In the vicinity of one of our great London Hospitals, there is a pleasant Park. Very diversified in its character: laid out most artistically in shady groves, sloping lawns of soft grass, retired rockeries where water drips among giant ferns, and lakes winding in and out between banks covered with fine trees and exotic flowers. It is one of the most charming of the many charming oases in the vast Saharah of brick and mortar. And yet the fashionable world know nothing of it save by name. It is the playground of the people, and perhaps has never been visited by any of the daughters of Mayfair, except on the one occasion, when Royalty went down into that poverty-stricken quarter of the great city, to formally open these beautiful gardens to the humblest of its subjects.

But being within easy reach of the hospital, it was a common thing for the worn-out house-surgeons, the nurses and others connected with that noble charity, to snatch a few moments of fresh air in that pleasant place, in the intervals of their labour among the sick.

It was early in November, but the autumn had been so mild, and so free from the usual blustering South Westers, that the leaves were still on the trees, and the glorious colouring of the foliage was such as to remind Canadian visitors of their own mellow Indian summer.

Two young women were walking leisurely by the path which bordered the lake. The elder of the two, who seemed to be about twenty-five, was of middle height, well filled out, dumpy she might almost be called, not over much so, however, but to that extent only that many of the other sex prefer in a woman. She was pretty, decidedly so, but not of a good prettiness; she had the sort of evil beauty that tempted the old saints, the purely carnal attractiveness.

When a man's met her eyes, he was fascinated; but the thoughts that they excited in him were of madness and lust, and not of the pure and chastening delight which the beauty of the true woman inspires.

Those eyes were large, languid, with full pupils, and lids that generally half closed over them—eyes that would not look frankly into yours, though they would voluptuously—eyes that to him who can read the tale the human features tell, betrayed the lascivious, deceitful, cruel temperament—the three qualities so often go together—and let the man that values his manhood avoid such eyes as he would the lord of hell, who, as the hermits of old believed, created them.

If the affection of such a woman be cast upon a man he is lost; for it is not the sweet flower of love that they will enjoy together, but another, a flower indeed, but a flower of hell.

The other woman was taller, slighter, much younger, and of a very different style of beauty; for this other was Mary Grimm, whereas her companion was Susan Riley.

The two would-be baby-killers were now members of an association of lady nurses, and were undergoing their training for ministry of the sick at the neighbouring hospital.

They were conversing: Susan in a flippant volatile fashion, not forgetting to cast sidelong glances of conquest through the corners of her eyes at the men that passed her, as ever eager for admiration; Mary in an earnest manner, not observing the people, and while she talked, throwing, in an absent way, crumbs of bread she had brought with her for the purpose to the tame swans and ducks that swam on the artificial water.

The contrast between the two was immense, and indeed they were at the opposite poles of womanhood.

Mary was speaking:

"And do you really find an absolute pleasure, as you say you do, in being in the possession of a secret like this, Susan? I cannot say that I do. It is necessary of course to work in the dark: but I should like so much better if we could work out our ends openly, before all the world, and not in round-about ways, in holes and corners."

Sister Susan laughed.

"You are not half a woman, Mary; why, you talk just like some silly young man might. Love a secret! of course I do. All women love secrets. Anything that smells of mystery and intrigue exerts a fascination on the feminine imagination. I should not care a bit to be a leader of revolution in the face of all the world—but to be an executioner of the unknown terror, the pitiless secret punishment that works in silence, that strikes in the dark, unseen, unexpected. I must confess that has for me a delightful charm. It's quite irresistible."

Mary replied: "Yes, women may love secrets, but—"

Susan interrupted her with a hard laugh. "Love secrets! I should think so, indeed; why, a woman is so fond of a secret and considers it such a precious thing that she cannot even keep it to herself. She must needs go, unselfish generous creature, and share the treasure with all her friends. Nasty people hint so, anyhow. Now as you are not a bad little thing, though a little fool, I'll tell you a secret. I'm going to leave the hospital soon. I've got a very good place through Sister Eliza."

