"And that, you know, is a difficulty for you to weigh. How far are you a dictator?
"I have been thinking of my rôle and yours.
"In the long run, however 'capable' I become, my soul should be given to the smoothing of pillows.
"You are barred from so many kinds of sympathy: you must not sympathize over the deficiencies of the hospital, over the food, over the M.O.'s lack of imagination, over the intolerable habits of the man in the next bed; you must not sigh 'I know ...' to any of these plaints.
"Yours is the running of the ward. Yours the isolation of a crowned head.
"One day you said a penetrating thing to me:
"'He's not very ill, but he's feeling wretched. Run along and do the sympathetic V.A.D. touch!'
"For a moment I, just able to do a poultice or a fomentation, resented it.
"But you were right.... One has one's métier."