This, then, was the first of the two things that remained to be told about this part of Louie's story.
For the second of them she had neither years nor months to wait, but a bare fortnight. A very few words will tell it.
One evening after the boy had been put to bed she went down into the nurses' parlour and helped Dot and Nurse Chalmers to overhaul the blouses in which the doctors operated. Besides themselves, only Miss Cora was present; she was reading an evening paper. Louie saw her purse her lips and then throw the paper away. Presently Louie, tossing a patched blouse aside, reached for the paper.
A few minutes later Miss Cora, with a "Why, what's the matter?" started forward and bent over her. Louie had gone deathly white.
"It's nothing—I shall be all right presently," she muttered, her eyes closed.
Miss Cora took the paper. The page at which she herself had last looked was still uppermost. It contained an account of a suicide.
"What is it, dear?" Miss Cora asked again. "Not that?" She pointed to the paragraph. Indeed, there was little else of interest on the page.
"I shall be all right in a minute," Louie murmured again.
There was nothing remarkable about the suicide. A young man had hanged himself behind his bedroom door, and a verdict in accordance with the evidence (which, it was suggested, was largely medical) had been returned. He had left a letter for his mother, precisely like almost every other such letter, and parts of it were quoted. The young man's name was Archie Merridew. He was to have been married on the morrow.
"Is that it?" Miss Cora asked again.