[Pg 14]

And all the while a girl was leaning over the sill of the little rest-house, watching him. It was a girl with a demure mouth, a determined chin, and eyes that shone, who answered impartially to the names of Sheila, Miss O’Leary, or Leerie. The gray was changed for the white uniform and cap of a graduate nurse, and the change was becoming. She had recognized him at first with casual amusement as she watched him fill her prescription of Hennessy and the swans, but after Hennessy had gone she watched him with all the intuitive sympathy of her womanhood and the understanding of her profession. Not one of the emotions that swept Peter’s face but registered full on the girl’s sensibilities: the illuminating interest in something, bewilderment, hopelessness, despair, agony, and a final weary surrender to the inevitable—they were all there. But it was the strange, haunting look in the deep-set eyes that made the girl sit up, alert and curious.

“’Phobia,” she said, softly, under her[Pg 15] breath. “Not over-fed liver or alcoholic heart, but ’phobia, I’ll wager, poor childman! Wonder how the doctors have diagnosed him!”

[Pg 15]

She learned how a few days later when Miss Maxwell, the superintendent of nurses, stopped her in the second-floor corridor. “My dear, I should like to change you from Madam Courot to another case for a few days. Miss Jacobs is on now and—”

“Coppy?” Sheila O’Leary broke in abruptly, a smile of amusement breaking the demureness of her lips. “Needn’t explain, Miss Max. I see. Young male patient, unattached. Frequent pulse-takings and cerebral massage, with late evening strolls in the pine woods. Business office takes notice and a change of nurse recommended. Poor Coppy—ripping nurse! If only she wouldn’t grow flabby every time a pair of masculine eyes are focused her way!”

“But it wasn’t the business office this time.” Miss Maxwell herself smiled as she made the statement. “It was the patient himself. He asked for a change.”

“A man that’s a man for all he’s a patient. God bless his soul!” and a look of sudden[Pg 16] radiant delight swept the girl’s face. “What’s he here for? Jilting chorus-girl—fatty degeneration of his check-book?”

[Pg 16]

The superintendent shook her head. “He doesn’t happen to be that kind. He’s a newspaper-man—a personal friend of Doctor Dempsy’s. Overwork, he thinks, and for a year he’s been 

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