"What are you going to do?" asked Mary, deeply interested, for she knew what "a place" signified, without the emphasis which Susan had laid on the expression.

"Nothing less than be a sort of nursery governess in Lord Doughton's house," was the reply.

"Lord Doughton!" exclaimed Mary. "Why, Sister Eliza says that he is the largest landed proprietor in England since his marriage with that heiress whose estates adjoined his."

"Sister Eliza is quite right," said Susan. "She makes it her business to keep a registry of all that concerns the great landed proprietors. Lord Doughton has been married eleven years; he has three children; the eldest is a boy of ten, a cripple. Think of that, no less than three to get rid of. Aren't you jealous?"

"But you don't mean that a child as old as that has to be—to be—"

"But of course I do," interrupted Susan sharply, then continued with her usual heartless flippant tones. "I'll tell you what it is, my girl, the sooner you get the rest of this sentimentality out of you, the better. It's sickening."

"Surely there is a great distinction between removing babies just born, who have not really begun to live, and killing big boys and men."

Susan laughed.

"Bless me, here's a fine moral distinction! What is the difference pray, Miss Casuist? But turn off here, across the grass. If we are going to talk of these things we had better go where there is no chance of eaves-dropping. Our conversation would rather surprise that shabby-looking old person there if he overheard it, wouldn't it? Let's go and ask him what is the latest age at which it is justifiable to put away a human being for the public good."

"For God's sake, Susan, let us talk seriously!" Mary said.

"For whose sake? don't know him; but for your sake I'll be sober for a little time as you hate joviality; you'll be jovial enough though when you are as old as I am, and have gone through as much. It's by joviality people who have suffered plenty make up for it when it's all over. You'll find that out. People who have lived untroubled lives are seldom jovial."

They walked on in silence a short distance, then Mary after looking around her said:

"There is no one about here; there is no danger of anyone overhearing us now."

"Right you are, Mary; so now I'll answer your question. Did you ask me a question by-the-bye?"

"I don't think so; but we were talking about this boy of Lord Doughton's."

"Ah, yes! to be sure, the sprig of nobility you thought was too old to die. I've heard of people being too young to die; but you seem to think that one gets a sort of prescriptive right of living, that life's like land out of which one shouldn't be turned if there have been so many years undisputed possession. Droll theory! But I see you are frowning, so I'll try to be serious. Now, what is the difference between killing a baby or a ten-year-older? The latter doesn't feel more pain in the process of being put out of the way; why should his life be considered to be of more value? Why, bless the girl! We must kill all the heirs, whatever age they may be. Of course we must kill them as babies if possible, because it is easier to get at them."

Mary had been scanning with great curiosity the woman's face as she glibly chattered on in her flippant way.

"Susan," she asked, "have you ever killed a child?"

"Yes, one," was the prompt reply, delivered in a cool matter-of-fact fashion.

"Lately."

"No, long ago; not for the cause, before I even joined the Sisterhood, or dreamed of all the theories and plots my head is now chokefull of. It was my own baby."

The two women looked at each other, the one with a hard stare of brazen effrontery, the other with an expression of terror and disgust.

"Ay!" went on the elder with a voice which, breaking through its usual false ring, was full of malice and bitterness. "Ay! you cream-faced beauty, you are shocked are you? Of course you are right. One should not kill except for the good of the Society, other private killing is objectionable. I know all that. But wait until you have gone through what I have, and see what you will be then...." Changing back to her old light tone she continued, "Ah, Mary! it was the same old story with me as with the rest. A warm temperament"—and she laughed as she made this cool confession—"a warm temperament, a man, and a baby, that's all—and a little tragedy mixed up with it that won't be worth your while to hear about now."

