled to Gillian : "You know, when David happened to say, the first time he came to the ward, that he hoped to get an East End parish, somehow I felt that it was important news for me. But how could I have known then?"

"Did David know?" parried Gillian with a smile.

"He says he did. Though how or why, I can't think. And can you picture me as a padre's wife, Gilly?"

"I can't picture anyone likely to make a better wife for David, who happens to be a padre."

"But I'm so slapdash, and not a bit brainy!"

"And David loves you that way."

"Yes, bless him, I believe he does." Marnie's smile was a joy to see.

Sometimes, when they were both free, Gillian would go with her to St. Anselm's, and after the service David would see them home. But one Sunday in early December when Gillian was to be on duty for the afternoon and evening, Marnie was going to have tea with David and his landlady, going to the evening service afterwards.

"Come and meet me?" she invited at lunch-time before Gillian went back to the ward.

"You'll have David. He'll get the idea that I'm always tagging along," protested Gillian.

"Of course he won't. Besides, I'm so proud of him that I adore sharing him. But I shan't have him tonight. He's going to supper with his vicar."

"I'll come then," promised Gillian. "Look out for me.

It was a warm day for the time of year and the sun was shining then. But the rising warm air caused the mists to gather at sunset, and by the time Gillian came off duty a dense blanket of fog had fallen.

She did not welcome the thought of going out into it to meet Marnie, but she had promised, and was glad that she had. For Marnie had a dread of fog. As a child she had once been lost for hours in one and had never quite overcome her fears.

Gillian glanced at her watch, thinking that she would ring the Vicarage, asking for a message to be given to Marnie, telling her to wait at the church until she came. But she saw that the service must already be over and Marnie would probably be on her way.

Not until she was really out in it did Gillian realise how thick the fog was. She had a torch with her, but it was quite useless, so she thrust it into her coat pocket and trusted to trailing her hand along walls and fences until she should gain some confidence.

The silences were eerie; the occasional sounds - a footfall, the cautious chug of a car in low gear - were distorted and alien. Each street lamp was no more than an aloof nimbus, colouring the fog round it and lighting nothing else. And every human sense but that of touch was dulled, frustrated and without purpose.

When Gillian had gone some way she knew that she had expected to meet Marnie before this. And she could not have missed her, for every pedestrian had exchanged a companionable good night with her, and Marnie had not been one of them.

Perhaps she had had the good sense to wait at St. Anselm's, knowing that Gillian would meet her as she had promised. She might even be at the Vicarage with David, but in that case Gillian thought she would have telephoned to say so. Gillian found she did riot want to consider the chance that Marnie might be wandering bewilderedly somewhere in the fog.

So far Gillian had been able to hug the friendly railings, but now she had a wide intersection of roads to cross. To leave the footpath was like setting out upon an uncharted sea. But fortunately there were few cars abroad, and those which were could hardly bear down like juggernauts. They were creeping as guardedly as the pedestrians, but all the same Gillian was glad when she sensed that she had almost reached the far side and could begin to grope for the kerb.

She had not found it when she heard a car coming. She did the sensible thing and stood still, believing that she was close enough in to the gutter for the car to pass outside her. But to her surprise the driver seemed to be going to slide between her and where she thought the kerb should be. She was missed by inches, and to steady herself she had to thrust upon the car's body as if she were trying to push it away.

There had been no real danger. The car had only been edging along at walking pace and came instantly to a standstill. But the driver craned out of his window to enquire with pardonable irritation, "Really, do you have to go jay-walking on such a night?"

Still a little shocked by the experience, Gillian found herself staring into the eyes of Adrian Pilgrim. From the expression in them she could see that he considered his anger justified, even though he had recognised her.

Rather lamely she said: "I'm sorry, I believed I was safely in to the kerb."

"A poor judgment," he commented. "You're more than a car's breadth from it still, and a menace to a driver. But I didn't touch you, did I?"

"No. I'm all right." She stood awkwardly, wondering how to part with him and go on her way, though she felt a little shaken by the incident and not as sure of her footing as before.

He solved the problem for her by alighting from the car, putting a hand beneath her elbow and guiding her to the path. "Now," he demanded, "where were you going, and why need you be out at all?"

"I had promised to meet Nurse Chard after evening service at" St. Anselm's. She's got a phobia about walking in fog -"

"And you haven't - entitling you to foolhardiness at your own and other people's expense? Was there no other way of arranging for Nurse Chard's safety than by risking yours? "

Gillian tried to brace herself against the cold compulsion of his tone, wondering at an indignation which seemed to her to go far beyond her offence. But again her voice came in lame explanation: "I had promised to meet her, and once we were together we should have been all right."

"Well, you haven't met her, have you? How far did you mean to go?"

"All the way if necessary. I'd better go on."

But he barred her path. "You'll do nothing of the sort. I'm taking you straight back to hospital, and you can make enquiries about Nurse Chard's whereabouts from there. Come along."

She thought he meant to drive her. But as she made a movement towards the car he said : "No. I'll abandon her here. We shall walk as quickly and with less risk. Ready?"

They set out, his arm tucked within hers, holding her close. But she felt it to be the hold of a prison guard and that she was as much in his impersonal custody as if she had really been guilty of some misdemeanour.

On the way he put crisp questions as to Marnie's possible movements, and promised to institute a search for her if telephone enquiries gave no clue.

Gillian admitted: "I am worried, because though she is so sensible and reliable usually, fog seems to petrify all her senses. But I daresay David didn't allow her to set out."

"David?"

"I mean Mr. Sheppey. I think they will be engaged as soon as he has his vicar's permission to marry."

"Really? I shall have to congratulate Sheppey." Adrian paused before adding drily: "I must say Sister Hugh would appear to be fighting a losing battle against the intrusion of romance on her ward. And I feel guilty at having had some share in bringing it about."

Gillian flushed, guessing that he was referring to herself and Colin as well as to Marnie and David Sheppey. She wanted to hate his seemingly bland assurance that all was well between her and Colin because he had willed it. But she knew that she could hate nothing about him, least of all the deep conception of his duty towards Colin which had urged him to seek her help.

She wondered why she did not tell him now that Colin meant nothing to her. And knew with frightening clarity that if she did it would have no concern for him, except for Colin's sake. She did not tell him, because he loved Elspeth Paul, and it could not matter that he should know.

She gave herself up to the brief pleasure of merely being with him. He had shortened his stride to match hers and guided her steadily ahead, keeping her close to the inside of the path and warning her of obstacles in good time.

But he did not foresee a dangerously jutting doorstep, and when Gillian tripped over it, it was only his grip upon her that kept her from falling.

His hand went instantly about her shoulders, his fingers tightening like a vice upon her upper arm as she steadied and recovered her balance. He did not release her at once and she was pressed so closely to his side that she thought he must feel the beating of her heart.

He said: "Steady!" And: "You're not hurt, are you?"

"No. But I wasn't expecting that." The clasp of his fingers upon her arm was an exquisite pain.

"Neither was I. We were getting too confident. However, we haven't much further to go -" He thrust his arm in hers again and matched his step as they went on towards St. Ranulph's.

Gillian checked at the main entrance, meaning to suggest that she should telephone about Marnie from the porter's box. She had remembered her promise to Matron, and though Matron would understand tonight's particular circumstances, Sister Hugh would not. That was why she did not want Adrian Pilgrim to go on with her to the Nurses' Home.

But he said: "Come along. I want to see you the whole way."

"I was going to telephone about Nurse Chard -"

"You can do it from your quarters while I wait."

She left him standing in the entrance hall while she went to telephone from the rest-room. To her immense relief her call to St. Anselm's Vicarage was answered at once - and by Marnie.

"The Vicar let me come to the phone because I guessed it would be you," she explained breathlessly. "I'm here with David, Gilly."

"I'm so glad. I hoped you might be. But I thought you would have rung up."

"I did, dear. But apparently not before you left to meet me, and I've rung twice since to see if you'd got back safely. You see, I didn't ring as soon as the service was over. I didn't want to bother David, so I actually set out. But you know what an idiot I am - I began to panic and felt I just couldn't make it alone. So I came back here and threw myself on the Vicar's mercy and got myself invited to supper too."

"Then that's all right. I must go now, Marnie. Mr, Pilgrim is waiting to hear whether he has to put out a search party for you -"

"The Pilgrim is?" gasped Marnie. "How on earth does he come into my humble story?"

"On my way to meet you I practically walked into his car. He abandoned it then, and he saw me back here."

"Where is he now? "

"Waiting in the hall."

"Oh. Then I suppose I mustn't keep you, even to hear my news -"

It was an appeal that Gillian could not resist. She said: "I can wait long enough to hear, if it's what I think. Is it?"

"I expect so." Marnie's breath caught with excitement. "Tonight David told the Vicar about us while I was there. And Gilly - we're really engaged! "

"Oh, Marnie, I'm so happy for you. And dying to hear your plans -"

They rang off then, and as Gillian replaced the receiver she knew that she had spoken the truth. She was happy for Marnie. For David too. The sadness, the sense of feeling deserted was for herself, and was dangerously near to a self-pity which she ought to despise. But Marnie's friendship had been so much a part of her life here at St. Ranulph's that she could not imagine what it would be like without her. And when Marnie went she would have nothing to put in her place. Nothing at all.

Adrian Pilgrim was reading the list of St. Ranulph's nurses who had given their lives in the war when she went back to him. He turned on his heel. "Well?" he asked.

"Nurse Chard is safe at the Vicarage, and Mr. Sheppey will see her home."

"Good."

"Thank you for waiting to hear about her," said Gillian shyly.

But his eyes, intent and critical, were upon her own face. He put a hand upon her shoulder to turn her towards the nearest light. He said: "I should go straight to bed with a hot drink, if I were you. You look overtired and as if you've taken a good deal of strain, worrying about your friend, and you can't afford that when you have to be on the ward tomorrow as usual."

Gillian flinched, from the harshly-revealing light playing on her face? Or from the critical advice which sounded without concern for her as

a person, only for the efficiency of her work? Adrian looked at her for a moment longer, then nodded and let her go. As he went towards the door Gillian saw that from the corridor leading from the Sisters' quarters Sister Hugh had crossed to the rest-room.

Had she seen Gillian standing there with Adrian Pilgrim, his hand upon her shoulder while he looked down into her upturned face?

Gillian did not know. But tonight, depressed and as overwrought as Adrian had discerned, she felt almost too tired to worry or to wonder about it.

Like most newly-engaged girls, Marnie seemed blissfully content with that state; not eager to hurry over the intervening, exciting months that must lapse before she and David could marry.

David's ambition was steady - a busy London parish of his own. But he had not been long enough in his present appointment to be willing or able to leave it yet. He and Marnie might not wait until he could, but there was no house available for a married curate at St. Anselm's, and he did not want to put Marnie into lodgings if he could help it.

"You won't be leaving St. Ranulph's yet, then?" asked Gillian.

"And be parted from David, who has to be here?" said Marnie, whose home was in the north. "Heavens, no! We may have to wait, but I shall go on working and begin to save like mad. It's going to be such fun -"

Shared fun, thought Gillian. The best in the world. She felt a pang of regret for the things she and Marnie had shared - their anxious spinning out of their salaries, their friendly rivalry over shopping bargains, their adventures into amateur dressmaking and the talk and

argument which never failed them and for which, in their busy lives, there was never enough time. Their friendship was staunch enough to withstand Marnie's engagement and her coming marriage, but inevitably it would change, leaving Gillian behind.

Neither of them was prepared for the change which lay immediately ahead of them and which had nothing to do with David at all.

That night of fog was followed by a week that made disastrous weather history for London and the suburbs. For days and nights the black choking pall did not lift, and its toll of ill-health was monstrous.

Every London hospital had to fill its wards to capacity and beyond with cases of bronchitis, lung congestion and pneumonia. All empty beds were pressed into emergency service, and staff had to be hastily transferred to cope with the inrush of patients suffering from such complaints.

At St. Ranulph's Matron consulted with her senior staff to see which wards could spare personnel, which wards needed it. On Peterhead Ward the result was that Marnie was sent to the Ear, Nose and Throat Ward, already overflowing into two annexes. She and Gillian were going to miss their companionship on duty, and their work on Peterhead had swung into a rhythm which would now be broken. Marnie had been on Peterhead ever since she qualified and she had expected, probably without reason, that she would continue there until she left hospital to marry David.

"I declare I've put down roots on Peterhead," she said ruefully to Gillian. "I believe I may even miss Sister Hugh. They say Sister Jacker is so easy-going that it's likely to be quite bad for my morale! "

The patients saw her going, not as a mere transfer, but as a parting from a nurse who was a favourite with them all. When the word passed from bed to bed that the ward was to lose Nurse Chard there were secret conclaves with visiting relatives; other commissions were entrusted to Gillian and the student nurses, and on Marnie's last day she found herself the recipient of an assortment of small gifts, most of them costing no more than a few shillings but coming from every patient on the ward.

Marnie was touched almost to tears. There were cards of hair-grips, a book of postage stamps, a jar of barley sugar, a thimble, a box of bath-cubes and a dozen other items which, as Marnie said, would have made the perfect collection for Kim's Game.

"I'm so glad nobody tried to be clever by giving me something expensive," she said.

"You haven't finished yet," Gillian warned. "Colin has something for you too, I think."

"There wasn't any need for that," retorted Marnie with a touch of her early hostility for Colin.

"Well, you couldn't expect him to be left out. He's a patient of the ward like the rest. He's going out himself in a day or two, did you know?"

"He is going 'to stay with the Pilgrim's, isn't he?"

"Yes. He'll still be having some treatment and be under observation."

"Will his going there mean that you'll be seeing less of him - or more?" It was Marnie's first intrusion into Gillian's confidence, and putting the question seemed to embarrass her.

"Less, I should think. Why?" (Dear Marnie! She's worried for me. If only I could tell her why she needn't be!)

"Only that you know I'd hate you really to fall under his spell again, Gilly. Lately I've wondered. When you are together he is sometimes a bit possessive towards you, and you don't keep him at bay or snub him."

"I've got to nurse him," Gillian reminded her quietly. "I can't very well be on bad terms with him in the circumstances."

"You didn't mind my asking?" queried Marnie anxiously.

"Of course not. But it's all right, Marnie. I'm not in love with him any more. We're just friends." Perhaps, now that Colin was leaving hospital, she would be able to prove that to be true.

Colin's parting gift to Marnie was half a dozen initialled linen handkerchiefs - admittedly more costly than her other presents, but in good, simple taste, and Gillian was glad that Marnie accepted them graciously.

Then, to Gillian's surprise, Colin handed a parcel to her. Opening it, she found a large pure silk square, picturing London street-cries. Gillian ran it through her fingers in some embarrassment, not wanting to accept anything so expensive from him, yet not knowing how to refuse.

"I'm not leaving the ward," she protested.

"No, but I am - day after tomorrow," he retorted. "I wanted to give you something. You do like it, don't you?"

"Yes, of course. It would make a lovely head-scarf or look awfully jaunty as a kind of stock with a sweater. But-"

"No buts," declared Colin firmly. "You'll take it - and like it or else."

But late that day Gillian was not to feel gratified by the gift.

Elspeth Paul had been to visit Colin, and when he went to see her off they paused by the open door of the linen-room, adjacent to the ward's outer doors, where Gillian was checking in the clean laundry.

Gillian heard Colin ask: "By the way, how much do I owe you for the girls' things? "

Elspeth told him, adding: "Did they do?"

"Yes, very popular, I think. Thanks for getting them for me."

"Well, handkerchiefs are always safe, aren't they? Not that you could be suspected of having designs on that lumpish Nurse Chard! "

At that Colin laughed, and while Gillian bristled with chagrin for Marnie Elspeth went on: "And you said you'd like a Dagmar square for your Gillian like the one Adrian gave me for my birthday."

Colin objected: "It wasn't exactly the same, was it?

I thought girls loathed that sort of thing?"

Gillian heard Elspeth reply: "No. Mine from Adrian was old London inn-signs; the one I got for you was London street-cries. A man mightn't see much difference, but any girl would. And that's all that matters to a girl-" '

There was a pause then until Colin asked with rather studied carelessness: "Looking forward to having me at Adrian's?"

"Yes, of course."

"Don't overdo the enthusiasm, will you?" Gillian recognised the petulance of Colin's self-pitying tone.

Elspeth retorted archly: "Why should I? All your enthusiasm is directed elsewhere!" To which Colin's riposte came too readily: "I shouldn't be too sure of that. I've got a capacity for an awful lot of enthusiasm. And when you're about, even Gillian can't command it all!"

But at that point Gillian's distaste for a flirtatious exchange which she was reluctant to continue to overhear caused her to drop a parcel of laundry on to the floor of the linen-room with a resounding thud. She waited, listening. Then she heard the swing-doors close behind Elspeth, and Colin's footsteps returning to his room.

CHAPTER VI

AT Christmas-time Mrs. Pilgrim, hearing that both Gillian and Marnie would do full duty on Christmas Day but would be free on Boxing Day, invited them and David Sheppey to luncheon, telling Gillian over the telephone: "Only cold turkey, of course, my dear. In the afternoon we can be as lazy or as strenuous as we like, but Adrian has tickets for one of the ice pantomimes in the evening. I'm afraid I'm a babe over pantomimes! It will be Colin's first outing, and I daresay I needn't tell you that he is anxious you should share it with him."

