“Then Nurse Quayle sees nothing of your sister now? That's the pity of the life she is leading, poor girl! No friends, no future----” “It wasn' that, brother.” “What then?” “The nurse was not there.” A silence followed, and then John said in another voice: “I suppose she was on a holiday. It was very stupid of me; I didn't think of that. Twice a year a hospital nurse is entitled to a week's holiday, and no doubt----” “But she was gone.” “Gone? You mean left the hospital?” “Yes.” “Well,” in a husky voice, “that isn't to be wondered at either. A high-spirited girl finds it hard to be bound down to rule and regulation. But the porter--he is an intelligent man--he would tell you where she had gone to.” “I asked him; he didn't know. All he could say was that she left the hospital on the morning of Lord Mayor's Show-day.” “That would be the 9th of November--the day we took our vows.” There was another pause; the big dark eyes were wandering vacantly. “After all, he is only a porter; you asked for the matron, didn't you?” “Yes; I thought she might know what had become of my sister. But she didn't. As for Nurse Quayle, she had been dismissed also, and nobody knew anything about her.” John had seated himself at Paul's side and the form itself was quivering. “Now that's just like her,” he said hoarsely. “That matron was always a hard woman. And to think that in that great house of love and pity nobody----” “I'm forgetting something, brother.” “What is it?” “The porter told me that the nurse called for her letters from time to time. She had been there that night--not half an hour before.” “Then you followed her, didn't you? You asked which, way she had gone, and you hurried after her?” “Yes; but half an hour in London is a week anywhere else. Let anybody cross the street and she is lost--more lost to sight than a ship in a storm on the ocean. And then it was New Year's Eve, and the thoroughfares were crowded, and thousands of women were coming and going--and--what could I do?” he said helplessly. John answered scornfully: “What could you do? Do you ask me what you could do?” “What would you have done?” “I should have tramped every street in London and looked into the face of every woman I met until I had found her. I should have worn my shoes to the welt and my skin to the bone before I should have come crawling home like a snail with my shell broken over my head!