During the first days of our acquaintance Evadne's attitude, whatever happened, surprised me. I could anticipate her action up to a certain point, but just the precise thing she would do was the last thing I had expected; I knew her feeling, in fact, but I was ignorant of the material it had to work upon, and by means of which it found expression. I had begun by believing her to be cold and self-sufficing, but even before her illness I had perceived in her a strange desire for sympathy, and foreseen that on occasion she would exact it in large measure from anyone she cared about. It was making much of a cut finger one day that she had led me to expect she would be exacting in illness, languishing as ladies do, to excite sympathy; and when the illness came I found I had been right in so far as I had believed that she would appreciate sympathy, but entirely wrong about the means she would employ to obtain it. Instead of languishing, when she found herself really suffering, she pulled herself together, and bore the trial with heroic calm. As I have said, she never uttered a complaint; and she had the strength of mind to ignore annoyances which few people in perfect health could have borne with fortitude. Certainly her attitude then had excited sympathy, and respect as well. It was as admirable as it was unexpected.

I had also perceived that she could not bear anything disagreeable. She seldom showed the least irritability herself, nor would she tolerate it for a moment in anyone else. Servants who were not always cheerful had to go, and the kind of people who snap at each other in the bosom of their families she carefully avoided, turning from them instinctively as she would have done from any perception revolting to the physical senses; and that she would fly disgusted from sickening sights or sounds or odours I never doubted. But here again I was wrong—or rather the evidence was utterly misleading. I found her one day sitting on the bridge of a little river that crossed a quiet lane near their house, and got down from my horse to talk to her, and as we stood looking over the parapet looking into the stream, the bloated carcase of a dead dog came floating by. She could only have caught a glimpse of it, for she drew back instantly, but she looked so pale and nauseated that I had to take her to the house, and insist upon her having some wine. And I once took her, at her own earnest request, to visit a children's hospital; but before we had seen a dozen of the little patients she cried so piteously I was obliged to take her away; and she could never bear to speak of the place afterward. And lastly, I had seen how she shrank from going to the palace because of the association with Edith's terrible death, and the chance of seeing her poor, repulsive looking little boy there.

Yet when it came to be a question of facing absolute horrors in the interests of the sufferers, she was the first to volunteer, and she did so with a quiet determination there was no resisting, and every trace of inward emotion so carefully obliterated that one might have been forgiven for supposing her to be altogether callous.

This happened after her mother's death, In the spring, when she had already begun to revive, and was the first startling symptom she showed of the new phase of interest and energy upon which I suspected she was entering. I hoped at the time that the great grief had carried off the minor ailments of the mind as the great illness did of the body, and that the change would prove to be for the better eventually, although the first outcome of it was not the kind of thing I liked at all—for her.

I had not seen her for a week or so when she was ushered one morning into my consulting room. She had not asked for an appointment, and had been waiting to take her turn with the other patients.

"Well, what can I do for you?" I said. I was somewhat surprised to see her. "You don't look very ill."

"No, thank goodness," she answered cheerfully; "and I don't mean to be ill. I have come to be vaccinated."

"Ah. that is wise," I said.

"You have heard, I suppose, that small-pox has broken out in the barracks?" she said when she was going. "There are fifteen cases, four of them women, and one a child, and they are going to put them under canvas on the common, and I shall be obliged to go and see that they are properly nursed. That is why I am in such a hurry. Military nursing is of the most primitive kind in times of peace. Our doctor is all that he should be, but what can he do but prescribe? It takes all his time just to go round and get through his ordinary duties."

"Did I understand you to say that you are going to look after the small-pox patients?" I asked politely.

"Yes," she answered defiantly. "I am going to be isolated with them out on the common. My tent is already pitched. I shall not take small-pox, I assure you."

"I don't see how you can be so sure," I said.

She gave me one of her most puzzling answers, one of those in which I felt there was an indication of the something about her which I did not understand.

"Oh, because it is such a relief!" she said.

"How a relief?" I questioned.

"Oh—I shall not take the disease," she repeated, "and I shall enjoy the occupation."

But this, I knew, was an evasion. However, I had no time to argue the point with her just then, so I waited until my consultations were over, and then went to see Colonel Colquhoun. I thought if he would not forbid he might at all events persuade her to abandon her rash design. I found him at his own place, walking about the garden with his hands in his pockets, and a cigar in his mouth. He was in a facetious mood, the one of his I most disliked.

"Now, you look quite concerned," he said, with an extra affectation of brogue, when I had told him my errand. "Sure, she humbugs you, Evadne does! If you knew her as well as I do, you'd not be troubling yourself about her so much. I tell you, she'll come to no harm in the world. Now what do you think were her reasons for going to live in the small-pox camp?"

"Then she has gone!" I exclaimed.

"Oh, yes, she's gone," he answered. "The grass never has time to grow under that young woman's feet if she's an idea to carry out, I will say that for her. But what do you think she said when I asked her why she'd be going among the small-pox patients? 'Oh,' she said, 'I want to see what they look like!' And she'd another reason, too. She'll make herself look like an interesting nurse, you know, and quite enjoy dressing up for the part."

