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at pleasing him had failed. “Thank God I didn’t do the dance,” she thought as she dived between the swing doors of the operating theatre. “He wouldn’t have liked it. He’d only have laughed.” The cold sweat broke out on her forehead at the thought of her madness in ever having supposed that it would impress him. If it had been Frederica Linley, now—but she knew that Frederica would never for a moment have considered so demeaning herself. Anyway, he was not with her this evening. Linley had gone back to her ward and Gervase was strolling across the circular hall with Woods. Woods was forty if she was a day, and she had a face like the back of a cab. “Forceps, retractors, scissors, knives,” muttered Sister Bates, checking over instruments in the hot, bright, green-and-silver security of her own domain; “forceps, retractors, scissors, knives. But Woods has marvellous legs!” Outside, the guns thundered and rolled, there was the scream of a bomb and the occasional noisy rattle of machine-gun fire; even down here, twenty feet below ground, the room shook with the crash of every gun. “I wonder what he’s saying to Woods,” thought Bates, automatically separating the jingling instruments. “I wonder if she’s still in the hall with him. I think I’ll just slip up and see …”
    Frederica had gone back to her ward with Esther who happened to be on day duty there. “I’ll stay and give you a hand,” said Esther. “There are two empty beds and they’re sure to fill them up with casualties. It’s already as much as one person can manage in here, now that we’re so short of orderlies.”
    The relieving V.A.D. was glad to see them. “The Orderly Officer hasn’t made his round yet, Linley. Sister says when he comes will you ask him for some morphia for the two hernias and the appendix that were done to-day, and to say can he give you something for the asthma in number seven. She’s gone down to St. Cat’s ward.”
    â€œOh, all right; thank you, Jones. I’ll tell him.”
    â€œBlast these air-raids,” said Jones cheerfully, struggling into her ugly blue outdoor coat for her dash across the grounds to the safety of her shelter. “They keep the men awake.”
    The ward was on the ground floor, opposite the main operating theatre; a long, high room, the tall windows now blacked out for the night; fifteen beds were ranged down each side, with an aisle down the centre, its narrow tables denuded of their bowls of flowers. The open lockers were tidily packed with the little miscellaneous possessions of the men; on the lower shelves their uniforms were folded into precise, square bundles and their overcoats and caps hung on hooks at the bed-heads. A corner of the ward, near the door, had been partitioned off into a small square ‘bunk’ for the sister, furnished with a desk and some chairs; here notes were kept, reports written up, discussions held with the medical officers, endless cups of tea consumed, and a good deal of more or less surreptitious entertainment carried on. A large pane of glass had been let into the side facing the ward, so that all that went on there could be seen from the bunk. It frequently escaped the attention of the occupants that, especially when the light was on in the bunk, everything that went on there could be seen from the ward.
    The air-raid was becoming very heavy. The droning of aeroplanes overhead was incessant, and the building shook and shuddered with the thundering of the guns in the neighbouring fields, and now and again with the sickening thud of a bomb. The men moved uneasily in their beds and made foolish, defiant little jokes. “Cor that was a near one! Nearly scraped me ’air off, that one did! They’ve ’eard about the pudding we ’ad to-day, nurse, and they’re trying to kill the cook!” The hospital humorist