His face grew a mottled red, his clenched fist made an abortive
gesture as though he would have liked to strike her.

"Disappeared!" he reiterated. "Have you the face to stand there and
confess to such a piece of flagrant carelessness?"

She bit her lip.

"I suppose it was careless of me, doctor, but I didn't think----"

"That's the whole trouble; you never think--except about frivolity,
men, anything but your work! There is no excuse for your
conduct--none."

The attack was so unwarranted that, although she felt her face burn
with indignation, she was able to regard him with sudden calm
detachment, noting curiously his twitching mouth, his laboured
breathing. He seemed in a few minutes to have become quite a different
person. She had never seen him violently angry before.

"I was only going to say that although I was no doubt to blame, I
certainly had no idea that you could possibly consider the matter so
important."

He seemed suddenly to rein himself in for a second or two, during which
he glared at her fixedly. Then he burst out again with scathing venom,
the more concentrated because he kept his voice low.

"_You_ didn't consider it important! That's what you mean to say. Let
me tell you that any nurse worth her salt does not rush off and leave
her patient as you did just now in that cavalier fashion. It was your
duty to ask my permission, to find out if I was ready for you to go.
Your behaviour was undisciplined, un----"

"Oh, I see. Then it was my running off to help Mr. Clifford that was
wrong, not losing the needle?"

She tried to keep sarcasm from her voice, realising that it was the
first time in her career she had ever given anything approaching a
"back answer," yet unable to resist making some retort. She saw an odd
gleam come into the doctor's deepset eyes, an expression she did not
understand. For the moment the cold scientist was non-existent.

"Find that needle," he commanded, his whole huge frame tense with
suppressed fury. "It is the principle that matters. I have no use for
careless people."

Then, as though maddened by the passivity of her regard, he lashed out
at her once more, blindly cutting her with abuse that stung, even
though it was entirely undeserved. A certain crude coarseness crept
into his phrases, perhaps something long repressed had found vent. The
cold, inert mass of him had turned into a volcano of vituperation.

Shaken and outraged, she felt that a fe