"Well, yes." She wished that she could say all the right things, Sadie would have known; made some witty observations about being married and turned everything into a joke, something which she was quite unable to do.

"I'm glad about Shirley and you must be delighted. When she is grown up she'll think of you with grat.i.tude."

"And you. Rose; you're already grown up, how do you think of me?"

The warm colour washed over her face but she didn't look away.

"I shall think of you as a very eminent surgeon. Sir."

"You flatter me. Goodbye, Rose." He stood on one side and after a moment's hesitation she went past him, across the hall and through the door at the back which would take her to the nurses' home.

She went very fast, trying to run away from her unhappiness. Before she reached her room she had already made up her mind to go to Aunt Millicent. If she hurried she could get a train; the local bus would have left, but just for once she would be extravagant and get a taxi.

She hurled things into an overnight bag, tore out of her uniform, showered and dressed, tied her hair back with very little thought as to her appearance, left a message for Sadie and nipped smartly to the hospital entrance, remembering to peer cautiously out into the forecourt first in case Sybren's car was still there. It wasn't. She gulped back the ridiculous hope and went to catch a taxi to the station. She caught the train with seconds to spare and at the other end was lucky enough to find the vicar's sister, only too glad to share a taxi with her. Aunt Millicent's cottage looked cosy and welcoming under the summer evening sky; Rose flew down the path and opened the door, calling "It's me. Rose," and when Aunt Millicent poked her austere head round the sitting-room door, she dropped her bag and hugged that lady quite ruthlessly, fighting a great desire to burst into tears.

Aunt Millicent took a lightning glance at her niece's face and said heartily, "Well, what a lovely surprise. I was only saying to Maggie this very evening how nice it would be if you were here for a day or two."

She frowned fiercely at Maggie, who had come hurrying from the kitchen, and that lady on the point of saying something quite different agreed instantly and loudly.

"And there's a lovely little raised pie just waiting to be eaten," she pointed out.

"Just you put that bag in your room and I'll get a tray."

"And a gla.s.s of wine, I think," declared her aunt, 'and if you're not too tired we long to hear about that awful bomb. I had such a splendid letter from your princ.i.p.al nursing officer and a charming one from Mr. Werdmer ter Sane. "

Rose, on her way upstairs, whizzed round.

"He wrote? To you? what about?"

"Telling us what had happened and saying that your courage had saved a child's life. He wrote that you were a splendid nurse with a great sense of duty."

Rose said, "Oh, did he?" in a hollow voice. That was the sort of thing one could say about anyone; someone one didn't like overmuch or someone to whom one was quite indifferent. She went upstairs to her pretty room and sat down on the bed and pulled herself together.

Presently she went down again and ate the raised pie and drank the wine and with the two elderly ladies on either side of her gave them a tidied-up version of the bombing. After that she was urged to go to her bed with the promise of a nice day on the morrow, doing nothing.

She kissed the two kind faces, drank the milk with Maggie standing over her, and went upstairs. She was sure that she wouldn't sleep and she had a lot to think about but the country silence was soothing and the gentle murmur of voices from downstairs acted far more efficiently than a sleeping pill. She slept.

Mr. Werdmer ter Sane had left the outskirts of London behind him and was well on the way to the ferry which would take him back to Holland when he slowed the car at an exit, followed it down and round and started driving back to London again on the other side of the motorway. For a man accustomed to having his own way either by arrogance or charm, he found himself singularly helpless. Rose, una.s.suming, not even pretty, certainly tiresomely obtuse about some things, had wished him goodbye in a matter-of- fact manner which should have left him in no doubt as to her feelings, but her eyes, her lovely gentle eyes, mused Mr. Werdmer ter Sane besot- tedly, had betrayed her. He was at a loss to know why she had taken such a dislike to him--after all they had gone through too. He put an elegant foot down hard, anxious to get back to St. Bride's and find out.

The head porter was unable to help him.

"Saw Staff Nurse Comely go out this evening with me own eyes. Sir--'ad a bag wither too."

