“About what?”

“About your marrying me.”

“What did he say?” She humoured him.

“He said he was willing if you were.  You’re not going to move—­are you?”

“No.  But you must not talk.”

“It’s like this.  I’ve got a little property—­not much; a little.”  He was nervously eager about this.  If she knew it amounted to anything she would refuse, and the Lindley Grants——­ “And when I—­you know——­ I want to leave it where it will do some good.  That little brother of yours—­it would send him through college, or help to.”

Once, weeks ago, before he became so ill, she had told him of the brother.  This in itself was wrong and against the ethics of the profession.  One does not speak of oneself or one’s family.

“If you won’t try to sleep, shall I read to you?”

“Read what?”

“I thought—­the Bible, if you wouldn’t mind.”

“Certainly,” he agreed.  “I suppose that’s the conventional thing; and if it makes you feel any better——­ Will you think over what I’ve been saying?”

“I’ll think about it,” she said, soothing him like a fretful child, and brought her Bible.

The clock on the near-by town hall struck two as she drew up her chair beside him and commenced to read by the shaded light.  Across the courtyard the windows were dim yellowish rectangles, with here and there one brighter than the others that told its own story of sleepless hours.  A taxicab rolled along the street outside, carrying a boisterous night party.

The Nurse had taken off her cap and put it on a stand.  The autumn night was warm, and the light touch of the tulle had pressed her hair in damp, fine curves over her forehead.  There were purple hollows of anxiety and sleeplessness under her eyes.

“The perfect nurse,” the head of the training school was fond of saying, “is more or less of a machine.  Too much sympathy is a handicap to her work and an embarrassment to her patient.  A perfect, silent, reliable, fearless, emotionless machine!”

Poor Junior Nurse!

Now Billy Grant, lying there listening to something out of Isaiah, should have been repenting his hard-living, hard-drinking young life; should have been forgiving the Lindley Grants—­which story does not belong here; should have been asking for the consolation of the church, and trying to summon from the depths of his consciousness faint memories of early teachings as to the life beyond, and what he might or might not expect there.

What he actually did while the Nurse read was to try to move his legs, and, failing this, to plan a way to achieve the final revenge of a not particularly forgiving life.

At a little before three o’clock the Nurse telephoned across for an interne, who came over in a bathrobe over his pajamas and shot a hypodermic into Billy Grant’s left arm.  Billy Grant hardly noticed.  He was seeing Mrs. Lindley Grant when his surprise was sprung on her.  The interne summoned the Nurse into the hall with a jerk of his head.