Gillian was torn between acceptance and refusal of the invitation. She had planned, when Colin left hospital, to drop the association, for then she would have fulfilled the part Adrian had asked her to play. And she thought she could deal, gently but unmistakably, with Colin's persistence since. But on the morning of Mrs. Pilgrim's telephone call Adrian had told her that, as Colin still needed to continue the course of exercises she had begun with him, he had sought Matron's permission to borrow her to administer them and to instruct Mrs. Pilgrim, who would later take over the duty from her.

So, Gillian realised, since she must still see Colin in her nursing capacity, an immediate break with him was impossible. And Marnie, told of the invitation, was anxious to accept it and urged Gillian to do so too.

With unconscious cruelty to Gillian, Marnie argued: "It's the nearest to a 'homey' Christmas either of us will get this year, Gilly. And though Elspeth Paul is certainly a fly in the ointment, let's hope that she'll be as busy bedazzling The Pilgrim that she won't annoy us. Anyway, I can always use David as a kind of defence-in-depth against her if she tries to be rude. Did you ever enquire from The Pilgrim about her wrist, by the way?"

"Yes. It wasn't a fracture. She had only strained the tendons."

"Well, thank goodness, Sister Hugh being the demon for discipline that she is, we knew we could rely on her to uphold us in refusing to allow Elspeth on to the ward. Sister Jacker lets people roam in and out of a 'closed' ward as they please, and when we are as busy as we are at present the result is chaos."

Not knowing what the party would entail, Gillian decided to wear a dress of soft myrtle-green angora under a top coat, in the capacious pockets of which she could carry evening-slippers and the scarf Colin had given her, in case a walk was mooted in the afternoon. The morning of Boxing Day was unusually luxurious, with morning tea brought to the staff nurses and sisters off duty, and grilled sausages and fried eggs for breakfast. And, pleasant and hilarious as Christmas Day had been on the wards, it was consoling to think that the anti-climax of clearing up after it would fall to the lot of someone else.

When Gillian and Marnie walked across to Mrs. Pilgrim's house David was already there, drinking sherry with Mrs. Pilgrim while Colin moodily stirred a glass of frothing chocolate. He did not appear to think much of it as an aperitif. Elspeth was in her room and Adrian, his mother explained, had been called to the Casualty Ward.

Mrs. Pilgrim greeted the two girls warmly, asking about their Christmas, telling Gillian how much Colin had been looking forward to seeing her and wishing Marnie happiness in her engagement. She teased David: "As soon as I heard St. Ranulph's was to have a padre who was unmarried, I gave him just six months, no longer, at the mercy of our charming nurses. It seems that I over-estimated by about a month! '•'

"By more than that," smiled David. "I didn't ask Marnie to marry me by any means as soon as I knew I wanted her to. Call it a week, Mrs. Pilgrim. You'd be a lot nearer!"

While they were still laughing, Elspeth appeared, her choice of dress bizarre in the extreme. Over a very slim black skirt she wore a boxy coat of what looked like thick cream felt, stiff with scrolled embroidery in red, black and gold braid, its upstanding collar high about her throat, "fastening with frogs of braid looped over huge chunky wooden buttons.

While they all stared Mrs. Pilgrim exclaimed: "Elspeth, my dear, what a marvellous garment! Where did you get it?"

Elspeth said: "It's a south Russian peasant coat. Daddy brought it back from Turkestan ages ago, and one day I dug it out and saw its possibilities."

Colin was less impressed. Murmuring: "Russian, eh? Bring me my vodka, do!" he waited for the fleeting annoyance to cross Elspeth's face. She snapped: "I don't ask you to approve what I wear." To which he retorted: "If you did, you wouldn't doll up like a character in Petrouchka in order to eat turkey and cold stuffing on a Christmas Boxing Day! Snow on my boots - if you could only see yourself!"

"I happen to possess a mirror, thanks." Elspeth took the glass of sherry Mrs. Pilgrim offered her and turned her back on him just as Adrian came in his hair covered in rime-frost.

He greeted his guests, allowed his eyes to travel over Elspeth from head to foot, and took a glass of sherry from his mother. Then he turned pointedly to Gillian.

"I've sent you a new patient up from Casualty," he said. "Sister is putting him in the side-ward Colin has vacated because, apart from his case which has no complications, he brings us a problem of his own. He was brought into Casualty after breaking his leg by slipping on the icy road outside, and he is French, with not a word of English to his name! "

"Then he has come to the right shop. Ici on parle francais. Gillian speaks French like a native," struck in Colin.

"Do you?" Adrian asked Gillian. "How have you managed that?"

"Not 'like a native,' and I daresay I'm' very much out of practice. But I did speak it during a whole summer in the south of France before I began my training here." She glanced quickly at Colin, flinching at her memories.

Adrian said briskly: "Well, that's very useful, I shall look to you to act as interpreter. I know you're off duty all day, but perhaps you wouldn't mind coming back with me to the ward this afternoon, so that we can check fully on this man's history - find out about his relatives and so on? He was only half conscious when he was brought in; he had no papers on him and we don't even know his name."

"He may speak a patois that I shan't understand," warned Gillian.

"We must risk that. On the other hand, he may have some English which the shock of his accident could have caused him to forget. I want to look in on him again, and I'd be glad of your help if you'll give me your time."

"Of course I will." Gillian was glad that they were called to luncheon then, for she was only too well aware, without having to look at Elspeth, that the girl was already resenting her monopoly of Adrian's attention. And at the luncheon table Elspeth went with assurance to take the chair which Adrian drew out for Gillian at his right hand.

Adrian said quietly: "I think you are over there by Sheppey, Elspeth." And she turned away with marked ill grace.

After the meal Mrs. Pilgrim asked about everyone's plans for the afternoon, making no apology for going herself to rest in her room.

"Colin must rest too, though he can do it in the lounge, can't he, Adrian? You and Gillian are going over to hospital. What about Marnie and David? And you, Elspeth?"

Marnie and David claimed in chorus that they would go for a walk and invited Elspeth to join them. But Elspeth said that, so far as she was concerned, it was no day for out-of-doors and she would probably join Colin in the lounge as - pointedly - Adrian appeared to be otherwise engaged.

David and Marnie left, and when Gillian came down after fetching her coat, Elspeth and Adrian were in the hall.

Adrian glanced critically at Gillian's bare head. "It's pretty cold. Haven't you anything to cover your hair?" he asked her.

"Yes, I have a scarf -" Gillian's hand went to her pocket, but in gloves her fingers were awkward, and Colin's present flicked to Adrian's feet.

He stooped to retrieve it. "That's an attractive thing," he commented. He turned to Elspeth. "Didn't I give you something like it for your birthday?"

She took a corner of the silk in her hand. "Yes, exactly like," she said with assumed indifference.

"How awkward!" It was David echoing Colin's earlier comment. "It wouldn't do at all if you met, both of you wearing them, would it?"

"It wouldn't - if that were possible at the moment." Elspeth raised limpid eyes to Adrian. "I'm afraid," she told him, "that I've got to confess to having lost the one you gave me. I'm terribly sorry."

"Well, I don't suppose you could help it." He handed Gillian's to her. "At least that leaves you with the undisputed fashion rights in this one, doesn't it?" he asked her with a smile.

Gillian smiled back. She began to fold the square into a triangle, asking Elspeth as she did so: "Have you no idea where you may have lost yours?" Somehow, even as she put the question, an instinct of impending danger warned her against Elspeth's reply.

Elspeth said carefully: "Oh, I know where I lost it. I was wearing it, I remember, on the day I had that accident on your ward. It's supposed to be the in-thing to tie them round your arm. You would have had to take it off, when you gave me first-aid."

There was no possible mistaking the implied accusation. Gillian stared at her, only too aware of the tide of colour that was flooding her face. She felt they were all awaiting her reply.

She said: "I helped you off with your cardigan. I don't remember that anything was tied to either of your arms."

"Well, it wasn't there later." Elspeth shrugged. "Of course as soon as I missed it I remembered where I had had it last. But I knew it wouldn't be any good making enquiries. I mean, the staffs of hospitals are so mixed, aren't they, and if anyone who wasn't too particular found it and took a fancy to it, they'd probably think nothing of keeping it. I certainly had lost all hope of seeing it again." Her very avoidance of Gillian's eye was an insolence in itself.

"Are you implying, Elspeth, that this one is yours?" Adrian's voice, cool and judicial, cut across the silence.

"I didn't say so. Only that it's just like mine."

"Then I, for one, misunderstood you. I confess I thought you were accusing a guest of a paltry theft from you."

"How could I? I've no proof -"

Adrian persisted: "So you were making an unfounded accusation?" He turned to Gillian. "I'm sorry about this," he said. "But I think you owe it to yourself to answer it, though you've a perfect right to refuse to do so."

"Please -!" She looked up at him, knowing how easily she could confound Elspeth by reference to Colin, but longing to read in his face that his defence of her arose from some deep belief in her inability to stoop so low. She received no such satisfaction. His impartiality was that of a judge -

"Well?" He was waiting.

She made a little weary gesture. "Do we have to pursue this?" she asked. "You must be wrong, Mr. Pilgrim, in thinking that Elspeth meant to accuse me, because it's quite likely that she knows my Dagmar scarf was a present. A present from Colin," added Gillian reluctantly.

"Do you mean that Colin call settle the matter for us?"

"But of course Colin can settle it." It was Colin speaking from the door of the lounge. "Easy," he went on. "I gave Gillian her bit of nonsense, though I got Elspeth to buy it for me." He shook his head at Elspeth in mock reproof. "Casting aspersions for the sake of it - I'm surprised at you, you bad wench! You know quite well you told me yours and Gillian's weren't identical, because I asked you."

Elspeth shrugged. "Did you? I don't remember. I'm afraid I lost mine shockingly soon after Adrian gave it to me." She turned to him.

"Well, are you satisfied now that I only made the mistake of thinking that mine and Gillian's were identical? That I couldn't possibly have been accusing her of finding and keeping mine?"

"It's not for me but for Gillian to say that she is satisfied -"

"I've already said as much, Mr. Pilgrim." For the first time she had heard him call her "Gillian." But she was too relieved at Colin's intervention to savour the sweetness of it fully. Without Colin the nasty accusation would have left its smear. For nothing would have induced her to prove the truth by admitting to her own eavesdropping.

Adrian made no further reference to the incident, for which Gillian was thankful. On their way across to the hospital she was thinking that Sister Hugh would probably not approve her coming on to the ward in his company and in civilian clothes. It was consoling to think that for once the onus of explanation would not fall on her!

Sister came to stand by with Adrian as she summoned her rusty French to put a gentle question or two to the old Frenchman.

His worried eyes brightened at the sound of his own language. He clicked his tongue expressively and launched into a flood of French which bewildered Gillian with its speed, idiom and accompanying gesture. She felt Sister Hugh was not displeased at her inability to cope.

"Is it dialect?" asked Adrian.

"I hope not" She turned to the old man. "Parlez plus lentement, monsieur. Speak more slowly please!" she pleaded.

"Eh bien, alors!" He shrugged and grumbled but slackened speed, and presently Gillian was able to tell Adrian: "His name is Pierre

Outenard, from Caen, and he is an itinerant onion-seller. But I think he hasn't anyone in France, and since the end of the onion-season he has turned colporteur - a pedlar, I think - and has been lodging with a Frenchwoman in Soho. He seems more concerned than anything about someone he calls la petite' - not his child nor his grandchild, but the little girl belonging to his landlady. He wants to see her-"

"Children are not allowed to visit the adult wards, Nurse," put in Sister Hugh sharply.

"Will you explain that to him?" asked Adrian. "Tell him, if you can, that it's not just a harsh rule but one that is for the children's own protection against infection. Does he speak any English at all, by the way? "

"No more than he need, I think." Gillian's lips curved into a smile. "He says, 'The onion speaks its own language!'"

"Too true!" Adrian's eyes met hers amusedly. "Meanwhile, if you can get the name and address of this woman he lodges with, I think he oughtn't to talk any more now. The Social Adviser will get in touch with her and she, if not the child, can visit him while he is here."

Gillian wrote down the particulars old Pierre gave her and when they left the ward Adrian took the paper from her, saying that he would make it his business to take it to the Social Adviser's office while Gillian returned to the house. He said: "Tell my mother, will you, that I have a couple more patients to see afterwards, but I shall be back in time for tea."

The winter afternoon was drawing in and the house across the grounds was dark when Gillian reached it. Evidently Marnie and David had not returned, and as Mrs. Pilgrim had explained that Anna, the housekeeper, was having the day off, Gillian let herself in quietly when she found the front door unfastened.

She stood irresolutely in the hall for a minute or two before going to join Colin in the lounge. Elspeth would be there too, she supposed, and their meeting would not be easy. But it must be faced.

She had turned the handle of the door before she realised that, except for the leaping firelight, the lounge was also in darkness. There was no murmur of voices. Colin and Elspeth were not talking. And by the glow of the fire against which their standing figures were silhouetted she saw the reason why.

Elspeth was in Colin's arms, and as Gillian watched he bent his head and kissed her - not lightly nor playfully but with the seemingly compelling passion of which he was a master.

The room spun about Gillian. Colin - and Elspeth? What did it mean? She did not love Colin herself and she ought to feel relieved. But the sudden dryness of her mouth, the beat of blood in her head meant not relief but a troubled fear that here, in the thing she did not understand, was menace, not for herself but for Adrian whom she loved.

Adrian was in love with Elspeth. And she, surely, with him. Yet she could still betray him with Colin - While she waited for them to notice her, Gillian felt as if she were feeing forced from sleep, knowing there was a reason why she did not want to wake.

They drew apart at last, and Elspeth turned and saw her. Elspeth's eyes dilated. "Where's Adrian?" she demanded sharply, as if she were afraid he was not far away.

"He stayed in hospital. I came back alone."

"Oh -" Relief mingled with bravado in Elspeth's tone as she went on: "Well, I daresay I can leave Colin to explain the foregoing little

scene. I hope he'll make it cleat it was none of my seeking -" She snatched her bag from an armchair and swept past Gillian to the door.

Colin took out cigarettes and offered them to Gillian as she crossed to the fire. When she refused with a shake of her head he said: "Now you're going to sit in judgment on me. You consider I owe you an explanation."

"You owe me nothing."

"But I do. At the moment -you're hating and despising me. And I can't afford that. You mean too much to me." His smile was disarming.

"You and Elspeth have never seemed to get on with each other. I didn't know. I hadn't realised -" Gillian might have been speaking to herself.

"You wouldn't understand that a girl like Elspeth fairly asks to be quarrelled with - or kissed - without either process meaning much?"

"Kisses - don't mean much to you, do they, Colin?" She was ashamed of the bitterness but could not resist it.

Colin looked at her. "That's not fair, but I suppose I had it coming to me. I couldn't expect you to see how different it was for us. Kissing Elspeth amounts to no more than taking a dare. She knows that. She sets out to provoke it, and she can't blame a chap for taking her up on it."

"It's happened before? "

"No. This was the first time we had sheathed daggers. We shall have polished 'em again by tomorrow, I daresay."

Gillian made a little helpless gesture with her hands. "Are you saying that baiting Elspeth and making love to her are part of the same thing for you? "

"Yes, that's it," he agreed eagerly. "But you wouldn't know what it is to feel sort of challenged by the aloofness of someone who doesn't care a fig for you -"

"Why shouldn't I know?" The question held a bitter irony at which Colin was not meant to guess.

"Well -" He stopped, a little nonplussed. "There's no reason why you should have experienced it. You told me there'd been no other man for you. And you never needed to doubt what I felt for you."

"Didn't I?"

"Well, not until -" He broke off in embarrassment, and because it did not' matter now she let it pass.

She asked: "And Elspeth doesn't care for you?"

"Heavens, no! She wants Adrian, and is likely to get him. It's probably only a matter of time before they announce the engagement. Unless -" Colin paused, his eyes narrowing. "Unless there's trouble over this afternoon's affair."

"Trouble? Who would make it? Besides, you claim that it meant nothing."

"Nor did it, of course. But it mightn't be easy to convince Adrian of that. I imagine that for my respected cousin there'd be only black and white about such things - no shading into grey. Gill, you wouldn't think it your duty to tell him? "

"Do you suppose that I would? Colin, I'm not quite despicable!"

"I'm sorry. But you see there's another reason why Adrian mustn't get wind of this. For my own sake I've got to keep on the right side of him."

As Gillian was silent he went on: "I suppose you realise that I haven't earned anything for a long time, and that putting me back into car racing is going to cost a bit? Well, when the time comes I'm going to have to look to Adrian to help."

"Do you mean that you hope to borrow money from him?"

"Not borrow. It's my own money, put in trust for me until I'm thirty, under my father's will. And Adrian is the senior of two trustees for it."

"But you are still only twenty-seven, and if it's in trust-?"

"That's the • point. I'm going to need that capital long before I'm thirty. And Adrian's got to be on my side about claiming it. It'll be Adrian who'll have to persuade the other trustee that there's no need to keep me waiting all that time for an advance. Now do you see why he mustn't get any idea that I'm - er - poaching on his property?"

Gillian stared at him, sickened by a self-interest that could make use of people so. She said coldly: "You ask a great deal - expecting favours from a man whom you don't scruple to deceive! "

"But I've told you - kissing Elspeth meant not a thing!"

"Then why are you so afraid it should come out? Why was Elspeth afraid -?"

It was a question to which she was not to get an answer. For there were footsteps on the stairs, and Mrs. Pilgrim came into the room, scolding Colin for not keeping the lire banked with logs and asking

whether it was possible that anyone could want a cup of tea as much as she did.

Adrian came in just afterwards; then Elspeth, studiedly avoiding Colin's and Gillian's eyes; lastly, David and Marnie, both glowing with the conscious virtue of people who have taken exercise when others have not.

