r the table, not on the
anesthetist, nor young Travers, his partner, but on the nurse who stood
a little apart, the girl he had selected in order to test her on a really
great case. So radiant and inspired was Priscilla Glenn's face that it
fairly shone in that grim place and positively had the effect of bringing
Ledyard to the calmness that characterized his action once the necessity
demanded.

"How is your patient, Doctor Sloan?" he asked the anesthetist.

"Fine, Doctor Ledyard. I'm ready when you are."

Then tense silence followed, broken only by the click of instruments and
the curt, crisp commands. The minutes, weighted with concentration, ran
into the hour. Not a body in that room was aware of fatigue or anxiety. A
life was at stake, and every one knew it. It did not matter that the man
upon the table was important and useful: had he been the meanest of the
mean and in the same critical state, that steady hand, which guided the
knife so scientifically and powerfully, would have worked the same.

The sun beat down upon the glass roof of that high room; the perspiration
started to Ledyard's forehead and a nurse wiped it away.

From her place Priscilla Glenn watched breathlessly the scene before her.
It seemed to her that she had never seen an operation before; had never
comprehended what one could be. She realized the odds against which those
two great men were battling, and her gaze rested finally, not on the head
surgeon, but on his partner. Once, as if by some subtle attraction, he
raised his eyes and met hers. Above the mask his glance showed kindly and
encouragingly. He knew that some nurses lost their nerve when a thing
stretched on as this did; he never could quite overlook the fact that
nurses were women, as well, and he hated to see one go under. But this
young nurse was showing no weakness. Travers saw that, after a moment,
and dropped his eyes. But that glance had fixed Priscilla's face in his
memory, and when, after the great man had been carried to his room with
hope following him, when he could be left with safety to his private
nurse, Travers came upon the girl standing by a deep window in the upper
hall. He remembered her at once and stopped to say a pleasant word.

This was not the strictly proper thing to do, and Travers knew it.
Ledyard was always challenging his undignified tendencies.

"Unless doctors and nurses can leave their sex outside their profession,"
was a pet epigram of Ledyard's,