Winifred also should have gone. She had got her sal volatile and her information. But life was lying in ruins around her—Sadie's life, if not her own—and she did not know how to set about reconstructing it.
"What man does she love who loves another girl?" she asked herself.
Then, suddenly, she knew. It was Earl Usher, and he loved her, Winifred, who could never be more to him than a friend.
Win had heard of a "vicious circle." It seemed that she and Sadie and Ursus were travelling in one, going round and round, and could never get out.
"But I must go down," the mechanical part of herself kept repeating.
She had involuntarily paused near the door to think things out in peace. There were no patients for the two narrow white beds, and the nurse—a small, nervous woman with sentimental eyes—was heating water over a spirit lamp. She suffered from headache and had prescribed herself some tea. The water had begun to boil, and despite the throbbing in her temples she hummed monotonously: "You Made Me Love You."
Winifred heard the tune through her thoughts of Sadie and Earl Usher, and it seemed to make everything sadder and more hopeless. But suddenly the singing broke off—the thin voice rose to a shriek, and was lost in a loud explosion.
In the act of going out Win turned, bewildered and expecting horror. Head down, her hands covering her burned face, the nurse came staggering toward the door. Hair and cap were on fire. All over the white dress and apron were dotted little blue tongues of flame that had spouted out from the bursting lamp.
Often such an accident had been lightly prophesied by this very woman. The spirit sent up for the hospital was of the cheapest. Peter Rolls was "not in business for his health!"
Dazed by the deafening noise, and shocked to the very heart by the woman's shriek of pain, Win was not conscious of thought. She did not tell herself to spring to the