Mary had never liked this woman, she now began to conceive an intense dislike for her. Susan would never have converted her to the cause, though she was the very person to win over girls naturally flighty and wicked. But Mary concealed her dislike as much as possible, for she was interested in drawing out this strange being, so wicked, so like a female Mephistopheles, so different in every way to her own ideal, her mistress, Catherine King.

"Did you have such a thing as a conscience when you were a little girl, Sister Susan?" she inquired.

"I don't know—not much of a one anyhow. I never had the fight you had; and yet your conscience still raises his head now and then. You are full of pities, and scruples, and trashy sentiment. I'll tell you what it is. Mary; I know what you want; I know what will soon make you happier, what will altogether knock on the head that nasty, teasing conscience of yours. Would you like to know what it is?"

"I wish you would tell me the cure; but time is the only one. It is not conscience though, it is cowardice."

"Indeed! I should not have taken you for a coward," Susan observed.

"But I am. It can be nothing else than cowardice. I know it is my duty—I know it is for the good of the world that I should do certain things. Of course I will do those things when I am ordered to do so. But, oh! how I shall shirk that horrible duty! How I shall suffer! I sometimes think I shall go mad when the time comes."

"Nonsense. I've heard young medical students talk like that. Yet see how soon they get hardened into chopping and probing away into our quivering anatomies. No! You go and try my patent cure for conscience—never known to fail, cures pain at the heart, prevents softening—testimonials from Mrs. Jezebel, several empresses of Rome, and many of the nobility and gentry. Try it, Mary!"

"Well, what is it?" asked the girl, laughing in spite of her melancholy frame of mind.

"A regular bad man," replied the other fiercely—"that's my prescription, my dear. You've got a pretty face enough, so the drug can be easily 'presented,' as the doctors say. It's not a difficult medicine to procure. It is not even unpleasant to the taste at first—on the contrary; but it rather upsets you when it's working its effect and purging the morbid secretion conscience out of you. Go and get one, one of your haw-haw club dandies; get him to fall in love with you, as they will for a time. It's easy to make him do that—work on his vanity, that's all. Flatter him—you'll catch any man like that. Talk about woman's vanity—it's nothing to a man's. Then you must fall in love with him—you may find that difficult, but it is necessary, else the medicine won't work. Now after a period more or less long—after babies, coolness, insult, desertion—after your hero proves but a mean, heartless cad after all—after all this, the devil of a bit of conscience you'll find left in you, I'll guarantee."

Mary looked at Susan, wondering at this strange nature, feeling a great antipathy, yet not unmixed with pity, for the vain, wicked, hardened creature by her side.

At last she said,

"I often wonder what you were like when you were a child, Susan."

Susan seemed buried in thought, and did not reply for a few minutes. "You want to know how my antecedents developed the charming being, Susan Riley? I don't suppose my nature was what some people would call a good one to begin with; but, child—for you are a child to me—you have suffered nothing to what I have. Your life at Brixton was an unhappy one, there ends your suffering; my life as a child, too, was no merry one. But it was what happened afterwards. It was a man that completed my education and finished my conscience. Ah, what a bringing up was mine! I, full of animal life, high-spirited, was kept down by my parents as few children have been. They, both father and mother, were religious monomaniacs, cruel, selfish, hard Puritans of the severest school. And what fools they were too! Just think of it! My father thought that any person who did not exactly believe in his own narrow views, must be altogether a child of sin—capable of any possible crime. So my brother, who would not play the hypocrite enough, was so mistrusted by my father, that when my cousin, a pretty girl, came to our house to tea, as she often did, he was not permitted to escort her home afterwards. No! a man-servant, a sneaking hypocrite, was sent with her instead—that man seduced my sister, and, I believe, my cousin also. My brother was driven to the dogs, of course, by the judicious treatment of his parents. I will tell you what happened to him some day. Ha! there's an education to drive religion out of you. How I hated the very name of it! How I hated my father and mother, and all the sneaking, sickly crew that surrounded them! Anyhow, my dear parents died broken-hearted at their children's behaviour; that was one consolation for us anyhow."

