midday
Her eyes seemed on fire . Nelly was suddenly aware of the flaming up of fierce elemental things in this fashionably dressed young woman whose time was oddly divided between an important share in the running of her brother 's hospital , and a hungry search after such gaieties as a world at war might still provide her with . She could spend one night absorbed in some critical case , and eagerly rendering the humblest V.A.D. service to the trained nurses whom her brother paid ; and the next morning she would travel to London in order to spend the second night in one of those small dances at great houses of which she had spoken to Nelly , where the presence of men just come from , or just departing to , the firing line lent a zest to the talk and the flirting , the jealousies and triumphs of the evening that the dances of peace must do without . Then after a morning of wild spending in the shops she would take a midday train back to Cumberland and duty . Nelly , looking at her , wondered afresh how they had ever come to be friends . Yet they were friends , and her interest in Cicely 's affairs was one of the slender threads drawing her back to life . It had all happened when she was ill at the flat ; after that letter from the Geneva Red Cross which reported that in spite of exhaustive enquiries among German hospitals , and in the prisoners ' camps no trace of Lieutenant Sarratt could be found .