"My dear Jim, I haven't the faintest notion. Call it an impulse."
He looked at me interrogatively for a moment. "No, I'm afraid I can't help."
It was not until the beginning of February that I saw her. I was returning to dine at the flat in Queen Anne's Mansions when I met her coming out into the courtyard.
"What brings you here?" I asked.
"I've been seeing your uncle again," she told me. "Again asking for a job," she added.
"Have you been doing one of these courses?" I asked, remembering that on a previous occasion Bertrand had been compelled to decline her offer of assistance.
"I tried, but it was no good," she answered. "I fainted every time at the sight of blood. Your uncle's going to give me something else to do. Perhaps I shall see you when I get to work."
The hospital was opened a few days later, but I saw nothing of Sonia till the middle of March. The Admiralty kept me employed always for six and sometimes for seven days a week: whenever I could get away on a Sunday I used to sit in the wards talking to the men, but somehow never met Sonia, whose activity seemed to range in some other part of the building. It was not, indeed, till a severe turn of influenza laid me on my back that she telephoned to know if she might come and sit with me.
"Have you been taking a holiday?" I asked, when she arrived. "I never see you in Princes Gardens."