Neither spoke for some time, then Mary asked, "Do you think, Susan, that after I have once removed a child I shall be different, will this feeling of horror go away then? Oh! it is awful, Susan. I believe even you would pity me if you knew. My life is now like one long night-mare. In the day-time I wish that it was night-time again, that I might be asleep; and in the night it is no better and I wish it was day again; and I always wish that I was dead. I would kill myself were it not for my dear mistress. Are many of the sisters like this? Shall I go mad do you think, Susan?"

Susan replied, "It is the first step that costs, as we used to translate some sentence in the French exercise book when I was at school. I can't give you the original, I've forgotten my French, and piano, and other accomplishments now; but it means that when you have killed your first baby you will feel better: that is the experience of all Nihilists. All have the horrors, more or less, at first. They think that as soon as they have done the deed some frightful bogie, some maddening remorse worse than anything imaginable before, will jump up and seize them. It is the dread of this bogie that does all the mischief. Now, as soon as they have done the deed, they are so agreeably surprised to find that this dreaded bogie does not come, that a delightful reaction sets in. You should see how mad some of them get with joy. As soon as you have killed your first baby, or boy, or man, your horrors will go. You will experience immediate relief. It's like having a tooth out."

"I see what you mean. It sounds natural enough, too," said Mary, musingly.

"Of course; and at last you'll become a jovial body like me, and you'll come to like your duties and take a relish in blood for its own sake."

Mary shuddered perceptibly, and said, "I shall never come to that I hope—that is, I fear."

"Don't be afraid of speaking out, my dear! I'm not thin-skinned—besides, I take pride in being cruel. I can hate. It would be well for you if you could. You will always suffer somewhat. You will have to keep a picture of your duty always before you, between you and the sight of the blood. You will have to work yourself up to blind enthusiasm every time you have work to do. I wouldn't wonder if you have to take to opium. It is not a bad temporary conscience-duller. But look how much more convenient my state of mind is. I don't require winding up. I have no scruples. I enjoy my work."

"And I loathe it," exclaimed the girl. "It is all a matter of temperament I suppose, Susan."

"I suppose it is," Susan continued. "Do you know, I have observed that most voluptuous women are cruel as well. It is a curious fact, Mary. I sometimes think that my nature is chiefly made up of these two noble qualities. My man used to call me Faustina. Now you are all made up of cold duties, and so you will suffer. Hot passions are better for the Nihilists."

Mary with difficulty concealed her feelings of disgust, and spoke again. "And yet I have known what hate is, how I hated my father and step-mother! How cruel I felt I could have been! But now that I am away from their persecution the hate seems to be all going. I even sometimes find myself thinking of my father with pity, wishing I could see him; yet he was always cruel to me."

"That sort of hate's no good. You are as fickle in your hates as I am in my loves. Yours was an artificial hate, such as a saint could acquire if ill-treated as you were. But mine is a good, genuine, natural hate, Mary, and I'm proud of it."

"Ah! I wish I could be brave, and fearless, and thoughtless like you, Susan."

"Do you?" cried Susan. "Perhaps I, too, have a skeleton hidden away in a cupboard, somewhere, my girl. You always see me jolly. Yes! if it were not for one horrid thing"—she spoke slowly and shivered—"I should be perfectly happy."

"What is that?" asked Mary, wondering what possible secret sorrow could be a constant bugbear to this frivolous being.

"The fear of old age, Mary," was the reply. "The dread of being old, ugly—like withered Sister Jane, for instance. Oh! how I fear that loathsome thing."

The woman's face actually blanched as she spoke these words, and her accents betrayed an emotion that surprised Mary. Yes! this indeed was the one phantom that ever pursued this butterfly creature. This terror that possessed her was ever present to her, as happens sometimes to such natures. To be no longer beautiful, to be no longer sighed after by men, was to her imagination terrible as is the thought of hell to some.

"Let us sit down on this seat and rest a little, Susan," suggested Mary.

