She had at first pleaded for at least a limited freedom, urging that she might take her part in caring for the wounded.

But her father had refused this request with such decision that she had never repeated it.

And so she had seen nothing while hearing much, lying through many sleepless nights with nerves strung to a pitch of torture far more terrible than any bodily exhaustion, and vivid imagination ever at work upon pictures more ghastly than even the ghastly reality which she was not allowed to see.
The strain was such as no human frame could have endured for long.
Her strength was beginning to break down under it.

The long sleepless nights were more than she could bear.

And there came a time when Muriel Roscoe, driven to extremity, sought relief in a remedy from which in her normal senses she would have turned in disgust.
It helped her, but it left its mark upon her--a mark which her father must have noted, had he not been almost wholly occupied with the burden that weighed him down.