Ann Royston glanced back at the great, grey building that was St. Martha's Hospital. Lights gleamed from it, bright against the gathering dusk of evening, and, in imagination, she saw beyond the walls and the windows, into the wards, the theatres, the laboratories...

And suddenly she was seeing it all through a mist of tears. Memories came flooding back; she remembered the years she had spent there as a student, with Michael Loder, and she remembered, as if it had been yesterday, her first meeting with his brother Nicholas ...

"It's rather a wonderful feeling, belonging to a place like Martha's, isn't it?" Nurse Fitzgerald said. Her words found their echo in Ann's heart.