The party was in full swing again, as if it had not been marred for some of them by those earlier crosscurrents of enmity and emotion. Mrs Pilgrim the only one unaware of conflict, rallied them into shared jokes and laughter, and Gillian, for one, was grateful to bask in the illusion that this was as pleasant a Christmas party as any other.

After tea a party of carol-singers from David's church, on its way to sing carols on the wards, called at the house first. They all went out to greet them, to listen and to join in. It was then that Gillian noticed how Mrs. Pilgrim's clever hostess-ship was contriving to group her young people as she believed would please them best. Adrian with Elspeth. Inevitably, David with Marnie. Colin and herself. . . . While they joined in a lusty "Good King Wenceslas" Colin laid a hand lightly on her shoulder; David and Marnie were holding hands like children; and Elspeth, the porch light turning her hair to stranded gold, had tucked her arm into Adrian's, laughing up at him as she sang.

It was like that for the rest of the evening. Adrian's car could take five of them to the Ice Stadium; a taxi had been ordered for the remaining couple, and Gillian hoped against hope that it would not be suggested that she and Colin should share it. She did not want to find herself alone with Colin again just yet. Fortunately, it was allotted to David and Marnie - "our officially engaged pair," Mrs. Pilgrim commented, her smiling glance passing over the others as she spoke.

They all agreed that the ice pantomime was first- class entertainment when they discussed it in the intervals. From Elspeth's and Adrian's conversation on skating in general Gillian gathered that their appointment for skating on the afternoon of Elspeth's mishap had been only one of several. They sat together at the end of the row of their party, and whenever Gillian glanced in their direction Elspeth's smooth gold head seemed very close to Adrian's; once, at the climax of a particularly daring exploit on the ice-floor, Elspeth put a hand impulsively over his where it lay on the ledge be-, fore them. He did not draw it away at once.

For her own part she was only too well aware that Colin, at her side, was dividing his attention between the show and herself, trying to compel her eyes to meet his. Afterwards in the foyer he whispered: "Let's take a taxi for ourselves!" But she said: "No, we can't -" and quickly accepted Adrian's invitation to take her place in the back seat of his car. And Colin, with a look of reproach, got in beside her and grudgingly made room for Elspeth too.

However, her efforts to avoid being alone with him again were foiled when they reached the house. For Adrian and Mrs. Pilgrim agreed that the day had been long enough for him, and decreed that Gillian should go with him into the lounge while the rest of them foraged for supper.

In the lounge Colin said harshly: "You don't want to talk about us, do you?"

"What is there to say?" she parried.

"You know what I want to hear - that this afternoon's affair isn't going to make any difference? That you aren't turning me down because of it?"

Could he really believe that if they had been pledged to each other her faith in him would have suffered no tarnish? She might have forgiven him for falling in love with Elspeth instead, even for kissing her upon an impulse of love. But she would have found it hard to forgive his cynical claim that Elspeth had tempted him to it and even more his calculating concern with fending off the unfavourable consequences to himself. She was glad that there was no longer any need for forgiveness between them. Now she was really free of him -

She said: "There's nothing between you and me, Colin, that could have been hurt by what happened this afternoon." Her months of care of him had schooled her to a gentle patience with him and her voice was quiet. But she saw that she had not made her meaning clear when he looked relieved.

"I might have known that you were too 'big' to allow it to matter. It shan't happen again - I promise." Momentarily his eyes slid away from her, and she had a flash of suspicion that he was not convinced it would not.

She said urgently: "You haven't understood. You don't owe me any promises - about Elspeth or anything else. There's nothing between us to justify it, Colin."

"Nothing -?" He looked more affronted than hurt. "You've been making a fool of me? You've let me think-?"

"We haven't discussed it," she reminded him. "But we've grown too far apart from each other to be able to pick up the threads again."

These were the overt, brutal things that Adrian had asked her not to say to Colin. But the time for holding them back was past. And Colin had some bitterness of his own to utter. He said savagely: "A tactful way of telling me that, without prospects, I can't expect you to wait

for me! Of course it's only a lever though. If I could offer you marriage tomorrow, that would be different, wouldn't it?"

"No, Colin, no-!"

But his arms were about her, and heady, desperate words born of his affronted male pride were pouring from his lips: "You've got to be willing to wait a bit longer! I know four years is a long time, and I was a fool ever to let you escape me. If I hadn't, we should probably have been married by now, and you wouldn't have had anything to reproach me with -"

She struggled to speak, to free herself. But he held her fast and plunged on, forcing her reluctantly to listen.

"D'you suppose," he muttered, "that I haven't known, all these months, that I'm just a piece of flotsam on the side, and that it would be no wonder if you got tired of waiting for me to make good. Now it's happened -"

How long had Adrian been in the doorway, a tray of glasses in his hands? He had not been there, Gillian knew, before Colin had taken her in his arms. But how many of Colin's reproaches had he heard? And since he had made himself keeper of her relationship with Colin, would he expect an explanation of the scene?

Colin's voice had trailed into silence. His hands released her and she made a muttered excuse for joining the others in the kitchen, leaving the two men together. But not before she had heard Adrian's casual, "Sorry about that," as he set down the tray.

CHAPTER VII

IT was a relief to be back on the ward the next day. There Gillian felt she was worthy of Adrian's trust, and her problems - Colin's demand for a loyalty that he did not return, Elspeth's hostility, no longer merely belittling but dangerous - seemed to dwindle against the background of the hard work which went to the easing of other people's trouble and pain. And by now, expecting no real partnership with Sister Hugh, she could be satisfied if she could keep her senior's more caustic criticisms at bay.

When they met, upon an impulse Gillian asked about Sister Hugh's Christmas.

"I was on duty, as you saw, Nurse."

That was true. Sister Hugh had declined to take off- duty on either of the Christmas days. But Gillian had been asking rather about her personal Christmas - hoping for those anecdotes about family gifts, unexpected greeting-cards and private parties which were being eagerly exchanged all over hospital this morning.

She tried again. "Yes, Sister. But you had a good Christmas, apart from the ward party?"

"Quite, thanks - by my standards, which may or may not coincide with yours, Nurse."

It was the rebuff direct, daunting further curiosity. But again Gillian wondered about the experience which might have set those hard lines about Sister Hugh's mouth and which seemed to have made her world one not to be entered by any ordinary door of friendship or sympathy. Suddenly Gillian wished she could make a real friend of Sister Hugh - and felt as far away from her as ever.

As they went on to the ward Sister Hugh gestured towards the paper decorations that dipped and swayed down its length. "We'll have these down as soon as possible. Get the walking patients to help you later, Nurse."

"Aren't we leaving them up till New Year?" asked Gillian in surprise. They had been the pride of everyone when they had gone up on Christmas Eve.

"Till New Year? Of course not. They have served their purpose. And this is a hospital ward - not a fairground." It certainly took Sister Hugh's grim mentality to look for purpose in a bunch of coloured balloons and a galaxy of paper chains, thought Gillian ruefully.

That was the beginning of a difficult time on Peterhead Ward. During the subsequent week Sister Hugh did not take the time off to which she was entitled after having been on duty over Christmas. And on the score that the ward was badly understaffed since losing Marnie and the two juniors, she proceeded to drive herself and her nurses near to the limit of endurance.

Besides the extra work that Sister Hugh found necessary Gillian had the additional task of helping Mrs. Pilgrim to supervise Colin's exercises every day. This entailed going down to Adrian's house, and though she did not linger and never allowed Colin to delay her, her absence from the ward was always strictly timed and none of her other duties were lightened in consequence of that one.

Sister Hugh resented in particular the time which Gillian gave to the old Frenchman, Pierre Outenard. For he claimed that he could make himself understood only to Gillian; he sulked with Sister Hugh and he was liable to drive bewildered juniors from his room with a flow of inelegancies of speech which would have been clear in any language.

Gillian felt drawn to him. He was a simple, sturdy peasant, outwardly uncouth, yet with a nature as essentially sweet and untainted as the earth and the open air. She quickly came to understand most of what he said, and she found that he conjured for her the France she had begun to love four years ago.

He could not, or would not, understand that his landlady's little girl would not be allowed to visit him in hospital. "Bien entendu, Madame Rideau will bring la petite to Papa Pierre," he reassured himself at first. But as the days passed and he had no visit nor any message he began to fret. And at last he said to Gillian: "You will write a letter for Papa Pierre, yes?"

Useless to explain that a message would already have gone officially to the address he had given, and that if it received no response there was nothing that authority could do for the moment. But to comfort him Gillian wrote the letter he dictated - in French this time, so that there should be no doubt about Madame Rideau's understanding it.

When there was no reply Gillian had to ask herself whether it was possible that this Madame Rideau was tired of her old lodger and saw herself well rid of him. On the other hand, he probably owed her for at least part of a week's keep, and she must hold some of his belongings, though these were likely to be few. In any case, the silence was puzzling and Gillian hardly knew what to do.

She would have consulted Adrian, but since Christmas he had been taking some days of overdue leave. She had not seen him, and his work was being done by the house-surgeons between them. She had decided that it would be best to go to the Social Office when, with the same directness as before, the old man said: "Madame Rideau does not come. But you will go to her instead, please?"

Would she? It would ease his anxiety, she knew. And it would be quicker than to set the machinery of official enquiry afoot. So she smiled at him and agreed. "I will go," she said.

"You will go now? At once?"

She shook her head, explaining that she must go in her own time, when she was off duty. But that would be that afternoon, and when she came back to the ward after tea she would have news for him, she promised.

After lunch she changed out of uniform and took the Underground to Piccadilly Circus. The address she had to find was in one of the streets which make up the network of the foreign quarter of Soho. But old Pierre's directions had been more voluble than explicit and she took some time to find it. When she did it proved to be a narrow court between two shops. At the far end an iron stairway led to a balcony with a door opening off it.

Gillian ran up the stairs, knocked and waited. At first there was silence, then the door was opened a crack and a little girl - la petite of Papa Pierre's anxiety, no doubt - peered out.

Gillian smiled and said "Hullo" before she remembered that she must speak in French. But little Marie returned her "Hullo" shyly and in a pretty accent and opened the door wider.

"You speak English, Marie?"

"At school I must speak English, Madame. At home with Maman and Papa Pierre I speak French. With you - either, Madame." She had a grave, lovable dignity.

Gillian said: "I have come from Papa Pierre, Marie. He is ill. He had an accident and he is in hospital. I am helping to look after him and

he is happy, except for being worried that, though he has written to your Maman, he has heard nothing."

"Poor Papa Pierre! There have been letters, yes. But Maman cannot write, you understand. For she is ill too."

"I? Oh, I'm so sorry, Marie. What is the matter with her?"

"I do not know. At first she is only a little ill. She has the letter about Papa Pierre and she will write. But the next day she is worse and she must go to bed and cannot write. She coughs and coughs and she is so hot. And today she cannot speak to me at all. Madame" - the child's lip quivered piteously - "now I think that she is very ill indeed!"

Gillian said quickly: "May I see her, Marie? I am a nurse. I understand about people who are ill, and perhaps I could help." .

"Come in, Madame." Where to an adult she would still have been a stranger without credentials, to the child's unquestioning trust she was already a friend. She stepped into the little flat and looked about her. The living-room was overcrowded with old-fashioned furniture but, except for some surface untidiness, it looked clean and well-cared-for. Opening off it there was a kitchen where a three-legged stool by the deep sink showed that Marie had been washing some dishes. Another door led into the bedroom where the sick woman lay.

'Gillian was shocked by the sight of her. Her head turned restlessly on the pillow and she coughed continually but weakly as if she had no strength for the effort. Her fingers plucked at the bedclothes - a sign of the onset of delirium, Gillian knew. Her skin was burning, her pulse racing. There was no need of a clinical thermometer to diagnose her high fever.

"Have you had a doctor to Maman, Marie?"

"No, Madame. Tante Nicole says 'Pff' to doctors. She says her tisanes will make Maman well without doctors. But Maman does not eat, and she cannot drink the tisanes -"

"Tante Nicole? Is she your aunt?"

"Oh, no. She is a lady who has a stall in the street market. She is busy with her stall and cannot come often to see Maman. But she is very kind."

And so she probably was - according to her fashion, thought Gillian wryly. But powerful as her tisanes might be, they were not likely to avail poor Madame Rideau just now. She must have a doctor, and at once.

There was no telephone, but there would be one in the shop below. Gillian told Marie what her errand was, promising to come back at once.

"We do not know a doctor since we are in England, Madame."

"Never mind. I'll find one -"

The winter afternoon was drawing to dusk as she ran down to the street, which was clamorous with the noise of the dismantling of stalls and bedraggled with the day's refuse which littered pavement and gutter. As Gillian emerged from the passageway she bumped into a man and recoiled.

"I'm so sorry -" She broke off as his hand fastened on her arm and he leered into her face. "Going somewhere pretty fast, aren't you?" he asked unpleasantly.

"Yes, I am -" She tried to turn into a shop doorway, but he barred her path. "There's no hurry that I can see," he said in a thick, argumentative voice.

"There is. Let me go." Her heart was thumping and she had to tell herself there was no need for panic. She had only to appeal to the next passer-by or call out to the market-men across the street. But he had delayed her long enough and she did not want to create a scene that would delay her still more. She tried again to wrench free. But the stubborn grasp tightened, and she was just measuring her chance of success in aiming a kick at his shins when the passer-by she had hoped for was upon them. She found herself looking straight up into Adrian Pilgrim's incredulous face.

"Please -! " She gestured towards her assailant. But Adrian had already taken in the situation, and at his muttered "Get out!" the man grumbled and slunk away.

Adrian turned back to Gillian. "What was all that?" he asked sharply. "Must you invite such unpleasantness by coming alone to streets like these at dark?"

Gillian gave a rather tremulous laugh. "I didn't realise I had invited anything," she admitted. "I was in a hurry and I bumped into him. I think he was drunk and would have picked a quarrel with anyone. I thought someone would come along, but I didn't expect you, Mr. Pilgrim-" '

"My club is nearby, and I usually take a short cut through here to the street where I park my car," he told her, his voice still curt. "But what are you doing here? Have you friends in this quarter? Or may I give you a lift back to hospital?"

"Not yet. I've got to find a doctor. I came to telephone for one -"

"A doctor? Well?" He stood waiting, his brows raised.

"Oh - would you come yourself? It's just through this passageway. For Madame Rideau -"

"Rideau? Rideau? I've heard that name recently," he muttered, following her.

"Yes, you have. She is old Monsieur Outenard's landlady. You asked the Office to tell her about his accident."

"I remember now. He was fretting about the little girl, wasn't he?"

"Yes, and as he had no sign from them he has been worrying ever since. He begged me to come and see what was wrong. And when I arrived I found the woman collapsed with fever. She has been ill for some days, but no doctor has seen her."

"Why on earth not? What are they thinking of?"

"There is only the little girl, Marie, and I believe she is only eight or nine," Gillian told him. "Apart from her, there seems to be only a woman neighbour who goes in."

They reached the door of the flat and Marie opened to them. Adrian smiled at her and ruffled her hair and then strode through to the bedroom where Gillian joined him at the bedside.

She watched his hands, gentle but purposeful, about their work. It was good to be with him briefly, loving him in secret and knowing that it was through countless other times like this - of seeing trouble carried to him, of sharing it with him often - that she had come gradually to care for him, learning to love the man behind the mask of the impersonal skill. His skill, his strength of decision for others, might be all that she had the right to lean upon. But here, briefly, she could cherish the illusion of being able to rely upon him for more than that; of there being a link, a kind of interlocking between them that would hold fast.

He replaced the bedcovers and straightened himself. "She is on the verge of double pneumonia," he said as he signalled Gillian from Madame Rideau's bedside, "I must get her into hospital at once."

"Will she go to St. Ranulph's?"

"No. It must be to one in this area. I shall have to ring round for a vacancy. Ask the child to help you to get her things together, and I'll order an ambulance."

"What about little Marie herself? She can't stay here alone," said Gillian doubtfully.

"Neither she can. I'd forgotten that."

They looked at each other, sharing the problem of Marie. Adrian asked: "Is there no one she can go to, do you suppose?"

"Only this neighbour, Tante Nicole, who is a market- woman. But I don't know how suitable she is or how she is placed -"

"Then I'll take the child home with me - for tonight at least or until we can arrange something. My mother will be delighted to have her."

"That is good of you -" said Gillian impulsively.

"My mother would never forgive me if I didn't. And it should serve to round off your mission to our old friend's satisfaction. Perhaps we can keep the child until he is getting around in his plaster, and then they can meet."

"There's still this Tante Nicole. We must let her know what has happened or she may think we have kidnapped Marie," Gillian reminded him.

Adrian's eyes twinkled. "I think we can leave the spreading of the news to the bush telegraph of the street," he said. "By the time I've organised the ambulance, there's hardly likely to be anyone in the quarter who doesn't know as much about Madame Rideau's case as we do ourselves, and more! "

He was right, of course. The ambulance men had difficulty in pushing their way through the voluble, sympathetic crowd at the mouth of the narrow courtyard, and Gillian had to put a protective arm round little Marie as they watched the ambulance move off. The child was being very brave, but Gillian sensed that, with its going, she was seeing the whole of her little world slide away. She shrank close to Gillian's side, bewildered at being the centre of so much strident attention.

It was kindly concern, warm, real, though oddly expressed. While they waited for Adrian to fetch his car someone thrust a bar of chocolate into Marie's hand and someone else ran into a toy-shop nearby and brought out a squeaker to blow into her face and to present to her afterwards. And just as Adrian drew in to the kerb a stout woman in an apron dashed up, kissed Marie on both cheeks, saluted the astonished Gillian in the same fashion, and in a torrent of French seemed to be giving her blessing to the whole affair. Evidently Tante Nicole approved of Marie's being taken into such safe hands!

