In the Pavillion

I

Now, had Billy Grant really died there would be no story. The story is to relate how he nearly died; and how, approaching that bourne to which no traveller may take with him anything but his sins–and this with Billy Grant meant considerable luggage–he cast about for some way to prevent the Lindley Grants from getting possession of his worldly goods.

Probably it would never have happened at all had not young Grant, having hit on a scheme, clung to it with a tenacity that might better have been devoted to saving his soul, and had he not said to the Nurse, who was at that moment shaking a thermometer: “Come on–be a sport! It’s only a matter of hours.” Not that he said it aloud–he whispered it, and fought for the breath to do even that. The Nurse, having shaken down the thermometer, walked to the table and recorded a temperature of one hundred and six degrees through a most unprofessional mist of tears. Then in the symptom column she wrote: “Delirious.”

But Billy Grant was not delirious. A fever of a hundred and four or thereabout may fuse one’s mind in a sort of fiery crucible, but when it gets to a hundred and six all the foreign thoughts, like seeing green monkeys on the footboard and wondering why the doctor is walking on his hands–all these things melt away, and one sees one’s past, as when drowning, and remembers to hate one’s relations, and is curious about what is coming when one goes over.

So Billy Grant lay on his bed in the contagious pavilion of the hospital, and remembered to hate the Lindley Grants and to try to devise a way to keep them out of his property. And, having studied law, he knew no will that he might make now would hold against the Lindley Grants for a minute, unless he survived its making some thirty days. The Staff Doctor had given him about thirty hours or less.

Perhaps he would have given up in despair and been forced to rest content with a threat to haunt the Lindley Grants and otherwise mar the enjoyment of their good fortune, had not the Nurse at that moment put the thermometer under his arm.

Now, as every one knows, an axillary temperature takes five minutes, during which it is customary for a nurse to kneel beside the bed, or even to sit very lightly on the edge, holding the patient’s arm close to his side and counting his respirations while pretending to be thinking of something else. It was during these five minutes that the idea came into Billy Grant’s mind and, having come, remained. The Nurse got up, rustling starchily, and Billy caught her eye.

“Every engine,” he said with difficulty, “labours–in a low–gear. No wonder I’m–heated up!”

The Nurse, who was young, put her hand on his forehead.

“Try to sleep,” she said.

“Time for–that–later,” said Billy Grant. “I’ll–I’ll be a–long time–dead. I–I wonder whether you’d–do me a–favour.”

“I’ll do anything in the world you want.”

She tried to smile down at him, but only succeeded in making her chin quiver, which would never do–being unprofessional and likely to get to the head nurse; so, being obliged to do something, she took his pulse by the throbbing in his neck.

“One, two, three, four, five, six—-“

“Then–marry me,” gasped Billy Grant. “Only for an–hour or–two, you know. You–promised. Come on–be a sport!”

It was then that the Nurse walked to the table and recorded “Delirious” in the symptom column. And, though she was a Smith College girl and had taken a something or other in mathematics, she spelled it just then with two r’s.

Billy Grant was not in love with the Nurse. She was a part of his illness, like the narrow brass bed and the yellow painted walls, and the thermometer under his arm, and the medicines. There were even times–when his fever subsided for a degree or two, after a cold sponge, and the muddled condition of mind returned–when she seemed to have more heads than even a nurse requires. So sentiment did not enter into the matter at all; it was revenge.

“You–promised,” he said again; but the Nurse only smiled indulgently and rearranged the bottles on the stand in neat rows.

