She ran down twice to Folkestone during the following week. Her visits made her mind easier. Mrs. Phillips seemed so placid, so contented. There was no suggestion of suffering, either mental or physical. “Quick,” said the doctor. He pushed her in front of him, and she almost fell down a flight of mud-covered steps that led into the earth. She found herself in a long, low gallery, lighted by a dim oil lamp, suspended from the blackened roof. A shelf ran along one side of it, covered with straw. Three men lay there. The straw was soaked with their blood. They had been brought in the night before by the stretcher-bearers. A young surgeon was rearranging their splints and bandages, and redressing their wounds. They would lie there for another hour or so, and then start for their twenty kilometre drive over shell-ridden roads to one or another of the great hospitals at the base. While she was there, two more cases were brought in. The doctor gave but a glance at the first one and then made a sign; and the bearers passed on with him to the further end of the gallery. He seemed to understand, for he gave a low, despairing cry and the tears sprang to his eyes. He was but a boy. The other had a foot torn off. One of the orderlies gave him two round pieces of wood to hold in his hands while the young surgeon cut away the hanging flesh and bound up the stump.!

“I was so afraid you would not be back before I went,” said the child. “I ought to have gone this afternoon, but Papa let me stay till the evening.” “I want to give you something quite expensive, Dad,” she said. “I’ve had my eye on it for years.”

“Don’t you see it for yourself?” he demanded. Mrs. Phillips acquiesced. “It’s turning me into a lazy-bones,” she said with a smile. “I can sit here by the hour, just watching the bustle. I was always one for a bit of life.” Guests with other engagements were taking their leave. A piquante little woman, outrageously but effectively dressed—she looked like a drawing by Beardsley—drew her aside. “I’ve always wished I were a man,” she said. “It seemed to me that they had all the power. From this afternoon, I shall be proud of belonging to the governing sex.”