"they had better choose another."

But Travers had never been able to fulfil his partner's ideal.

"It was a wonderful operation," he said. "I hope it did not overtire you.
You will get hardened after a while."

"I am not at all tired. Yes, it was--wonderful! I did not know any
operation could be like that--I mean in the way that it was done. I have
always been afraid of Doctor Ledyard before; all of us are; I shall never
be again."

"May I ask why?"

Travers, being young and vital, was forgetting, for the moment, his
professional air to a dangerous extent. He was noticing the strange
coloured hair under the snowy cap, the poise of the head, the deep
violet eyes in the richly tinted face.

"It was that--well, the look on his face after he had done all that he
could--done it so wonderfully. That look was--a prayer! I shall never
forget."

Travers gave a light laugh.

"It would be like Doctor Ledyard," he said with a peculiarly boyish ring
in his voice, "to do his part first and pray afterward."

"But no one could ever be afraid of him again having once seen that
look!"

"Miss Glynn," Travers replied; "they could! and yet the _look_ holds the
fear in check."

Priscilla went early to bed that night. She had planned a visit to
Boswell when her enthusiasm was at its height, but at the day's end she
found herself so exhausted that she sought her room in a state bordering
on collapse.

Sounds outside caught and held her attention; every sense was quiveringly
alert and receptive; she was at the mercy of her subconscious self.

"Extry! extry!" bellowed a boy just below her window; "turribul
accident on--de--extry! extry! Latest bulletin--Gordan Moffatt--big
fin--cier--extry! extry!"

Priscilla sat up in bed and listened. So intimate had the insistent boy
in the street become that she was drawn to him by a common bond of
sympathy.

Slowly a luxurious sense of weariness overcame her and again she leaned
back on her pillow and sank into a semiconscious sleep. Balanced between
life and the oblivion, into which reason enters blindfolded, she made no
resistance, but was swayed by every passing wave of thought, memory, and
vision.

The voice outside merged presently into Jerry-Jo McAlpin's. So naturally
did it do so that the girl upon the bed, rigid and pale, accepted the
change with no surprise.

Jerry-Jo was asking her the way out! He was lost--lost. He wanted to get
out of the darkness and the noise; he want