So she
planned her battle, ignorant that she had lost already.

Her method was simple enough. She stopped sulking, met Max with smiles,
made no overtures toward a renewal of their relations. At first this
annoyed him. Later it piqued him. To desert a woman was justifiable,
under certain circumstances. But to desert a woman, and have her
apparently not even know it, was against the rules of the game.

During a surgical dressing in a private room, one day, he allowed his
fingers to touch hers, as on that day a year before when she had taken
Miss Simpson's place in his office. He was rewarded by the same slow,
smouldering glance that had caught his attention before. So she was only
acting indifference!

Then Carlotta made her second move. A new interne had come into the
house, and was going through the process of learning that from a senior
at the medical school to a half-baked junior interne is a long step
back. He had to endure the good-humored contempt of the older men, the
patronizing instructions of nurses as to rules.

Carlotta alone treated him with deference. His uneasy rounds in
Carlotta's precinct took on the state and form of staff visitations. She
flattered, cajoled, looked up to him.

After a time it dawned on Wilson that this junior cub was getting more
attention than himself: that, wherever he happened to be, somewhere in
the offing would be Carlotta and the Lamb, the latter eyeing her with
worship. Her indifference had only piqued him. The enthroning of a
successor galled him. Between them, the Lamb suffered mightily--was
subject to frequent "bawling out," as he termed it, in the
operating-room as he assisted the anaesthetist. He took his troubles to
Carlotta, who soothed him in the corridor--in plain sight of her quarry,
of course--by putting a sympathetic hand on his sleeve.

Then, one day, Wilson was goaded to speech.

"For the love of Heaven, Carlotta," he said impatiently, "stop making
love to that wretched boy. He wriggles like a worm if you look at him."

"I like him. He is thoroughly genuine. I respect him, and--he respects
me."

"It's rather a silly game, you know."

"What game?"

"Do you think I don't understand?"

"Perhaps you do. I--I don't really care a lot about him, Max. But I've
been down-hearted. He cheers me up."

Her attraction for him was almost gone--not quite. He felt rather sorry
for her.

"I'm sorry. Then you are not angry with me?"

"Angry? No." She lifted her ey