“Yes, sir,” said the White Linen Nurse.  Even just to herself—­all alone there in the big black hall, she was perfectly polite.  “Y-e-s, sir,” she repeated softly.

With a slightly sardonic grin on his face the Senior Surgeon resumed his pacing.  Up and down,—­round and round,—­on and on and on!

At one o’clock in the dull, clammy chill of earliest morning he stopped long enough to light his hearthfire.

At two o’clock he stopped again to pile on a trifle more wood.

At three o’clock he dallied for an instant to close a window.  The new day seemed strangely cold.

At four o’clock, dawn the wonder,—­the miracle,—­the long despaired of,—­quickened wanly across the East.  Then suddenly,—­more like a phosphorescent breeze than a glow, the pale, pale yellow sunshine came wafting through the green gloom of the garden.  The vigil was over!

Stumbling out into the shadowy hall to greet the new day and the new beginning, the Senior Surgeon almost tripped and fell over the White Linen Nurse sitting all huddled up and drowsy-eyed in a little gray heap on his outer threshold.  The sensation of stepping upon a human body is not a pleasant one.  It smote the Senior Surgeon nauseously through the nerves of his stomach.

“What are you doing here?” he fairly screamed at her.

“Just keeping you company, sir,” yawned the White Linen Nurse.  Before her hand could reach her mouth again another great childish yawn overwhelmed her.  “Just—­watching with you, sir,” she finished more or less inarticulately.

“Watching with—­me?” snarled the Senior Surgeon resentfully.  “Why—­should—­you—­watch—­with—­me?”

Like the frightened flash of a bird the heavy lashes went swooping down across the pink cheeks and lifted as suddenly again.  “Because you’re my—­man!” yawned the White Linen Nurse.

Almost roughly the Senior Surgeon reached down and pulled the White Linen Nurse to her feet.

“God!” said the Senior Surgeon.  In his strained, husky voice the word sounded like an oath.  Grotesquely a little smile went scudding zig-zag across his haggard face.  With an impulse absolutely alien to him he reached out abruptly again and raised the White Linen Nurse’s hand to his lips. “’Good God’ was what I meant—­Miss Malgregor!” he grinned a bit sheepishly.

Quite bruskly then he turned and looked at his watch.

“I’d like my breakfast just as soon now as you can possibly get it!” he ordered peremptorily,—­in his own morbid pathological emergency no more stopping to consider the White Linen Nurse’s purely normal fatigue, than he in any pathological emergency of hers would have stopped to consider his own comfort,—­safety,—­or even perhaps, life!

Joyously then like a prisoner just turned loose, he went swinging up the stairs to recreate himself with a smoke and a shave and a great, splashing, cold shower-bath.