Chapter XIII

It was three hours later when Joan awoke in a daze. Her healthy youth had insisted on this repose after the sleepless night. A curious, heavy depression was upon her. She looked around the strange room in surprise. It was not its strangeness that puzzled her--new bedrooms had become normal--but this one, although small, was so comfortable. Surely she must be in a private house. And why should she be sleeping in her clothes?

Suddenly the events of the last twenty-four hours came back. She started up in horror. How could she have been such a wretch, a heartless brute? As she reached the upper landing, the sound of the same loud breathing coming from her grandmother’s room struck her ears with positive relief. She peeped in. Granny was lying apparently in exactly the same position as when she had left her. Yes, the patient’s condition was unchanged, the nurse corroborated. She did not mention that there had been paroxysms of pain, nor that the temperature had gone up another degree. What was the use? Dr. Strachey did not anticipate any immediate collapse. The following night would be the critical time, he said. It was this verdict that had made the nurse break her promise of summoning Joan. For her own part she much preferred not to be worried by the presence of relations in the sick room; besides it had been evident that the girl was exhausted. She would need all her strength for what lay before her, the nurse had felt, with a touch of unprofessional pity.

Joan sat down by the bedside. At first she felt fortified by her sleep, but as she listened to the quick, gasping breathing, the old horror again began to grip her. Presently the nurse handed her a letter. “From Miss Bland,” she said. Partly to distract her mind, Joan noiselessly opened it. Enclosed was the tariff of the nursing home. The charge for the best rooms was seventy dollars a week. In all cases the payment must be in advance. This was underlined in red ink.

Well, she couldn’t pay in advance because she had not got the money. And Granny had none either, for she had spoken of having to cash a cheque directly they reached Norfolk. How much was there left of her last Saturday’s salary, Joan speculated. She did not like to open her purse under the nurse’s inquisitive gaze, but she could easily reckon it up. The last hotel bill had been $4.80, and tea on the cars seventy-five cents, and the taxi this morning, five dollars. How extortionate, Mr. Montgomery had thought it, but to Joan, who had retained her old standard in taxis, it had seemed most reasonable. That made ten dollars fifty-five cents, and then there had been one or two little tips. So there would be about a dollar left--and these people asked her for seventy! Well, they must just wait, that was all, in spite of their red ink.

But suppose they wouldn’t wait. Suppose they turned Granny out--sent her to the hospital. It might kill her. Oh, they couldn’t be so cruel, so wicked and cruel! But suppose they were? She dare not run the risk, Joan felt. She must get these people their seventy dollars. But how? In books people sold their jewellery. If only she had some jewellery to sell. Her mind went back to the argument with Granny in New York, when she had refused to take the trinkets that her father had given her. But she had given in about the fur coat. Why, that was valuable! She remembered Mrs. Dupuy discussing the price with the shopman. It had cost eight hundred dollars. Of course, then it was all right. Her fur coat would pay for lots of weeks.

Her grandmother still lay immovable. It was the torpor of exhaustion, but Joan thought she still slept. So, telling the nurse that she had to go out on business, but would soon be back, the girl crept out of the room.

The easiest way to take the coat would be to wear it. Underneath Joan had on a tailormade street suit. How fortunate that it was of Scotch tweed and thick. She went out quickly, but once in the street, she hesitated. Probably her best plan would have been to take the coat to a high-class furrier, but selling clothes was connected in the girl’s mind with extreme indigence, so she asked the way to “a very poor district.” The policeman looked amused as he gave the direction. He thought she was a society woman who was trying her ’prentice hand at slumming. “There’s a queer lot of crooks about in them streets,” he warned her. As a matter of fact, either out of solicitude for her youth or for her costly furs, he had not told her of the really rough quarter down by the docks, but had only indicated a thoroughfare of moderate indigence.

As Joan went along, she looked about her with interest. It was the first time she had been in the South, and the Spanish oaks, with their dangling trails of old man’s beard, gratified her eyes. Chiefly, however, she was fascinated by the chattering knots of darkies, whom a gleam of watery sunshine had brought out of their congested wooden shanties. Joan almost laughed aloud as she noticed the coiffure of some of the girls--innumerable, miniature pigtails each curled round and speared with a hairpin. It was the nearest that they could achieve with their short ‘wool’ to the hairdressing of their white sisters. And how different their gestures were, Joan realized with keen interest, and the intonation of their voices! Granny had told her that she once acted a negro Mammy, but she did not seem to have cared about it. Why, Joan felt enviously, she would simply love to do it! She began murmuring phrases to herself, trying to give them the queer, sing-song darkey cadence. Suddenly she pulled herself up. How could she be so heartless? To be thinking about acting when Granny was so ill!

