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"Lesley?" Graham seemed puzzled. "I'm sorry, sir, I don't think I quite follow you."

"Don't you? I should have thought it was plain enough. If there's only one post, you'd be competing with one another. I just wondered how you might feel about that."

"I can't see why that should come into it." Graham clearly hadn't given the matter any thought.

"You haven't discussed it with her, then?"

"Should I have done?"

"I thought you would talk about most things affecting your future."

Graham gave him an odd look. "I'm afraid I haven't given it much thought, sir."

"Then - purely out of academic interest - would you care to consider it now?" He regarded the twenty-four-year-old with what he hoped would pass for clinical detachment. He'd been surprised lately to discover how difficult that was becoming.

"I didn't think you'd be interested in a woman for this job."

"I agree, Charles," Dayborough interjected. "It's hardly a post for a girl." He spoke almost as though they'd already discussed it.

"I wasn't asking you, Dr. Dayborough." He chose not to use first names in front of a junior. "I was speaking to Graham. If he wants my support he must be able to present his own case."

"Well, the way I look at it," Graham was obviously thinking on his feet, "if you want something you have to go all out for it."

"No holds barred? Is that what you mean?"

"If necessary."

"Whoever stands in the way?"

"Yes, sir." He seemed hesitant now, not altogether sure what reply was expected. "It's the way of the world, isn't it?" Harry Dayborough smirked and Graham glanced quickly at him. "It's only logical, isn't it?" he persisted.

"And it makes no difference that it's Miss Leigh?"

"No, I don't think so." Was there perhaps a hint of doubt now in the voice?

"What I'm trying to say, Graham, is this. You wouldn't consider that because she's your friend" - he put a slight emphasis on the last word - "that perhaps you ought to stand down for her?"

"Good lord, no. That would be ridiculous. Lesley herself would never expect that. After all, my career could be at stake."

"Would it surprise you to learn that is just what she proposes to do for you?" He held the other man's gaze. "She feels there is something distasteful about - 'running against a friend' was how she put it, I think."

"That would be just the sort of fool thing she would do. It's the quixotic streak in her. She's out of this world when it comes to things like that."

"You mean she puts other people's claims before her own?"

"Women can afford these extravagant gestures."

"You don't find it rather an endearing characteristic, Graham?"

"I suppose it is, sir. But it's scarcely the way to do business, is it?"

"You don't think life can be conducted on those principles?" Now that he had started he couldn't prevent himself finding out just how far Graham was prepared to go. "You haven't much time for the New Testament, it seems."

"Sir?"

" 'In honour preferring one another' I think is the relevant quotation."

"I scarcely think equal rights for women figured much in the mind of the fellow who wrote that," said Dayborough drily.

"Then you don't mind standing against Miss Leigh?" Sir Charles ignored the last remark.

"I'll take my chances, sir. It's up to you to decide." There was something rather arrogant about the way he replied. It didn't seem to strike him that the decision could be in doubt.

"I find this all very enlightening, Graham. I had thought perhaps someone of your generation -" He paused. No, that was scarcely fair. He found himself wondering just how important a part age played in forming the great gulf that so obviously stretched between them. Young men like Graham with their unshakable self-confidence - they were almost like creatures from another planet. What had they really learned about themselves yet? He shook his head. He couldn't help feeling they were in for some shocks. Life had a habit of knocking the feet from under you. Not a shadow of doubt seemed to cloud their self-assessment. "I wouldn't be twenty- four again for a king's ransom," he thought. Another part of his mind mocked him. What wouldn't he give to be this particular youngster with all that life seemed to hold out to him? He brought himself up with a start. Graham was looking at him strangely.

"Are you all right, sir?"

"Quite all right, Graham, thank you. For a moment my mind had strayed to something else. You were saying?"

"I thought you were still opposed to women specialists."

"Not to women - merely to the wastage of highly trained personnel. It was entirely a matter of the economics involved." He noticed himself that he'd used the past tense.

