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which pinned her keys to the inside of her trouser pocket and pulled it through her hands until she came at the key for the top drawer, unlocked it and took out Michael’s case history.

5
    When Neil Parkinson came in on the echo of his knock she was getting herself settled back in her chair, the papers still unopened on the desk in front of her. He sat down in the visitor’s chair and looked at her gravely. She, taking his look for granted, merely smiled and waited.
    But the eyes she took for granted never gazed on her with the blinded ease of a friendly liking; they took her apart and put her back together again at each meeting, not in any lascivious sense, but as a delighted small boy might dissect the mystery of his most treasured toy. The novelty in discovering her had never left him, and he took fresh pleasure in it every evening when he came to her office to sit with her and chat in private.
    Not that she was any raving beauty, or could substitute sensuality for beauty. She did have youth and the advantage of a particularly lovely skin, so clear the veins showed under it smokily, though atabrine yellow marred it now. Her features were regular, a little on the small side save for her eyes, which were the same soft brown as her hair, large and tranquil unless she was angry, when they snapped fiercely. She had a born nurse’s figure, neat but sadly flat-chested, with very good legs, long, slender yet well-muscled, fine in the feet and ankles; all this the result of constant movement and much hard work. During daylight hours when she wore a dress, the white crisp folds of her nurse’s veil formed a charming frame for her face; at night when trousered, she wore a slouch hat to and from duty, but went bareheaded within the ward. Her short, wavy hair she kept that way by trading off a part of her generous nurses’ liquor allowance in return for a cut, shampoo and set from a QM corporal who had been a hairdresser in civilian life and did the nurses’ hair upon request.
    That was her surface. Underneath she was as tough as annealed metal, intelligent, very well read in a posh girls’ school way, and shrewd. She had decision, she was crisp, and for all her kindness and understanding she was clinically detached in some core of her. She belonged to them, she had committed herself to them, these patients of hers, yet whatever it was that lay at the center of her being she always held back from them. Maddening, but probably a part of the secret of her attraction for Neil.
    It couldn’t have been easy, finding the lightest and deftest touch in dealing with soldiers to whom she was a restatement of that almost forgotten race, women. Yet she had managed it beautifully, never given one of them the slightest indication of sexual interest, romantic interest, call it what you would. Her title was Sister, they called her Sis, and that was how she always presented herself—as a sister to them, someone who was extremely fond while not willing to share all of her private self.
    However, between Neil Parkinson and Honour Langtry there existed an understanding. It had never been discussed nor indeed even so much as openly mentioned, but they both knew that when the war was over and they were back on Civvy Street he would pursue his relationship with her, and she would welcome that pursuit.
    They were both from the very best homes, had been brought up with an exquisite appreciation of the nuances duty scarcely began to define, so that to each of them it was inconceivable that personal matters should claim precedence over what was owed to duty. At the time they met, the war had dictated a strictly professional kind of relationship, to which they would adhere strictly; but after the war circumspection could be abandoned.
    To that prospect Neil clung, looking forward to it with something more painful than eagerness; what he dreamed of was virtually the rounding out of his life, for he loved her very much. He was not as strong as she, or