Only when they were in the car and speeding westwards did Gillian realise that by the time she had changed into uniform she was likely to be very late on the ward - one of the more inexcusable faults, even with good reason.

Adrian might have sensed her worry. He asked: "Are you due back on duty this evening? If you are going to have to explain yourself to Sister Hugh, you may cite me as evidence for the defence, if you like."

She thanked him, but resolved not to bring in his name if she could help it. Since that trouble over his calling at the Nurses' Home to take her out, she knew that Sister Hugh had been watching for any sign of familiarity between them, and she could probably twist even so accidental a contact as this afternoon's into something which threatened the proper distance to be maintained between senior surgeon and mere staff nurse.

When she reached the ward at last the only good fortune to stand by her was that she encountered Sister Hugh at the door of her office instead of on the ward itself, where she might have had to take her rebuke in the hearing of both staff and patients.

"You are very late, Nurse. Why?"

"I'm sorry, Sister. I was detained unavoidably."

"Permit me to judge of that. Where have you been? I suppose I may conclude you were about your own pleasure?"

"I don't think you could call it that. I undertook an errand for Monsieur Outenard. He has been fretting because he has had no sign from his landlady since his accident, and he asked me to go and see her to find out why."

"The Office attends to such things, Nurse. Why should you feel called upon to interfere? You take too much upon yourself. The matter should have been reported to me for reference back."

"But that would have meant more delay, and I think the old man needed reassuring that he hadn't been completely abandoned by his only friend in this country. As it is, I can assure him of that, as the silence was due to his landlady's being ill, and she is in hospital herself now. It's not what he feared, and though it is not good news, at least I shall be able to give it to him tonight -"

"Not tonight, Nurse. You will not be going to the side-wards during what remains of your evening's duty."

"Not -?" Gillian broke off, supposing that for some reason the side-ward patients had been "finished" and settled down for the night particularly early. But Sister Hugh's next words made her meaning quite clear. She said: "I am removing you from acting as my 'special' from now on. Instead I shall share the duty myself with Nurse Cook, and you will take over her general work on the main ward."

It was a decision intended to imply disgrace for herself. Gillian realised that and would seethe against the injustice of it until she could see it as the petty expression of antagonism which it was. She must accept it without question, she knew. But with poor Papa Pierre anxiously awaiting her news, surely it could not mean literally what it said?

"I see, Sister," she replied quietly. "But you don't mean, do you, that I may not go to Monsieur Outenard to tell him what I've learnt?"

"You heard me, Nurse. There is no need for you to go to Number Three or any other side-ward tonight. In fact, you are not to go."

"But Sister-!"

"Please go to the ward now and take over the medicine-list from Nurse Cook -" And Sister Hugh turned away, leaving Gillian white and shaking with inward rebellion.

She stood outside the ward doors, knowing that she must wait until she had taken a grip upon herself before she went to work. And even when she had relaxed sufficiently to walk calmly on to the ward and to smile in response to the "Evening, Nurse", which greeted her on all sides, she knew that she had come to a cold, calculated decision of her own.

She had been given an explicit order and she was going to disobey it. She had promised to bring news to Papa Pierre on her return to duty, and she was going to fulfil that promise. There were subterfuges she could resort to. For instance, she could scribble a note in French to the old man, asking Nurse Cook to deliver it. Or she could pretend to need a piece of apparatus from his room. But she despised them as mere ruses, and when she had seen old Pierre she meant to tell Sister Hugh what she had done.

She completed her work on the main ward and then went through to Papa Pierre's room, not taking any particular care that Sister Hugh should not see her go. And as soon as she saw how eagerly the old man looked for her coming she felt no more doubt that she had been right.

"It is good, hein? You have seen them?" His gnarled fingers were plucking nervously at the sheet as he searched her face.

"Yes, I have seen them. Madame Rideau and Marie too." She sat down by his bed and told him gently of the afternoon's happenings, praising Marie and soft- pedalling the severity of Madame Rideau's illness, though assuring him it was absolutely necessary for her to go into hospital. When she told him that Marie was here within "reach and in good loving care, his eyes filled with grateful tears. "It is the hand of le bon Dieu!" he said. And after a minute or two he lay back and with the facile ability of old people he was suddenly asleep.

Gillian left the room, steeling herself for her ordeal.

It was upon her almost at once. As she closed Papa Pierre's door Sister Hugh came down the corridor towards her, her face a mask of cold anger.

"So you took it upon yourself to disobey me, Nurse?" she demanded.

"Yes, Sister. I felt that my duty didn't call upon me to break my promise to Monsieur Outenard. I was coming to tell you that I had been to see him."

"You did this quite deliberately? You are prepared to take the consequences to yourself?"

"Yes, Sister." With the detachment she had known all the evening Gillian noticed that Sister Hugh's face, which had been chalk-white, was suffused now with waves of colour that rose from her throat. In an oddly uncertain gesture for her she pressed two fingers to her temple as if to ease an ache there, and though Gillian could not believe she was at a loss for scathing words, none came.

In the pause, Adrian came upon them, though neither had noticed his approach from the main ward.

Unaware of the tension between them he gestured towards Papa Pierre's door. "I thought I would look in unofficially to see how he took the news," he said. "Also to report on young Marie."

"He is asleep, Mr. Pilgrim."

"Then I won't disturb him -" Adrian's glance went from Gillian to Sister Hugh's rigidity. "Is anything wrong, Sister?"

"Nothing that I cannot deal with I hope, Mr. Pilgrim." Sister Hugh seemed to speak with effort, as if anger were choking her.

"But something is?" He looked again at Gillian and frowned. "Haven't you explained this afternoon's affair to Sister? Your reasons for being late back to duty, for instance?"

Why should he have come to witness her humiliation? wondered Gillian bitterly. But before she could reply Sister Hugh said: "Nurse

Harlowe has explained that she saw fit to interfere in what is properly the concern of the Social Adviser, Mr. Pilgrim -"

"To 'interfere'? You mean her errand for Outenard? But I know something of that, as I daresay she has told you. Don't you agree that she was right to act as she did in order to save the old man needless fret?"

"Her function is to nurse the patients in her care, not to make a sentimentality of their personal affairs which are adequately handled elsewhere."

Adrian brushed the argument aside. "Come, Sister. That's not tenable. Not even humane. Our patients aren't so many lay-figures for mere medical and surgical treatment, but human beings with worries and deep-felt troubles of their own. And, through nobody's fault, this one wasn't being handled at all until Nurse Harlowe acted. As it was, she was in time to save a woman's life and to lift an intolerable burden from a child's shoulders. An infinitely forgivable interference, I should say!"

"That is beside the present point. You seem to know more of the circumstances than I do, and of course I am glad that Nurse Harlowe chanced to be able to help these people. But that does hot excuse her deliberate flouting of my explicit orders when she returned to the ward."

"Orders? In connection with this matter?"

"Yes. When she was late coming on duty I gave her work with the side-ward patients to another nurse, and when she arrived I told her she was not to visit Monsieur Outenard tonight. She chose to do so."

"You gave her good reasons for your decision, no doubt?" asked Adrian smoothly.

"I expect my staff to accept my rulings without seeking for explanations, Mr. Pilgrim! "

"But you had good reasons?" he pressed.

"That is my business!"

"Nurse Harlowe's too, surely? Without justifying your decision, how could you expect to override her natural eagerness to tell Outenard the results of her errand? Consider - she had the means for giving him a peace of mind that he hasn't known since he came into hospital. Wouldn't it have been a very soulless obedience to you that would have withheld it from him?"

For a moment there was silence, while Gillian wondered at the miracle which was prompting his passionate defence of what she had done. She glanced at Sister Hugh, saw again those mounting waves of ugly colour, that same ineffectual pressure of her fingers to her brow. The older woman seemed to be making a supreme effort at control as she said: "You manage to turn my maintenance of discipline on my ward very adroitly against me and to Nurse Harlowe's advantage, Mr. Pilgrim! But that was to be expected, considering how she has contrived to ingratiate herself with you since she came to the ward! How she has managed - successfully enough - to use every means, even to her connection with Mr. Fenmore, to bring herself to your notice-!"

"Sister - please! These are ridiculous accusations! " Adrian's voice cut like a knife across the tirade.

"They are true! Do you suppose that I haven't known how Nurse Harlowe has done her best to undermine my authority on my own ward? Why, she has not stopped short of flouting professional etiquette by accepting your ill-advised invitations, visiting your house -"

"At my house Nurse Harlowe has been my mother's guest. I don't have to excuse her going there with me. Your ideas on staff relationships off-duty are sadly out of date, Sister!"

"Ideas? They are proper standards to which I was trained!"

Adrian shook his head. "On the contrary, I think they are impossible standards which you have set yourself but which you cannot expect to impose on others -"

Sister Hugh's eyes flashed. "You go too far in your criticisms, Mr. Pilgrim! You have no, right. I -" She broke off suddenly, putting a hand to her throat and then again to her head. She was swaying on her feet when Gillian sprang to put a steadying arm about her.

"Sister isn't herself, Mr. Pilgrim. She's ill."

"Yes." He took the hand which Sister Hugh put out gropingly, without direction. He turned her gently about. "You must help me to get her back to her office, then ring for your house physician and ask the Private Block to have a room made ready for her. Do that, will you, while I wait for your houseman. Who is on call, by the way?'.'

She told him, then went to telephone, leaving Sister Hugh in his care. While they waited for the house physician to come he drew Gillian aside, out of Sister Hugh's hearing.

He said: "It's clear that she is nervously exhausted, at the end of her tether. I should have known better than to rouse her to those extravagant accusations. It was unfair, too, to make you the bone of contention in your hearing -"

"You could hardly help it," claimed Gillian quickly. "Sister Hugh had a legitimate grievance against me."

"Technically perhaps, on the score of your disregard of an order she should never have given. But we both went too far in our accusation and defence. When she is better," added Adrian drily, "we're going to go through an embarrassing time, living them down."

'We." Somehow that put them into a private alliance. Absurd, perhaps, to gather comfort from that. But the foolish heart which loved unasked must be content with crumbs.

CHAPTER VIII

THE next day on her duty visit to Colin Gillian told him a little dazedly, "I'm not quite sure where I am at the moment. Matron has just made me acting Sister on Peterhead Ward to replace Sister Hugh, who will have to have a long rest when she is better."

Colin groaned. "Heavens, more starch? My pet, you're not really thrilled about that? "

"I am. I knew I was in the running for promotion, but I never expected to be given an important ward like Peterhead." She could not tell Colin that she was glad, not so much about her increased privileges and freedoms, as that she would now be working in closer partnership with Adrian, responsible directly to him.

"But you can't go all earnest about being a career girl now - not when you and I may be able to make a go of things before long. Look, Gilly" - he caught at her wrist and held it tightly - "you didn't really mean what you said at Christmas? I - I can't afford to let you mean it!"

She disengaged herself gently. "We'd better begin your exercises, Colin -"

"No! I'll do the fool things later if I must. This is the first time I've had you to myself since then, and you can't fob me off now. Listen. After you'd gone that night I had a talk with Adrian. He was curious about why you dashed off as you did."

Gillian bit her lip. "What did you tell him?"

"I said that you were upset, and no wonder - because you saw no future in having to wait indefinitely to get married while I haven't a prospect in the world -"

"You told Adrian that?"

"Well, I could hardly tell him we had had a row over Elspeth, could I? And anyway," declared Colin at a bold stroke, "I don't believe, you'd have been as touchy as you were about Elspeth if you'd got something to hold on to about us, if you felt that there was something I could really offer you. And as Adrian seemed in a pretty sympathetic mood, I sounded him about my trust."

"What did he say?" Had Colin managed to force that issue to his advantage too?

"He wasn't disposed to play at all. Said that he understood from Sheppey that I'd got a better future in engine design than I'd ever have in racing, and that he wouldn't be justified in influencing the other trustee against his own better judgment that the money ought not to be advanced to get me back into racing. What I did when I came into it in my own right was my own affair, of course."

Had that been Adrian's avoidance of admitting that Colin's hope of resuming racing was remote for a long time yet? Gillian wondered. But Colin went on: "He said then that he would be more disposed to advance it to ease my way to marrying you, as that appeared to be what we both wanted."

Something cold seemed to clamp round Gillian's heart. "Adrian said that?" she asked bleakly. "But you must have told him then that I want it to be all over between us - finished -!"

Colin regarded her pityingly. "Gill, I'm not a fool! How d'vou think I could afford to by-pass an offer like that? Of course I didn't tell him - especially when, if I had anything to offer you, I don't believe it would be true."

"It is true, Colin. And if you allow Adrian to believe anything different, you'll be taking the money under false pretences."

Colin's lip curled. "You've been reading too many newspapers. The money is mine. I'm not absconding with it, and there's only a quibble between my having it now or waiting till I'm thirty. I'm convinced Adrian will shell out as soon as we announce our engagement, but now you add your quibble - you refuse to play!"

"I can't, Colin. You mustn't ask me!"

"But there could be 'many a slip' and all that if you wanted it that way later. Nobody can force us to marry, and Adrian isn't demanding a contract, signed, sealed and delivered. In fact, I got the impression that he made the suggestion at least as much for you as for me - because he wanted you to be happy. Gill, it's easy - if only you'll agree!"

So Adrian wanted her happiness - in engagement and marriage to Colin! Well, he had once said as much to her, and the irony had been as bitter then as now. To Colin she said again: "No, I can't," with as much determination as she could put into her voice.

"So much then for your concern that I should get back to where I was and stop being as dependent as a kid on you all for this, that and the other!" He turned upon her in savage self-pity. "You've got the power to help and you won't. Your duty stops short at your nursing of me, and if I've sometimes thought Adrian was pretty cold-blooded, you are just callous! "

"There's no point in discussing it any further," she said. "I think we'd better get on with your exercises."

"I agree." He went through them mechanically with set lips, and when at the end of them she told him that, now that she was to be

Sister of Peterhead, Matron had said she must leave his treatment to Mrs. Pilgrim, he made no comment.

Gillian walked back across the grounds, feeling wretched where she had set out earlier, buoyant over her promotion. She felt that the only thing she had saved was her honesty. She had not agreed to Colin's suggestion that Adrian should be led to believe they were about to be engaged. And Colin could hardly announce their engagement without her knowledge and consent.

Peterhead Ward was an infinitely happier place without Sister Hugh. Gillian admitted it a little guiltily; the patients and the rest of the staff made no secret of it. When Marnie came back as staff nurse at the end of January she wanted to claim loyally that it was Gillian who had created the new atmosphere. But Gillian said modestly that under any different Sister's rule Peterhead would have felt the same wind of freedom blowing through it. Nobody worked less hard than before, and the patients took no more licence. It was simply that a completely unnecessary tyranny had ended, that was all.

She often remembered that last scene between Adrian and Sister Hugh with shame, realising how humiliated the older woman must have been. Gillian wished that she had not had to witness Sister Hugh's loss of face through Adrian's defence of herself, and she felt that Sister Hugh would never forgive her for having been there to hear it.

News of Sister Hugh's slow fight towards recovery came through in gossip to the Sisters' rest-room and from Marnie, reporting from David Sheppey.

Marnie said: "David goes to see her, you know. He says she is the most essentially lonely person he has ever known. For instance, we've always thought that her home was in London, but no one visits her and she has no personal letters. Once David tried to draw her out

by suggesting what he. once told me - that he felt sure they had met some years ago. But she only said that the disparity in their ages made it unlikely, and he had to leave it at that."

That talk worried Gillian. She was haunted by the thought of Sister Hugh, sick, lonely, but with her offensive arrogance so turned in upon itself that she could not even take the hand of friendship offered to her by the padre's sympathetic approach. And if David could not penetrate her frozen reserve, who could?

One morning, looking through some drawers in the ward office, Gillian came across a duty-rota which had not been destroyed by her predecessor's ruthless tidiness when it had served its purpose. It was signed as usual "C. Hugh," and Gillian found herself wondering what the C stood for, realising she had never known.

Unheard by her, Adrian came in. "What have you got there?" he asked, looking over her shoulder.

She crumpled the paper. "Only an old duty-sheet of Sister Hugh's." Upon an impulse she added: "I was thinking that I have never heard her Christian name."

"Odd though it seems, considering how long we were colleagues, neither have I," agreed Adrian drily. "It's significant of the distance she puts between herself and others. Have you visited her, by the way?"

"No, I -" Gillian broke off, not wanting particularly to explain the cause of her diffidence.

"I wish you would. I wonder you haven't done so."

She had to defend herself against the implied criticism. Flushing, she said: "I've wanted to. But I'm in a difficult position with regard to her."

"Because you have taken her place on the ward? But you were in line for some such promotion. Matron told me so when she did me the courtesy of consulting me about giving you charge of Peterhead."

"Did you recommend me then, Mr. Pilgrim?" asked Gillian a little breathlessly.

He regarded her with dry composure. "I did. Why should that surprise you? I admit I told Matron that you might not think it worth your while to take it."

"Not worth my while? I wouldn't have dreamed of not accepting -!"

"That was what I hoped," he said cryptically.

After a moment's hesitation Gillian said: "It wasn't really that I was afraid Sister Hugh would grudge me my promotion. But I thought it might embarrass her to see me, though I know she would never have spoken as she did in front of me if she had not already been very very ill."

