“Dearest, the Love-Talker has turned so completely human that he has to say at the outset he’s not half good enough for you, But he wants you—­he wants you, just the same, to carry back with him to his faery-land.  It will be rather a funny little old faery-land, made up of work and poverty—­and love; but, you see, the last is so big and strong it can shoulder the other two and never know it’s carrying a thing.  If you’ll only come, dearest, you can make it the finest, most magical faeryland a man ever set up home-making in.”

Another silence settled over Ward C.

“Well—­” said the House Surgeon, breaking it at last and sounding a trifle nervous.  “Well—­”

“I thought you said I wasn’t to move or speak, or the spell would be broken?”

“That’s right, excellent nurse—­followed doctor’s orders exactly.”  He was smiling radiantly now, only no one could see.  Slowly he drew her hands away from her eyes and kissed the lids.  “You can open them if you solemnly promise not to be disappointed when you see the Love-Talker has stepped into an ordinary house surgeon’s uniform and looks like the—­devil.”  With a laugh the House Surgeon gathered her close in his arms.

“The devil was only a rebelling angel,” she murmured, contentedly.

“But I’m not rebelling.  Bless those trustees!  If they hadn’t put us both out of the hospital we might be jogging along for the next ten years on the wholesome, easily digested diet of friendship, and never dreamed of the feast we were missing—­like this—­and this—­and—­”

Margaret MacLean buried her face in the uniform with a sob.

“What is it, dearest?  Don’t you like them?”

“I—­love—­them.  Don’t you understand?  I never belonged to anybody before in all my life, so no one ever wanted to—­”

The rest was unintelligible, but perfectly satisfactory to the House Surgeon.  He held her even closer while she sobbed out the tears that had been intended for the edge of Bridget’s bed; and when they were spent he wiped away all traces with some antiseptic gauze that happened to be in his pocket.

“I will never be foolish again and remember what lies behind to-night,” said Margaret MacLean, knowing full well that she would be, and that often, because of the joy that would lie in remembering and comparing.  “Now tell me, did they make you go, too?”

“The President told me, very courteously, that he felt sure I would be wishing to find another position elsewhere better suited to my rising abilities; and if an opportunity should come—­next month, perhaps—­they would not wish in any way to interfere with my leaving.”

“Ugh!  I—­”

“No, you don’t, dearest.  You couldn’t expect them to want us around after the things we magnanimously refrained from saying—­but so perfectly implied.”

“All right, I’ll love them instead, if you want me to, only—­” And she puckered her forehead into deep furrows of perplexity.  “I have kept it out of my mind all through the evening, but we might as well face it now as to-morrow morning.  What is going to happen to us?”