“It is a wonderful cap.”

“Is my face dirty?”

“It is a won——­ No, certainly not.”

“Then would you mind not staring so?  You—­upset me.”

“I shall have to shut my eyes,” he replied meekly, and worried her into a state of frenzy by sitting for fifty minutes with his head back and his eyes shut.

So—­the evening and the morning were another day, and the bottle lay undisturbed under the handkerchiefs, and the cold shower ceased running, and Billy Grant assumed the air of triumph permanently.  That morning when the breakfast trays came he walked over into the Nurse’s room and picked hers up, table and all, carrying it across the hall.  In his own room he arranged the two trays side by side, and two chairs opposite each other.  When the Nurse, who had been putting breadcrumbs on the window-sill, turned round Billy Grant was waiting to draw out one of the chairs, and there was something in his face she had not seen there before.

“Shall we breakfast?” he said.

“I told you yesterday——­”

“Think a minute,” he said softly.  “Is there any reason why we should not breakfast together?” She pressed her hands close together, but she did not speak.  “Unless—­you do not wish to.”

“You remember you promised, as soon as you got away, to—­fix that——­”

“So I will if you say the word.”

“And—­to forget all about it.”

“That,” said Billy Grant solemnly, “I shall never do so long as I live.  Do you say the word?”

“What else can I do?”

“Then there is somebody else?”

“Oh, no!”

He took a step toward her, but still he did not touch her.

“If there is no one else,” he said, “and if I tell you that you have made me a man again——­”

“Gracious!  Your eggs will be cold.”  She made a motion toward the egg-cup, but Billy Grant caught her hand.

“Damn the eggs!” he said.  “Why don’t you look at me?”

Something sweet and luminous and most unprofessional shone in the little Nurse’s eyes, and the line of her pulse on a chart would have looked like a seismic disturbance.

“I—­I have to look up so far!” she said, but really she was looking down when she said it.

“Oh, my dear—­my dear!” exulted Billy Grant.  “It is I who must look up at you!” And with that he dropped on his knees and kissed the starched hem of her apron.

The Nurse felt very absurd and a little frightened.

“If only,” she said, backing off—­“if only you wouldn’t be such a silly!  Jenks is coming!”

But Jenks was not coming.  Billy Grant rose to his full height and looked down at her—­a new Billy Grant, the one who had got drunk at a club and given a ring to a cabman having died that grey morning some weeks before.

“I love you—­love you—­love you!” he said, and took her in his arms.

* * * * *