"Here are you--if you'll allow me to say so--a magnificent, splendid, healthy young person, wearing out your young life over a lot of lame ducks, failures, and cripples." "Nor is that quite the way we look at," said Sister Anne.
"We ?" demanded Sam.
Sister Anne nodded toward a group of nurse "I'm not the only nurse here," she said "There are over forty." "You are the only one here," said Sam, "who is not! That's Just what I mean--I appreciate the work of a trained nurse; I understand the ministering angel part of it; but you--I'm not talking about anybody else; I'm talking about you--you are too young! Somehow you are different; you are not meant to wear yourself out fighting disease and sickness, measuring beef broth and making beds." Sister Anne laughed with delight.
"I beg your pardon," said Sam stiffly.
"No--pardon me," said Sister Anne; "but your ideas of the duties of a nurse are so quaint." "No matter what the duties are," declared Sam; "You should not be here!" Sister Anne shrugged her shoulders; they were charming shoulders--as delicate as the pinions of a bird.
"One must live," said Sister Anne.
They had passed through the last cold corridor, between the last rows of rigid white cots, and had come out into the sunshine.

Below them stretched Connecticut, painted in autumn colors.

Sister Anne seated herself upon the marble railing of the terrace and looked down upon the flashing waters of the Sound.
"Yes; that's it," she repeated softly--"one must live." Sam looked at her--but, finding that to do so made speech difficult, looked hurriedly away.

He admitted to himself that it was one of those occasions, only too frequent with him, when his indignant sympathy was heightened by the fact that "the woman was very fair." He conceded that.

He was not going to pretend to himself that he was not prejudiced by the outrageous beauty of Sister Anne, by the assault upon his feelings made by her uniform--made by the appeal of her profession, the gentlest and most gracious of all professions.