She soon found herself in the kind of street she wanted. A large placard, “Cast off wardrobes purchased,” announced the end of her search. In the window a discarded naval uniform figured prominently, together with a pile of dirty satin slippers and a large bowl of false teeth. Above the latter dangled a notice, “Acceptable Gifts.” Possibly it had fallen from some other object. Who could want other people’s teeth? Joan speculated with amusement.

However, it would not do to loiter. She nerved herself and took off her coat to her job. As she pushed open the door, she thought it was the most uninviting shop she had ever seen. And what a horrible smell! The proprietor, a rather corpulent, oily man, came forward rubbing his hands obsequiously. This well-dressed lady must have taken a fancy to something in the window. “What can I show you, Madam?” he asked.

Joan explained, the hot colour flaming into her cheeks. The man’s manner changed at once. He took the coat and examined it minutely. The dirt in his nails, as he pawed it about, made her feel sick. Once he wetted his finger so as to part the fur and examine the skin. Anyway, she couldn’t wear it after that, Joan felt. When he had finished, he glanced at the girl curiously. Probably the young lady had got into debt, and didn’t like to tell her poppa. The question was did she know the value of her coat. “Dis is a good coat, and so I will give you”--he paused. “I will give you fifty dollars.”

“What?” Anger came to Joan’s help. “How dare you offer me such a sum!”

“Na, na, fifty dollars does not grow on every bush. Well, for de sake of your pretty face, we’ll say fifty-five, though I swear to you, I will be de loser on it.”

Before the philanthropist had realized what was happening, Joan had snatched up her coat and marched out. “Not so quick, my dear, not so quick. Maybe we can make it a little more,” he called out and shuffled after her. He had, however, to make the circuit of the counter, and so by the time he had reached the shop door, his prey was irrevocably lost. Indeed, the girl was almost running to get away from this detestable place.

Half unconsciously she retraced her steps, and found herself nearing the nursing home. She paused wondering what to do next.

Should she throw herself on Miss Bland’s mercy, and offer her the coat in lieu of payment? She hated the idea, but it might be the best plan. “Miss North!” She suddenly heard Mr. Montgomery’s familiar voice behind her. “I was just coming up to enquire.”

“Granny is about the same.” Joan told him what had passed since he had left them on the doorstep of the nursing home some five hours earlier.

As she spoke, Mr. Montgomery had been glancing at the fur coat over her arm. “Don’t you think, Miss North,” he now suggested kindly, “that it’s a bit risky to take off your furs. One feels warm in the sun, but this is a tricky climate. It’s so damp, you know.”

“I have been walking quickly. I am quite hot.” This, indeed, was true. The argument with the cast-off clothes dealer had in itself considerably raised her temperature. Suddenly she decided to confide in this new friend. “Besides, I am trying to sell my coat.”

“Dear, dear, that’s bad.” The little man’s voice was comprehending and sympathetic. He did not question her decision, as Joan had feared he might. Instead, he reassuringly told her that he knew of a place in the town, where they’d do the square thing and give her a decent price. “I can’t remember the address, but I can show it you,” he said. Mr. Montgomery’s acquaintance with the cheap hotels and pawn shops of the South and Middle West was probably unrivalled!

As they were walking along, however, the little man seemed to reflect. “Are you sure you can spare that fur coat, Miss North?” he suggested. “The nights are still real cold, even down here. Ain’t you got any jewellery now, or something in that line, that you’d miss less?” As Joan shook her head, he continued with some hesitation; “I’ve noticed Miss West wearing a nice ring.”

“I’m not going to steal Granny’s jewellery when she is ill and helpless. I haven’t sunk as low as that!” Joan blazed out passionately.

“Well, I didn’t mean to offend you,” Mr. Montgomery deprecated, rather amazed at his companion’s violence.

But Joan also had cooled. “I don’t suppose I should mind the idea so much,” she began penitently, with a recollection of all Mr. Montgomery’s kindness, “only you see, I feel I’ve been such a beast.” There was a tremor in her voice. “All this time I have been wanting the weather to be bad. Yes, I have been actually glad at the snow and the cold and everything, so that it should make Miss Bransom ill--not really ill, only enough to give me my chance--and I never even thought of Granny. And now instead of Miss Bransom being ill, it’s----” Joan turned her head aside quickly.

