“It’s well you came when you did.”  She bent her head to keep the swirling snowflakes from her face.  Martha is fat and short and rapid walking is difficult.  “I was just about to leave for the other end of town to see a typhoid case of Miss Wyatt’s.  She’s young and gets frightened easily, and I promised I’d come some time to-day, though it’s out of my district.  Who is this girl I’m going to see?”

“I don’t know.  I heard Mr. Guard and Mrs. Mundy call her Lillie Pierce.  They seemed to know her.  I never saw her before.”

“Never heard of her.”  Miss White, who had been district nursing for fourteen years, made effort to recall the name.  “She had a hemorrhage, you say?”

She did not wait for an answer, but went up the steps ahead of me, and envy filled me as I followed her into the room where she was to find her patient.  Professionally Miss White was one person, socially another.  Off duty she was slow and shy and consciously awkward.  In the sick-room she was transformed.  Quiet, cool, steady, alert, she knew what to do and how to do it.  With a word to the others, her coat and hat were off and she was standing by the bed, and again I was humiliated that I knew how to do so little, was of so little worth.

Between the doctor and herself was some talk.  Directions were given and statements made, and then the doctor came to the door where I was standing.  For a half-moment he looked me over, his near-sighted eyes almost closing in their squint.

“I knew your father.  A very unusual man.”  He held out his hand.  “You’re like him, got his expression, and, I’m told, the same disregard of what people think.  That”—­he jerked his thumb over his shoulder—­“is a side of life you’ve never seen before.  It’s a side men make and women permit.  Good morning.”  Before I could answer he was gone.

Close to the cot Mrs. Mundy and Miss White were still standing.  The latter slipped her hand under the covering and drew out the hot-water bag.  “This has cooled,” she said.  “Where can I get hot water?”

Mrs. Mundy pointed to the bath-room, then turned, and together they left the room.  The girl on the cot was seemingly asleep.

As they went out the man, who was standing by the mantel, came toward me.  “I am David Guard,” he said.  “I have not thanked you for letting me bring her in.  Had there been anywhere else to take her, I would not have brought her here.  I met her at the other end of the Square.  We had been standing for some while, talking.  There was no place to which we could go to talk, and, fearing she would get too cold, we had moved on.  Last month she tried to take her life.  This morning she was telling me she could hold out no longer.  There was no way out of it but death.”

“Who is she?”

Before he could answer I understood.  Shivering, I turned away, then I came back.

“Will you come to my sitting-room, Mr. Guard?  Can we not talk as human beings who are trying to find the right way to—­to help wrong things?”