. The Staff knows it."

"Then, why doesn't the Staff do it?"

The Senior Surgical Interne was still feeling very tall. He looked
down at her from a great distance.

"Because, dear child," he said, "it's your man's case. You ought to
know enough about professional ethics for that."

He went away, then, and had a violent headache, which he blamed on
confinement and lack of exercise. But he had sowed something in the
Probationer's mind.

For she knew, suddenly, that he had been right. The Staff had meant
that, then, when they looked at Johnny and shook their heads. The
Staff knew, the hospital knew. Every one knew but Doctor Willie. But
Doctor Willie had the case. Back in her little town Johnny's mother
was looking to Doctor Willie, believing in him, hoping through him.

That night Twenty-two slept, and Jane Brown lay awake. And down in H
ward Johnny Fraser had a bad spell at that hour toward dawn when the
vitality is low, and men die. He did not die, however. But the night
nurse recorded, "Pulse very thin and iregular," at four o'clock.

She, too, was not a famous speller.

During the next morning, while the ward rolled bandages, having
carefully scrubbed its hands first, Jane Brown wrote records--she
did it rather well now--and then arranged the pins in the ward
pincushion. She made concentric circles of safety-pins outside and
common pins inside, with a large H in the centre. But her mind was
not on this artistic bit of creation. It was on Johnny Fraser.

She made up her mind to speak to Doctor Willie.

Twenty-two had got over his sulking or his jealousy, or whatever it
was, and during the early hours, those hours when Johnny was hardly
breathing, he had planned something. He thought that he did it to
interest the patients and make them contented, but somewhere in the
back of his mind he knew it was to see more of Jane Brown. He
planned a concert in the chapel.

So that morning he took Elizabeth, the plaster cast, back to H ward,
where Jane Brown was fixing the pincushion, and had a good minute of
feasting his eyes on her while she was sucking a jabbed finger. She
knew she should have dipped the finger in a solution, but habit is
strong in most of us.

Twenty-two had a wild desire to offer to kiss the finger and make it
well. This, however, was not habit. It was insanity. He recognised
this himself, and felt more than a trifle worried about it, because
he had been in love quite a number of times before, b