I still am very unhappy at times. It is only when I lose myself in my work, only when I am caring for those who suffer, does my life seem at all worth living."

Nancy looked with deeper interest at the calm brow, the steady blue eyes, the sweet mouth, the fast-graying hair of the woman before her. "You are very brave," she said, "and very unselfish if you can forget your own troubles in doing for others. I am afraid I can never do that. It must be very, very hard not to dwell upon one's own griefs."

"It was hard at first, but one learns. To centre one's entire thoughts upon one's own sorrows that way madness lies. If we can not busy ourselves in some vital way we become worthless to ourselves and the world."

Nancy sighed. It would be hard to disengage her thoughts from her present sorrows, she considered, yet, for the second time that day she had been made to realize that life was a battle, and that one must not be a coward. One must look for defeats, for weariness of soul and body, for privations and sufferings, but one must not desert the ranks. "Would you mind telling me about the way you learned to be brave?" she said presently. "Would it hurt you to tell me of your sufferings? Were you very young when they came to you?"

"I was young—less than twenty-four—when the storm broke which threatened to destroy me. If it will help you I am ready to tell you, although I seldom speak of it now to anyone. Let me get my knitting first, for it is something of a long story."

She found her knitting and returned with it. Nancy lay back upon the pillows to listen. "If it will sadden you, please don't tell it," she said.

Mrs. Bertram smiled and shook her head. "Sometimes it is good discipline to be saddened," she said. "Many of us try to avoid anything that is not perfectly agreeable to see or to hear; that, too, is selfish. As our good Quaker friends say: it is borne in upon me to tell you. As you already know, I was born in a little town in Sussex, England, near the sea. My father was a clergyman. When I was seventeen he died and my mother and I were left with very small means to battle with the world. I had been carefully educated and a year later there came a chance for me to go to Mexico as governess in an English family. The pay was so good, the opportunity so unusual, that we decided it would be best for me to go. To leave my mother was a great grief to me; to lose me, her only child, was heartbreaking to her, but we made many plans and as the period of separation promised to be but two years we thought we must 

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