He wrote his name on a medicine label and glued it to her hand.  It looked alarmingly possessive.

Twenty-two presided at the concert that night.  He was extravagantly funny, and the sort of creaking solemnity with which things began turned to uproarious laughter very soon.

Everything went off wonderfully.  Tony started his selection too high, and was obliged to stop and begin over again.  And the two Silversteins, from the children’s ward, who were to dance a Highland fling together, had a violent quarrel at the last moment and had to be scratched.  But everything else went well.  The ambulance driver gave a bass solo, and kept a bar or two ahead of the accompaniment, dodging chords as he did wagons on the street, and fetching up with a sort of garrison finish much as he brought in the ambulance.

But the real musical event of the evening was Jane Brown’s playing.  She played Schubert without any notes, because she had been taught to play Schubert that way.

And when they called her back, she played little folk songs of the far places of Europe.  Standing around the walls, in wheeled chairs, on crutches, pale with the hospital pallor, these aliens in their eddy listened and thrilled.  Some of them wept, but they smiled also.

At the end she played the Minuet, with a sort of flaming look in her eyes that puzzled Twenty-two.  He could not know that she was playing it to Johnny Fraser, lying with closed eyes in the ward upstairs.  He did not realise that there was a passion of sacrifice throbbing behind the dignity of the music.

Doctor Willie had stayed over for the concert.  He sat, beaming benevolently, in the front row, and toward the end he got up and told some stories.  After all, it was Doctor Willie who was the real hit of the evening.  The convalescents rocked with joy in their roller chairs.  Crutches came down in loud applause.  When he sat down he slipped a big hand over Jane Brown’s and gave hers a hearty squeeze.

“How d’you like me as a parlour entertainer, Nellie?” he whispered.

She put her other hand over his.  Somehow she could not speak.

The First Assistant called to the Probationer that night as she went past her door.  Lights were out, so the First Assistant had a candle, and she was rubbing her feet with witch hazel.

“Come in,” she called.  “I have been looking for you.  I have some news for you.”

The exaltation of the concert had died away.  Jane Brown, in the candle light, looked small and tired and very, very young.

“We have watched you carefully,” said the First Assistant, who had her night garments on but had forgotten to take off her cap.  “Although you are young, you have shown ability, and—­you are to be accepted.”

“Thank you, very much,” replied Jane Brown, in a strangled tone.

“At first,” said the First Assistant, “we were not sure.  You were very young, and you had such odd ideas.  You know that yourself now.”