“Nah.  Ise don’t want nuttin’ but one ting—­an’ dat’s—­wot wuz Ise tinkin’—­Ise forgits wot it wuz—­lemme see—­Wot’s de matter?  Wheer is youse all?—­” The little frame relaxed and lay quiet.

“That is all you can do for us, Miss Durant,” said Dr. Armstrong.

“May I not stay, as I promised him I would?” begged Constance.

“Can you bear the sight of blood?”

“I don’t know—­but see—­I’ll turn my back.”  Suiting the action to the word, the girl faced so that, still holding Swot’s hand, she was looking away from the injured leg.

A succession of low-spoken orders to his assistants was the doctor’s way of telling her that he left her to do as she chose, She stood quietly for a few minutes, but presently her desire to know the progress of the operation, and her anxiety over the outcome, proved too strong for her, and she turned her head to take a furtive glance.  She did not look away again, but with a strange mixture of fascination and squeamishness, she watched as the bleeding was stanched with sponges, each artery tied, and each muscle drawn aside, until finally the nerve was reached and removed; and she could not but feel both wonder and admiration as she noted how Dr. Armstrong’s hands, at other times seemingly so much in his way, now did their work so skilfully and rapidly.  Not till the operation was over, and the resulting wound was being sprayed with antiseptics, did the girl realize how cold and faint she felt, or how she was trembling.  Dropping the hand of the boy, she caught at the operating-table, and then the room turned black.

“It’s really nothing,” she asserted.  “I only felt dizzy for an instant.  Why!  Where am I?”

“You fainted away, Miss Durant, and we brought you here,” explained the nurse, once again applying the salts.  The woman rose and went to the door.  “She is conscious now, Dr. Armstrong.”

As the doctor entered Constance tried to rise, but a motion of his hand checked her.  “Sit still a little yet, Miss Durant,” he ordered peremptorily.  From a cupboard he produced a plate of crackers and a glass of milk, and brought them to her.

“I really don’t want anything,” declared the girl.

“You are to eat something at once,” insisted Dr. Armstrong, in a very domineering manner.

He held the glass to her lips, and Constance, after a look at his face, took a swallow of the milk, and then a piece of cracker he broke off.

“How silly of me to behave so,” she said, as she munched.

“The folly was mine in letting you stay in the room when you had had no dinner.  That was enough to knock up any one,” answered the doctor.  “Here.”  Once again the glass was held to her lips, and once again, after a look at his face, Constance drank, and then accepted a second bit of cracker from his fingers.

“Do you keep these especially for faint-minded women?” she asked, trying to make a joke of the incident.