Part 12 (1/2)

What ato refuse me any spoken explanation

But one should not listen to what people say, only to what they mean, and she was one of those persons whose minds one must read for oneself, since her words so often deforhts

The familiarity and equality of her tone seemed to come from some mood removed fro about a trouble personal to herself

She did not mean ”You are not so nice” but ”You don't like , it was all so new to her, she wanted so to be ”liked”!

But there was this question of her authority

Hoas she to live a her fellows?

Can one afford to disdain them? Can one steer happily with indifference?

Must one, to be ”liked,” bend one's spirit to theirs? And,question of all, is to be ”liked” the final standard?

Whether to wear, or not to wear, a mask towards one's world? For there is so e and uncertainty

As she sat there, unfolding to s of her situation, her fresh pink face clouded, her grand cap and red cape adding burdens of authority to the toil of growth, I could readily have looked into the glass to see ifyou condeest Sister finally, at the close of a conversation

I have to-day cority; it is terrible She has eternal youth, eternal fair hair, cold and ignorant judg to the world I can't further soften her; a entleentleot!

Here in the wards the Sisters have the stuff the world is made of laid out, bedded, before their eyes; the ups and downs of man from the four corners of the Empire and the hundred corners of social life, helpless and in pyjaentleest Sister loves to add to her criticism of a patient

It isn't my part as a VAD to cry, ”Who wants you to?”

”I couldn't trust that oes deeper

But whom need one trust? Brother, lover, friendno more Why wish to trust all the world?

”They are not real h”

That's where she goes wrong; they are h--patchy, ordinary, human Shewill happen in the ward Once I have touched this bedrock in her I shall be for ever touching it till it gets sore!

One should seek for no response They are not elastic, these nuns