love alone, love pure, innocent, hallowed maybe, guilty and unlicensed often, but love all the same.

And Eleanor Morrell looking back over these three years of loving labour can trace the growth of this strange love, the knowledge of which even had been called into existence by a few chance words, as it were, and knows, being faithful in all things to her conscience, that her life and her work are as nothing by the side of this all-possessing passion.

"Life's sweetest indulgence! It has been nothing less."

"After all," she asks herself, "has it not been worthily bestowed?" Would it be possible to witness such skill and not admire, such strength and not reverence, such kindness and gentleness and not love? She can, bit by bit, build up the whole structure which threatens now to overwhelm her-the interest at first awakened by her ready aptitude, fed in her by words of praise, heightened by the common wish to succour and save; the calm self-reliance that inspired trust, the unvarying patience and tenderness that had soothed so many an hour of anguish, the minutes of chance talk when professional matters had merged in personal, the quick interchange of sympathetic thoughts and glances and realise that life's calendar is marked by the visits of the senior surgeon alone.

To Eleanor it is, this night, a revelation—and yet, feeling its intensity, she wonders how she can have been so blind, so unsuspecting the whole thing had crept upon her unawares, so imperceptibly that its realization is a complete shock. There had been no real wrong-doing-no word that could offend the ears, no action the dignity of that quiet gentle wife whose belief in her husband is the strongest of her creeds, and who, with every wish to share in his work, in no sense realizes a "helpmeet."

The only bond that existed between the grave, serious-minded man and the bright, tender-hearted woman, was that entire kinship of mind, that sympathy of thought and taste, without which love is but a base and soulless thing, and which defies all circumstance and laughs at disparity of years, knowing that there is that in it that neither the one nor the other can touch, embodying, as it does, the real indissoluble union.

There are those in this world to whom self-deception, by a process of mental skirmishing, becomes second nature. Το

Eleanor, reared in an atmosphere of truth and morality, it is not possible-she no more hesitates to rob her life of its happiness, now that it appears to her in the light of a sin, than she would hesitate to part with a limb which she knew was diseased and was likely to undermine the entire body. The resolution of her face was as deeply marked as the pain of it, as she wends her way home, after that evening service, with a crushing sense of utter desolation. She feels how utterly dependent she has been on the companionship which it behoves her now to put away from her.

"To-day is possible," she had said to herself only on entering the sacred edifice, "because to-morrow is mine." To-morrow, that was to bring the wished-for presence, the loved voice!

And yet she did not know she loved him? As she walks slowly back to the scene of her work, she marvels to think how it all seems to have been ordered-the temptation and with it the way to escape. The way to escape lies in her pocket at that moment in the form of a letter, offering her the situation as matron in a provincial hospital, where there is a wide field for her intelligence and her activity, the acceptance of which she had put from her but a few short hours ago, as impossible, because --ah, well, she had not known then that she loved him!

The patients wonder to find their favourite nurse so pale and subdued, as she makes her final evening round-they have never known her otherwise than bright and buoyant. There is a good deal of excitement in the wards with regard to the morrow-the anticipation of friendly visits and gifts and an evening entertainment in the hospital itself have made most of the inmates put aside, for the time, the remembrance of their pain and troubles, and unite in a common feeling of goodwill and even mirth, and Eleanor, struck anew by the sense of their cheerfulness and resignation under circumstances so pitiable, resolves that she will bear her lot no less bravely, and offer her gift with the cheerful heart that will make it so much more acceptable.

To promise is one thing, but to perform is not always possible to poor humanity!

Nurse Morrell awakes on Christmas morning with a feeling as if life is rather more than it is possible to bear, the effort to be bright and to promote brightness too great to be sustained, but

her cry "God help me!" is not unanswered, and to outsiders there is no appreciable difference in her appearance or manner. The day partakes of a sacrament to her, and the knowledge that years of happy and useful ministry in what had been nothing less than a home will so shortly be over, adds a new tenderness to her voice, a new gentleness to all her actions.

A gift of flowers bearing a card "From Dr. Duncan, with best wishes," brings the blood to her face for a moment, and leaves it afterwards a trifle paler than before. The innocent kindly chaff which the gift gives rise to amongst patients and nurses is anguish to her whilst attempting to answer them in their own bantering tone, a spasm passes through her heart, she could cry out to them to spare her.

"Lor, Lord!" says old Mary Raynor, a feeble old woman, whose days are numbered and full of mortal pain, and yet who praises God and thanks him, in her shrill little voice," the doctor be mighty sweet on you, Sister Eleanor, and I, for one, don't blame him."