Jenks, the orderly, carried her supper to the isolation pavilion at six o’clock–cold ham, potato salad, egg custard and tea. Also, he brought her an evening paper. But the Nurse was not hungry. She went into the bathroom, washed her eyes with cold water, put on a clean collar, against the impending visit of the Staff Doctor, and then stood at the window, looking across at the hospital and feeling very lonely and responsible. It was not a great hospital, but it loomed large and terrible that night. The ambulance came out into the courtyard, and an interne, in white ducks, came out to it, carrying a surgical bag. He looked over at her and waved his hand. “Big railroad wreck!” he called cheerfully. “Got ’em coming in bunches.” He crawled into the ambulance, where the driver, trained to many internes, gave him time to light a cigarette; then out into the dusk, with the gong beating madly. Billy Grant, who had lapsed into a doze, opened his eyes.

“What–about it?” he asked. “You’re not–married already–are you?”

“Please try to rest. Perhaps if I get your beef juice—-“

“Oh, damn–the beef juice!” whispered Billy Grant, and shut his eyes again–but not to sleep. He was planning how to get his way, and finally, out of a curious and fantastic medley of thoughts, he evolved something. The doctor, of course! These women had to do what the doctor ordered. He would see the doctor!–upon which, with a precision quite amazing, all the green monkeys on the footboard of the bed put their thumbs to their noses at him.

The situation was unusual; for here was young Grant, far enough from any one who knew he was one of the Van Kleek Grants–and, as such, entitled to all the nurses and doctors that money could procure–shut away in the isolation pavilion of a hospital, and not even putting up a good fight! Even the Nurse felt this, and when the Staff Man came across the courtyard that night she met him on the doorstep and told him.

“He doesn’t care whether he gets well or not,” she said dispiritedly. “All he seems to think about is to die and to leave everything he owns so his relatives won’t get it. It’s horrible!”

The Staff Man, who had finished up a hard day with a hospital supper of steak and fried potatoes, sat down on the doorstep and fished out a digestive tablet from his surgical bag.

“It’s pretty sad, little girl,” he said, over the pill. He had known the Nurse for some time, having, in fact, brought her–according to report at the time–in a predecessor of the very bag at his feet, and he had the fatherly manner that belongs by right to the man who has first thumped one between the shoulder-blades to make one breathe, and who had remarked on this occasion to some one beyond the door: “A girl, and fat as butter!”

The Nurse tiptoed in and found Billy Grant apparently asleep. Actually he had only closed his eyes, hoping to lure one of the monkeys within clutching distance. So the Nurse came out again, with the symptom record.

“Delirious, with two r’s,” said the Staff Doctor, glancing over his spectacles. “He must have been pretty bad.”

“Not wild; he–he wanted me to marry him!”

She smiled, showing a most alluring dimple in one cheek.

“I see! Well, that’s not necessarily delirium. H’m–pulse, respiration–look at that temperature! Yes, it’s pretty sad–away from home, too, poor lad!”

“You—- Isn’t there any hope, doctor?”

“None at all–at least, I’ve never had ’em get well.”

Now the Nurse should, by all the ethics of hospital practice, have walked behind the Staff Doctor, listening reverentially to what he said, not speaking until she was spoken to, and carrying in one hand an order blank on which said august personage would presently inscribe certain cabalistic characters, to be deciphered later by the pharmacy clerk with a strong light and much blasphemy, and in the other hand a clean towel. The clean towel does not enter into the story, but for the curious be it said that were said personage to desire to listen to the patient’s heart, the towel would be unfolded and spread, without creases, over the patient’s chest–which reminds me of the Irishman and the weary practitioner; but every one knows that story.

Now that is what the Nurse should have done; instead of which, in the darkened passageway, being very tired and exhausted and under a hideous strain, she suddenly slipped her arm through the Staff Doctor’s and, putting her head on his shoulder, began to cry softly.

“What’s this?” demanded the Staff Doctor sternly and, putting his arm round her: “Don’t you know that Junior Nurses are not supposed to weep over the Staff?” And, getting no answer but a choke: “We can’t have you used up like this; I’ll make them relieve you. When did you sleep?”

“I don’t want to be relieved,” said the Nurse, very muffled. “No-nobody else would know wh-what he wanted. I just–I just can’t bear to see him–to see him—-“

The Staff Doctor picked up the clean towel, which belonged on the Nurse’s left arm, and dried her eyes for her; then he sighed.

