Carlotta had gone by that time--gone with hate in her heart and black despair. She knew very well what the issue would be. Sidney would drive with him, and he would tell her how lovely she looked with the air on her face and the snow about her. The jerky motion of the little sleigh would throw them close together. How well she knew it all! He would touch Sidney's hand daringly and smile in her eyes. That was his method: to play at love-making like an audacious boy, until quite suddenly the cloak dropped and the danger was there. The Christmas excitement had not died out in the ward when Carlotta went back to it. On each bedside table was an orange, and beside it a pair of woolen gloves and a folded white handkerchief. There were sprays of holly scattered about, too, and the after-dinner content of roast turkey and ice-cream. The lame girl who played the violin limped down the corridor into the ward. She was greeted with silence, that truest tribute, and with the instant composing of the restless ward to peace. She was pretty in a young, pathetic way, and because to her Christmas was a festival and meant hope and the promise of the young Lord, she played cheerful things. The ward sat up, remembered that it was not the Sabbath, smiled across from bed to bed. The probationer, whose name was Wardwell, was a tall, lean girl with a long, pointed nose. She kept up a running accompaniment of small talk to the music. “Last Christmas,” she said plaintively, “we went out into the country in a hay-wagon and had a real time. I don't know what I am here for, anyhow. I am a fool.” “Undoubtedly,” said Carlotta. “Turkey and goose, mince pie and pumpkin pie, four kinds of cake; that's the sort of spread we have up in our part of the world. When I think of what I sat down to to-day--!” She had a profound respect for Carlotta, and her motto in the hospital differed from Sidney's in that it was to placate her superiors, while Sidney's had been to care for her patients. Seeing Carlotta bored, she ventured a little gossip. She had idly glued the label of a medicine bottle on the back of her hand, and was scratching a skull and cross-bones on it. “I wonder if you have noticed something,” she said, eyes on the label. “I have noticed that the three-o'clock medicines are not given,” said Carlotta sharply; and Miss Wardwell, still labeled and adorned, made the rounds of the ward. When she came back she was sulky. “I'm no gossip,” she said, putting the tray on the table. “If you won't see, you won't. That Rosenfeld boy is crying.” As it was not required that tears be recorded on the record, Carlotta paid no attention to this. “What won't I see?” It required a little urging now. Miss Wardwell swelled with importance and let her superior ask her twice. Then:-- “Dr. Wilson's crazy about Miss Page.” A hand seemed to catch Carlotta's heart and hold it. “They're old friends.”