"You don't seem to have much fever," she said. "There was a poor fellow in the Military Hospital this morning with a temperature of 107. I could hardly bear to touch him."
"What was the matter?" asked Hilda idly, occupied with hypotheses about the third person in the room.
"Oh, I don't know exactly. Some complication, I suppose, of the wages the body pays to sin."
"Divinest Laura!" Hilda exclaimed, drawing her head back. "Do take a chair. It will be even more soothing to see you comfortable."
Captain Filbert spoke again to Alicia, as she obeyed. "Miss Howe is more thoughtful for others than some of our converted ones," she said, with vast kindness. "I have often told her so. I have had a long day."
"It may improve me in that character," Hilda said, "to suggest that if you will go about such people, a little carbolic disinfectant is a good thing, or a crystal or two of permanganate of potash in your bath. Do you use those things?"
Laura shook her head. "Faith is better than disinfectants. I never get any harm. My Master protects me."
"My goodness!" Hilda said. And in the silence that occurred, Captain Filbert remarked that the only thing she used carbolic acid for was a decayed tooth. Presently Alicia made a great effort. She laid hands on Hilda's previous references as a tangibility that remained with her.
"Do you ever go to the Cathedral?" she said.
The faintest shade of dogmatism crossed Captain Filbert's features, as when, on a day of cloud fleeces, the sun withdraws for an instant from a flower. Since her sect is proclaimed beyond the boundaries of dogma it may have been some other obscurity, but my appraisement fails.