Page:Women Wanted.djvu/148

 only two people exist, you on earth and God in Heaven."

Well, Leila Paget stayed with Serbia to the end. After two months' rest in England, she was back in July at her hospital in Uskub. Sir Ralph had returned with her, having been made general director of the British medical and relief work in Serbia, with his headquarters at Nish. In October the Bulgarians took Uskub. When the city was under bombardment during the battle that preceded its fall, Sir Ralph arrived in a motor car to rescue his wife. But four hours later he had to leave without her on his way in his official capacity to warn the other hospitals which were in his charge. "Leila, Leila," he expostulated in vain. She only shook her head. "My place is here," she said, glancing backward where 600 wounded soldiers lay. Lady Paget and her hospital were of course detained by the enemy when they occupied the town. She remained to nurse Bulgarians, Austrians and Serbians alike. And she organised relief work for the refugees, of whom she fed sometimes as many as 4,000 a day. For weeks and months, it was only by dint of the utmost exertion that it was possible to extract from the exhausted town sufficient wood and petrol just to keep fires going in the hospital kitchen and sterilisers in the operating rooms. "These," says Lady Paget, "were strange times and in the common struggle for mere existence it did not cccuroccur [sic] very much to any one to consider who were friends and who were enemies." In the spring of