He had only one request to make.  There was a little girl in the training school who believed in him, and he would like to go to the ward and write the order for the operation himself.

Which he did.  But Jane Brown was not there.

Late that evening the First Assistant, passing along the corridor in the dormitory, was accosted by a quiet figure in a blue uniform, without a cap.

“How is he?”

The First Assistant was feeling more cheerful than usual.  The operating surgeon had congratulated her on the way things had moved that day, and she was feeling, as she often did, that, after all, work was a solace for many troubles.

“Of course, it is very soon, but he stood it well.”  She looked up at Jane Brown, who was taller than she was, but who always, somehow, looked rather little.  There are girls like that.  “Look here,” she said, “you must not sit in that room and worry.  Run up to the operating-room and help to clear away.”

She was very wise, the First Assistant.  For Jane Brown went, and washed away some of the ache with the stains of Johnny’s operation.  Here, all about her, were the tangible evidences of her triumph, which was also a defeat.  A little glow of service revived in her.  If Johnny lived, it was a small price to pay for a life.  If he died, she had given him his chance.  The operating-room nurses were very kind.  They liked her courage, but they were frightened, too.  She, like the others, had been right, but also she was wrong.

They paid her tribute of little kindnesses, but they knew she must go.

It was the night nurse who told Twenty-two that Jane Brown was in the operating-room.  He was still up and dressed at midnight, but the sheets of to-morrow’s editorial lay blank on his table.

The night nurse glanced at her watch to see if it was time for the twelve o’clock medicines.

“There’s a rumour going about,” she said, “that the quarantine’s to be lifted to-morrow.  I’ll be rather sorry.  It has been a change.”

“To-morrow,” said Twenty-two, in a startled voice.

“I suppose you’ll be going out at once?”

There was a wistful note in her voice.  She liked him.  He had been an oasis of cheer in the dreary rounds of the night.  A very little more, and she might have forgotten her rule, which was never to be sentimentally interested in a patient.

“I wonder,” said Twenty-two, in a curious tone, “if you will give me my cane?”

He was clad, at that time, in a hideous bathrobe, purchased by the orderly, over his night clothing, and he had the expression of a person who intends to take no chances.

“Thanks,” said Twenty-two.  “And—­will you send the night watchman here?”

The night nurse went out.  She had a distinct feeling that something was about to happen.  At least she claimed it later.  But she found the night watchman making coffee in a back pantry, and gave him her message.