When Janet had taken her departure Claire looked at the clock and found that it was time to start for the hospital.  She went out of the station, and, passing a shop for flowers and fruit went in, spent ten shillings in the filling of a reed basket, and, leaving the shop, seated herself in one of the taxis which were standing in readiness outside the great porch.  Such carelessness of money was a natural reversion to habit, which came as a consequence of her absorbed mind.

The great hospital looked bare and grim, the smell of iodoform was more repellent than ever, after the sweet scents of the country.  Claire knew her way by this time, and ascended by lift to the women’s ward, where Sophie lay.  Beside almost every bed one or two visitors were seated, but Sophie was alone.  Down the length of the ward Claire caught a glimpse of a recumbent form, and felt a pang at the thought of the many visiting days when her friend had remained alone.  With no relations in town, her brother’s family too pressed for means to afford expeditions from the country, Sophie had no hope of seeing a familiar face, and her very attitude bespoke dejection.

Claire walked softly to the further side of the bed, and dangled the basket before the half-covered face, whereupon Sophie pushed back the clothes and sat up, her eyes lighting with joy.

“Claire!  You!  Oh, you dearly beloved, I thought you were still away!  Oh, I am glad-I am glad!  I was so dreadfully blue!”

She looked it.  Even in the eagerness of welcome her face looked white and drawn, and the pretty pink jacket, Claire’s own gift, seemed to accentuate her pallor.  The hands with which she fondled the flowers were surely thinner than they had been ten days before.

“My dear, what munificence!  Have you come into a fortune?  And fruit underneath!  I shall be able to treat the whole ward!  When did you come back?  Have you had a good time?  Are you going on to the farm?  It is good of you to come again.  It’s-it’s hard being alone when you see the other patients with their own people.  The nurses are dears, but they are so rushed, poor things, they haven’t time to stay and talk.  And oh, Claire, the days!  They’re so wearily long!”

Claire murmured tender exclamations of understanding and pity.  A pained conviction that Sophie was no better made her shrink from putting the obvious question; but Sophie did not wait to be asked.

“Oh, Claire,” she cried desperately, “it’s so hard to be patient and to keep on hoping, when there’s no encouragement to hope!  I’m not one scrap better after all that has been tried, and I’ve discovered that they did not expect me to be better; the best they seem to hope for is that I may not grow worse!  It’s like running at the pitch of one’s speed, and succeeding only in keeping in the same place.  And there are other arthritics in this ward!” She shuddered.  “When I think that I may become like them!  It would be much easier to die.”

“I think it would often seem easier,” Claire agreed sadly, her thoughts turning to Cecil, whose trouble at the moment seemed as heavy as the one before her.  “But we can’t be deserters, Sophie.  We must stick to our posts, and play the game.  When these troubles come, we just have to bear them.  There’s no hiding, or running away.  There’s only one choice open to us-whether we bear it badly or well.”

But Sophie’s endurance was broken by weeks of suffering, and her bright spirit was momentarily under an eclipse.

“Everybody doesn’t have to bear them!  Things are so horribly uneven,” she cried grudgingly.  “Look at your friend Miss Willoughby, with that angel of a mother, and heaps of money, and health, and strength, and a beautiful home, and able to have anything she wants, as soon as she wants it.  What does she know of trouble?”

Claire thought of Janet’s face, as it had faced her across the table in the refreshment room, but it was not for her to betray another’s secret, so she was silent, and Sophie lifted a spray of pink roses, and held them against her face, saying wistfully-

“You’re a good little soul, Claire, and it’s because you are good that I want to know what your opinion is about all this trouble and misery.  What good can it possibly do me to have my life ruined by this illness?  Don’t tell me that it will not be ruined.  It must be, in a material sense, and I’m not all spiritual yet; there’s a lot of material in my nature, and I live in a material world, and I want to be able to enjoy all the dear, sweet, natural, human joys which come as a right to ordinary human beings.  I want to walk!  Oh, my dear, I look out of these windows sometimes and see all the thousands and thousands of people passing by, and I wonder if a single one out of all the crowd ever thinks of being thankful that he can move!  I didn’t myself, but now-when I hobble along-”

She broke off, shaking back her head as though to defy the rising tears, then lay back against the pillows, looking at Claire, and saying urgently-“Go on!  Tell me what you think!”

“I think,” Claire answered slowly, “that we are bound to grow!  The mere act of death is not going to lift us at once to our full height.  Our training must go on after we leave this sphere; but, Sophie dear, some of us have an extra hard training here, and if we bear it in the right way, surely, surely when we move up, it must be into a higher class than if things had been all smooth and easy.  There must be less to learn, less to conquer, more to enjoy.  You and I are school-mistresses and ought to realise the difficulties of mastering difficult tasks.  Don’t look upon this illness as cheating you out of a pleasant holiday, dear- look upon it as special training for an honours exam.!”

Sophie smiled, her old twinkling smile, and stroked Claire’s hand with the spray of roses.

“I knew you’d say something nice!  I knew you’d put it in a quaint, refreshing way.  I shall remember that, when I am alone, and feel courage oozing out of every pore.  Two o’clock in the morning is a particularly cheery time when you are racked with pain!  Claire, I asked the doctor to tell me honestly whether there was any chance of my ever taking up the old work again, and he said, honestly, he feared there was none.”

“But Mrs Willoughby-”

“I asked that, too.  He says he quite hopes to get me well enough to go to Egypt in October or November, and that I should certainly be much better there.  It would be the best thing that could happen if it came off!  But-”

Claire held up a protesting hand.

“No ifs!  No buts!  Do your part, and get better, and leave the rest to Providence and-Mrs Willoughby!  It’s her mission in life to help girls, and she’ll help you, too, or know the reason why.  The truly sensible thing would be for you to begin to prepare your clothes.  What about starting a fascinating blouse at once?  Your hands are quite able to sew, and if you once got to work with chiffon and lace the time would fly!  You might write for patterns to-night.  You would enjoy looking at patterns.”

When Claire took her departure half an hour later, she left behind a very different Sophie from the wan dejected-looking creature whom she had found on her arrival.

Hers was a happy nature, easily cheered, responsive to comfort, and Claire had a happy conviction that whatever physical handicaps might be in store, her spirit would rise valiantly to the rescue.  A winter in Egypt was practically assured, since Mrs Willoughby had privately informed Claire that if nothing better offered, she would send Sophie at her own expense to help in the household of her niece-an officer’s wife, who would be thankful for assistance, though she could not afford to pay the passage out.  What was to happen in the future no one could tell, and there was no profit in asking the question.  The next step was clear, and the rest must be left to faith, but with a chilling of the blood Claire asked herself what became of the disabled working women who had no influential friends to help in such a crisis; the women who fell out of the ranks to die by the roadside homeless, penniless, alone?