"Pretty bad," answered the nurse. The patient had been admitted the previous day, and she had watched by him through the night. "He was awake till three, and very restless." "You repeated at three the dose I ordered?" "Yes. He has lain like this since. When he wakes is he to have it again?" "H'm!" said the doctor, deliberating, his eyes on the patient's face. "We will, I think, halve the dose. We mustn't overdo it; he seems susceptible to the drug." He lifted his eyes from the unconscious face of the patient to the weary face of the nurse, and, as if struck by what he saw there, studied it with attention. "You are more than usually tired this morning, sister," he said. "You must go at once to bed when I leave." "It is always difficult for me to sleep in the daytime. I shall not sleep to-day," she said. "But you are tired?" "Dead tired." The doctor observed her in a minute's silence. Her fine, almost regal form, at which few men looked and turned away, drooped a little this morning, seemed--but that was impossible--to have faded and shrunk since yesterday. There was, however, no sinking of the white eyelids over the pale blue eyes which, set in her darkly tinted face, were a surprise and a joy to the beholder. The eyelids were reddened now, and held wide apart, the eyes shining with a dry feverishness painful to see. "If you go on night-duty and do not sleep in the day you will be ill," said the doctor, gently. "Not I," said the nurse, roughly. He was not, perhaps, sorry to miss in that handsome woman the show of extreme deference with which it was usual for the nurses to treat the doctors, but her brusqueness a little surprised him. Imagining that she resented the personal note, he turned, after a minute's quiet perusal of her face, to the patient. Having given briefly his directions for his treatment and moved away, he stopped, looking at him for a minute still. "His friends been communicated with?" he asked. She shook her head. "By the look of him should you think he has got any friends who would care to hear?" she enquired. Pityingly the doctor threw up his head. "Poor wretch!" he sighed. "What is his history, I wonder!" To which Sister Marion made no reply. For she knew. * * * * * For the rest of the day she would be off duty. As a rule she took a brisk walk through the suburban town, passed the rows upon rows of neat little one-patterned houses, the fine, scattered villa-residences, with their spotless gardens, reached the common where the goats and the donkeys were tethered, the geese screamed with stretched necks, the children rolled and played. Plenty of good air there to fill lungs atrophied by long night hours in the sick atmosphere of the wards. Then, at a swinging pace home again to her welcome bed and a few hours' well-earned sleep.