It was with a leap of ecstasy that yet was pain, that she imagined to herself the coming of the first word from him.  Prisoners’ letters came regularly—­no doubt of that.  Why, the landlady at the hotel had a son who was at Ruhleben, and she heard once a month.  Nelly pictured the moment when the letter would be in her hand, and she would be looking at it.  Oh, no doubt it wouldn’t be addressed by him!  By the nurse perhaps—­a German nurse—­or another patient.  He mightn’t be well enough.  All the same, the dream filled her eyes with tears, that for a moment eased the burning within.

Her life was now made up of such moments and dreams.  On the whole, what held her most was the fierce refusal to think of him as dead.  That morning, in dressing, among the clothes they had hurriedly brought with them from Westmorland, she saw a thin black dress—­a useful stand-by in the grime of London—­and lifted her hands to take it from the peg on which it hung.  Only to recoil from it with horror. That—­never!  And she had dressed herself with care in a coat and skirt of rough blue tweed that George had always liked; scrupulously putting on her little ornaments, and taking pains with her hair.  And at every step of the process, she seemed to be repelling some attacking force; holding a door with all her feeble strength against some horror that threatened to come in.

The room in which she stood was small and cheerless; but it was all they could afford.  Bridget frankly hated the ugliness and bareness of it; hated the dingy hotel, and the slatternly servants, hated the boredom of the long waiting for news to which apparently she was to be committed, if she stayed on with Nelly.  She clearly saw that public opinion would expect her to stay on.  And indeed she was not without some natural pity for her younger sister.  There were moments when Nelly’s state caused her extreme discomfort—­even something more.  But when they occurred, she banished them as soon as possible, and with a firm will, which grew the firmer with exercise.  It was everybody’s duty to keep up their spirits and not to be beaten down by this abominable war.  And it was a special duty for those who hated the war, and would stop it at once if they could.  Yet Bridget had entirely declined to join any ‘Stop the War,’ or pacifist societies.  She had no sympathy with ‘that sort of people.’  Her real opinion about the war was that no cause could be worth such wretched inconvenience as the war caused to everyone.  She hated to feel and know that probably the majority of decent people would say, if asked,—­as Captain Marsworth had practically said—­that she, Bridget Cookson, ought to be doing V.A.D. work, or relieving munition-workers at week-ends, instead of fiddling with an index to a text-book on ’The New Psychology.’  The mere consciousness of that was already an attack on her personal freedom to do what she liked, which she hotly resented.  And as to that conscription