“None of us likes to see it, girl,” he said. “I’m an old man, and I’ve never got used to it. What do they send you to eat?”

“The food’s all right,” she said rather drearily. “I’m not hungry–that’s all. How long do you think—-“

The Staff Doctor, who was putting an antiseptic gauze cap over his white hair, ran a safety pin into his scalp at that moment and did not reply at once. Then, “Perhaps–until morning,” he said.

He held out his arms for the long, white, sterilised coat, and a moment later, with his face clean-washed of emotion, and looking like a benevolent Turk, he entered the sick room. The Nurse was just behind him, with an order book in one hand and a clean towel over her arm.

Billy Grant, from his bed, gave the turban a high sign of greeting.

“Allah–is–great!” he gasped cheerfully. “Well, doctor–I guess it’s all–over but–the shouting.”

II

Some time after midnight Billy Grant roused out of a stupor. He was quite rational; in fact, he thought he would get out of bed. But his feet would not move. This was absurd! One’s feet must move if one wills them to! However, he could not stir either of them. Otherwise he was beautifully comfortable.

Faint as was the stir he made the Nurse heard him. She was sitting in the dark by the window.

“Water?” she asked softly, coming to him.

“Please.” His voice was stronger than it had been.

Some of the water went down his neck, but it did not matter. Nothing mattered except the Lindley Grants. The Nurse took his temperature and went out into the hall to read the thermometer, so he might not watch her face. Then, having recorded it under the nightlight, she came back into the room.

“Why don’t you put on something comfortable?” demanded Billy Grant querulously. He was so comfortable himself and she was so stiffly starched, so relentless of collar and cap.

“I am comfortable.”

“Where’s that wrapper thing you’ve been wearing at night?” The Nurse rather flushed at this. “Why don’t you lie down on the cot and take a nap? I don’t need anything.”

“Not–not to-night.”

He understood, of course, but he refused to be depressed. He was too comfortable. He was breathing easily, and his voice, though weak, was clear.

“Would you mind sitting beside me? Or are you tired? But of course you are. Perhaps in a night or so you’ll be over there again, sleeping in a nice white gown in a nice fresh bed, with no querulous devil—-“

“Please!”

“You’ll have to be sterilised or formaldehyded?”

“Yes.” This very low.

“Will you put your hand over mine? Thanks. It’s–company, you know.” He was apologetic; under her hand his own burned fire. “I–I spoke to the Staff about that while you were out of the room.”

“About what?”

“About your marrying me.”

“What did he say?” She humoured him.

“He said he was willing if you were. You’re not going to move–are you?”

“No. But you must not talk.”

“It’s like this. I’ve got a little property–not much; a little.” He was nervously eager about this. If she knew it amounted to anything she would refuse, and the Lindley Grants—- “And when I–you know—- I want to leave it where it will do some good. That little brother of yours–it would send him through college, or help to.”

Once, weeks ago, before he became so ill, she had told him of the brother. This in itself was wrong and against the ethics of the profession. One does not speak of oneself or one’s family.

“If you won’t try to sleep, shall I read to you?”

“Read what?”

“I thought–the Bible, if you wouldn’t mind.”

“Certainly,” he agreed. “I suppose that’s the conventional thing; and if it makes you feel any better—- Will you think over what I’ve been saying?”

“I’ll think about it,” she said, soothing him like a fretful child, and brought her Bible.

The clock on the near-by town hall struck two as she drew up her chair beside him and commenced to read by the shaded light. Across the courtyard the windows were dim yellowish rectangles, with here and there one brighter than the others that told its own story of sleepless hours. A taxicab rolled along the street outside, carrying a boisterous night party.

The Nurse had taken off her cap and put it on a stand. The autumn night was warm, and the light touch of the tulle had pressed her hair in damp, fine curves over her forehead. There were purple hollows of anxiety and sleeplessness under her eyes.

