“I’m safe, as long as she is here.”

“Do you mean-Miss Capel?” asked Mrs. Oates.

“Yes.”

Helen .did not like being picked out for this special distinction. She felt sorry that she. had stepped into the limelight, with the announcement of her alleged power to attract men.

“Why pick on me?” she protested.

“Because you are young and pretty.”

Helen laughed, with a sudden sense of fresh security.

“In that case,” she said, “I’m safe, too. No man would ever look at me, while the Professor’s daughterin-law was by. She is young, too, and oozes sex-appeal.”

Nurse Barker shook her head, with a smile full of dark meaning.

“No,” she insisted. “She is safe.”

“Why?” asked Helen. I In her turn, Nurse Barker put a question.

“Haven’t you noticed it for yourself?”

Her hints were so vague and mysterious that they got under Helen’s skin.

“I wish you would come out in the open,” she cried.

“I will, then,” said Nurse Barker. “Haven’t you no ticed that the murderer always chooses girls who earn their own living? Very likely he’s a shell-shock case, who came back from the War, to find a woman in his place. The country is crawling with women, like maggots, eating up all the jobs. And the men are starved out.” “But I’m not doing man’s work,” protested Helen,

“Yes, you are. Men are being employed in houses, now. There’s a man, here. Her husband.” Nurse Barker nodded to indicate Mrs. Oates. “Instead of being at home, you’re out, taking a wage. It’s wages from somebody else. That’s how a man looks at it.”

“Well-what about yourself?”

“A nurse’s work has always been held sacred to women.”

Mrs. Oates made an effort to relieve the tension, as she rose from her chair.’

“Well, I’d. better see what mess one man’s made of the dinner. Upon my word, Nurse, to hear you talk, you might be a man yourself.”

“I can see through their eyes,” said Nurse Barker.

Helen, however, noticed that Mrs. Oates had scored a bull, for Nurse Barker bit her lips, as though she resented the remark. But she kept her eyes fixed upon the girl, who felt herself shrink under the relentless stare. Her common-sense returned at the sound of Mrs. Oates’ loud laugh.

“Well, anyone what wants to get our little Miss Capel, will have to get past Oates and me first.”

Helen looked at her ugly face, her brawny arms. She thought of Oates with his stupendous strength. She had two worthy guardians, in case of need.

“I’d not afraid of getting preferential treatment,” she said. As though she had some uncanny instinct, Nurse Barker seemed to know exactly how to raise up the spectre of fear.

“In any case,” she observed, “you will have Lady Warren to keep you company. You are sleeping with her tonight.”

Helen heard the. words with a horrible sense of finality.