Mr. Werdmer ter Sane thought for a moment.

"Can you get hold of her friend? Sadie the name is--but that is all I know."

Old Wilson said stolidly: "Staff Nurse Gordon, Sir." He had worked all his life at St. Bride's but he couldn't remember a consultant ever wanting to speak to a staff nurse off-duty.

"She'll be over in the 'ome, being just off-duty as you might say."

He applied himself to the phone.

"She'll be right over. Sir."

Sadie came dancing through the door; no one looking at her would have guessed

that not five minutes earlier she had been in her dressing gown drinking tea and about to wash her hair. Now the dressing-gown had been replaced by uniform and her hair was charmingly arranged under a snowy cap.

She said breathlessly, "Hullo. It seems silly to call you Sir, but I suppose I must. I thought you'd forgotten me.""Impossible--although I must do my best-- I hear you are to be married veryshortly." He smiled, at his most charming.

"Sadie, where's Rose?"

"Rose?" They had walked into the centre of the entrance hall where no onecould overhear them."Is that why she went?""Where?""To her aunt's house at Ashby St. Ledgers, that's in...""I know, I wrote to her aunt--Miss Curtis-- it's somewhere near Daventry.""Four miles--go up the Ml and turn left. Too late to go now--they'll all be in bed. It's about seventy miles; that's nothing to you and your Rolls. I say, why do you want to see her, has something awful happened on the ward?"

He shook his head.

"No, nothing like that..."

"You're not going to tell me, are you?"

"No, Sadie, not now."

"I shall ask Rose when she gets back on Sunday evening."

"By all means. Thank you for your help. I hope you'll invite me to your wedding?"

"I say, will you come if I do? Rose is to be one of the bridesmaids, she is going to wear pink, she looks pretty in pink."

"I have thought for some time that she looks pretty in anything."

Old Wilson peering at them from his little box was shocked when she leaned up and kissed Mr. Werdmer ter Sane's cheek. Really, what was the world coming to?

"Good luck," said Sadie, "Rose is a darling girl but; very pigheaded."

She whirled away blowing a kiss to Wilson as she pa.s.sed.

Sybren left London after seven o'clock in the morning, breakfasted on the way and was tooling down Ashby St. Ledgers brief main street before ten. He stopped once here to ask the way and presently stopped in the lane outside Aunt Millicent's cottage. He got out and stood a moment looking at it; the windows were all open as was the front door and at the side of the house, given over to the soft fruit, he could see Rose picking raspberries.

She turned round as he shut the gate behind him and started slowly up the path and then came across the gra.s.s towards her. His good morning was affable and gave her no clue at all as to why he was there, standing in front of her, an uncanny answer to her daydreams. She put the basket of fruit down carefully and said good morning in her turn and since the silence between them got rather too long for comfort she essayed a little light conversation.

"I thought you were going to Holland."

"So did I, indeed I started my journey and changed my mind. I wanted to make quite sure that you had meant what you had said; that you had wanted it to be goodbye. Rose."

She said very steadily, "Yes, I did mean it. I'm sorry you came all this way..." She paused and being a truthful girl, added, "No, I'm not sorry."

He stared down at her.

"I believe that we are at cross purposes; and I think to get to the heart of the tangle I must go back to Holland." He studied her face carefully.

"You really mean it, don't you. Rose?"

"Oh, yes. And if you don't mind I'd rather not talk about it."

He nodded.

"Very well. We'll say goodbye for a second time. Do you not have a saying in English " Third time lucky"?"

She wasn't going to answer that. It would be so easy to tell him that she loved him; she had only to open her mouth, but there was Mies-such a suitable wife for a wealthy eminent surgeon--waiting for him to go back to her.

She asked politely, "Have you had breakfast! I'm sure Aunt Millicent will be glad to give you something."

"I had a meal on the way here. I'll be on my way."

Not just yet, cried her heart, five minutes more--ten minutes more. Someone, somewhere heard her. Aunt Millicent poked her head out of the kitchen window and called in her no- nonsense voice, "Rose, whoever that is bring him in for a cup of coffee."

