“Why!  Dr. Faber ’s back!” fluttered the senior nurses.  “Isn’t he wonderful?  Isn’t he beautiful?  But, oh, say,” they worried, “what do you suppose Rae ever finds to talk with him about?  Would she ever dare talk things to him,—­just plain every-day things,—­hats, and going to the theater, and what to have for breakfast?—­breakfast?” they gasped.  “Why, yes, of course!” they reasoned more sanely.  “Steak?  Eggs?  Even oatmeal?  Why, people had to eat—­no matter how wonderful they were!  But evenings?” they speculated more darkly.  “But evenings?” In the whole range of human experience—­was it even so much as remotely imaginable that—­evenings—­the Senior Surgeon and—­Rae Malgregor—­sat in the hammock and held hands?  “Oh, Gee!” blanched the senior nurses.

“Good-morning, Dr. Faber!” greeted the Superintendent of Nurses from behind her austere office desk.

“Good-morning, Miss Hartzen!” said the Senior Surgeon.

“Have you had a pleasant trip?” quizzed the Superintendent of Nurses.

“Exceptionally so, thank you!” said the Senior Surgeon.

“And—­Mrs. Faber,—­is she well?” persisted the Superintendent of Nurses conscientiously.

“Mrs. Faber?” gasped the Senior Surgeon.  “Mrs. Faber?  Oh, yes!  Why, of course!  Yes, indeed—­she’s extraordinarily well!  I never saw her better!”

“She must have been—­very lonely without you—­this past month?” rasped the Superintendent of Nurses—­perfectly politely.

“Yes—­she was,” flushed the Senior Surgeon.  “She—­she suffered—­keenly!”

“And you, too?” drawled the Superintendent of Nurses.  “It must have been very hard for you.”

“Yes, it was!” sweated the Senior Surgeon.  “I suffered keenly, too!”

Distractedly he glanced back at the open door.  An extraordinarily large number of nurses, internes, orderlies, seemed to be having errands up and down the corridor that allowed them a peculiarly generous length of neck to stretch into the Superintendent’s office.

“Great Heavens!” snapped the Senior Surgeon.  “What ’s the matter with everybody this morning?” Tempestuously he started for the door.  “Hurry up my cases, please, Miss Hartzen!” he ordered.  “Send them to the operating room!  And let me get to work!”

At eleven o’clock, absolutely calm, absolutely cool,—­pure as a girl in his fresh, white operating clothes—­cleaner,—­skin, hair, teeth, hands,—­than any girl who ever walked the face of the earth, in a white tiled room as surgically clean as himself, with three or four small, glistening instruments still boiling, steaming hot—­and half a dozen breathless assistants almost as immaculate as himself, with his gown, cap and mask adjusted, his gloves finally on, and the faintest possible little grin twitching oddly at the corner of his mouth, he “went in” as they say, to a new born baby’s tortured, twisted spine—­and took out—­fifty years perhaps of hunched-back pain and shame and morbid passions flourishing banefully in the dark shades of a disordered life.