“The perfect nurse,” the head of the training school was fond of saying, “is more or less of a machine. Too much sympathy is a handicap to her work and an embarrassment to her patient. A perfect, silent, reliable, fearless, emotionless machine!”

Poor Junior Nurse!

Now Billy Grant, lying there listening to something out of Isaiah, should have been repenting his hard-living, hard-drinking young life; should have been forgiving the Lindley Grants–which story does not belong here; should have been asking for the consolation of the church, and trying to summon from the depths of his consciousness faint memories of early teachings as to the life beyond, and what he might or might not expect there.

What he actually did while the Nurse read was to try to move his legs, and, failing this, to plan a way to achieve the final revenge of a not particularly forgiving life.

At a little before three o’clock the Nurse telephoned across for an interne, who came over in a bathrobe over his pajamas and shot a hypodermic into Billy Grant’s left arm. Billy Grant hardly noticed. He was seeing Mrs. Lindley Grant when his surprise was sprung on her. The interne summoned the Nurse into the hall with a jerk of his head.

“About all in!” he said. “Heart’s gone–too much booze probably. I’d stay, but there’s nothing to do.”

“Would oxygen—-“

“Oh, you can try it if you like. It’s like blowing up a leaking tire; but if you’ll feel better, do it.” He yawned and tied the cord of his bathrobe round him more securely. “I guess you’ll be glad to get back,” he observed, looking round the dingy hall. “This place always gives me a chill. Well, let me know if you want me. Good night.”

The Nurse stood in the hallway until the echo of his slippers on the asphalt had died away. Then she turned to Billy Grant.

“Well?” demanded Billy Grant. “How long have I? Until morning?”

“If you would only not talk and excite yourself—-“

“Hell!” said Billy Grant, we regret to record. “I’ve got to do all the talking I’m going to do right now. I beg your pardon–I didn’t intend to swear.”

“Oh, that’s all right!” said the Nurse vaguely. This was like no deathbed she had ever seen, and it was disconcerting.

“Shall I read again?”

“No, thank you.”

The Nurse looked at her watch, which had been graduation present from her mother and which said, inside the case: “To my little girl!” There is no question but that, when the Nurse’s mother gave that inscription to the jeweller, she was thinking of the day when the Staff Doctor had brought the Nurse in his leather bag, and had slapped her between the shoulders to make her breathe. “To my little girl!” said the watch; and across from that–“Three o’clock.”

At half-past three Billy Grant, having matured his plans, remarked that if it would ease the Nurse any he’d see a preacher. His voice was weaker again and broken.

“Not”–he said, struggling–“not that I think–he’ll pass me. But–if you say so–I’ll–take a chance.”

All of which was diabolical cunning; for when, as the result of a telephone conversation, the minister came, an unworldly man who counted the world, an automobile, a vested choir and a silver communion service well lost for the sake of a dozen derelicts in a slum mission house, Billy Grant sent the Nurse out to prepare a broth he could no longer swallow, and proceeded to cajole the man of God. This he did by urging the need of the Nurse’s small brother for an education and by forgetting to mention either the Lindley Grants or the extent of his property.

From four o’clock until five Billy Grant coaxed the Nurse with what voice he had. The idea had become an obsession; and minute by minute, panting breath by panting breath, her resolution wore away. He was not delirious; he was as sane as she was and terribly set. And this thing he wanted was so easy to grant; meant so little to her and, for some strange reason, so much to him. Perhaps, if she did it, he would think a little of what the preacher was saying.

At five o’clock, utterly worn out with the struggle and finding his pulse a negligible quantity, in response to his pleading eyes the Nurse, kneeling and holding a thermometer under her patient’s arm with one hand, reached the other one over the bed and was married in a dozen words and a soiled white apron.