"I imagine you've no need to worry on that score," Dayborough said slyly. "The little redhead isn't likely to last long - not if you have anything to do with it, eh, Graham?"

Jim Graham laughed and didn't deny it.

"It doesn't trouble you - all that ability going to waste?" The Chief was acutely aware now of his lost objectivity.

"It's only human nature, sir. Lesley's had her moment of triumph."

"Just to have been first. You think that is enough?"

"Well, she is a woman, after all. She's bound to want to settle down some time like everyone else."

"And be content to take second place?" He was partly ashamed, pitting himself against a houseman like this. Graham, however, seemed impervious to veiled hints.

"I don't know so much, Charles," Dayborough insinuated. "Maybe that's where she belongs. After all, the lady's shown considerable stress under recent conditions. Examinations are one thing, bearing up under hospital responsibility is quite another."

"I suppose that's why you both get her out in the middle of the night when she's not on duty." He couldn't resist the barbed comment.

Dayborough and Graham exchanged glances. "That's hitting a bit below the belt, Charles."

"Is it?" For some reason he wouldn't let the thing go. "However, you do seem to have answered my original query, Graham."

"Come along, James. You've pestered the Chief quite long enough for one night." Dayborough was suddenly very solicitous. "Leave it meantime. Things will look very different in the morning." He rose and gave Graham a push towards the door. "I'll see Sir Charles to his car shortly."

"Yes, don't wait up any longer, Graham." Charles felt suddenly weary. "I'm sorry if I seemed to be badgering you. It's just that the whole question fascinates me. I've never before had anyone surrender the chance of promotion for no other reason than the one Miss Leigh gave me."

Graham said goodnight and the two men left him. After a moment Harry came back into the room. "You rather put him on the spot there, Chuck." He laughed. "He could hardly tell you that he had his own plans for dealing with the competition - as you would have gathered for yourself if you'd seen them both coming out of his room at one o'clock this morning." (He'd really said nothing and yet he'd said everything.) "You needn't look at me like that. I'm not making it up, if that's what you think. How else do you suppose she got here at this hour in the morning when she's not on call?"

So his original impression had been right. That was the real reason she wouldn't apply for the job: why she'd been scurrying out of sight in the corridor just now. Why should he feel so let down about it? It was none of his business. He should have guessed all along that they were probably more than just friends. Throwing herself away on young Graham, he thought bleakly. Self-awareness forbade him to analyse his reaction further. He knew perfectly well that the hollow note the thought struck was really for no one but himself.

"There's
no smoke without fire - that's what I always say." Sister Staines went on placidly knitting. The early morning sunshine streamed into the Sisters' sitting-room. Outside, the. first of the winter's snow lay crisp and untrampled, except for the tracks of one solitary crow. Overhead the sky was blue. For the moment, at least, the leaden clouds had cleared away.

"We all know what you're always saying." Angela Bishop's tone was scathing. "And as for smoke without fire - when tongues like yours get wagging there's always a veritable smoke bomb going off round someone or other." She threw down the morning paper she'd been endeavouring to read. "I don't care what you say, if she was seen coming out of his room, there's probably some perfectly innocent explanation."

"It's no good you getting high and mighty with me, Angela. All I'm saying is this. It took Graham a precious long time to get over to the ward, and she was the one - in her dressing gown, mark you - who was seen coming out of his room first." Staines put the grey wool over her steel needle with a decided jab. "I've said all along no good would come of it - putting men and women medicals into the same block."

"You've got a one-track mind, Minnie Staines." Angela stood up and looked down at her with undisguised distaste. She was surprised at the violence of her own reaction. "I'm getting sick and tired of your never-ending insinuations. No wonder they call us 'bags in three-cornered bonnets'. You'd think you'd have acquired more sense by now!" Without warning the years dissolved away. She found she was trembling with an old-remembered rage. "As if you hadn't done enough damage to other people in the past."