Adrian nodded. "The whole thing was unfortunate. It's an embarrassment between the three of us that will rankle until it is dispersed. Placed as she is, Sister Hugh can do nothing about it. But you can - if you are willing to sink your pride by making the first approach to her." Then abruptly he changed the subject to ask about old Pierre Outenard, whose leg had been taken out of plaster the previous day.

"He's getting around," smiled Gillian. "This morning, while the sun was out, we took him on to the sun- balcony. Mrs. Pilgrim had

already arranged with us to bring little Marie on to the drive below when he was likely to be there. And there followed a quarter of an hour of the shrillest exchange of French imaginable. I could hear what they were saying from the other end of the ward!"

"No secrets, eh? Well, I heard from King's Hospital today that Marie's mother is out of danger, too. The three of them should be back home before long."

Gillian murmured: "The happy ending! It's a reward we often get, don't we?"

He regarded her gravely. "Do you think we get them often enough to compensate for the despairs?"

"Surely," she ventured shyly, "you don't know many despairs?"

"Do I appear so case-hardened then?"

"No. So 'not interested in the possibility of defeat,'" she quoted, feeling that for the moment he had allowed her to draw close enough to him to say such things.

"And you think I have never failed?" he demanded.

"You fail of course - but I think you are never defeated."

"You perceive a difference?"

"Yes. Don't you?"

He did not answer at once. Then: "I've always wanted to believe so. And in my work I must convince myself that it is true - that there'll be another chance to prove myself tomorrow. But in other things that matter to my life as much I've begun not to be so sure." His face was strangely haggard as he turned away.

Realising that she knew nothing of Sister Hugh's taste in books, Gillian decided to take flowers - some sprays of golden mimosa and a bunch of the earliest daffodils.

Sister Hugh was sitting up in bed, wrapped in a severely plain bedjacket. Her hair, once corn-coloured, now greying, hung forward in two thick plaits, and Gillian reflected that she had not guessed at its abundance, nor that the essential lines of the older woman's face were so fine-drawn.

She summoned a faint, chill smile as Gillian went to lay the flowers on her coverlet. Beneath the flesh of the hand with which she touched them the bones protruded sharply. She said: "I hadn't realised the wattle would have arrived."

"The wattle? Oh - the mimosa? Yes, it has been in the flower-shops for some weeks." Snatching at the opening, Gillian added: "I remember now - they call it wattle in Australia, don't they?"

"I am Australian," said Sister Hugh.

"Oh, I didn't know." Gillian hooked a chair towards her and sat down. "I - that is, Nurse Chard - thought your home was in London -"

"My 'home' " - a note of bitterness seemed to mock at the word - "is a one-roomed flat in Hammersmith. I keep it on because, outside St. Ranulph's, I have no other. I came to England as a girl, for my nursing training. My real home broke up soon afterwards."

There was an uneasy pause. Then: "I hear from Matron that you have been made Sister of Peterhead in my place?" asked Sister Hugh.

"Only until you come back, I understand, Sister," said Gillian quickly.

"I shall not be coming back."

"Oh, but surely, Sister - when you are better?"

"Not even then. I have written my letter of resignation today." She reached out to her locker and handed a sheet of notepaper to Gillian. "Read it if you don't believe me."

Gillian glanced at the letter, noticed the unexpected full signature "Clarice Hugh," and handed it back.

"I'm-sorry, Sister."

"Are you? I wonder how many people could say that with sincerity?"

"I say it," said Gillian steadily, "because I'm sorry that I'm to have no chance of knowing you better." She smiled her sweet, wide smile as she added: "I've thought for a long time that we could have been real partners on Peterhead if we had understood each other better. For instance, I didn't guess that you could think I wanted to usurp your position with - with our surgeons. I needed your help too much!"

"You never gave the impression of relying on my advice or my experience, Nurse!"

"Mightn't that have been because you never showed that you were to be approached for it?" argued Gillian desperately. "Sister, please - won't you reconsider your decision and let us try again? "

Sister Hugh shook her head. "No. And you could hardly revert to staff-nurse rank on the ward where you had been Sister." She paused and her hard eyes softened a little. "I admit that, since I have been ill, I have wondered whether I misjudged you. Whether your independence of me might have shown a strength of character which I could have made my ally. But it is too late now. In this life one cannot go back."

"Perhaps not, but-"

"One makes mistakes, destroys at a stroke - and the way back to the second chance is always barred."

"Yes - but surely you learn something that will help the next time?"

"For you - in the decisions of your life - it may be so. In the one decision that altered the course of mine there wasn't a 'next time.' Tell me" - her eyes, which had been distantly fixed on the horizon, returned to search Gillian's face - "in taking up this ward-sister- ship, you haven't turned your back irrevocably on anything more real that offered, have you?"

"No, Sister."

"You know what I mean? Marriage? Children? Even working at your man's side? If you have, you could regret it so bitterly - as I did."

"I've had no such choice to regret, Sister."

"I thought - I understood that you and Mr. Fen- more-?"

"We were very good friends a long time ago. There's nothing between us now. Do you mean, then, that you chose nursing instead of marriage? "

"Not merely nursing. I might have been justified in that - if I believed it to be the right choice for me. No, I did exceptionally well in my training, and while I was still young I was dazzled by the offer of becoming Matron of a fashionable nursing-home. I should have realized that no place of respected standing would make such an offer to a girl still in her twenties, but I refused to be advised that it was only a catch-penny venture to attract a lot of vain patients, with no hope of being recommended by reputable doctors. I was engaged at the time - to a clergyman whom I had nursed -"

"And you chose-?"

"As I've told you. My fiancé was due to go abroad to a mission-station, and I could have married and gone with him to do really valuable nursing work. But I was flattered, and for a while I believed I could persuade him to go back on his agreement and stay in England. I failed, and when we reached deadlock we broke our engagement and he went abroad without me. The end of the story followed swiftly after that. The nursing- home was sold up before I had worked out my notice to my training hospital; I never even took up my new quarters."

"Poor Sister Hugh! But there were other vacancies for you?"

Sister Hugh's lips set in the familiar grim line. "There were -<• though only at the level I had really reached. Later at higher levels, which I attained only after years of hard Work - Sister of Peterhead Ward, for instance."

"Oh, I've been lucky -" breathed Gillian.

"No. You do get your chances earlier nowadays. And I jeopardised mine more than once."

"But you said-?"

"That I was good at my work? So I've always been, I think. But" - sardonically - "you have seen me in a position of authority. Would you say that I was entirely a success?"

"I - that is, your staff, your patients, often thought your discipline too harsh, that you didn't make enough allowances," hesitated Gillian, realising that Sister Hugh wanted the truth.

"Yes. It was my way of killing softness and regret . in myself. I argued that Fate had put a bitter choice to me too early and had shown me no quarter when I took the wrong way -"

"Couldn't you have told your fiancé what had happened?"

"I'm afraid I blamed him for letting me override him, and pride wouldn't admit J was wrong until I'd worked through the bitterness I felt. When I had - I supposed he wouldn't want me. I never got in touch again."

"But if he is a padre there must be ways -!"

Sister Hugh's smile was wintry and infinitely pathetic. "I used to look up his name in the Clerical Directory every year," she said simply. "But not now. For a long time now I haven't dared to know -"

"And you told me this because you wanted to protect me from making any such mistake? I'm very, very grateful, Sister Hugh!"

Sister Hugh's eyes strayed back towards the grey sky beyond the window. "Do you think I didn't tell it as much for myself?" she asked wearily. "Needing to put it into so many bald words - a thing I've never done in all these years."

"But you chose me to tell it to! That means more than you know -" began Gillian eagerly, breaking off as Private Ward Sister-in-charge came to say that her visiting-time was up and that she must go.

She rose and laid a hand over the thin one on the coverlet. "May I come again?" she asked.

"Of course. I shall look forward to seeing you." No one could have guessed at the gulf which had been bridged between their greeting and that formal farewell.

Outside in the corridor Sister-in-charge turned to Gillian. "Sister Hugh looks more genial than I've ever seen her - well or ill. Almost matey, in fact. What have you been at with her, Harlowe? "

Gillian said: "Making friends, I think." It was a warmth, a gentle triumph which buoyed her for the rest of the day.

A few days later Mrs. Pilgrim rang up to ask her to tea, saying that, after several days indoors with a bad cold, she felt in need of some bright company. David Sheppey would be likely to be there, as he looked in most days for a chat with Colin, and perhaps Marnie could come too if she were free. Did Gillian know?

Gillian glanced at the weekly duty-list - now of her own compiling - found that there was an afternoon when both she and Marnie would be off, and suggested that time to Mrs. Pilgrim. She felt that she could accept the invitation with safety as, in the short time she would be there, she was not likely to be left alone with Colin.

"B-rrh! What a winter!" grumbled Marnie as they set out across the grounds in half a gale. "The poet who wrote, 'If winter comes' - and the rest - ought to have a taste of this one, and he wouldn't have been in any doubt of its arrival. What concerns me more is - will it ever depart?"

At Mrs. Pilgrim's Anna said her mistress would be down presently. Mr. Colin was out with Mr. Sheppey, but Miss Elspeth was in the lounge, Anna believed.

Elspeth's greeting was as laconic as they would have expected, and conversation proved difficult. But suddenly they heard a clattering descent of the staircase which could hardly be Mrs. Pilgrim coming down. They were all staring at the door when it burst open and little Marie Rideau ran in.

"Mademoiselle Elspet'! Mademoiselle Elspet'! Your perfume - the lovely bottle I admire so much! It is spilled! It is a pool, a puddle - on

your carpet, on your boudoir stool, and the bottle broken! I see it when I go in-!"

Elspeth sprang up, her eyes flashing with annoyance. A couple of steps took her to Marie's side. She snatched at the child's shoulder and shook her. "You 'saw' it! You mean you did it, you little wretch! How many times have I told you I won't have you meddling with my things? What were you doing in my room, anyway?"

Marie's eyes widened in dismay, then clouded with tears. "No, no! I do not muddle your articles of toilet. You say it is forbidden, and I look at them only. They are beautiful. As in a salon -"

"And I suppose you were 'looking' at my perfume when the bottle broke - just like that? Why, you reek of the stuff!"

"It is - it is because I go to pick up the poor bottle. Your door is open as I pass, and I hear it go splinter, crash - so! And I go in. But the bottle is in small pieces, and the perfume -"

"A likely story! Don't lie to me -!" began Elspeth furiously, breaking off at Marnie's shocked expostulation and as Gillian stepped forward to slip an arm about the trembling child's shoulders.

Tight-lipped, Gillian said: "I don't think she's lying. And to accuse her of it isn't the way to get the truth."

"Kindly don't interfere!" ordered Elspeth imperiously. "It's no concern of yours."

"It is - while you refuse to believe her without a shred of proof to the contrary. Marie, dear - don't cry so!" begged Gillian as the little girl wrenched about and buried her head against her in an agony of childish despair.

In a low, tense voice Elspeth said: "She's going to be sorry for this. And so are you!"

A tide of anger surged over Gillian. "Not half as sorry," she retorted, "as I should be if I stood by while she is so petrified with fear of you that she can't defend herself. She hasn't even enough command of English, for one thing."

"Enough English to try to get away with it by lying in English!" sneered Elspeth, but stopped as Anna came in with a tea-trolley. She pushed it into the middle of the room, then straightened and addressed Elspeth.

"Miss Elspeth, I have asked you," said Anna patiently, "you know - not to leave your bedroom door ajar as well as your window when there's a wind like this at the front of the house. Now see what's happened! Your curtains have swept in and caught your big scent- bottle on your dressing-table, and it is lying on the floor in smithereens, with the scent splashed everywhere. I didn't see that happen, but when I went to call Mrs. Pilgrim I heard another crash, and there's your powderbowl on the floor too. I'm sorry, Miss Elspeth. But I have warned you, you know."

No one spoke to break the pregnant silence. It seemed to go on and on. Then Elspeth hitched one shoulder and turned her back on them all. "All right, Anna," she said distantly, "you may go."

Slowly and fearfully Marie withdrew her face from the shelter of Gillian's dress. A tremulous smile ventured about her lips.

"It is good? It is understood that I did not break Mademoiselle Elspet's perfume?"

"Yes, we understand." Gillian bent down and spoke in French, and Marie, nodding happy agreement, ran out of the room.

To Elspeth's hostile back Gillian explained: "I took the liberty of suggesting that she should go and help Anna with the tea. I thought you'd like to be spared the task of apologising to her in front of us!"

"I'm not in the habit of apologising to children or inferiors!"

Gillian opened her lips to retort, but it was Marnie who clinched the argument. Marnie said sweetly: "What a pity! If you did put in some practice on your inferiors, a few of the apologies you owe to your equals might come more easily, mightn't they?"

Elspeth deigned no reply.

Colin and David Sheppey came in just then, followed by Mrs. Pilgrim, and when tea was brought in the conversation became general, enabling Gillian and Marnie to avoid addressing Elspeth directly.

Colin was full of the merits of a car which a local garage had asked him to look at. "It's a lovely job, isn't it, Sheppey?"

Mrs. Pilgrim paused, her teapot poised. "You didn't drive it, Colin?"

He frowned. "No," he said shortly, adding as if in excuse of his brusquerie: "It wasn't ready for the road, anyway."

Mrs. Pilgrim turned to Gillian. "Adrian tells me he suggested you should visit Sister Hugh. How did you find her?"

"She is better, and I think she was glad to see me," began Gillian, breaking off at a sudden exclamation from David Sheppey.

They all looked at him. He had set down his cup and was staring into the fire, his eyes unfocused. He murmured: "That's it! I've just remembered-"

They waited and he explained smilingly: "As Gillian was speaking it came back to me - where I've seen Sister Hugh before, I mean."

"Oh, where, David?" asked Marnie eagerly.

"It wasn't herself, really," he replied, enjoying their suspense. "It's a photograph I've been remembering. A photograph of Sister Hugh as she would have been perhaps twenty years ago - which accounts for the odd fact of my recognising her as she would have been while I was still at school and not likely to have met her. It was a photograph which, until the day I left the mission in India, always stood on the desk of the padre who was my superior and who had originally gone out there on a five-year agreement and had stayed close on twenty. When we teased him about the photograph he used to say it was the girl he had hoped to marry, that he'd marry her still if she would have him. The photograph was signed: 'Clarice' -"

"Clarice!" broke in Gillian. "Then it could have been Sister Hugh -!"

"It was Sister Hugh," declared David with conviction. "I'm as sure of that as of my own name. She is called Clarice, then?"

"Yes, and -" Gillian stopped in sudden perplexity. "I don't know how much about this I ought to tell,"

she appealed to Mrs. Pilgrim.

"Did you learn something in confidence, dear?"

"I think it was. I don't quite know." Gillian could hardly explain that she was reluctant to lay bare Sister Hugh's pathetic secret in front of Elspeth - a reluctance which was immediately confirmed by Elspeth's contemptuous : "I bet he wouldn't want to marry her now, if he knew the sour-puss she has become!"

"Elspeth! It's no business of ours." Mrs. Pilgrim's tone was sharp. To Gillian she said: "Perhaps you'd like to tell just David? Then if anything either of you know is likely to help Sister Hugh he can decide what is best to do." She rose. "Marnie, I've got two new cacti to show you in my collection. Colin and Elspeth, make yourselves scarce in Adrian's study, will you?"

CHAPTER IX

IN the lounge David Sheppey bit thoughtfully on his pipe-stem, considering Gillian's story. When he had not spoken for several minutes Gillian asked eagerly: "What do you think we ought to do?"

"I'm not sure. I confess I'm a little afraid of doing anything hastily. You see, it's as if we've been given power over these two people's lives, and it would be easy to abuse it in our enthusiasm for bringing them together."

"But it's what they both want!" protested Gillian.

"They did once. But the past has been receding from them for a very long time. And it may be that one or both of them are deceiving themselves about their feelings now."

"You mean that they could have grown farther apart from each other than they know or would admit?" Gillian's thoughts flashed to herself and Colin.

"Yes. And if one of them was still as deeply involved as ever, and the other wasn't, something would have been reopened which would have been better left closed."

"But surely they should be given the chance to find out?"

"I think so, though I'm a little afraid of the consequences."

"I was hoping you would write to your padre superior, asking him to get in touch with Sister Hugh."

David shook his head. "I think she should be sounded first. She might not take too well the shock of hearing from him out of the blue, though her doctor could advise about that. Meanwhile, I'd like to think it over, if you agree. In fact, I'd like another angle on it- perhaps

my vicar's or, better still, someone who knows Sister Hugh better than we do. I was thinking of Pilgrim, in fact -"

They both started as the door opened and Adrian came in, flicking on more lights as he did so.

He regarded them with dry surprise. "I thought my mother warned me to expect a tea-party, not a conclave of two! And I seem to have eavesdropped upon my name-"

"You did," said David, standing up to face him. "We should like your advice."

The telling did not take long. At the end of it Adrian said: "I see your dilemma, but I think you can't take it upon yourselves to withhold the facts and do nothing."

"I agree," said David. "The danger is that, in doing the little that we must, we could blunder into trying to do too much."

"You mean that you could find yourselves committed to persuading these two that, as they were once in love, their destinies still lie together? You are chary of playing Fate, in fact?" Adrian turned to Gillian. "And you? What do you say? "

"I think we should tell them what we know, with as little shock for Sister Hugh as possible. I see that there's nothing more that we ought to try to do."

"But you are sentimental enough to want to believe this romance has survived its original callous betrayal by Sister Hugh? This man's forgiveness could go so far, you think?"

"Yes, I do,' she said - and saw too late that the passionate conviction which rang in her tone could have admitted to him that her own love had forgiven Colin his "callous betrayal."