Mr. Montgomery’s soft heart was touched. “Anyway your wanting the blizzard didn’t make it,” he suggested with sound common sense, “so I don’t see you need blame yourself. I often think what a mercy it is, we haven’t got command of the elements--there’d be more worry than ever. But, look here, Miss North, about this fur coat, you said you were going to sell it. Don’t do that anyway--just pawn it. Of course, you won’t get so much on it now, but then next fall, if you’ve a good engagement, you can get it back.”

Joan acquiesced. “And I couldn’t very well be offered less than for selling it,” she observed cheerfully. “What do you suppose a horrid, dirty little man wanted me to take--fifty dollars!”

To Mr. Montgomery, it sounded a very nice sum, but he made no comment. “Do you know what the coat cost?” he asked instead.

“Yes, eight hundred, and I’ve not had it two months.”

“What!” The actor stared incredulously. “Eight hundred--eight hundred dollars? My! I didn’t know a coat could be that costly.” He had been carrying it for Joan, and he now gazed at it hanging over his arm with an almost comic awe. “I’d be afraid to wear it! Eight hundred dollars--enough to keep a family for a year. I suppose you ain’t Miss Pierpont Morgan in disguise by any chance?”

Joan flushed. The laughing suggestion was too near the truth to be comfortable. “Oh, the coat was a present,” she said hastily. Then it struck her he would only think her grandmother had given it and still be suspicious. “It was a present from a gentleman.”

Mr. Montgomery gave her a startled look. What a pity, he was thinking; a terrible pity. Then with the charitable morality of the stage, he concluded it was none of his business. Besides the girl’s words might bear another explanation. Her next remark almost convinced him of it. “Would it be bothering you too much to come into the pawnshop with me?” she remarked. “You see I only left school at Christmas, so I don’t know very much about things of this sort.”

“No, it ain’t usually part of the scholastic curriculum. Of course, I’ll see you through.” But how young she must be, Mr. Montgomery was thinking in surprise, much younger than he had imagined. It made her acting more wonderful than ever! Why, if she had only just left school, she wouldn’t be more than eighteen--perhaps less--not more than three or four years older than his Sadie. Suppose one of his little girls were ever in such a plight. “I hate you having to come into this thing at all,” he said with a rush of paternal tenderness. “I’d send you home right away, but folks might wonder what I was doing running around with a lady’s eight hundred dollar coat--think I’d lifted it off an automobile maybe! So I guess you’ll have to come along to carry it off.” He realized suddenly, as his awakened eyes rested on her, that her tweed costume was of quite a different cut from any to which he was accustomed. Yes, he had seen clothes like that on the swells in Central Park.

Despite Joan’s attire and despite Montgomery’s haggling, the utmost that could be raised on the fur coat was two hundred dollars. However the girl was jubilant. It was with difficulty that Montgomery kept her from taking a cab back to the nursing home. Instead, he insisted on further delay in the shape of lunch. “It’s late, and they may have finished up there,” he wisely observed. Gratitude made Joan consent. Just as they were separating at the door of the nursing home, he suggested he might see her round at the theatre later on.

“At the theatre?” The girl had absolutely forgotten her professional engagement. “Oh, at six o’clock. Do you think I need come? It’s such a farce, and Granny might be awake then and wanting me. I have been out so long to-day already.”

As she truly said, it did seem a farce. “I guess that will be all right,” Mr. Montgomery agreed. “I tell you what, I’ll get down to the theatre early myself, then we can always tell Clark that I could have ’phoned you if you had been wanted. Well, good-bye. I do hope Dr. Strachey will say Miss West’s better next time he comes. I’ll be round first thing to-morrow morning to ask.”

Joan found when she got into the hall, that she had only been gone a little over two hours, although it seemed so much longer. A passing nurse informed her that Miss West’s condition was unchanged. Reassured, the girl decided that, before going up to the sick room, she had better have her interview with Miss Bland. The superintendent--a stout, black-gowned figure, with a flabby, yet hard-looking face--was sitting writing in a comfortable, little office. She looked up with cold, hostile eyes as Joan walked in. Of course the girl had come to say she couldn’t pay. It was really scandalous. As for Dr. Strachey he was a soft-hearted fool.