Dawn was creeping in at the windows–a grey city dawn, filled with soot and the rumbling of early wagons. A smell of damp asphalt from the courtyard floated in and a dirty sparrow chirped on the sill where the Nurse had been in the habit of leaving crumbs. Billy Grant, very sleepy and contented now that he had got his way, dictated a line or two on a blank symptom record, and signed his will in a sprawling hand.

“If only,” he muttered, “I could see Lin’s face when that’s–sprung on him!”

The minister picked up the Bible from the tumbled bed and opened it.

“Perhaps,” he suggested very softly, “if I read from the Word of God—-“

Satisfied now that he had fooled the Lindley Grants out of their very shoebuttons, Billy Grant was asleep–asleep with the thermometer under his arm and with his chest rising and falling peacefully.

The minister looked across at the Nurse, who was still holding the thermometer in place. She had buried her face in the white counterpane.

“You are a good woman, sister,” he said softly. “The boy is happier, and you are none the worse. Shall I keep the paper for you?”

But the Nurse, worn out with the long night, slept where she knelt. The minister, who had come across the street in a ragged smoking-coat and no collar, creaked round the bed and threw the edge of the blanket over her shoulders.

Then, turning his coat collar up over his unshaved neck, he departed for the mission across the street, where one of his derelicts, in his shirtsleeves, was sweeping the pavement. There, mindful of the fact that he had come from the contagious pavilion, the minister brushed his shabby smoking-coat with a whiskbroom to remove the germs!

III

Billy Grant, of course, did not die. This was perhaps because only the good die young. And Billy Grant’s creed had been the honour of a gentleman rather than the Mosaic Law. There was, therefore, no particular violence done to his code when his last thoughts–or what appeared to be his last thoughts–were revenge instead of salvation.

The fact was, Billy Grant had a real reason for hating the Lindley Grants. When a fellow like that has all the Van Kleek money and a hereditary thirst, he is bound to drink. The Lindley Grants did not understand this and made themselves obnoxious by calling him “Poor Billy!” and not having wine when he came to dinner. That, however, was not his reason for hating them.

Billy Grant fell in love. To give the devil his due, he promptly set about reforming himself. He took about half as many whisky-and-sodas as he had been in the habit of doing, and cut out champagne altogether. He took up golf to fill in the time, too, but gave it up when he found it made him thirstier than ever. And then, with things so shaping up that he could rise in the morning without having a drink to get up on, the Lindley Grants thought it best to warn the girl’s family before it was too late.

“He is a nice boy in some ways,” Mrs. Lindley Grant had said on the occasion of the warning; “but, like all drinking men, he is a broken reed, eccentric and irresponsible. No daughter of mine could marry him. I’d rather bury her. And if you want facts Lindley will give them to you.”

So the girl had sent back her ring and a cold little letter, and Billy Grant had got roaring full at a club that night and presented the ring to a cabman–all of which is exceedingly sordid, but rather human after all.

The Nurse, having had no sleep for forty-eight hours, slept for quite thirty minutes. She wakened at the end of that time and started up with a horrible fear that the thing she was waiting for had come. But Billy Grant was still alive, sleeping naturally, and the thermometer, having been in place forty minutes, registered a hundred and three.

At eight o’clock the interne, hurrying over in fresh ducks, with a laudable desire to make the rounds before the Staff began to drop in, found Billy Grant very still and with his eyes closed, and the Nurse standing beside the bed, pale and tremulous.

“Why didn’t you let me know?” he demanded, aggrieved. “I ought to have been called. I told you—-“

“He isn’t dead,” said the Nurse breathlessly. “He–I think he is better.”

Whereon she stumbled out of the room into her own little room across the hall, locking the door behind her, and leaving the interne to hunt the symptom record for himself–a thing not to be lightly overlooked; though of course internes are not the Staff.

The interne looked over the record and whistled.

