“It’s funny,” said he, “that you’re the only human being I should know in the world.” Her intuition skipped the gap of demonstration of so extraordinary a pronouncement, and followed his flight into the Unknown. “It might be luck for you,” she said. He smiled wistfully on her. “Why?” He hung on her answer which she took some time to give. In the lines on the pallid face, in the dull blue eyes of this sphinx-like woman so correct in her negative attire of black coat and skirt and black hat with just a redeeming touch of white, and on the thin, compressed lips, his sick man’s brain seemed to read his destiny. She hovered over him, impressive, baffling, ever about-to-be oracular. Combined with her mystery existed the strange fact that she was his sole link with the world, not only the great humming universe of thought and action, but the inner spiritual world in which Olivia reigned. He regarded her with superstitious dread and reverence; conscious all the time of the comedy of so regarding the woman whose duty had been to fold up his trousers and set out his underclothes on the hot rail of the bathroom. “What are you going to do when you leave?” she asked, and he guessed a purpose behind her question. “I must hide until I am strong enough to take up active life again.” “Where will you hide?” He didn’t know. He had not thought—so remote did the date of his discharge appear. It must be some secluded, man-forgotten spot. “If the worst comes to the worst and you need a place where you’ll be looked after, I’ll give you an address of friends of mine,” said Myra. “You’ll, maybe, spend the rest of your life on crutches, and have all sorts of things wrong inside you. I shouldn’t like you to feel I was abandoning you. If you were broken down and needed help, I suppose you wouldn’t write to me, would you?” “I most certainly shouldn’t,” said Triona. “I thought so,” said Myra. “In that case I’d better give you the address.” She scribbled it on the writing pad by his bedside. “There. Take it or leave it. It’s the best I can do.” She left him with an abrupt “Good day, sir,” and took the next train back to Medlow. “You haven’t had a long holiday, Myra,” Olivia remarked when she arrived. “I didn’t say I was going on a holiday.” “I hope things were all right.” “As right as they ever can be,” replied Myra. The weary weeks of convalescence dragged themselves out. Myra did not come again; and of course he had no other visitor. He made casual acquaintances in the ward; here and there an ex-soldier with whom he could exchange reminiscences of warfare.