In secret she devoured the
reports of medical commissions, the pamphlets of sanitary
authorities, the histories of hospitals and homes. She spent the
intervals of the London season in ragged schools and workhouses.
When she went abroad with her family, she used her spare time so
well that there was hardly a great hospital in Europe with which
she was not acquainted; hardly a great city whose shims she had
not passed through. She managed to spend some days in a convent
school in Rome, and some weeks as a 'Soeur de Charite' in Paris.
Then, while her mother and sister were taking the waters at
Carlsbad, she succeeded in slipping off to a nursing institution
at Kaiserswerth, where she remained for more than three months.
This was the critical event of her life. The experience which she
gained as a nurse at Kaiserswerth formed the foundation of all
her future action and finally fixed her in her career.
But one other trial awaited her. The allurements of the world she
had brushed aside with disdain and loathing; she had resisted the
subtler temptation which, in her weariness, had sometimes come
upon her, of devoting her baffled energies to art or literature;
the last ordeal appeared in the shape of a desirable young man.
Hitherto, her lovers had been nothing to her but an added burden
and a mockery; but now-- for a moment-- she wavered.
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