dreams again, and it seemed to her that she was the very Rosalie
Evanturel of old, whose thoughts were bounded by a river and a hill,
a post-office and a church, a catechism and a few score of books. Here
in the crowded city she had come to be a woman who, bitterly shaken in
soul, knew life's sufferings; who had, during the past few months, read
with avidity history, poetry, romance, fiction, and the drama, English
and French; for in every one she found something that said: "You have
felt that." In these long months she had learned more than she had known
or learned in all her previous life.

As she sat looking out into the eastern sky she became conscious of
voices, and of a group of people who came slowly down the ward, sometimes
speaking to the sick and crippled. It was not a general visitors' day,
but one reserved for the few to come and say a kindly word to the
suffering, to bring some flowers and distribute books. Rosalie had
always been absent at this hour before, for she shrank from strangers;
but to-day she had stayed on unthinking. It mattered nothing to her who
came and went. Her heart was over the hills, and the only tie she had
here was with this poor cripple whose hand she held. If she did not
resent the visit of these kindly strangers, she resolutely held herself
apart from the object of their visit with a sense of distance and cold
dignity. If she had given Charley something of herself, she had in turn
taken something from him, something unlike her old self, delicately non-
intime. Knowledge of life had rationalised her emotions to a definite
degree, had given her the pride of self-repression. She had had need of
it in these surroundings, where her beauty drew not a little dangerous
attention, which she had held at arm's-length--her great love for one man
made her invulnerable.

Now, as the visitors came near, she did not turn towards them, but still