“I have come to pay the week in advance,” Joan observed.

At the words and the sight of Joan’s bulky pocket book, Miss Bland’s face underwent a sudden change. “That is very good of you, Miss, er--” “North,” Joan interpolated--“Miss North, but there was really no hurry. Unfortunately we are obliged to make a rule as to advance payment, owing to some people being so unscrupulous, but, of course, we had no anxiety in your case.” As Miss Bland was cooing these vague, mellifluous phrases, she got out and signed a printed receipt form in an incongruously definite manner. “Yes, seventy dollars, that is quite correct--exclusive of medical attendance and drugs. As I was saying we have had patients actually brought to this house, who had not a dollar in their pocket. As though that class of person can expect the advantages of a nursing home.”

“No, of course not,” Joan agreed. “That class of person ought just to be satisfied to die.”

Miss Bland looked up sharply. Was the girl making fun of her. Joan’s face was blankly innocent; her dramatic talent was not confined to the stage. “Well, perhaps one can hardly say that,” the lady superintendent replied with a lurking discomfort. “But we have an excellent hospital--at which Dr. Strachey also visits.” She felt uneasily that it might be better to change the subject. “Dr. Strachey tells me that you have no friends in Norfolk, Miss North. If you care to stay in the Home for a few days, the little room you have already occupied is quite at your disposal. We rarely require it for patients. There would be a nominal charge of five dollars a day for board and attendance.”

With her recent experience Joan was amused at the ‘nominal’ charge. However, she accepted gratefully for one night. The fur coat justified that. “Now I must go to my--to Miss West,” she said.

Of the afternoon that followed, Joan never afterwards consciously let herself think. It was too horrible. Indeed, she sometimes felt that she was never quite the same again. Some of the gay assurance of youth was irretrievably lost. In those black hours, a doubt, a fear of life, had come to her, which, until then, had been unknown. That morning her horror had been that her grandmother should die. In the afternoon, as she sat watching the paroxysms of pain, as she heard the awful struggle for breath, it was changed to a horror that her grandmother should go on living like this. “Can you do nothing--nothing?” she cried at last to the nurses, tears rolling down her white cheeks.

“She’s probably unconscious,” they told her. But at the sound of the girl’s voice, the sick woman’s hand had moved, as though seeking something. Joan took it in her firm clasp and the groping fingers were still. The nurse ceased to urge that Miss North was only causing herself unnecessary distress by remaining in the room.

Naturally these attacks were intermittent, or the patient could hardly have lived through the afternoon. During the intervals the figure lay motionless as before, only stirred by the dreadful breathing. It was in one of these pauses that a message came to the sick room. “A gentleman, Mr. Montgomery, wants to see you downstairs,” the nurse whispered to Joan. “It is most urgent, he says.”

The girl looked round dazed. However, her grandmother’s clasp on her hand had loosened; she was lying quite still. Mr. Montgomery had been so very kind. It would be better to run down for a minute and see what he wanted.

The little man was standing in the reception room. There was no one else there. He looked distressed and nervous. The manservant, who had opened the door, had told him that Miss West’s condition was very serious. Mr. Montgomery did not offer any sympathy as Joan came in, although his eyes rested pityingly on her colourless face. “You have got to come with me, Miss North. Miss Bransom can’t appear to-night.”

Joan stared at him. Then his words penetrated her consciousness. “I can’t come,” she whispered. “Didn’t they tell you? Granny is worse.”

“The show must be given. People are lining up already.” Mr. Montgomery was inexorable.

The blood rushed to Joan’s face. “Then Miss Bransom must give it,” she cried. “All these weeks I have longed to play and she wouldn’t let me. Now because she knows I can’t leave Granny, she says she will not appear.”

Her companion felt relieved at the outburst. Anything was better than that unnatural white calm. Miss Bransom’s throat was relaxed, he explained, choosing his words carefully, as though speaking to a child. The fatigue of the long journey had tried it. She could not speak above a whisper. “Do you think she would give up one of the best houses of the season just to spite you?” he asked almost sternly. “Why it is our opening night here; we shall have all the press. And every seat is sold.”

“But I can’t come,” Joan repeated dully. “Don’t you understand? They think Granny is---” Her voice failed her.

“You must come.” Mr. Montgomery crushed down the sympathy he was feeling. “If you don’t appear to-night it will kill you with the management; it will kill you with every management in the country. You will never get another engagement. What will you live on--and your grandmother--when she gets better.”

