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“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.

* * * * *

Now the Head Nurse was interviewing an applicant; and, as the H.N. took a constitutional each morning in the courtyard and believed in losing no time, she was holding the interview as she walked.

“I think I would make a good nurse,” said the applicant, a trifle breathless, the h.n. being a brisk walker. “I am so sympathetic.”

The H.N. stopped and raised a reproving forefinger.

“Too much sympathy is a handicap,” she orated. “The perfect nurse is a silent, reliable, fearless, emotionless machine–this little building here is the isolation pavilion.”

“An emotionless machine,” repeated the applicant. “I see–an e—-“

The words died on her lips. She was looking past a crowd of birds on the windowsill to where, just inside, Billy Grant and the Nurse in a very mussed cap were breakfasting together. And as she looked Billy Grant bent over across the tray.

“I adore you!” he said distinctly and, lifting the Nurse’s hands, kissed first one and then the other.

“It is hard work,” said Miss Smith–having made a note that the boys in the children’s ward must be restrained from lowering a pasteboard box on a string from a window–“hard work without sentiment. It is not a romantic occupation.”

She waved an admonitory hand toward the window, and the box went up swiftly. The applicant looked again toward the pavilion, where Billy Grant, having kissed the Nurse’s hands, had buried his face in her two palms.

The mild October sun shone down on the courtyard, with its bandaged figures in wheel-chairs, its cripples sunning on a bench, their crutches beside them, its waterless fountain and dingy birds.

The applicant thrilled to it all–joy and suffering, birth and death, misery and hope, life and love. Love!

The H.N. turned to her grimly, but her eyes were soft.

“All this,” she said, waving her hand vaguely, “for eight dollars a month!”

“I think,” said the applicant shyly, “I should like to come.”