Mary is a privileged person in the wards and says what she thinks, but Eleanor stops her gossip now with a request for a song. Mary is always ready to sing, she has a great belief in her own voice still, and the amusement that one would otherwise find in the quaint untuneful rendering of "And Mary said—” is lost in the real pathos that true belief and resignation infuse into her faint treble.

When the evening comes, Eleanor surprises everyone by her announced intention of remaining on duty in the wards, instead of mixing with the guests; they do not, however, attempt to combat her decision-former experience of their nurse's determination of character tells them it would be futile. And so she secures for herself the solitude for which she has longed throughout the day, and, unobserved and alone, finds herself face to face with her sorrow.

To those who have never experienced it, it would be difficult to convey the atmosphere of restfulness and peace which pervades the ward of a hospital at evening. The absence of sound, excepting perhaps an occasional low murmur or movement from some bed-the absence of light, excepting the fitful reflection of the firelight on the polished boards—the long dark room, with its white beds—its severe neatness and cleanliness on this par

ticular occasion softened and relieved by the evergreens and holly that deck it everywhere; fitting temple for thought and introspection-fitting altar for so sweet a sacrifice! No high priest to officiate, no pompous rites or ceremonial, only a woman with her heart laid bare—and God!

From the fit of entire abstraction into which she has allowed herself to drift, Eleanor is aroused by a feeble call from the only occupied bed in the ward, in which Lucy Andrews, a girl of fiveand-twenty, lies slowly but surely dying. In an instant she is bending over her.

Why are you here?"

“Lucy—do you want me?" "Is it you, Sister Eleanor? "Because I preferred to be. Tell me, my poor girl," as the sounds of laughter and clapping and occasional music reach in a muffled way to the distant ward, " does it not seem hard to you to be lying here whilst the others are enjoying themselves downstairs ?"

"No," she answered feebly, "I don't want to be amongst them -I don't want to be well. I know their enjoyment is all makebelieve; it is not real happiness. I have lain here so long that I have weaned myself from earthly pleasures; I have come to see things as they really are. If I could only have my life over again, how different it would be! I don't mind for myself, but oh! why did I take his opportunity away from my Jim?" "What do you mean, Lucy?"

"I loved him, Sister, and, when his drunken wife left him, I thought it little harm to live with him and try to be a mother to his children. But God has shown me by this "-pointing to her wasted frame-" that I was wrong. He ought to have brought her back and tried to reclaim her, but I stood in the way of that. I don't mind for myself, Sister Eleanor, but that perhaps through me my Jim has lost his opportunity, and Heaven!"

"Your death will give it to him, Lucy!"

"Yes, thank God for that," answers the girl fervently; "and so you sec, Sister, that's why I'm glad to be lying here! But you—you ought to be amongst all the gaiety and fun! You are full of hope, and you are not dying!"

"No, Lucy, I am not dying-but to watch the death of one's hopes, is it not second to it, my dear?"

"Better that they should die, Sister," answers the girl, putting

out a hand to clasp Eleanor's, with instinctive understanding, "for," she whispers, "by death comes resurrection ! "

In that quiet ward, the scene of so many of their mutual labours, Eleanor takes leave of him whose love has constituted her life's happiness, recognising, as she does so, how necessary is the step, since minds and hearts have unconsciously grown into such union that no word of explanation seems needed-all is understood between them.

A spasm of pain passes over his face as he reads the letter which she hands to him, offering her a matronship in a far-off town; but he merely returns it with the words:

"I felt somehow that this was coming!"

"Tell me," she asks him, "that I am right? Tell me that it is best?"

Her eyes fix themselves on him eagerly, hungrily. All the world of expectation is in them; her fate seems to hang upon his answer. Even the strong spirit knows its weakness in his presence; even he recognises his power over her, feels that one word from him might make her waver in her decision. The temptation is great-great, as those alone can understand who have felt keenest hunger and pushed their food from them keenest thirst and dashed the cup from their lips! But he conquers. There is a spirit shining up at eyes, strong, true and pure!

him through those yearning Shall he sully it?

"You are quite right," he answers firmly; " and it is for the best!"

"When do you go?" he continues, after a moment's pause. "Almost immediately."

"Then I shall not see you again?”

"Not after to-night!" The voice is low, pathetic-almost a wail.

And they stand together before the quaint old fireplace, with the dancing firelight playing on their mute figures, lighting up at times their wistful faces, in a solemn silence-a silence though that is eloquent with the pent-up passion of months! How well she has done to love him, who has proved himself strongest, manliest, best! How truly has she enshrined herself in his heart as purest, most lovable, most loved!

Unconscious and forgetful of the presence of the one witness