"You've changed your time, haven't you? I'd like to see your face if anyone suggested putting male and female pros into the same quarters." Staines held up the heel she was in the process of turning.

"You know my views well enough about that. But these aren't two teenagers out for a bit of a lark. It would take a special brand of folly to expose themselves to scandalmongers like you - especially with promotion coming up for one of them soon. Besides," Angela added, "she's not that kind of girl."

Staines sniggered. "I never thought I'd ever hear you saying that. They're all that kind of girl - or is it so long ago that you've forgotten?" She peered at the sock and ponderously began counting stitches.

"No, I haven't forgotten." Angela stared out of the window. "Not any of it." The tongues that stopped when you came into a room: the glances intercepted between friends: the hot embarrassment which made you an outsider again - and all because vicious tittle-tattlers like Minnie Staines put two and two together and always managed to come up with five. She turned back into the room. "That's why I'm sure that I'm right about this."

"You can talk till you're blue in the face. You'll not convince me there's not something in it. Dr. Dayborough certainly seemed to think so, I must say."

"Harry? Where does he fit into this?" Angela asked sharply. "Sister Three said Sir Charles was the senior called in."

"You are slipping, my pet." Staines had a smug look on her face now. She removed the spare needle which had been sticking out of her hair. With apparent unconcern she began transferring stitches on to it. "Both men were called to Farmer last night."

"Two of them?" Angela could smell a rat. "How come Sir Charles was summoned if Harry was on duty?"

"Young Graham, presumably, couldn't find him at first. He panicked. Anyway, there were the two of them. And if there isn't something fishy going on, maybe you'll tell me why, when her Chief arrived, there she was, as large as life, sneaking into Surgery to avoid being seen? Not exactly the act of a girl with nothing to hide, is it?"

"You're an interfering old busybody, Minnie Staines." Her voice was filled with the old rancour. "Still working off your frustrations on somebody else." Why did she have to identify so closely, she wondered, with the young idealist who reminded her of herself at twenty-four?

"Go ahead, Angela, insult me as much as you like. But mark my words, we haven't heard the last of this by a long chalk. You just see if I'm not right," she called out after Angela's retreating back, "and your Sir Charles doesn't show that he thinks so, too, this morning. From what I overheard in their staffroom last night, he got his eyes opened about his precious Miss Lesley Leigh!"

"Of course there's talk. What else did you expect?" Jim shifted his position slightly to avoid meeting her eye. "They'll be at it again if you don't come away from that door."

Lesley made to leave his room, but he called her back.

"For Pete's sake, relax. Who cares what the old hags say, anyway?"

"I care -" she said slowly.

"You would. It'll be the usual nine days' wonder till they get their claws into someone else. You ought to know that by now."

"But I don't like the idea of them whispering behind our backs." She turned troubled eyes on him. "Especially when what they're hinting is so untrue."

"You care about too many things - all of them the wrong ones."

"I don't know what you mean."

"No, you wouldn't. That's part of the trouble."

"It's not like you, Jim, to sound so bitter."

He tinned to face her almost angrily. "You think I care what they say? I wish it were all true. Do you hear? All true!" He was almost shouting.

"Jim!" She was shocked by his vehemence as much as by what he was saying.

"Everyone else can see it but you."

"See what, for goodness' sake?"

"That I love you, of course." He still sounded angry. "Don't worry. You don't have to do anything about it. I know the score. I ought to by now." His shoulders sagged and he looked down at the floor. "I kept fooling myself that some day it would all come right. If I just hung around, making myself indispensable, sooner or later it would happen. All that it would take was some emotionally charged moment - music, perhaps, the accidental touch of hands, a sunset - anything that might find you particularly vulnerable - and wham, it would happen." He shrugged and sat up. "I know now where I went wrong. It was assuming that all that loving couldn't have been planted in me to come to nothing. As if Almighty God hadn't more on His mind than that." He stood up. "There, I feel better now for having said it." His hands were trembling. He put them on her shoulders. She shuddered involuntarily and he withdrew them instantly.