I felt sure that all this was a horrid perversion of the truth, but I let it pass.

"You'll not interfere, then?" I persisted.

"Not I, indeed!" he answered. "She never comes commandering it over me, and I'm not going to meddle with her private affairs, so long as she doesn't come here bringing infection, that's all."

"But she may catch the disease herself and die of it, or be disfigured for life," I remonstrated.

"And she might catch her death of cold here in the garden, or be burnt beyond all recognition by a spark setting fire to her ball-dress the next time she wears one," he answered philosophically. "When you look at the chances, now, they're about equal."

He smiled at me complacently when he had said this, and something he saw in my face inclined him to chuckle, but he suppressed the inclination, twirling his fair moustache instead, first on one side and then on the other, rapidly. In his youth he must have been one of those small boys who delighted to spear a bee with a pin and watch it buzz round. The boy is pretty sure the bee can't hurt him, but yet half the pleasure of the performance lies in the fact of its having a sting. It would not have been convenient for Colonel Colquhoun to quarrel with me, because there had been certain money transactions between us which left him greatly my debtor; but he thought me secured by my interest in Evadne, and indulged himself on every possible occasion in the pleasure of opposing me. Not that he bore me any ill-will, either. I knew that he would borrow more money from me at any time in the friendliest way, if he happened to want it. I was his honey bee, and he was fond of honey; but it delighted him also to see me buzz.

I was obliged to consider my own patients and keep away from the small-pox camp during the epidemic, for fear of carrying infection, and consequently I saw nothing of Evadne, and only heard of her through the military doctor, for she would not write. His report of her, however, was always the same at first. She was the life of the camp, bright, cheerful, and active, never tired apparently, and never disheartened. This went on for some time, and then, one evening, there came another report. She was just as cheerful as ever, but looking most awfully done.

At daybreak next morning I drove out to the common, and, leaving my dogcart outside the camp, went in to look for her. I knew that she was generally up all night, and was therefore prepared to find her about, and I met her making her way toward her own tent. She was dressed like a French bonne, in a short dark blue gown made of some washing material, with a white apron and white cap, and a chÂtelaine with useful implements upon it hanging from her girdle, a very suitable costume for the work; but she wore no wrap of any kind, and the morning air was keen.

I noticed as she walked toward me that her gait was a little uncertain. Once she put out her hand as if seeking something to grasp, and once she staggered and stopped. I hastened to her assistance, and saw as I approached her that she was colourless even to her lips; her eyes were bright and sunken, with large black circles round them, and the lids were heavy. I drew her hand through my arm without more formal greeting, and she grasped it gratefully for a moment, then dropped it and stepped back.

"I forgot," she said, "it seems so natural to see you anywhere. But don't touch me. I shall infect you."

"I shall have to go home and change in any case," I answered briskly.

"I've been up all night with a poor woman," she said, "and I'm just tired out. Don't look concerned, though. I shall not take small-pox. My own illness, you remember, was a blessing in disguise, and I am sure the absorbing distraction of helping to relieve others—" she stopped short, looked about her confusedly, and then exclaimed: "It is quite time I went to bed. I declare I don't know the Hospital Tent from the sandy common, nor a rabbit running about from a convalescent child, and the whin bushes are waltzing round me derisively." She swayed a little, recovered herself, tried to laugh, then threw up her hands, and fell forward into my arms.

I carried her to her tent, guided by one of the men. On the way Dr. James joined us. We laid her on her bed and looked anxiously for symptoms of the dreadful disease, but there were none.

"No, you see," Dr. James declared, "it's just what I expected—sheer exhaustion, and nothing else. But she'd better be got out of this atmosphere at once."

She was in a semi-unconscious, semi-somnolent state, half syncope, half sleep, and there was nothing to be gained by rousing her just then, so we wrapped her up warmly in shawls, sent for my dogcart, and lifted her on the back seat, where I supported her as best I could, while my man drove us to As-You-Like-It.

Colonel Golquhoun was not up when we arrived, but I waited to see her swallow some champagne after she had been put to bed, and in the meantime the bustle had aroused him. When he learnt the occasion of it, his wrath knew no bounds. He could not have abused me in choicer language if I had been one of his own subalterns. But I managed to keep my temper until I could get a word in, and then I mildly suggested that the best thing he could do, as he was so afraid of infection, was to give himself leave, and be off. "Nobody will expect you to stay and look after your wife," I said. "You'd better go to town."

It was what he would have done if I had not advised it, but the habit of opposing me was becoming so inveterate that he changed his mind, and, rather than act upon a suggestion of mine, ran the risk of living in barracks until all fear of infection was over.

Happily Evadne suffered from nothing worse than exhaustion, and soon recovered her strength; but I never could agree with Dr. James about the merit of her conduct during the epidemic.