With all her training and experience as a nurse, Maud was half terrified at the ordeal before her.  But she realized the logic of the doctor’s conclusion and steeled her nerves to do her part.

An hour later she stood looking down upon the patient.  He was still upon the operating table but breathing quietly and as strongly as at any time since he had received his wound.

“This shows,” Dr. Gys said to her, his voice keen with elation, “what fools we are to take any human condition for granted.  Man is a machine.  Smash his mechanism and it cannot work; make the proper repairs before it is too late and—­there he goes, ticking away as before.  Not as good a machine as it was prior to the break, but with care and caution it will run a long time.”

“He will live, then, you think?” she asked softly, marveling that after what she had witnessed the man was still able to breathe.

Gys leaned down and put his ear to the heart of the patient.  For two minutes he remained motionless.  Then he straightened up and a smile spread over his disfigured features.

“I confidently believe, Miss Stanton, we have turned the trick!  Luck, let us call it, for no sensible surgeon would have attempted the thing.  Rest assured that Andrew Denton will live for the next ten days.  More than that, with no serious set-back he may fully recover and live for many years to come.”

He was so pleased that tears stood in his one good eye and he wiped them away sheepishly.  The girl took his hand and pressed it in both her own.

“You are wonderful—­wonderful!” she said.

“Don’t, please—­don’t look in my face,” he pleaded.

“I won’t,” she returned, dropping her eyes; “I will think only of the clever brain, the skillful hand and the stout heart.”

“Not even that,” he said.  “Think of the girl wife—­of Elizabeth.  It was she who steadied my hand to-day.  Indeed, Miss Stanton, it was Elizabeth’s influence that saved him.  But for her we would have let him die.”

CHAPTER XVI

CLARETTE

So it was toward evening of the fourth day that the launch finally sighted the ship Arabella.  Delays and difficulties had been encountered in spite of government credentials and laissez-passer and Patsy had begun to fear they would not reach the harbor of Dunkirk before dark.

All through the journey the Belgian woman and her children had sat sullenly in the bow, the youngsters kept from mischief by the stern eye of Henderson.  In the stern seats, however, the original frigid silence had been thawed by Patsy Doyle’s bright chatter.  She began by telling the countess and Elizabeth all about herself and Beth and Maud and Uncle John, relating how they had come to embark upon this unusual mission of nursing the wounded of a foreign war, and how they had secured the services of the clever but disfigured surgeon, Dr. Gys.  She gave the ladies a clear picture of the hospital ship and told how the girls had made their dash to the firing line during the battle of Nieuport and brought back an ambulance full of wounded—­including Andrew Denton.