I wondered about the doctor. How had she been brought to have someone tending me who did not call himself a Healer, yet who I felt might well have cured any malady but mine? She had forbidden the nurse to talk to me about my sister, so that I was the more surprised the day Mrs. Harborough spoke of Betty of her own accord. "If you will try to get strong," she said, "I will tell you what has been done to find her. And when you are really well I will do all that any one woman can to help." So we talked a little--just a little now and then, about the things I thought of endlessly. And not vaguely either. She saw how vagueness maddened me. We faced things. How she had misunderstood my mother. That could never be made up now. My mother never knew why we were not with her, nor even that we were not there. Consciousness had never come back to her. I heard of all that Eric had done, and that his was the last face she knew. He had stayed with her all that night, to the end. There were letters for me from him. Soon, now, I should have my letters. He had been many times to ask about me. About _me_! What was he doing about.... But no, that was for me alone. Up and down the streets I should go, looking into the eyes of outcasts under city lamps--looking for the eyes I knew. Nor could I wait till I was well. Night by night I went upon the quest. Catching distant glimpses of Bettina in my dreams, struggling to reach her, for ever losing her in the turmoil of streets and the roar of stations, till the thought of Bettina was merged in overmastering terror of the noise and evil which was London. The moment I was a little better they tried to get me to sleep without an opiate. The doctor made so great a point of this, I did all in my power not to disappoint him, and for no reason in the world but that something in his voice reminded me of Eric--just a little. Nobody knew how much of the time, behind closed eyes, my mind was broad awake.... Oh, the London nights!--airless, endless. And the anguish of those haunted hours before dawn. My country ears, so used to silence or the note of birds, strained to interpret London sounds before break of day. Hardly any honest, individual voices, and yet no moment quiet. Incessantly the distant rumbling of ... _something_. I could never tell what. It was the roar of London streets by day, attenuated, held at bay, but never conquered--the bustle and clang muffled in the huge blanket of the night. The strongest impression about it was just of the vague, unverifiable thing being _there_--an enemy breathing in the dark. Sometimes it started up with a rattle of chains. "Mail-carts," said the nurse.