Had Adrian drawn that inference? His eyes were inscrutable, and she could not tell. He addressed them both: "We're agreed then? To act within the limits of what we know, and then to stand aside?"

"I think so," said David. "I'll see Sister Hugh's doctor, and then break it to her as gently as I can."

They were interrupted then by the return of Mrs. Pilgrim and Marnie, followed presently by Colin and Elspeth.

Mrs. Pilgrim glanced from Gillian to David, but respected their reserve about their talk. She shook a reproving head at her son.

"Adrian, you can't possibly have finished!"

He went to tilt her chin with his forefinger. "Mother dear, when I agreed to take your place as chairman of one of your precious hospital committees, did I or did I not stipulate that I should run it in my own way?"

"You did. But there was so much to be decided -!"

"And it's all settled. The date of the Hospital Dance - Shrove Tuesday. The hall hired - by telephone direct from the meeting. The bands likewise. Catering - by tender, and to be divided among three firms. Matron will see to the flowers."

"But we usually appoint a lot of sub-committees," protested Mrs. Pilgrim faintly.

"Who proceed to draw their own trivial red herrings across the business in hand," retorted Adrian. "Now everything is arranged in one, and all you've got to do, Mother, is to get completely over your chill and be ready to put on your best bib and tucker for the dance."

She wrinkled her nose at him. "I shall still have to soothe my voluntary workers who dearly love their subcommittees." She turned to Gillian. "You and Marnie will be able to go, won't you? "

"I expect so. Normally most of the day nurses will be free in time for it."

"I suppose we shall be taking a party?" Elspeth asked Adrian.

"Hardly a party. Ask anyone you like, of course - the Hospital Friends Fund can do with the money. But Mother and I will both be there in semi-official capacities and we shan't want the responsibility for guests for whom we can't spare much time."

Elspeth looked none too pleased. "I suppose it will be a case of staggering round with a herd of galumphing medical students. It sounds too, too hearty for words."

"It is, but it's in a worthy cause. And it should offer you plenty of scalps. Most of our students and housemen are unmarried."

"I'm not interested in boys!" she flashed.

"You don't have to be. It will be they who will be over-working their interest in you."

Along with the others Gillian smiled at the brisk exchange, playfully acid on Elspeth's part, drily tolerant on Adrian's. With a pang she thought, Probably he can afford to tease her about her power with other men because he has grown sure of his own with her.

People in love, she supposed, could delight to tempt fate so - pretending to test and probe and doubt the surface of the sureness of each other that ran, they felt, too deep to be hurt. Yet, in the light of Elspeth's flirtation with Colin, how confident of her would Adrian be

if he knew? Gillian was surprised and shaken by the welling strength of her own love which enabled her to pray he never would.

Marnie heard Sister Hugh's story later from both Gillian and David. She wanted to visit Sister Hugh herself, but refrained from doing so until they had both seen her again and David had broken his news. She was waiting for Gillian, eager to question her, after Gillian's visit.

"How do you think she took it?" demanded Marnie. "I haven't seen David to ask him."

"She was sitting up and looking much better, though terribly frail and drawn still: And she thanked me for my part in it almost as soon as she saw me. I was so much afraid she'd feel I had broken her confidence if she hadn't understood that David's bit of intuition and memory happened first."

"And what is she going to do?"

"She has given David permission to write to his padre. And a letter of hers is going along with his." Gillian uttered a little sigh. "Marnie, I do wonder whether anything will-come of it for her?"

"David is quite sure something will come of it, though he won't commit himself," declared Marnie stoutly. "What I find so odd is that I sincerely want it to - for her sake and not because it would be an easy way of waving her farewell and never seeing her again on Peterhead. I suppose it's because I'm so happy myself that I want to spread the feeling around." She paused. Then: "I - I want some for you, Gilly - if I knew how to arrange it. There really isn't anything between you and Colin any longer, is there?"

"Nothing at all."

"I'm so glad. He never was worthy of you, but I couldn't be sure that you realised it. Once, Gilly -I can tell you this now - I overheard him flirting with Elspeth Paul just after he had been particularly possessive towards you."

"Once," echoed Gillian with a curiously twisted smile, "I came upon him with Elspeth in his arms -!"

"And that opened your eyes?"

"No. I knew my feelings long before that. It only confirmed for me how little I cared." Gillian laid a hand over Marnie's. "I know just how you feel about wanting to share happiness. I felt the same when I really was in love with Colin. I longed to give it away in handfuls. But don't worry about me. I was terribly proud to be given Peterhead."

"Yes, I know. And I was glad for you. But that's no more than a success you deserve. Somehow" - Marnie shook a rueful head - "it isn't the kind of happiness I want for you most."

Gillian had a birthday shortly before the Hospital Dance, and when she received an unexpected cheque from an uncle whose attentions towards his niece were generous but fitful, she was tempted to indulge in a new evening dress.

It was full-length, of pale coffee-coloured triple ninon, the gossamer lightness of the skirt weighted by three huge velvet and chenille flowers sewn diagonally on it. As soon as she had been shown it by the salesgirl, she had known she must have it, and when she dressed on the night of the dance, her heart asking just two questions. Would Adrian notice what she looked like? Would he ask her to dance? Then she remembered how, once before, she had set out with hopes of just such another brief encounter with him, and how that particular

fragile shell of delight had been ruthlessly smashed at Elspeth Paul's hands. No, she must not hope too much....

Because she had been anxious to get her toilet just right she found she was dressed too early. She looked at her watch. If Marnie was ready too, she thought, they might slip across to the Private Wards and persuade Sister-in-charge to let them make a brief visit to Sister Hugh.

Private Ward Sister pretended not to know them when they rustled in their finery to the door of her office. Looking beyond them to a non-existent colleague she commented: "A lot of strangers going to this dance tonight, they say. A couple of them seem to have fetched up here by mistake!" Then she allowed her eyes to focus on Gillian, pretending dawning recognition. "Haven't we met before somewhere?" she puzzled.

"We have," laughed Gillian. "You nobly yielded to me your claim to the last bit of toast at breakfast this morning. But only because it was burnt, I suspect. Look, could we see Sister Hugh for a few minutes before we go on to the dance? "

"Sister Hugh?" Private Ward Sister's smile faded. "I'd rather you didn't disturb her tonight, Harlowe."

"Why- she isn't worse, is she?"

"She isn't keeping up the progress she was making. She is tensed and restless and she is getting far too little sleep for her condition. Dr. Marron has strengthened her sleeping draught, and we're hoping she may get some tonight."

"Oh, dear -" The two girls glanced at each other in distress. Marnie asked with studied casualness: "She hasn't had any bad news to set her back, has she? Nothing by letter, I mean? "

"Not that I know of. If she had many private letters or visitors I wouldn't presume to know enough of her affairs to say. But she has so few that I'm afraid we're rather agog to anything she does get," said Sister rather apologetically.

Gillian and Marnie were silent as they retraced their steps. At last Marnie hazarded: "No news is good news, I suppose?"

"I wish I could think so," worried Gillian. "But her letter and David's went by airmail, arid there has been plenty of time for a reply. Why, there could have been a cablegram in a matter of hours!"

"Do you think this padre has lost hope or changed his mind at last, then?"

"I don't know what to think. Perhaps we hoped too much from the scraps David could remember, and since he returned to England almost anything could have happened." The threatened failure of her hopes for Sister Hugh had already overshadowed Gillian's evening.

As soon as they appeared on the dance-floor Dr. Dundrear from the Casualty Ward claimed her for a dance. "You look like a million dollars, Harlowe. How come I was able to prise you away from the boy-friend so early?"

"From the -?" She stiffened at the question.

"Well - Fenmore," he explained. "I thought -"

"I came with Marnie Chard and a crowd of nurses from the Home. I don't know if Colin Fenmore is coming. He won't be dancing, even if he is."

Gillian had spoken the truth. She had had no direct contact with Colin lately, and when Adrian had said he would not be making up a party, Colin had not indicated whether he meant to go or not. But she

saw him now across the room with two or three other men, strangers to her, and Elspeth. Adrian was not there.

When the music stopped Dr. Dundrear contrived to pull up so near to Colin's group that it was inevitable they should join it.

Colin was completely at ease with Gillian, more so than she was with him. He was in a gay mood and quickly became hail-fellow with Dr. Dundrear, whom he had not met before.

Dr. Dundrear asked Elspeth to dance, and the other men of the group were drifting away to find themselves partners. Gillian was left alone with Colin.

Colin said: "I haven't seen much of you lately, Gil."

"No. We've been awfully busy on the ward, and now that David is doing some tutoring to help with their savings for the wedding, I've been able to spend more time with Marnie during our off-duty."

They both knew it was an evasion, and Colin shrugged with an air of resignation.

"I only stated a fact, Gill. You don't have to think up excuses. I haven't forgotten where we left off last time-"

"Don't let's begin that all over again," she begged in a low voice.

"I'm not going to. I think I understand at last. At least, I'm trying to. We - look, Gill, we can still be friends, can't we?"

"Of course we can," she assured him in eager gratitude, hearing in his tone a new note of acceptance that for once was not tinged with self-pity. "Nothing need be different, really."

Colin nodded and was silent for a minute or two. Then he began awkwardly: "By the way, it's going to be all right about that advance. Adrian sees that I'm likely to need it now more than later, and the other trustee chap has agreed -"

Shocked that she should have allowed him to lull her into a sense of security from him, she turned to stare at him. "Colin, you didn't -?"

He shook his head. "No, Gill, I didn't. Tell Adrian that we'd fixed things between us, you mean, don't you? No, I was pretty hard driven, but if it had come to the point I couldn't have done it. As it was, he made no demur and asked no questions. Just said he'd arrange things."

Relief flooded over Gillian. "I'm so glad, Colin. About the money and - and everything." She longed to ask him how much he had told Adrian, but was afraid of betraying her secret to him if she did so.

His smile was a little bitter. "I can't agree about the 'and everything.' I'm still awfully fond of you. But if you are relieved that I'm not going on pestering you, that's all right. And you needn't ever have feared the worst from me."

At his side Gillian stirred and caught her breath in a little sigh. Adrian was coming towards them, threading his way through the dancers. He reached them, excusing himself to Gillian for wanting to speak to Colin. He said: "Colin, I wish you'd go and sort things out for a couple of Mother's committee workers. They've got their raffle-ticket counterfoils and the money they've collected hopelessly out of tally with each other."

"What do you expect me to do? Forge a few counterfoils - or counterfeit some money?" asked Colin with a lazy smile.

"Neither. My guess is that they've mislaid a book of tickets somewhere. But the more they do recounts, the more they fear being suspected of taking money under false pretences. Go and do what you can, will you?"

"All right. But what about Gillian?"

"If I may, I'll find her a partner."

The silly hope that he would ask her to dance himself was stillborn. He had said he would not have much time for dancing, and his coming to enlist Colin's aid showed that he was as busy as he had expected. But before he left her with the man to whom he introduced her he said, "May I come and find you myself - say, after supper?"

"Yes, of course -"

For her the whole evening was now pointed towards "after supper," but she determined to enjoy the rest of it for its own sake, not wishing the time away. She danced every dance, except those she sat out with Colin, and she and he with Marnie and David made a foursome for supper.

Adrian was having supper in a party with two other senior doctors, his mother and Elspeth. Afterwards he danced with Elspeth, who was having such a success of her own that, to Gillian's relief, she had not joined the group about Colin throughout the evening.

When Adrian came for Gillian, they executed a few steps experimentally, and then were into the rhythm of the beat. By now there was a certain amount of wild dancing going on, and as he drew her close to him to save a collision with another couple, he said, "I must have met you at quite a number of these hospital affairs during our time. A pity I hadn't realised before what an attractive dancer you were!"

Gillian glowed. "But how could you expect to know by instinct which of us nurses knew our left feet from our right?" she laughed.

"I still blame myself. That you were there - to be discovered - is something which I feel I should have known."

She was trembling a little as he put a hand beneath her elbow to guide her from the floor. That you were there. Had his meaning deepened? Or was it just her imagination that tried to read into a light compliment to her dancing a tribute to other qualities he valued? He said, "Will you be cold if we go out on to the balcony? The glass screens are in place, so there'll be no wind."

The balcony which ran round three sides of the dance-hall was cool and dim after the heat and light within. Beyond its glass walls the night sky glowed from the reflections of distant London. By common consent they went to look out, leaning their elbows on the stone coping which formed a kind of window-sill.

Gillian would have been content to say little, simply to be there with him, allowing the quiet night to wrap them about. But he could be feeling no such secret communion with her, and he would expect her to talk....

She said: "Has David Sheppey told you that Sister Hugh has heard nothing from India yet?"

"I know that she hasn't. Does that disappoint you a great deal?"

"I'm afraid it does. From what David had told us I thought we had done right, and that everything would be well."

"I feared you might be too sanguine. But I think you badly wanted your conviction proved - that love, once deeply given, endures through everything."

Was he deriding that faith? She said steadily: "I believed it would be proved, yes. But you make it sound as if my conviction mattered more to me than Sister Hugh's happiness does."

"If I did, I'm sorry. It's only that I can imagine that a woman might need such a conviction to keep her going in certain circumstances."

"Such as-?" Gillian parried.

"I think you know. Wasn't it something of the sort which made it reasonable for you to stand by your own fidelity when it must have appeared a hopeless cause?"

"You mean my fidelity to Colin?" She shook her head. "No. I had made up my mind to forgetting him."

"But when chance threw you together again, you were able to do what I asked of you out of that old loyalty? And with your fidelity only dormant, you could face all the limitations of Colin's problem and - go on from there?"

Gillian said: "I did what I could because you convinced me that I could help his recovery. But the understanding we have reached now doesn't owe anything to our romance of four years ago."

She was startled by Adrian's sudden movement - as of recoil. He said: "H'm - very cool! Just like that?

May I ask how willing a partner Colin is to this 'understanding' of yours? "

"He - accepts it. He knows that the feeling I once had for him is dead, but we have agreed that for the future our friendship is going to be enough." Pride and resentment were; stabbing through her as she added: "Colin owes you a great deal, Mr. Pilgrim. And I stood by my agreement with you as long as was necessary. But I think that you

need not concern yourself with our personal affairs any longer. From now on we can manage them for ourselves."

"You wouldn't allow you might be making a mistake?"

"I am not making any mistake -" (Nor am I - in rejecting Colin. Only in loving you without hope of your loving me in return, ran the secrecy of thought.)

She waited, expecting that he must concede she was capable of making her own decision in something so vital to her. Surely he owed her that?

But he said savagely: "I can only hope that you are not! That you won't have to regret - too late and all your life - that you didn't wait for real love to reawaken for you." He turned, took her roughly by the shoulders. "You have been in love - with Colin. You have experienced the God-given thing; you've travelled the heights, you've toiled through the depths. And if you've had the pain, you've had the blessed glory of it too. So how dare you - how dare you, I say? - deliberately turn your back upon the possibility of knowing it again?"

"For Colin I never shall -" she managed to break in upon the tirade. "We are both content that it should be so."

"Content!" he flung back at her. "It's a word that smells of autumn, along with 'settled' and 'acceptance' and the slow, thin blood of old age! It shouldn't have any present meaning for you, with all your life before you." His grip tightened, hurting her. "Look at me, Gillian Harlowe, and repeat - if you can - that you are really content with this arrangement you have made?"

She looked at him, saw his eyes blazing, accusing her, despising her. "I have no option," she murmured, still not understanding the violence of his anger. "It has just worked out that way."

"No option! Couldn't you wait? Couldn't you believe -?" Without warning his hands moved from her shoulders, travelled down the length of her arms, closed about her back in a sudden, desperate urgency.

Panting, her lips parted and dry, she tried to thrust back from him. But she could not stir within that iron, remorseless grip, and as he drew her closer her body was forced to take the line of his, the taut resistant curve of a bow drawn against his strength. She could hear his heart thudding in a tumult which shook them both. And then his mouth - hard, assertive, asking no tenderness, offering none - came down upon her parted lips.

The moment held, a seeming vacuum in time. Then he released her and she sprang back from him. Wide- eyed with humiliation, she faced him while her trembling hands smoothed the crushed fall of her skirts in a futile gesture of tidying-up.

She said: "That was despicable and - and cheap! And what an argument to use to force me back into an affection for another man which I shall never feel again! Or wasn't it even an argument, but just a piece of male opportunism because, however much you despise me for refusing to let you play Fate to my future, we happened to be here alone together, and you found the darkness kind?"

He drew himself up and away from her. "I wasn't trying to force you into anything. Nor was it a cheap bit of opportunism. It doesn't occur to you that it could have been -" he hesitated - "something a good deal more kindly?"

Her heart leapt in a wild hope. But then her mind's cruel eye recalled a look he had once turned upon Elspeth, and even seemed to see Elspeth, coolly sure of him, standing behind him, claiming him.

She said: "I think it could have been nothing that's possible - between you and me." As she turned away she was hating the weakness of the tears that stung behind her eyelids and ached in her throat.

CHAPTER X

ADRIAN followed her back to the ballroom, opening doors for her with punctilious courtesy, though not speaking. And at the door of the hall itself David Sheppey was hurrying down the corridor towards them, signalling that he wanted to speak to Gillian.

"Find Marnie for me, will you, Gillian, and tell her I've been called away?" he asked as they met. "What do you think has happened?" His glance included them both. "I've just been rung up from my digs. Robert Ingraine - Sister Hugh's fiancé - is waiting there for me now!"