"Very well; but it's getting late, and my time will soon be up. Ah! I wish I was like you, Mary, living at home with that amiable old Catherine King, instead of being boxed up with a lot of foolish women in that hospital, with strict discipline about being out at nights and so on. I must say I like my liberty: but luckily this won't be for long."

"I never could make out how they allowed the rules to be broken through in my case," Mary said. "There was another nurse who wanted to live with her mother. But she was told they would not have her in the hospital unless she lived there altogether, as the rest do."

"The King has great influence in all directions. She must be very fond of you, must the King—your aunt as she calls herself now. Ah! I wish she would adopt me and take me out of this hateful place. I would make her a most dutiful niece."

"Yet, most of the nurses seem to be well contented with their home," urged Mary.

"Oh! it's nice enough for those women—innocent creatures—they have never known the delights of sin and liberty. I'm not like them—like Miss Anerly for instance. She's fun, isn't she? They have put her to sleep in the same room as I do. She is always at me about saying my prayers. She kneels down for half an hour at least, before getting into bed, and when she gets up, she has a sort of way of looking at me with a superior see-how-much-better-I-am-than-you air, that is sickening. I often feel tempted to bring out some remarks that will make her open her weak, little, grey eyes; but of course that won't do. What do you think; she insists on reading a chapter in the Bible to me every morning before I get up."

Mary replied with a deep sadness in her voice. "Ah! it is well for us to laugh, that know so much, but how happy are these people with their Bible! They cannot know our suffering. They find such comfort in their superstition. They say in the Bible that the tree of knowledge is the tree of evil; we have proved it so."

"Some wise man once said, Wherever truth is, there too is Golgotha," put in Susan.

"That is very true," continued Mary. "Wherever truth is, there too is Golgotha. I feel that. Now that I know so much, now that I know that all this religion that keeps society together is a fable, I feel as if I was no longer as other people, as if I was some other sort of being, standing quite apart from my fellow-creatures, with such different instincts and ideas that we can never understand each other again, that there can never more be pleasant sympathies between us."

Susan again laughed her disagreeable laugh. "Dear me! Why, you are a sort of Miltonic Satan, Mary; but it's too late to rant on in this ignorance-is-bliss style, now, my girl."

"But don't you feel it yourself sometimes, Susan?" asked the girl in wonder. "Don't you feel dreadful, when you pass by all these crowds of happy people, and think that if they only knew what you were they would loathe you, and tear you to pieces? It is horrible to me to be separated from all the world by such a barrier as that of our Aim. Never to approach them, never to know their little joys, and hopes, and affections. They seem only foolish to our eyes, but how detestable would we appear in theirs if they only knew."

Susan turned and looked contemptuously into the girl's face. "Why, Mary, you are talking treason. You'll be going back to your dear Bible next."

"Go back to the Bible—no, never! It would be better if I could ... perhaps. Ah, Susan, I sometimes think that mankind will never get on without religion, that truth will bring worse tyrannies and horrors than superstition ever did. A fearful outlook—man must have a religion or die; and yet there is no religion to be had."

"Oh, Mary, you are a little fool! When will you be wise and cunning like me? You talk of the horror of being different from other people; I delight in it. It amuses me to look at the happy simpletons, and know that I have secrets that would make their cheeks blanch to hear. You have not got the proper temper for a Nihilist."

Mary thought in silence for a few minutes, then said, "Susan, I have often wondered what motives led you to join the society. You are a zealous member, I know; but yet I can scarcely believe that it was a good motive, that it was a true love of humanity, an unselfish desire to benefit the world, like our Chief's, that induced you to become a conspirator in the first instance."

"Mary, shall I tell you my real reason?"

"Do."

"Because I am a woman—that is a sufficient reason. We women are driven to do strange things, by motives that cannot be put into words, motives that we cannot ourselves analyze. But see, here comes the doctor. He's sweet on me—so he's safe to come and talk with us."