n a degree which I have
never seen equalled elsewhere. To that extent, and within proper limits
of supervision, I acknowledge her faculty as a valuable adjunct to a
scientific practitioner."

Still, though Sebastian started with a predisposition in favour of
Hilda Wade--a pretty girl appeals to most of us--I could see from the
beginning that Hilda Wade was by no means enthusiastic for Sebastian,
like the rest of the hospital:

"He is extraordinarily able," she would say, when I gushed to her about
our Master; but that was the most I could ever extort from her in the
way of praise. Though she admitted intellectually Sebastian's gigantic
mind, she would never commit herself to anything that sounded like
personal admiration. To call him "the prince of physiologists" did
not satisfy me on that head. I wanted her to exclaim, "I adore him! I
worship him! He is glorious, wonderful!"

I was also aware from an early date that, in an unobtrusive way, Hilda
Wade was watching Sebastian, watching him quietly, with those wistful,
earnest eyes, as a cat watches a mouse-hole; watching him with mute
inquiry, as if she expected each moment to see him do something
different from what the rest of us expected of him. Slowly I gathered
that Hilda Wade, in the most literal sense, had come to Nathaniel's, as
she herself expressed it, "to be near Sebastian."

Gentle and lovable as she was in every other aspect, towards Sebastian
she seemed like a lynx-eyed detective. She had some object in view,
I thought, almost as abstract as his own--some object to which, as I
judged, she was devoting her life quite as single-mindedly as Sebastian
himself had devoted his to the advancement of science.

"Why did she become a nurse at all?" I asked once of her friend, Mrs.
Mallet. "She has plenty of money, and seems well enough off to live
without working."

"Oh, dear, yes," Mrs. Mallet answered. "She is independent, quite; has
a tidy little income of her own--six or seven hundred a year--and she
could choose her own society. But she went in for this mission fad
early; she didn't intend to marry, she said; so she would like to have
some work to do in life. Girls suffer like that, nowadays. In her case,
the malady took the form of nursing."

"As a rule," I ventured to interpose, "when a pretty girl says she
doesn't intend to marry, her remark is premature. It only means--"

"Oh, yes, I know. Every girl says it; 'tis a stock property in the
popular mas