a use for her money and had built and founded the house on Calumet Square.  For a time she had been the superintendent of nurses here, until her own theories and ideas had obtained and prevailed in its management.  Then, her work fairly started, she had resigned her position to an older woman, and had taken her place in the rank and file of the nurses themselves.  She wished to be one of them, living the same life, subject to the same rigorous discipline, and to that end she had never allowed it to be known that she was the founder of the house.  The other nurses knew that she was very rich, very independent and self-reliant, but that was all.  Lloyd did not know and cared very little how they explained the origin and support of the agency.

Lloyd was animated by no great philanthropy, no vast love of humanity in her work; only she wanted, with all her soul she wanted, to count in the general economy of things; to choose a work and do it; to help on, donner un coup d’epaule; and this, supported by her own stubborn energy and her immense wealth, she felt that she was doing.  To do things had become her creed; to do things, not to think them; to do things, not to talk them; to do things, not to read them.  No matter how lofty the thoughts, how brilliant the talk, how beautiful the literature—­for her, first, last, and always, were acts, acts, acts—­concrete, substantial, material acts.  The greatest and happiest day of her life had been when at last she laid her bare hand upon the rough, hard stone of the house in the square and looked up at the facade, her dull-blue eyes flashing with the light that so rarely came to them, while she murmured between her teeth: 

“I—­did—­this.”

As she recalled this moment now, leaning upon her elbows, looking down upon the trees and grass and asphalt of the square, and upon a receding landau, a wave of a certain natural pride in her strength, the satisfaction of attainment, came to her.  Ah! she was better than other women; ah! she was stronger than other women; she was carrying out a splendid work.  She straightened herself to her full height abruptly, stretching her outspread hands vaguely to the sunlight, to the City, to the world, to the great engine of life whose lever she could grasp and could control, smiling proudly, almost insolently, in the consciousness of her strength, the fine steadfastness of her purpose.  Then all at once the smile was struck from her lips, the stiffness of her poise suddenly relaxed.  There, there it was again, the terror, the dreadful fear she dared not name, back in its place once more—­at her side, at her shoulder, at her throat, ready to clutch at her from out the dark.

She wheeled from the window, from the sunlight, her hands clasped before her trembling lips, the tears brimming her dull-blue eyes.  For forty-eight hours she had fought this from her.  But now it was no longer to be resisted.

“No, no,” she cried half aloud.  “I am no better, no stronger than the others.  What does it all amount to when I know that, after all, I am just a woman—­just a woman whose heart is slowly breaking?”