"Oh -!" Gillian's long-drawn breath spoke of her infinite relief. And Adrian asked, "That was unexpected, wasn't it?"

"Entirely. I had no idea he was in England. But it could explain why there has been no sign from him until now. If he was already on his way home, he could have crossed with the outgoing mails, and our letters may have had to follow him back."

"Then you think he may really have come because of Sister Hugh, and not just to see you while he is on leave?" urged Gillian.

"My dear, how can I tell? My landlady rang me; I haven't spoken to him myself. But he wants to see me urgently, and there could hardly be any other reason why he should turn up as late as this at night and without warning. So I've every hope. I'll go along now and fill in the details for him, because he won't be able to see Sister Hugh tonight."

"If you'll get in touch when you've seen him, I'll have a word with her doctor, so that she'll be prepared," offered Adrian.

"Thanks. I'll do that. Any limit to the hour I may call you?"

"No limit. If you ring my home number, it will be put through, in case I'm still here."

"And I'll tell Marnie," promised Gillian, glad of the opportunity to leave Adrian in order to do so.

Why had he been so angry that she and Colin had agreed to be no more than friends? When, at the beginning of Colin's case, he had appealed to her not to break with him, he had said that he couldn't promise Colin the future. Why should he try to do so now? And why, when they were completely at odds, should he have shamed her with that utterly irrelevant kiss?

They were questions to which the true answers eluded her. And she shrank from the only explanation which occurred to her - that he could have thought she expected him to kiss her when she agreed to go out on to the balcony with him. It was possible, she supposed, that he saw her, not himself, as the snatcher of opportunity. And men, she knew, counted cheaply the taking and giving of such kisses. But - Adrian's kiss had been neither light nor meaningless. It had been ruthless, cruel - and it had scorned response. The memory of it stung and blistered in the mind.

She found Marnie in one of the side rooms, playing - and beating - Colin in a game of snooker.

Colin was saying grudgingly: "I didn't know a girl could tell one end of a billiard-cue from another!"

"I've got brothers, and I learnt the hard way - by being forcibly roped in to play when no one else was available!" laughed Marnie. "Oh - here's Gillian. Why don't you take her on? "

Gillian shook her head. "I couldn't give you a game. The only time I've ever handled a cue was at the age of five, when my efforts bid fair to scoop layers of baize from the table. Marnie, David asked me to tell you that he has been called back to his rooms - to see Sister Hugh's padre!"

"No?" breathed Marnie incredulously. "I thought he was supposed to be in India? Why hasn't he written? Come on, Gilly- tell!"

The three of them leaned companionably against the billiard-table and Gillian told all she knew, while Colin put in an interested question or two, as this was the first he had heard of the affair.

Marnie commented: "Well, that's Sister Hugh - that was! But twenty years -gosh, it's aeons I And suppose she thinks of herself - her looks and all that, I mean - as she was when they parted, and he doesn't see her like that at all?"

"He probably doesn't want her like that. I'm glad he's a padre. It must help him to understand and to - to tolerate more than other men," mused Gillian. And Colin added with unexpected wistfulness: "I wonder how often it happens - that a chap loves once and for ever? I've always needed a few comparisons to go by, myself. But it must be pretty good to be so sure that you don't need any."

"It's good to be loved like that too," said Marnie.

Gillian said nothing. What of the sureness which came too late?

The dance went on until the small hours and until the last diehards had drifted off the floor. When Gillian and Marnie were waiting outside for the slow file of cars to pick up their passengers and move on, she was acutely aware that Adrian's car was a little way down the line.

As it drew level he switched on the inside light, and Elspeth and Mts. Pilgrim rustled through the crowds on their way to join him. Momentarily he glanced up and caught Gillian's eye. She looked away at once, but as Colin arrived to say that he had managed to claim a taxi, Adrian was also at her side.

He said: "I thought you'd like to know that Sheppey has just rung up. We guessed rightly - Ingraine must have missed that mail by a couple of days, but he came at once to Sheppey as soon as the letters caught up with him - only this morning. I'm asking Dr. Marron to arrange for him to see Sister Hugh tomorrow. It looks as if the end of the story" - Adrian paused significantly - "should be all we hoped."

"Oh, I'm so glad -" Gillian forgot her embarrassment with him in the impulse of her relief. But as if he had despatched a necessary but distasteful task he turned to Colin.

"Are you coming back with us?" he asked.

"No." Colin's arm slipped into Gillian's. "I'm seeing Gill back, and I'll walk across to the house afterwards."

"All right." Adrian nodded, returned to his car and drove away.

The shadow of their genuine fears for Sister Hugh having lifted, on the short journey Marnie and Colin fell to making hilarious and irreverent plans for her future, Marnie designing her a wedding-gown of hospital-bed sheeting and Colin arranging a reception on the sun-balcony of Peterhead Ward.

Gillian listened only in a dream. She was thinking, That is what it will be like from now on - only the most necessary things said between us, and in as few curt words as need be. Can I go on working on Peterhead with him in such circumstances? I suppose pride ought to make it possible. But I don't believe I can -

As they parted Colin said to Marnie: "I suppose David will be coping with the padre and Sister Hugh tomorrow - I mean today, as it's past midnight. But is he free any time on Thursday, do you know?"

"I should think so. Why?"

"Well, Huntman's - at the garage - have that car I was looking at ready for demonstration now, and I'd like him to look it over with me if he would. I shouldn't be cutting across any option of yours on him if I asked him to meet meat Huntman's on Thursday, should I?"

"No, worse luck. I'm on duty all day. You can go ahead for me." But Marnie stood looking thoughtfully after Colin as he went away. "Does that mean he is thinking of buying that car, do you suppose?" she asked Gillian. "I thought he wasn't allowed to drive again yet?"

"He isn't. He knows that. But he is so much better that I think he probably enjoys fingering the possibility that he may be able to before long. Huntman's are only demonstrating the car, after all."

There were sandwiches and coffee awaiting the returning dancers, and they lingered in the rest-room, comparing notes about the evening until Home Sister, scandalised, drove them all to bed, saying that when not one of them was fit for their morning duty, it would be she who would be blamed by Matron.

So far as Gillian was concerned, the night seemed all too short - for a different reason. She told herself that it would be easier to meet Adrian on their professional terms than on any other. But even so, until she remembered that he usually operated all day on Wednesdays, she was dreading their meeting on the ward.

In her office she took over the night-report, then looked at the list of the day's discharges and saw the name of Outenard among them.

Of course! Papa Pierre was going out today. The ward was going to miss him sadly. Since he had been up and hobbling about he had become "Papa" to everyone, and he basked in the amused attention accorded to him by the other patients.

He still refused to learn or to speak more English than he need. To tireless efforts to instruct him he would shrug and twinkle: "Helas - I am too old! " Or to Gillian in French: "There is nothing which you English can say that we cannot say better in France. Our tongue is the language of food and of love. What could one want more? "

It was an opinion which he stoutly adhered to, for all Gillian's laughing protests. And certainly he could express all he wanted with a pouting lip, a roguish grin and a hitched shoulder which had a language all their own.

This morning he was ready early and had made his farewells to the ward when Gillian went to his room. She found him sitting by the window, his black beret and a pathetically small parcel of his belongings on his lap, watching for the taxi ordered by Mrs. Pilgrim to take him and little Marie home. Madame Rideau was already there, convalescing.

"I believe you are impatient to leave us!" teased Gillian.

"No, I am sad. One has known kindness here -" The impish grin broke through. "Now I understand that L'Entente Cordide is not a friendship of the politicians merely. It is of the people."

"Of course it is, Papa. And I should expect - and find - just as much kindness in France. Are you going back soon?"

"In the spring I shall go. I shall work in the fields for the planting and the tending and the harvest, you understand. And then in the autumn I shall come back with the sweet French onions which are round and warm in the hand and a good load to have upon one's back."

"You'll come to see us all, Papa Pierre?"

The keen old eyes twinkled. "I shall come. But - I think I may not see Soeur 'Arlowe in her white coif and her stiff linen skirts! "

"Why not, Papa? I shall be here." (Would she? Could she bear to be?)

He nodded. "Perhaps. But even the English can speak of love with the eye, ma soeur! And love conducts to marriage!"

"You think you have detected that I am in love, Papa?" she asked, humouring him.

"I think - But no. Papa Pierre shall keep in his foolish head what he thinks. At the time of the onion harvest we shall see whether he has been right - or wrong!"

At tea-time a call came through from the Private Wards asking Gillian to go and have tea with Sister Hugh.

"But she has had too much excitement. You must only stay a quarter of an hour," warned Private Ward Sister. "Afterwards, Harlowe, you're going to tell all you know of this secret romance of hers! Do you realise that this Mr. Ingraine plans to marry her as soon as he can get her to the church-? Can he realise what he's taking on?"

"I understand he has been waiting twenty years for the privilege!" laughed Gillian.

"I know. That's what everyone is saying - that it's a love-affair ages old. But do men really come as faithful as that any more?" queried Private Ward Sister in plaintive awe as she rang off.

A student nurse was pouring Sister Hugh's tea as Gillian arrived. She poured a cup for Gillian and went out, leaving them together.

Sister Hugh said: "You know - don't you?"

"I'm afraid everyone does by now, Sister Hugh. You know what hospital is - how news spreads like wildfire, and good news faster than most."

"And are my private affairs regarded as good news in the staff common-rooms?" Two spots of colour appeared on Sister Hugh's cheekbones, and there was a trace of her guarded reserve in her tone.

"Yes, they are," declared Gillian stoutly. "And everyone - everyone, I think - is glad for you."

"I believe that you may be, for I realise that I might have made a friend and a partner of you earlier if I had cared to. But the others whom I've deliberately shut out - people I've warded off, whose generosity I've never sought -"

"You don't have to seek generosity, Sister Hugh! People have it to give - or they have not. Do believe that there is a kind of belated overflow waiting for you! There will be the usual jokes, of course -"

"Jokes about me?" Behind her slight frown Sister Hugh did not look seriously annoyed.

"Yes. For instance, about how nobody supposed you would ever take time out from your work to consider getting married. Oh, dear -! " Gillian broke off in comical guilt. "Were we supposed to know that you are thinking of marrying Mr. Ingraine?"

"Well" - drily - "you seem to know it, don't you? You must tell me, of course, if there are any details you would like that I could supply!"

It was the first piece of sarcasm untinged by critical bitterness which Gillian had ever heard Sister Hugh utter. She smiled. "Perhaps it would do us good to be kept guessing for a while, Sister!"

"But I don't know that I want you kept guessing," retorted Sister Hugh surprisingly and with real vigour. "At the moment I feel that I should like to carol my happiness from the roof!" She paused, her eyes clouding. "Do you think I shall be able to - to make up to him for everything?"

"If he loves you, I think he won't even recall that you owe him anything. You'll both be giving and taking and sharing mutually." Gillian's time was up and she had to go. She rose and set down her cup upon the tray and then, upon an impulse, bent and kissed Sister Hugh lightly just below the line of the springing, luxuriant hair.

Sister Hugh flushed. "My dear -!" she began. But Gillian had turned away, betrayed by a sudden wave of longing for a fulfilment which Sister Hugh had come upon at last, but which had escaped her. She had spoken so confidently of generosity, yet it was a futile, destroying envy she was fighting as she went towards the door.

There she turned and looked back. From the bed Sister Hugh said: "My dear, I think you have been hurt by love too. But you will think-carefully, won't you, before you turn your back upon it completely for any lesser cause?"

There did not seem anything to reply.

Early the following afternoon Mrs. Pilgrim rang the ward, and to Gillian, answering the call, she said: "Gillian, I wonder if you can locate Adrian for me? He doesn't happen to be on Peterhead, I suppose?"

"No. He came in to a patient this morning, but I was at coffee and I haven't seen him today."

"Well, I want him rather urgently, if he is free. Elspeth's father has flown in unexpectedly from Baghdad. He has gone straight home - they live in Devon, you know - and he wants her to go back at once. She has to get to Paddington, of course; I have a long-standing appointment which I can't break, and Colin has gone off on some scheme with David Sheppey. I feel it is too discourteous to send her to Paddington alone, which is why Adrian must take her if he can be found and he isn't doing anything urgent. But I've tried the medical common-room and Theatre and Casualty Ward and now you -"

"What about the Path. Lab., Mrs. Pilgrim? I know they were preparing some slides that he was anxious to see. I could ring there for you, if you liked?"

"Do that. I'd be grateful. And perhaps you can find out better than I can whether Elspeth can - or ought to - wrest his attention from something under a microscope! Or no - I mustn't encroach on your time like that. Adrian would never forgive me. If you can get hold of him, just ask him to ring me, will you? "

Gillian replaced the receiver and dialled the Laboratory, reflecting that it was an exquisite irony which made her a messenger to Adrian for Elspeth's sake. But she was glad she had only the task of putting him in touch with his mother. She knew that she did not want to hear his reaction to the news of Elspeth's unexpected return home. Taken off his guard, he might reveal more than she could bear to know.

He and Elspeth had not yet satisfied the gossip of hospital with an announcement of their engagement. Had he already asked her to marry him? Or would her sudden recall turn an unspoken understanding into fact? They were questions which nagged. But she shrank from framing the blunt words into which even a question to Colin would have to be put; shrank even more from hearing the answer she dreaded in a certain inflection in Adrian's voice as he spoke Elspeth's name.

She found he was in the Path. Lab. and she gave her message to the student who answered the telephone. Then she returned to the ward, determined to shut her mind to the futility -of jealousy and to the stabbing cruelty of imagining the farewells between Adrian and Elspeth which would carry the promise of their future meetings.

The afternoon was quiet. As well as Papa Pierre, several other patients had taken their discharge yesterday, and now there were some temporarily vacant beds on the main ward and two of the side-wards were also empty. With Marnie's help she was able to catch up with a lot of work which had had to take second place when they were busy. They were surveying a newly- organised linen-room with some satisfaction when Nurse Christie came to say that a report on a patient which should have come up from the Casualty Ward had not arrived.

"Thanks, nurse. I'll ring them," promised Gillian. "And Nurse - if you haven't had your tea, go now, will you?" To Marnie she said: "I'll ring Casualty and wait for them to send up, while you go to tea as well, and I'll go afterwards."

"All right," Marnie agreed, but did not stir from her improvised seat on the edge of the lowest linen shelf. She nodded after Nurse Christie. "You know," she said judicially, "I believe that girl is really developing at last what Sister Tutor always called 'The makings of a nurse, Nurse!' "

Gillian laughed aloud at Marnie's mimicry of Sister Tutor's favourite admonition. "I hate to remember how often she said to me, 'You'll never have the makings of a nurse, Nurse' - and had me thinking I never would! But I agree about Christie. A few months ago she might have known that report hadn't come. But she would have been dumb about it until it was too late. It's odd, isn't it? For a time after they come from Prelim. Training they don't seem to have a clue to what they are doing or why they are doing it. And then something seems to

fall into place with a click, and then they are quite different. I suppose we were the despair of our ward Sisters and the staff nurses in our time too?"

"I daresay. But I think they - the Sisters and the 'staffs' have a lot to do with the timing of the 'click'.

Under Sister Hugh a nervous type like Christie hadn't a chance. With you she fairly blossomed."

They parted at the door of the linen-room, but Marnie had not yet gone to tea when Gillian went to find her after making an ineffectual telephone call to the Casualty Ward.

"Look in on your way down and collect that report, will you?" she asked. "I think they have just had a rash of cases brought in; I only got a bewildered junior on the line. She said Sister was too busy to come to the telephone, and I couldn't make her understand what I wanted. You needn't come straight back with it. Bring it on your way from tea."

But Marnie came straight back. Gillian had just left the main ward and was entering her office when Marnie came in at the outer doors, her cloak flying, her face white.

"Marnie! What's the matter? What's happened -?" Gillian drew her into the office, pulled out a chair and put her into it.

Marnie sank forward to rest her elbows on the table, pressing her fingers against each temple as she fought for control.

"They - they had just had a case in. Two cases," she muttered thickly. "Colin is one. And - David - is the other!"

"Colin and David?" echoed Gillian stupidly. "But what-? How-?"

"That car - the one at Huntman's. I haven't seen them, but the student nurse said Colin was driving it, and he overturned it a hundred yards from the hospital gates -"

"Colin was driving?"

"Yes. Colin was." Marnie slewed round to raise angry, ravaged eyes to Gillian's. "I thought you said he wasn't to, until he was a hundred per cent fit? "

"He knew he mustn't while there was still the faintest chance of that cramp returning -"

"But David didn't know it, and I daresay Colin was careful that Huntman's shouldn't. He's not just irresponsible, Gilly - he's wicked. And for involving David I'll never forgive him - never!"

"Hush, dear! There may be some explanation, some reason. A fault in the car perhaps -"

"You're defending him! How can you?" accused Marnie.

"I'm not defending him. I don't want to believe it of him, that's all. How - how badly hurt are they?"

"The junior didn't know, and Sister Bohun was with them. I didn't know what I was doing - I just raced back here. Oh, Gilly, if David is badly hurt, what shall I do?"

Without knowledge, words of comfort were futile. Gillian put an arm about the taut rigidity of Marnie's shoulders while her thoughts ranged over the alternatives they had to hope for - or to fear.

At last she managed: "If David is all right, he's sure to ring you soon."

"But I can't wait to know!"

"Of course you can't. I'll ring Casualty and try to get Sister Bohun. She'll understand."

But before Gillian could pick up the receiver the house telephone rang. At the other end of the line was Sister Bohun.

"Sister Harlowe? We're sending a patient up to Peterhead almost at once."

"One patient, Sister?"