“Wouldn’t that paralyse you!” he said under his breath. “‘Pulse very weak.’ ‘Pulse almost obliterated.’ ‘Very talkative.’ ‘Breathing hard at four A.M. Cannot swallow.’ And then: ‘Sleeping calmly from five o’clock.’ ‘Pulse stronger.’ Temperature one hundred and three.’ By gad, that last prescription of mine was a hit!”

So now began a curious drama of convalescence in the little isolation pavilion across the courtyard. Not for a minute did the two people most concerned forget their strange relationship; not for worlds would either have allowed the other to know that he or she remembered. Now and then the Nurse caught Billy Grant’s eyes fixed on her as she moved about the room, with a curious wistful expression in them. And sometimes, waking from a doze, he would find her in her chair by the window, with her book dropped into her lap and a frightened look in her eyes, staring at him.

He gained strength rapidly and the day came when, with the orderly’s assistance, he was lifted to a chair. There was one brief moment in which he stood tottering on his feet. In that instant he had realised what a little thing she was, after all, and what a cruel advantage he had used for his own purpose.

When he was settled in the chair and the orderly had gone she brought an extra pillow to put behind him, and he dared the first personality of their new relationship.

“What a little girl you are, after all!” he said. “Lying there in the bed shaking at your frown, you were so formidable.”

“I am not small,” she said, straightening herself. She had always hoped that her cap gave her height. “It is you who are so tall. You–you are a giant!”

“A wicked giant, seeking whom I may devour and carrying off lovely girls for dinner under pretence of marriage—-” He stopped his nonsense abruptly, having got so far, and both of them coloured. Thrashing about desperately for something to break the wretched silence, he seized on the one thing that in those days of his convalescence was always pertinent–food. “Speaking of dinner,” he said hastily, “isn’t it time for some buttermilk?”

She was quite calm when she came back–cool, even smiling; but Billy Grant had not had the safety valve of action. As she placed the glass on the table at his elbow he reached out and took her hand.

“Can you ever forgive me?” he asked. Not an original speech; the usual question of the marauding male, a query after the fact and too late for anything but forgiveness.

“Forgive you? For not dying?”

She was pale; but no more subterfuge now, no more turning aside from dangerous subjects. The matter was up before the house.

“For marrying you!” said Billy Grant, and upset the buttermilk. It took a little time to wipe up the floor and to put a clean cover on the stand, and after that to bring a fresh glass and place it on the table. But these were merely parliamentary preliminaries while each side got its forces in line.

“Do you hate me very much?” opened Billy Grant. This was, to change the figure, a blow below the belt.

“Why should I hate you?” countered the other side.

“I should think you would. I forced the thing on you.”

“I need not have done it.”

“But being you, and always thinking about making some one else happy and comfortable—-“

“Oh, if only they don’t find it out over there!” she burst out. “If they do and I have to leave, with Jim—-“

Here, realising that she was going to cry and not caring to screw up her face before any one, she put her arms on the stand and buried her face in them. Her stiff tulle cap almost touched Billy Grant’s arm.

Billy Grant had a shocked second.

“Jim?”

“My little brother,” from the table.

Billy Grant drew a long breath of relief. For a moment he had thought—-

“I wonder–whether I dare to say something to you.” Silence from the table and presumably consent. “Isn’t he–don’t you think that–I might be allowed to–to help Jim? It would help me to like myself again. Just now I’m not standing very high with myself.”

“Won’t you tell me why you did it?” she said, suddenly sitting up, her arms still out before her on the table. “Why did you coax so? You said it was because of a little property you had, but–that wasn’t it–was it?”

“No.”

“Or because you cared a snap for me.” This was affirmation, not question.

“No, not that, though I—-“

She gave a hopeless little gesture of despair.

“Then–why? Why?”

“For one of the meanest reasons I know–to be even with some people who had treated me badly.”

The thing was easier now. His flat denial of any sentimental reason had helped to make it so.

“A girl that you cared about?”

