She used a phraseology which was new to me: "Individualism," "self-expression," "expansion of personality." She spoke of life as a crusade against the tyrannies of prejudice and conventions. Her viewpoint was biologic. All evolutionary progress was based on variations from the type. Efforts to sustain or conserve the type she called "reactionary" and "invasive." She insisted on the desirability of "absolute freedom to vary from the norm." The authority she quoted with greatest reverence was Spencer. This conversation, much of which I did not understand, showed me clearly one thing—a soul seeking passionately for truth. That she told me was her ideal as it had been the war-cry of Bakounine. "_Je suis un chercheur passionné de la Vérité_." When any reference was made to my manner of life, she flared up. It was—and this was her worst denunciation—unnatural. "I believe in individualism, egoism," she said. "But not in isolation. Man is naturally as gregarious as the ant. An ant that lived alone would be a non-ant. You’ve been a non-man. It’s good your eyes went back on you—if it teaches you sense. Intercourse with one’s kind is a necessary food of human life." And while it was a God-send for me to find someone to talk to, it must have been also a pleasure for her. The stories she told me about the other patients showed that their relations to nurses were barren enough—when not actually insulting. After listening by the hour to Mrs. Stickney’s endless little troubles, it was a relief for her, I think, to come to my room and talk of the things which interested her violently. She gave more and more time to me. During the third week, when she was again on day duty, she read me Lecky’s "History of European Morals." *III* It is hard to write about the next week. I can no longer see it as it must have looked in those days. I cannot tell the "why" of it. It was. There was immense loneliness—and fear. The few hundred dollars I had saved for studying in Oxford would pay the doctor’s bill and keep me for some months. But what was there beyond, if my eyes did not come back? At best the chances were only even. In any case the one trade I knew was gone. A bookworm with weak eyes is a sorry thing. Of course I might have gone home. But I have never had much respect for the Prodigal Son. He must have been a poor spirited chap. Well, in my utmost misery, Ann comforted me—as women have comforted men since the world began. In some inexplicable way, for some inexplicable causes, she loved me. I try to arrange my memories of those days in orderly sequence. But it is all a blur. Day by day my need grew and day by day she met the need. The patients in that hospital did not require much attention, except in the day. Most of them slept well. They rarely rang for her after midnight. She gave me more and more of her time.