“If I don’t act, we shan’t need my salary,” Joan replied enigmatically.

“And your career--are you willing to give that up, too?”

The words were ill-advised; they pricked the girl’s galled conscience. “I shall be glad to give up my miserable career,” she broke out. “I’ve thought too much of it already. I’ve sacrificed Granny to it--now I’ll sacrifice it to Granny. It is my right punishment.”

“But suppose Miss West doesn’t want it sacrificed?” Montgomery suggested. Then he told himself that brutality might be the greatest kindness--besides, he must hurry, time was getting on. “Look here, Miss North, you say you have thought too much of yourself--you’re still doing it. You talk as though your appearing to-night were a question for you to decide--a question of your feelings. It ain’t. It’s nothing to do with you, nor with your Granny either. You’re on the salary list of this company, and you owe it to us not to shut down the performance.” He paused and then went on more slowly. “And that’s not all; there’s something more to it--something bigger. You’re new to this business and you don’t understand. But an actor’s not an individual; he can’t have the privilege of private feelings like other people. What he’s got to think of, first and last, and all the time, is the audience. My God, don’t you think we’ve all been through it?” the little man burst out with unexpected passion. “Once my wife was sick and I had to leave her--not with every care like this--Get your hat.”

Joan was staring at him curiously. Something new had come into her face. “But if I appeared, I’d be so bad, that it would ruin the performance just the same,” she said slowly.

“You’ll be all right. I will answer for that. Now, hurry, or Clark will be committing suicide.”

The theatre was on the direct car line, so they got there a little after half-past six. Although Mr. Clark had not yet taken the irrevocable step foreboded by Montgomery he was very near it. What a happy place the world would be, if all the leading ladies could be eliminated, he was thinking, as he frenziedly paced up and down. It was like Miss Bransom to have left it to the very last minute to tell him she’d got no voice, just because with her damned selfishness she couldn’t bear to give up the part. And now Montgomery’s news about Miss North! Why the goodness couldn’t the mother have chosen any other day to fall ill. Well, the girl would just have to come, that was all there was to it. If she didn’t, he’d he’d--oh here she was. His face cleared. “Hurry, hurry, Miss North. I’ve got a lady waiting from the best modiste to alter your gowns. You’re about Miss Bransom’s height, and that’s the one bit of luck about it,” he muttered to himself.

Like a lay figure Joan submitted to the various dressmaking and dressing operations. It was only the gown for the second act that needed much alterations. The others fitted fairly, and the big scene was played in an accommodating negligée. All the time, though Joan’s body was in the stuffy, little dressing room, her thoughts were----“It’s a wonderful house, they say,” the dresser announced, as she put on the finishing touches.

The audience had been exceedingly disappointed when they had heard that the star could not appear. However, very few troubled to get back their money. With American kindliness they gave the understudy a clap as she came on. “Poor girl, she must be nervous--they say it’s her first appearance,” a whisper went round.

But Joan did not feel nervous; she did not feel anything, except dazed and frightfully tired. It was as though she had had a blow on the head. The lines were so familiar that she could not go wrong, but it all sounded dull and mechanical. Yes, it was dragging horribly. There was no contact between her and those rows of white faces beyond the lights. Or were they real faces at all? Perhaps she and they were dream figures in a dream world.

In the wings Mr. Clark was raging futilely. “And to think what a performance she could have given,” he almost sobbed. “Isn’t there any earthly thing you can suggest to pull her together?” He turned fiercely on Montgomery, who happened just then to be ‘off.’

That little man of resource recommended champagne. So the property boy was sent scurrying off for _Mumm_, extra dry. As he returned, Clark and Montgomery snatched the bottle from him and invaded ‘Vivi’s’ dressing room. Fussing like two clucking hens with a very large chick, they stood over Joan until she drank some.

“Second Act” shouted the stage manager’s assistant outside.

When Joan went on again, the audience hardly recognized her. She looked alert, vital. As she began to speak there was a sudden, surprised attention. The effect of the wine had been magical, probably because she was quite unused to it. Her fatigue seemed to have dropped away. She was still conscious of a vague sense of depression, but as she went on, it faded into the infinitely remote. She was Vivi and no one else. Presently there came a burst of clapping; then another; then applause at frequent intervals. “She’s getting it across! Lord, she’ll slap the show through yet,” Mr. Clark exclaimed rapturously.

