That afternoon, however, he was nervous and restless.  The Nurse was troubled.  He avoided the subject that had so obsessed him the day before, was absent and irritable, could not eat, and sat in his chair by the window, nervously clasping and unclasping his hands.

The Nurse was puzzled, but the Staff Doctor, making rounds that day, enlightened her.

“He has pulled through—­God and you alone know how,” he said.  “But as soon as he begins to get his strength he’s going to yell for liquor again.  When a man has been soaking up alcohol for years——­ Drat this hospital cooking anyhow!  Have you got any essence of pepsin?”

The Nurse brought the pepsin and a medicine glass and the Staff Doctor swallowed and grimaced.

“You were saying,” said the Nurse timidly—­for, the stress being over, he was Staff again and she was a Junior and not even entitled to a Senior’s privileges, such as returning occasional badinage.

“Every atom of him is going to crave it.  He’s wanting it now.  He has been used to it for years.”  The Nurse was white to the lips, but steady.  “He is not to have it?”

“Not a drop while he is here.  When he gets out it is his own affair again, but while he’s here—­by-the-way, you’ll have to watch the orderly.  He’ll bribe him.”

“I don’t think so, doctor.  He is a gentleman.”

“Pooh!  Of course he is.  I dare say he’s a gentleman when he’s drunk too; but he’s a drinker—­a habitual drinker.”

The Nurse went back into the room and found Billy Grant sitting in a chair, with the book he had been reading on the floor and his face buried in his hands.

“I’m awfuly sorry!” he said, not looking up.  “I heard what he said.  He’s right, you know.”

“I’m sorry.  And I’m afraid this is a place where I cannot help.”

She put her hand on his head, and he brought it down and held it between his.

“Two or three times,” he said, “when things were very bad with me, you let me hold your hand, and we got past somehow—­didn’t we?”

She closed her eyes, remembering the dawn when, to soothe a dying man, in the presence of the mission preacher, she had put her hand in his.  Billy Grant thought of it too.

“Now you know what you’ve married,” he said bitterly.  The bitterness was at himself of course.  “If—­if you’ll sit tight I have a fighting chance to make a man of myself; and after it’s over we’ll fix this thing for you so you will forget it ever happened.  And I——­ Don’t take your hand away.  Please!”

“I was feeling for my handkerchief,” she explained.

“Have I made you cry again?”

“Again?’

“I saw you last night in your room.  I didn’t intend to; but I was trying to stand, and——­”

She was very dignified at this, with her eyes still wet, and tried unsuccessfully to take her hand away.

“If you are going to get up when it is forbidden I shall ask to be relieved.”