Much of the situation was all beyond her.  Try as she would she could not understand.  One thing, however, she saw clearly, unmistakably:  Bennett believed that she loved him, believed that she had told as much to Ferriss, and that when she had denied all knowledge of Ferriss’s lie she was only coquetting with him.  She knew Bennett and his character well enough to realise that an idea once rooted in his mind was all but ineradicable.  Bennett was not a man of easy changes; nothing mobile about him.

The thought of this belief of Bennett’s was intolerable.  As she sat there alone in her white room the dull crimson of her cheeks flamed suddenly scarlet, and with a quick, involuntary gesture she threw her hand, palm outward, across her face to hide it from the sunlight.  She went quickly from one mood to another.  Now her anger grew suddenly hot against Ferriss.  How had he dared?  How had he dared to put this indignity, this outrageous insult, upon her?  Now her wrath turned upon Bennett.  What audacity had been his to believe that she would so forget herself?  She set her teeth in her impotent anger, rising to her feet, her hands clenching, tears of sheer passion starting to her eyes.

For the greater part of the afternoon she kept to her room, pacing the floor from wall to wall, trying to think clearly, to resolve upon something that would readjust the situation, that would give her back her peace of mind, her dignity, and her happiness of the early morning.  For now the great joy that had come to her in his safe return was all but gone.  For one moment she even told herself she could not love him, but the next was willing to admit that it was only because of her love of him, as strong and deep as ever, that the humiliation cut so deeply and cruelly now.  Ferriss had lied about her, and Bennett had believed the lie.  To meet Bennett again under such circumstances was not to be thought of for one moment.  Her vacation was spoiled; the charm of the country had vanished.  Lloyd returned to the City the next day.

She found that she was glad to get back to her work.  The subdued murmur of the City that hourly assaulted her windows was a relief to her ears after the profound and numbing silence of the country.  The square was never so beautiful as at this time of summer, and even the restless shadow pictures, that after dark were thrown upon the ceiling of her room by the electrics shining through the great elms in the square below, were a pleasure.

On the morning after her arrival and as she was unpacking her trunk Miss Douglass came into her room and seated herself, according to her custom, on the couch.  After some half-hour’s give-and-take talk, the fever nurse said: 

“Do you remember, Lloyd, what I told you about typhoid in the spring—­that it was almost epidemic?”

Lloyd nodded, turning about from her trunk, her arms full of dresses.

“It’s worse than ever now,” continued Miss Douglass; “three of our people have been on cases only in the short time you have been away.  And there’s a case out in Medford that has killed one nurse.”