Her hands flew to her breast, higher, clasped against the full, white throat.

“Now, have I not dragged my very soul naked under your eyes?  Have I not confessed enough.  What more do you want of me before you consent to keep your distance and trouble me no more?”

“I want to know what has angered you against me,” he said quietly.

She set her teeth and stared at him, with beautiful resolute eyes.

“Before I answer that,” she said, “I demand to know why you refused to marry me.”

“I cannot tell you, Ailsa.”

In a white rage she whispered: 

“No, you dare not tell me!—­you coward!  I had to learn the degrading reason from others!”

He grew deathly white, caught her arms in a grasp of steel, held her twisting wrists imprisoned.

“Do you know what you are saying?” he stammered.

“Yes, I know!  Your cruelty—­your shame——­”

“Be silent!” he said between his teeth.  “My shame is my pride!  Do you understand!”

Outraged, quivering all over, she twisted out of his grasp.

“Then go to her!” she whispered.  “Why don’t you go to her?”

And, as his angry eyes became blank: 

“Don’t you understand?  She is there—­just across the road!” She flung open the window and pointed with shaking anger.

“Didn’t anybody tell you she is there?  Then I’ll tell you.  Now go to her!  You are—­worthy—­of one another!”

“Of whom are you speaking—­in God’s name!” he breathed.

Panting, flushed, flat against the wall, she looked back out of eyes that had become dark and wide, fumbling in the bosom of her gray garb.  And, just where the scarlet heart was stitched across her breast, she drew out a letter, and, her fascinated gaze still fixed on him, extended her arm.

He took the crumpled sheets from her in a dazed sort of way, but did not look at them.

“Who is there—­across the road?” he repeated stupidly.

“Ask—­Miss—­Lynden.”

“Letty!”

But she suddenly turned and slipped swiftly past him, leaving him there in the corridor by the open window, holding the letter in his hand.

For a while he remained there, leaning against the wall.  Sounds from the other ward came indistinctly—­a stifled cry, a deep groan, the hurried tread of feet, the opening or closing of windows.  Once a dreadful scream rang out from a neighbouring ward, where a man had suddenly gone insane; and he could hear the sounds of the struggle, the startled orders, the shrieks, the crash of a cot; then the dreadful uproar grew fainter, receding.  He roused himself, passed an unsteady hand across his eyes, looked blindly at the letter, saw only a white blurr, and, crushing it in his clenched fist, he went down the kitchen stairs and out across the road.

A hospital guard stopped him, but on learning who he was and that he had business with Miss Lynden, directed him toward a low, one-storied, stone structure, where, under the trees, a figure wrapped in a shawl lay asleep in a chair.