It was supposed by her companions, and accepted by them as a matter of course, that she had not left the bedside of her patient until after his death.  At first she had joyfully welcomed this mistake as her salvation, the one happy coincidence that was to make her life possible, and for a time had ceased to think about it.  That phase of the incident was closed.  Matters would readjust themselves.  In a few days’ time the incident would be forgotten.  But she found that she herself could not forget it, and that as days went on the idea of this passive, silent deception she was obliged to maintain occurred to her oftener and oftener.  She remembered again how glibly and easily she had lied to her friend upon the evening of her return.  How was it that the lie had flowed so smoothly from her lips?  To her knowledge she had never deliberately lied before.  She would have supposed that, because of this fact, falsehood would come difficult to her, that she would have bungled, hesitated, stammered.  But it was the reverse that had been the case.  The facility with which she had uttered the lie was what now began to disturb and to alarm her.  It argued some sudden collapse of her whole system of morals, some fundamental disarrangement of the entire machine.

Abruptly she recoiled.  Whither was she tending?  If she supinely resigned herself to the current of circumstance, where would she be carried?  Yet how was she to free herself from the current, how to face this new situation that suddenly presented itself at a time when she had fancied the real shock of battle and contention was spent and past?

How was she to go back now?  How could she retrace her steps?  There was but one way—­correct the false impression.  It would not be necessary to acknowledge that she had been forced to leave her post; the essential was that her companions should know that she had deceived them—­that she had left the bedside before her patient’s death.  But at the thought of making such confession, public as it must be, everything that was left of her wounded pride revolted.  She who had been so firm, she who had held so tenaciously to her principles, she who had posed before them as an example of devotion and courage—­she could not bring herself to that.

“No, no,” she exclaimed as this alternative presented itself to her mind.  “No, I cannot.  It is beyond me.  I simply cannot do it.”

But she could.  Yes, she could do it if she would.  Deep down in her mind that little thought arose.  She could if she wanted to.  Hide it though she might, cover it and bury it with what false reasoning she could invent, the little thought would not be smothered, would not be crushed out.  Well, then, she would not.  Was it not her chance; was not this deception which others and not herself had created, her opportunity to recover herself, to live down what had been done—­what she had been forced to do, rather?  Absolute right was never to be attained; was not life to be considered rather in the light of a compromise between good and evil?  To do what one could under the circumstances, was not that the golden mean?