Then a film passed over her eyes, and when it lifted the blind was drawn in front of the window and one of the electric lights by the fireplace was glowing.... There was a different person in the room with her: a thin, red-lipped, white-faced woman in nurse’s uniform: she also was rocking herself in front of the fire, and reading a paper-backed novel by Charles Garvice. Catherine watched her for a long while, and she did not move save to turn over the pages. She had brown hair and a mole on her right cheek. She was wearing Catherine’s bedroom slippers. That curiously trivial thing annoyed Catherine intensely. All at once Catherine reached out a hand from beneath the clothes and pressed the electric light switch that dangled above the pillow. Three clusters of light in various parts of the room burst into yellow brilliance. The nurse started violently, put down her book and approached the bedside. “Good evening ...” she began softly, and pressed back the switch so that the lights disappeared. Catherine felt herself burning with suppressed fury. What right had this strange woman to turn out the lights if _she_ wished them to be lit? What right had she? Who was mistress in her own house? With trembling fingers she reached again for the switch and pressed it. The lights reappeared. She kept her fingers tightly clasped round the switch. But a cold hand laid itself on the top of hers and she had to leave go. Then she saw the nurse take the switch and hang it over the top of a picture far out of anybody’s reach, unless a chair were used to stand on.... She lay there on the bed, panting with indignation. She had been insulted, deliberately, calculatingly, and in her own house.... And the nurse went back to the fireplace and resumed the paper-backed novel by Charles Garvice.... § 3 Dr. McPherson was standing beneath the single electric globe that was in use. Beside him, on a level with his shoulder, stood the nurse. In his hand he held a portion of newspaper, crumpled and partially torn. He said: “H’m, yes. Very possibly.... Are you certain she read it?” The nurse said: “I think she must have done. It was lying on the floor as if she had thrown it down....” And the doctor’s voice boomed back: “H’m, yes. Very pathetic.... But of course her illness accounts for her bad performance. She ought to have realized that....” Catherine’s heart gave a sudden leap. Of course! That was it! Why had she not thought of that before? She was _ill_. That accounted for her bad playing, the nurse, the doctor, everything.... When she recovered she would be able to play again all right! Of course! What a fool she had been! This was only illness ... illness. She began to cry for joy at this new hope that had sprung up in her heart.... § 4 Somebody (it looked like her father) was saying: “--if you want friends, let them be girl friends.... Surely you can find plenty of your own sex without----”