But the blow when it came was nothing but a cool finger tapping her pulse.

“There!  There!” crooned the Superintendent’s voice with a most amazing tolerance.

“But I won’t ’there—­there’!” snapped Rae Malgregor.  Her eyes were wide open again now, and extravagantly dilated.

The cool fingers on her pulse seemed to tighten a little.  “S—­sh!  S—­sh!” admonished the Superintendent’s mumbling lips.

“But I won’t ’S—­sh—­S—­sh’!” stormed Rae Malgregor.  Never before in her three years’ hospital training had she seen her arch-enemy, the Superintendent, so utterly disarmed of irascible temper and arrogant dignity, and the sight perplexed and maddened her at one and the same moment.  “But I won’t ’S—­sh—­S—­sh’!” Desperately she jerked her curly blonde head in the direction of the clock on the wall.  “Here it’s four o’clock now!” she cried.  “And in less than four hours you’re going to try and make me graduate—­and go out into the world—­God knows where—­and charge innocent people twenty-five dollars a week and washing, likelier than not, mind you, for these hands,” she gestured, “that don’t co-ordinate at all with this face,” she grimaced, “but with the face of one of the House Doctors—­or the Senior Surgeon—­or even you—­who may be way off in Kamchatka—­when I need him most!” she finished with a confused jumble of accusation and despair.

Still with unexplainable amiability the Superintendent whirled back into place in her pivot-chair and with her left hand which had all this time been rummaging busily in a lower desk drawer proffered Rae Malgregor a small fold of paper.

“Here, my dear,” she said.  “Here’s a sedative for you.  Take it at once.  It will quiet you perfectly.  We all know you’ve had very hard luck this past month, but you mustn’t worry so about the future.”  The slightest possible tinge of purely professional manner crept back into the older woman’s voice.  “Certainly, Miss Malgregor, with your judgment—­”

“With my judgment?” cried Rae Malgregor.  The phrase was like a red rag to her.  “With my judgment?  Great Heavens!  That’s the whole trouble!  I haven’t got any judgment!  I’ve never been allowed to have any judgment!  All I’ve ever been allowed to have is the judgment of some flirty young medical student—­or the House Doctor!—­or the Senior Surgeon!—­or you!”

Her eyes were fairly piteous with terror.

“Don’t you see that my face doesn’t know anything?” she faltered, “except just to smile and smile and smile and say ’Yes, sir—­No, sir—­Yes, sir’?” From curly blonde head to square-toed, commonsense shoes her little body began to quiver suddenly like the advent of a chill.  “Oh, what am I going to do,” she begged, “when I’m way off alone—­somewhere—­in the mountains—­or a tenement—­or a palace—­and something happens—­and there isn’t any judgment round to tell me what I ought to do?”

Abruptly in the doorway as though summoned by some purely casual flicker of the Superintendent’s thin fingers another nurse appeared.