“Partly that. The girl was a poor thing. She didn’t care enough to be hurt by anything I did. But the people who made the trouble—-“

Now a curious thing happened. Billy Grant found at this moment that he no longer hated the Lindley Grants. The discovery left him speechless–that he who had taken his hate into the very valley of death with him should now find himself thinking of both Lindley and his wife with nothing more bitter than contempt shocked him. A state of affairs existed for which his hatred of the Lindley Grants was alone responsible; now the hate was gone and the state of affairs persisted.

“I should like,” said Billy Grant presently, “to tell you a little–if it will not bore you–about myself and the things I have done that I shouldn’t, and about the girl. And of course, you know, I’m–I’m not going to hold you to–to the thing I forced you into. There are ways to fix that.”

Before she would listen, however, she must take his temperature and give him his medicine, and see that he drank his buttermilk–the buttermilk last, so as not to chill his mouth for the thermometer. The tired lines had gone from under her eyes and she was very lovely that day. She had always been lovely, even when the Staff Doctor had slapped her between the shoulders long ago–you know about that–only Billy Grant had never noticed it; but to-day, sitting there with the thermometer in his mouth while she counted his respirations, pretending to be looking out the window while she did it, Billy Grant saw how sweet and lovely and in every way adorable she was, in spite of the sad droop of her lips–and found it hard to say the thing he felt he must.

“After all,” he remarked round the thermometer, “the thing is not irrevocable. I can fix it up so that—-“

“Keep your lips closed about the thermometer!” she said sternly, and snapped her watch shut.

The pulse and so on having been recorded, and “Very hungry” put down under Symptoms, she came back to her chair by the window, facing him. She sat down primly and smoothed her white apron in her lap.

“Now!” she said.

“I am to go on?”

“Yes, please.”

“If you are going to change the pillows or the screen, or give me any other diabolical truck to swallow,” he said somewhat peevishly, “will you get it over now, so we can have five unprofessional minutes?”

“Certainly,” she said; and bringing an extra blanket she spread it, to his disgust, over his knees.

This time, when she sat down, one of her hands lay on the table near him and he reached over and covered it with his.

“Please!” he begged. “For company! And it will help me to tell you some of the things I have to tell.”

She left it there, after an uneasy stirring. So, sitting there, looking out into the dusty courtyard with its bandaged figures in wheeled chairs, its cripples sunning on a bench–their crutches beside them–its waterless fountain and its dingy birds, he told her about the girl and the Lindley Grants, and even about the cabman and the ring. And feeling, perhaps in some current from the small hand under his, that she was knowing and understanding and not turning away, he told her a great deal he had not meant to tell–ugly things, many of them–for that was his creed.

And, because in a hospital one lives many lives vicariously with many people, what the girl back home would never have understood this girl did and faced unabashed. Life, as she knew it, was not all good and not all bad; passion and tenderness, violence and peace, joy and wretchedness, birth and death–these she had looked on, all of them, with clear eyes and hands ready to help.

So Billy Grant laid the good and the bad of his life before her, knowing that he was burying it with her. When he finished, her hand on the table had turned and was clasping his. He bent over and kissed her fingers softly.

After that she read to him, and their talk, if any, was impersonal. When the orderly had put him back to bed he lay watching her moving about, rejoicing in her quiet strength, her repose. How well she was taking it all! If only–but there was no hope of that. She could go to Reno, and in a few months she would be free again and the thing would be as if it had never been.

At nine o’clock that night the isolation pavilion was ready for the night. The lights in the sickroom were out. In the hall a nightlight burned low, Billy Grant was not asleep. He tried counting the lighted windows of the hospital and grew only more wakeful.

The Nurse was sleeping now in her own room across, with the doors open between. The slightest movement and she was up, tiptoeing in, with her hair in a long braid down her back and her wrapper sleeves falling away loosely from her white, young arms. So, aching with inaction, Billy Grant lay still until the silence across indicated that she was sleeping.

Then he got up. This is a matter