Part 12 (2/2)

In all honesty the hospital is a convent, and the men in it my brothers

This for months on end

For all that, now and then some one raises his eyes and looks at lance deepens

”Charme de l'amour qui pourrait vous peindre!”

Wooes into hospital Such wo else becomes a tors the world back into lected, discos one doesn't fight

”Chared! The eldest Sister and the youngest Sister are my enemies; the patients are my enee head turned fixedly my way to see how often I stop at the bed whose nuht he dared to say, ”It's not like you, nurse, staying so allantsI know! But one arown quieter, and his bed is No 11

Even Mr Wicks is ht say to the eldest Sister?

He has nothing to do all day but watch and guard

In the bunk at tea I sit ahts of my own The Sisters are my enemies

I am alive, delirious, but not happy

I am at any one's mercy; I have lost thirty friends in a day The thirty-first is in bed No 11

This is bad: hospital cannot shelter this life we lead, No 11 and I He is a prisoner, and I have my honour, my responsibility towards him; he has come into this room to be cured, not tormented

Even my hand must not meet his--no, not even in a careless touch, not even in its ”duty”; or, if it does, what risk!

I aainst: it is not I who make his bed, hand him what he wishes; some accident defeats me every tie that the Sisters should be my enemies Don't we deserve sympathy and pity, No 11 and I? Fro about us? Aren't we leading ic days? Do they feel it and dislike it? Why?

I feel that the little love we have created is a hare whose natural fate is to be run by every hound But I don't see the reason

We can't speak, No 11 and I, only a whispered word or two that seems to shout itself into every ear We don't know each other

Last night it was stronger than I I let hiest Sister at the far end of the ward by the door, but I didn'tThe ot her That is how one feels when one is desperate; that is how trouble comes