“Let me think.”
They walked some steps in silence. “He is turning it over,” she thought. “He will tell me how to begin.”
He stopped, as if seized by a new idea.
“Did you tell them where you had been?”
“No,” she replied, in the same weak voice.
“But why not do so? There is hope in that. The chaplain was your friend—your only friend in London, so far as they know. Surely that is an extenuating circumstance so plausible——”
“But I cannot——”
“I know it is bitter to explain—to apologize—and if I can do it for you——”
“I will not allow it!” she said. Her lips were set, and her breath was coming through them in gusts.
“It is a pity to allow the hospitals to be closed against you. Nursing is a good profession, Glory—even a fashionable one. It is true womanly work, and——”