Aunt Millicent was well aware who it was; it was Maggie who had seen him coming up the garden path and had rushed into the sitting-room to whisper the news, just as though anyone was near enough to overhear her.

"It's him," she whispered excitedly, "I'm sure of it, Miss Curtis--that Dutch surgeon Rose never talks about. Fine as five pence and a splendid body of a man."

So Miss Curtis had gone to peer from the kitchen window while Maggie got out the coffee pot, and since Sybren accepted the offer at once there was nothing for it but to bring him into the house.

Aunt Millicent received him graciously, liking what she saw, and immediately embarked on a series of topics of an impersonal nature until he put his coffee-cup down, observing that he would have to leave if he were to catch the hovercraft from Dover; he didn't specify at what time it went and she drdn't ask him, merely observed that she had been delighted to meet him and telling Rose to see him to his car. Rose, who had had almost nothing to say, obediently got to her feet, waited while first her aunt and then Maggie bade him goodbye, and then led the way down the hall and out of the front door. She could see the Rolls parked in the lane and wished it miles away so that Sybren couldn't get into it and drive out of her life. They reached the gate but when she put out a hand to open it he covered it with one of his own.

"I had my life planned," he spoke quite quietly, 'unexciting but satisfactory enough and somehow it didn't concern me overmuch. And then we met. " He paused to stare down at her upturned face, and she said quickly, " A flash in the pan, that's all it was you don't need to explain; I don't want you to. It was kind of you to come but I've made up my mind. " She drew a deep breath and lied convincingly.

"I really don't want to see you again. Please go now."

She steeled herself against another goodbye and was very surprised when he smiled as though he were genuinely amused about something.

"Sadie said that you were pig-headed." He lifted the hand he had been covering with his and kissed it gently.

"Tot Ziens, Rose."

He got into his car, raised a casual hand in salute and drove away without a backward glance.

"He didn't kiss her," worried Maggie from the sitting-room window.

"He's gone."

He'll be back," said Miss Curtis, " Oh, he'll be back, Maggie. He's not aman to come whining excuses, he's gone to find out what's got between them.I suspect that our little Rose has got the wrong end of the stick and is toopig-headed to let go. " She nodded in a pleased manner.

"He will make her a splendid husband."

"I could do with another cup of coffee," she went on in her usual forthright tone as Rose came wandering in through the door.

"We'll all have one and then I'll come and help with those raspberries, Rose, it's best to pick them before the heat of the day.

She led the way into the sitting-room and sat down by the coffee tray while Maggie went off to the kitchen to fetch some more coffee.

"A very pleasant man," she commented casually, 'and one to. be trusted I think.

A good trait in a surgeon, not given to talking about himself either."

Rose agreed, it was something she had only just realised herself.

Rose was kept pleasantly occupied for the rest of the day; to sit idle withnothing but one's sad thoughts was what Aunt Millicent described to herselfas unsuitable, so Rose picked fruit, bathed Shep, took him for a walk withher aunt for company and then after tea was taken to the village for a whistdrive in aid of one of Miss Curtis's worthy causes. She did everythingsuggested to her in a docile manner, her mind far away, going every inch ofSybren's journey to his home. And on the way back home for supper, sheimagined him arriving at his lovely home on the gracht; Mies would be there to welcome him, of course, wearing something glamorous, and at the sight of her he would forget all about a girl named Rose. She fetched such a deep sigh that her aunt hurried her indoors with the observation that she had tired herself out.

"Supper," decreed Miss Curtis firmly, 'and then bed. "

Rose was indeed exhausted by her feelings, she slept soundlessly almost immediately her head touched the pillow, still thinking ofSybren.

Aunt Millicent kept her busy all the next day too, doing all the undemanding small tasks which went with village life, and the following morning she went

back to St. Bride's, fortified by Aunt Millicent's bracing therapy and an enormous cake baked by Maggie, to be eaten with the bedtime cups of tea.