The excited manager insisted on repeating Joan’s modest potion before the third act. Whether this was the cause or not, the girl gave a wonderful performance. The audience was impressed, startled, perhaps shocked. The silent attention of the house was almost painful. One woman was carried out in hysterics. At the end an uproar broke loose. The applause was like a cannonade as Joan came forward. Flowers rained upon the stage. Women waved their handkerchiefs. Men stood and shouted. Such a scene had never been known in Norfolk. The curtain went up and down fourteen times, while Joan, first in various combinations and then alone, stood silently bowing.

The fourth act was very short. Joan carried it through in quiet, decisive triumph. The audience dispersed still under the spell of the great central scene. Who was this girl, everyone was asking? Indeed, Joan was asking it herself as the curtain finally descended.

Suddenly the stage became crowded with people. Everyone was shaking her hand, congratulating her. Mr. Clark was flurrying about wildly, talking about the next evening’s performance. He indiscreetly hoped aloud that Miss Bransom’s voice would remain in abeyance. The advance manager, wearing a brown bowler tipped very far back, was agitatedly improvising an account of the new star’s career for a group of pressmen. Strange faces passed before Joan as in a phantasmagoria. One alone stood out, a typical American hatchet face of the intellectual type with clear grey eyes and a humorous mouth. “I’m sorry, Miss North,” this man said quietly, as he clasped her hand in his long, bony one. What was he sorry for, passed dimly through the girl’s mind. Then Mr. Terence came up. He was presenting someone who was vaguely familiar to her. Who could it be? No--yes--it was Eustace Chalfont, her mother’s tame poet. How surprising! Would he recognize her? That would be very improbable, Joan felt. Apart from her present make-up, Mr. Chalfont would hardly see in her the funny pig-tailed schoolgirl whom he had last met. The poet’s first words revealed all absence of suspicion. “Dear lady,” he said, almost fondling her hand in both of his. “A marvellous performance! Why does not America know you to worship at your shrine? In what enchanted castle have you been held captive?”

The spell of the acting had been broken by this sudden apparition out of her past, real life. She was Joan Vandeleur. And Granny? How could she stand there talking when Granny was so ill. “I must go back. I must go back at once,” she cried suddenly.

Mr. Montgomery had been standing near protectively. “Come,” he said, and escorted the girl off the stage. As they got near the back door, she began to make her way out, oblivious of her costume. “You must change first,” Mr. Montgomery reminded her. She fled to the dressing room and wildly pulled off her gorgeous evening gown with the dresser’s deprecating help. In an incredibly short time she reappeared in normal attire. A motor was waiting for her--at the expense of the management, Mr. Clark whispered. Apparently for stars who could afford to pay, such things were provided gratis. Mr. Montgomery got in with her, eclipsed under the floral tributes which Joan had utterly forgotten. He added to his kindness by saying nothing. A crowd had gathered, and they raised a cheer as the auto drove off.

The face of the man who opened the door at the nursing home from being coldly impassive had now become distinctly interested. “The press people have been keeping us pretty busy on the ’phone all the evening, Miss North,” he said with American familiarity combined with a certain deference. “They wanted all the particulars that we could give them.”

Joan stared in absolute bewilderment. “How is--” she began, and dared not trust herself to finish.

“How is Miss West?” Mr. Montgomery interposed sharply--“Miss North’s mother?”

“I haven’t heard lately. I think she was about the same. Supper has been left for you in the dining-room, Miss North. Shall I fetch you some vases for your flowers?” The man evidently could not give up his sensation. Death is a common incident in a nursing home, but this was the first time he had been associated with the début of a theatrical star.

Joan was already running upstairs. By the time she reached the landing her heart was pounding so, that she could hardly breathe. She clutched at the banisters and listened. Her grandmother’s door was a crack open, but no sound came from it. Or was it only that her own pulses were throbbing so loudly she could hear nothing else? She began to shake all over; she dared not push open that door. At last, by an almost impossible effort, she nerved herself to do so. The figure under the bedclothes lay very still. Two nurses were on the other side of the room. They turned as the door opened, and one came softly out on to the landing. “The breathing is much better,” she whispered. “Dr. Strachey thinks the serum is already having an effect. The temperature has gone down too.--May I congratulate you on your triumph, Miss North? One of the staff was at the theatre, so we have heard all about it.”

“I am so tired,” Joan said weakly, “so very tired.”