And once, at Balaklava, she knew she saw him: but not on a sick bed.
Standing beneath the window, chatting merrily with a group of officers-- It was he! Could she mistake that figure, though the face was turned away?
Her head swam, her pulses beat like church bells, her eyes were ready to burst from their sockets.

But--she was assisting at an operation.

It was God's will, and she must endure.
When the operation was over, she darted wildly down the stairs without a word.
He was gone.
Without a word she came back to her work, and possessed her soul in patience.
Inquiries, indeed, she made, as she had a right to do; but no one knew the name.

She questioned, and caused to be questioned, men from Varna, from Sevastopol, from Kerteh, from the Circassian coast; English, French, and Sardinian, Pole and Turk.

No one had ever heard the name.
She even found at last, and questioned, one of the officers who had formed that group beneath the window.
"Oh! that man?
He was a Pole, Michaelowyzcki, or some such name.