"Yes. It's Mr. Fenmore. He has just turned over in a car, but he isn't seriously hurt. Some cuts about the face, and he is shocked. Call your houseman to him, will you?"

"Yes, of course. But just a minute, Sister... What about Mr. Sheppey? You see, I know about the accident. My 'staff', Nurse Chard, came down to Casualty on a message just after they were brought in, and she is engaged to Mr. Sheppey, you know. She was only able to see your junior, and she is terribly anxious about the padre."

There was a pause which seemed endless. Then: "Poor child," said Sister Bohun compassionately. "I'd have managed a moment for ,her if I'd known. But I'm without a 'staff' myself, and naturally the junior wouldn't understand. I'm afraid it's not too good about Mr. Sheppey. We are having to get him into the theatre as soon as he can be prepared for operation. Several ribs are crushed, at least one broken, and there's been internal haemorrhage with considerable loss. Is Chard still with you on the ward? "

"Yes. She's here now."

"Would you like me to speak to her?"

"No, I can tell her." That was the least that friendship owed to Marnie.

"All right. Be gentle about it, won't you? The worst needn't happen, and I promise she shall have news as soon as we've operated."

"Thank you, Sister." Gillian replaced the receiver and turned about, wondering how to be "gentle" with such news.

"What - what is it?" breathed Marnie, her lips quivering. "He's not-?"

Gillian reached for her hand and held it tightly. "No, but you've got to be brave, Marnie. David is injured - worse than Colin, who is being sent up here now. David has some broken ribs that have penetrated internally, and they're having to take him straight into the theatre for operation. That's all there is for the moment, but you heard me telling Sister about you, and she has promised you shall have news as soon as there is any."

"Oh, David-" Marnie's long-drawn breath was piteously eloquent. "Is it - very serious?"

Their eyes met levelly, and Gillian knew that she dared tell no less than the truth. She said: "I'm afraid it is, from what Sister said. But if David were anyone else - a patient in your care on the ward here - you wouldn't allow someone who loved him to believe the worst, would you? And neither must you."

Marnie shook her head. "It's no use. You're right, but - forgive me, Gilly - what you are saying sounds like just so many words. And I feel that, where David is concerned, the only way I could really get outside fear for him would be to be able to do something for him myself. And there's nothing I can do -"

"Nothing, Marnie - except to wait and hope. And nothing more difficult could be asked of you. Don't you think David would understand?"

Marnie nodded slowly and was silent before bracing herself to ask: "Who will be operating?"

"Sister didn't say."

"Not The Pilgrim?"

"I'm afraid not. Just after lunch I tracked him down in the Path Lab for Mrs Pilgrim. Elspeth Paul has been recalled home suddenly, and I think he'll have driven her to Paddington."

Marnie made a listless gesture. "Elspeth - always Elspeth! If it weren't for her, he might have been available to operate on David, and that would have been the one thing which would have helped me to bear it - to know that David was in his hands."

"You mustn't let that rankle, dear," protested Gillian. "Mr. Pilgrim would have operated only if he were on call to Casualty today."

"But if it weren't for Elspeth he might at least have wanted to be there. He's awfully fond of David, you know."

"Yes, I think he is. Meanwhile, Marnie, would you like to go off duty? I'd ring Matron and explain to her if you would?"

"Oh, no, I couldn't, Gilly! Don't send me!"

"Of course I won't, if you'd rather not go. Instead, would you take a student nurse and get one of the empty side-wards ready for David? Afterwards - when they've operated - he'll be transferred here, you know."

"Afterwards -?" Marnie's voice lifted and cracked upon the echoed word. But she moved obediently towards the door, pausing when she reached it. "We've got to be ready for Colin first," she said.

"Yes, but I'll see to that," Gillian assured her quickly.

"No." Marnie's voice was toneless but steady. "I'll do it. I'd like to. I mean - whatever happens to David, he'll have forgiven Colin even if it was Colin's fault. And I can't let David down by doing less, can I?"

Bless you for that - the most generous gesture you could make, thought Gillian tenderly when she had gone. There was nothing that Marnie didn't deserve or that she wouldn't do to help her if she could. But there was nothing. Everything that surgical skill could do for David would be done, and she knew Marnie realised that. But she also understood only too well the girl's longing to lean upon a particular skill which she had learned to trust implicitly. Adrian Pilgrim's, in fact. And chance had seen fit to withhold even that consolation from her.

Meanwhile, the work of the ward must go on, for that was the very measure of nursing - that the need for it never ceased. Gillian glanced at her watch, calculating that Nurse Christie should be back from tea and wondering if she could persuade Marnie that she ought to go for hers. Perhaps after Colin had been brought in.

The telephone rang again and she snatched the receiver eagerly. News about David so soon? Surely not, unless -

"This is Casualty again," came Sister Bohun's brisk voice. "Listen, how are you placed on Peterhead - for staff, I mean? Have you had to send Chard off duty? "

"No, she wouldn't go. Why?"

"Because Theatre has no first assistant for the operation on the padre. Mr. Paignton is operating, with Dr. Dundrear as anaesthetist. I can't go myself because I've no staff nurse to help me, as I told you, and Matron has suggested that you should be there, if you can be spared, as you have more recent theatre experience than anyone. Can you leave Nurse Chard in the circumstances?"

"I'm sure I can. She is being very brave, and it is probably just what she needs," replied Gillian.

"Good. Then come down and get scrubbed up at once, will you? They'll be ready within a quarter of an hour."

"I'll be there," promised Gillian, adding a little hesitantly, "I suppose Mr. Pilgrim hasn't heard about the accident yet?"

"Not from us, I'm afraid. It's a pity, because Mr. Paignton would have liked him to be present. But we rang his house - because of Mr. Fenmore, you see - and though his housekeeper said the police had already been and had left a message about it for him, he was out and she didn't know when he would be back. I suppose he'll come over to hospital as soon as he does hear. But of course Mr. Paignton can't wait for that."

"No, of course not -" That was the last hope gone. As Gillian turned from the telephone Marnie came in. "They've sent Colin up, Gilly - Oh, was that Casualty again? With news?"

Gillian shook her head. "Not really. They haven't got him ready for Theatre yet. Mr. Paignton will operate, and that was Sister asking me to go to help."

"With the operation? Oh, Gilly, that's the one thing I could have asked, next to having The Pilgrim operate!"

"It's the one thing I could have wanted to do - for you," said Gillian softly. "Look, dear, I must go now. How is Colin?"

"Excited and too talkative, but he is to have a sedative they ordered for him in Casualty. I'm so thankful, Gilly. I was trying not to be bitter, as you know. But I was dreading seeing him until I found he wasn't to blame after all - at least, not for the accident. The steering of the car failed completely, it seems, and there was nothing he could have been expected to do, though naturally he is searching for all the things he might have done. He is blaming himself terribly about David. The first thing he said and went on repeating was that he has finished with driving racing cars for good -"

Gillian smiled sceptically. "I'd find that hard to believe," she said.

"I know. Probably it's only his reaction to the shock. But David did tell me some time ago that he thought Colin was coming round to the idea that his real future lay in design, not in actual racing at all. And there's an opening waiting for him with one of the big firms. Perhaps all this could clinch things for him. - But oughtn't you to be going, Gilly?"

Gillian went thankfully. As she had told Marnie, this was indeed as much as she could have asked - to have the chance to give such skill and faith in duty as she possessed to help David - for Marnie's sake.

The quickest way to the Casualty Ward on reaching the ground floor was to go out through a side door and across the courtyard where the surgeons' cars and the ambulances pulled in. There was a direct entrance to Casualty Theatre from there, and Gillian had just reached the doorway when a car - Adrian's car - swept up beside her.

A relief, a gratitude that was in way for herself flooded over her. Marnie, David, even his own colleague needed him - and he was

here! It was only she who had to blush at the memory of their last encounter; only she who had to learn to forget....

At sight of him she had hesitated a second too long. In a single bound he was up the short flight of steps, his hand above hers on the swing door.

"What are you doing here?" he demanded, his voice harsh.

"I've been detailed to help at the operation. You've heard about the accident?"

"Yes - from the police. They brought Colin's wallet to the house and left a message with Anna. Casualty rang too, I believe, before I got back. But why are you detailed for this particular job? May I ask who was callous or misguided enough to order that?"

Not understanding his concern she replied evenly:' "Theatre Sister needed an assistant with my recent experience of theatre work -"

"You volunteered then?"

"No. The order came from Matron. I couldn't question it, of course. Not that I wanted to. Why should I?"

He looked at her oddly, analytically. He said: "Well, it's something I shouldn't have cared to ask of you myself in the circumstances. I'd even question the wisdom of it, with all respect to Matron. You can hardly give your professional best when the issue is as deeply personal as this must be to you."

She stared at him. "This operation? Personal to me, Mr. Pilgrim?"

"Surely? You must know what I mean. You've laid certain plans for your future, and now today's evil chance may have put them in

jeopardy. If Colin shouldn't recover, you are going to be cheated of this platonic, loveless marriage you are contemplating, aren't you?"

The very blood seemed to drain from Gillian's heart. He must believe for some reason that it was Colin, not David, who was in danger! And he was speaking as if she had never convinced him that there was no question of her marrying Colin! Bewilderedly she broke in: "You don't understand! Colin isn't -"

He cut her short by pushing open the door and ushering her in ahead of him. "All right," he said. "I know I've already overspent my right to interfere. When I originally asked your help with him you were prepared to do the letter of your duty to him. You are doing it today with a courage of sorts, and if you are able to marry him I think you'll honour your bargain and do it for the rest of your life. Only remember, won't you, that in marriage duty - without love - can rarely be enough?"

He strode away and she did not see him again until, gowned and masked, he entered the operating theatre with Mr. Paignton, who would operate. They stood in subdued consultation at the operating-table while the anaesthetist took up his position and Gillian did a last check of the sterilised instruments beneath her hand.

"Ready, Sister Harlowe?" Theatre Sister's voice was muffled by her mask.

"Quite ready, Sister." Gillian took courage to steal a glance at Adrian, knowing that he must have learned by now the truth of who the patient was. But he was not looking at her. Without a muscle moving in hand or body he was watching David - already under the effects of the ante-operation drug - being wheeled across the floor.

He stood so until David had been transferred to the table within the pitiless circle of the arc-lights. Then, while Mr. Paignton spoke to

Sister and asked a question of Dr. Dundrear, he looked deliberately at Gillian.

Above their masks, across David's unconscious body, their eyes met and held for a long moment. In Adrian's there was a humility Gillian had never seen there before. But there was an unspoken promise too.

The operation was swift and successful, and when David had been returned to the ward - and into Marnie's care - the surgeons and Sister left the theatre, leaving Gillian to superintend the counting of swabs and the return of the instruments to the steriliser.

Somehow she had known Adrian would still be there when she returned to the ante-room. As a junior untied the strings of her gown for her he came up to her.

Without preliminary he said: "I owe you some explanations. Will you dine with me at my house tonight? My mother is out and, except for Anna, I shall be alone."

The junior nurse gasped and subjected Gillian's back to a gaze of round-eyed awe as she accepted. What a titbit with which to regale the junior table at supper - Mr. Pilgrim asking Sister Harlowe to have dinner with him alone, and Sister Harlowe saying: Yes, she would -just like that!

Gillian asked: "What time will you expect me?" She was not even surprised - just impelled by a sense of the inevitable when he replied: "At any time after you go off duty. I shall be waiting."

Formal words enough. For some reason he still believed she was going to marry Colin, and nothing had changed between them. Why then should she sense a new climate of understanding behind the

formality, even that he might be as aware of it as she? It was as if they knew they were upon the brink of an adventure - adventure towards each other, whatever discovery it might hold.

When she walked across the grounds to his house later there was a slip of moon to pale the sky, and though the nigh}: air was still cold, even that was different. There were new scents on the wind. The spring that Marnie had despaired of and that would take Papa Pierre back to France was already on the way.

Adrian was waiting for her as he had promised. The green baize door to Anna's kitchen quarters was firmly closed and a meal had been laid ready for them on a side-table in the lounge.

He indicated it. "Do you want to eat now?"

She shook her head. "Not yet."

"A drink? Sherry? A cigarette? "

"No, thank you." Inexplicably she knew he was sharing her shyness.

They stood facing each other in the leaping firelight until Adrian took both her hands in his. "I said some unforgivable things to you this afternoon," he said.

"You must have believed them justified."

"They weren't - by any standards. It began by my trying to play, for you and Colin, the role of Fate that Sheppey saw the danger of playing for Sister Hugh. But I should have known that I have no conceivable right to judge what you do with your life."

"From what you said this afternoon - and the other night - you implied you believed you knew what I mean to do with it?"

He dropped her hands and pulled forward a chair for her, while he stood above her, looking down at her.

"Until this afternoon I thought I knew. Until you looked at me across the operating-table I'd have sworn every hard thought I had about you was justified - even though I knew by then that the concern I'd reviled you for had been for Sheppey, not for Colin at all. That was a genuine mistake -"

"How did you come to make it?" (But did it really matter?)

"How? Oh - that. Well, I'd had only Anna's version of the message the police left for me. It said that the driver of the car had escaped almost unhurt, that it was the passenger who was seriously injured. I thought that meant Colin. It never entered my head that he would have been criminal fool enough to drive, against his unwritten bond with me that he wouldn't attempt to yet."

"I think conscience is making him suffer for it, even though the actual accident wasn't his fault."

"So it ought. I thought his friendship for Sheppey meant more to him. But that's how I came to accuse you as I did."

"And since then?" prompted Gillian.

"Since - and I confess that even in the theatre I had a corner of my mind on this - since, I've been, trying to play back on a kind of mental recording machine everything that made me believe the worst of you, hoping, praying almost, that I needn't. Gillian - what did you really mean when you told me you'd reached an understanding with Colin?"

"Why, just that we have agreed to be friends, that's all."

"Not that you are going to marry him on that basis - on a sort of bloodless agreement of convenience?"

Her eyes widened. "You really thought that?"

Adrian's laugh was suddenly exultant. "Now I'm wondering how I did! But Colin had said he needed his money because you were impatient to get married; Elspeth had told me you were making my release of his capital a condition of your marrying him. I was so sickened that I couldn't discuss it with him after that. I just put the thing in train without more ado."

"You could have asked me."

"I did - a couple of nights ago. And believed I had your confirmation of it. Everything you said might have been taken as you meant it, but on the top of the rest it had only one appearance to me - that you were rushing into marriage with a man for whom, you admitted quite cynically, you had no feeling left. I would rather by far have heard that you had rediscovered your old romance with him. I was furiously angry with you. Do you know why I felt I had the right to anger? Or guess why, when argument had seemed to fail with you, I took you in my arms?"

"That" - she raised her eyes to his - "seemed the supreme irrelevance of the whole issue. You kissed me. But you did it - hatefully. You weren't being merely flirtatious, and there was no - affection or kindliness behind it."

Adrian threw back his head despairingly. "Affection! My whole raging, frustrated soul was in it! I'd begged you to wait, to believe that you need not throw yourself away in a loveless marriage, and at that mad moment I craved to make my own passion convince you, if nothing else would. I love you, Gillian. I should have said so months ago, even if it did cut across what I saw as my duty to Colin. For I

knew - very soon after I believed he had reclaimed you. Do you remember the night I took you to the theatre? I made Marnie's fountain-pen the excuse for coming back to the ward, but I calculated you would still be on duty. That night I really felt I'd begun to feel my way towards you. And yet before we parted - after I'd brought you back here - something had happened. A thread we'd stretched between us had snapped -"

Gillian moistened her dry lips. "Elspeth had said that you had asked me to go out with you only from pique that she couldn't. She was so sure of you, and she said she knew just how to make you jealous."

"Sure of me? Elspeth - that despoiler! When we were discussing the play, I tried to make its situation - the older man, the younger girl - say something to you for me. And you used that word with a distaste I couldn't forget. If only I'd known then what a despoiler Elspeth already was, and might have the power to be!"

"When we were discussing the play," echoed Gillian, "you were looking at her as I'd never seen you look at any woman -"

"If I was, it was only because I dared not look at you - when I had no hope of you. But now I've told you that I love you. Have you nothing to say to that?"

He drew her to her feet and read her answer in her eyes, in the very way her body curved to his as his arms went about her. With his lips against her hair he murmured: "'Thy husband is thy lord, thy life, thy keeper; thy head, thy sov'reign; one that cares for thee.' Do you remember my quoting that at you? And, like Katharina, are you really content, my sweet, to have it so?"

"More than content, Adrian. It's all that my life could ask -"

Newly quick with the awareness of being loved where she had given her love, even time seemed to pulse with a rich generosity now. There was time for quietude in Adrian's arms, time for exchanging the shy jokes of lovers, time to explore his mind, time to reveal the withdrawn secrets of hers. Time in which to be willing to wait for the blessed ecstasy that marriage would bring. Time even for the exciting, practical plans for how and when and where-

Suddenly, in a pause in their murmured talk, she laughed. "I forgot! I'm to be married before the onion harvest!"

"Before the onion harvest? What on earth -?"

"Papa Pierre expects it. He had guessed I was in love, and he said, 'Love conducts to marriage' - though he couldn't have suspected to whom!"

Adrian chuckled. "Didn't he though! Once, when you left me with him, he jerked his thumb after you and said - in English, which was handsome of him - 'For you, it is love - is it not?' "

"And what did you say?" asked Gillian, her eyes dancing.

Adrian flicked a finger beneath the tip of her nose. "Greedy! I said, 'It is, Papa Pierre. It is.' And it was -"

His kiss, in sweet, eternal pledge, confirmed it.