The New Magdalen

'I believe so,' she said. 'We met here by accident. I know nothing of her.'

'Not even her name?' inquired the German surgeon.

Mercy's resolution was hardly equal yet to giving her own name openly as the name of Grace. She took refuge in flat denial.

'Not even her name,' she repeated obstinately.

The old man stared at her more rudely than ever, considered with himself, and took the candle from the table. He hobbled back to the bed and examined the figure laid on it in silence. The Englishman continued the conversation, no longer concealing the interest that he felt in the beautiful woman who stood before him.

'Pardon me,' he said, 'you are very young to be alone in war-time in such a place as this.'

The sudden outbreak of a disturbance in the kitchen relieved Mercy from any immediate necessity for answering him. She heard the voices of the wounded men raised in feeble remonstrance, and the harsh command of the foreign officers bidding them be silent. The generous instincts of the woman instantly prevailed over every personal consideration imposed on her by the position which she had assumed. Reckless whether she betrayed herself or not as nurse in the French ambulance, she instantly drew aside the canvas to enter the kitchen. A German sentinel barred the way to her, and announced, in his own language, that no strangers were admitted. The Englishman politely interposing, asked if she had any special object in wishing to enter the room.

'The poor Frenchmen!' she said, earnestly, her heart upbraiding her for having forgotten them. 'The poor wounded Frenchmen!'

The German surgeon advanced from the bedside, and took the matter up before the Englishman could say a word more.

'You have nothing to do with the wounded Frenchmen,' he croaked, in the harshest notes of his voice. 'The wounded Frenchmen are my business, and not yours. They are our prisoners, and they are being moved to our ambulance. I am Ingatius Wetzel, chief of the medical staff—and I tell you this. Hold your tongue.' He turned to the sentinel and added in German, 'Draw the curtain again; and if the woman persists, put her back into this room with your own hand.'

Mercy attempted to remonstrate. The Englishman respectfully took her arm, and drew her out of the sentinel's reach.

'It is useless to resist,' he said. 'The German discipline never gives way. There is not the least need to be uneasy about the Frenchmen. The ambulance under Surgeon Wetzel is admirably administered. I answer for it, the men will be well treated.' He saw the tears in her eyes as he spoke; his admiration for her rose higher and higher. 'Kind as well as beautiful,' he thought. 'What a charming creature!'

'Well!' said Ignatius Wetzel, eying Mercy sternly through his spectacles. 'Are you satisfied? And will you hold your tongue?'

She yielded: it was plainly useless to resist. But for the surgeon's resistance, her devotion to the wounded men might have stopped her on the downward way that she was going. If she could only have been absorbed again, mind and body, in her good work as a nurse, the temptation might even yet have found her strong enough to resist it. The fatal severity of the German discipline had snapped asunder the last tie that bound her to her better self. Her face hardened as she walked away proudly from Surgeon Wetzel, and took a chair.

The Englishman followed her, and reverted to the question of her present situation in the cottage.

'Don't suppose that I want to alarm you,' he said. 'There is, I repeat, no need to be anxious about the Frenchmen, but there is serious reason for anxiety on your own account. The action will be renewed round this village by daylight; you ought really to be in a place of safety. I am an officer in the English army—my name is Horace Holmcroft. I shall be delighted to be of use to you, and I can be of use, if you will let me. May I ask if you are traveling?'

Mercy gathered the cloak which concealed her nurse's dress more closely round her, and committed herself silently to her first overt act of deception. She bowed her head in the affirmative.

'Are you on your way to England?'

'Yes.'

'In that case I can pass you through the German lines, and forward you at once on your journey.'

Mercy looked at him in unconcealed surprise. His strongly-felt interest in her was restrained within the strictest limits of good-breeding: he was unmistakably a gentleman. Did he really mean what he had just said?

'You can pass me through the German lines?' she repeated. 'You must possess extraordinary influence, sir, to be able to do that.'

Mr. Horace Holmcroft smiled.

'I possess the influence that no one can resist,' he answered—'the influence of the Press. I am serving here as war correspondent of one of our great English newspapers. If I ask him, the commanding officer will grant you a pass. He is close to this cottage. What do you say?'

She summoned her resolution—not without difficulty, even now—and took him at his word.

'I gratefully accept your offer, sir.'

He advanced a step toward the kitchen, and stopped.

'It may be well to make the application as privately as possible,' he said. 'I shall be questioned if I pass through that room. Is there no other way out of the cottage?'

Mercy showed him the door leading into the yard. He bowed—and left her.

She looked furtively toward the German surgeon. Ignatius Wetzel was still at the bed, bending over the body, and apparently absorbed in examining the wound which had been inflicted by the shell. Mercy's instinctive aversion to the old man increased tenfold, now that she was left alone with him. She withdrew uneasily to the window, and looked out at the moonlight.

Had she committed herself to the fraud? Hardly, yet. She had committed herself to returning to England— nothing more. There was no necessity, thus far, which forced her to present herself at Mablethorpe House, in