With his foot already half lifted to the step, the Senior Surgeon turned abruptly around, and lifted his hat, and stood staring back bare-headed for some unexplainable reason at the two silent figures on the piazza.
“Rae,” he said perplexedly--“Rae, I don’t seem to know just why, but somehow I’d like to have you kiss your hand to Aunt Agnes.”
Obediently the White Linen Nurse withdrew her fingers from his and wafted two kisses, one to “Aunt Agnes” and one to the Little Crippled Girl.
Then the White Linen Nurse and the Senior Surgeon climbed up into the tonneau of the car, where they had never, never sat alone before, and the Senior Surgeon gave a curt order to his man, and the big car started off again into interminable spaces.
Mutely, without a word, without a glance, passing between them, the Senior Surgeon held out his hand to her once more, as though the absence of her hand in his was suddenly a lonesomeness not to be endured again while life lasted.
_Whizz, whizz, whizz, whir, whir, whir_, the ribbony road began to roll up again on that hidden spool under the car.
When the chauffeur’s mind seemed sufficiently absorbed in speed and sound, the Senior Surgeon bent down a little mockingly and mumbled his lips inarticulately at the White Linen Nurse.
“See,” he laughed, “I’ve got a text, too, to keep my courage up. Of course you _look_ like an angel,” he teased closer and closer to her flaming face; “but all the time to myself, to reassure myself, I just keep saying, ’Bah! she’s nothing but a woman, nothing but a woman, nothing but a woman!’”
Within the Senior Surgeon’s warm, firm grasp the White Linen Nurse’s calm hand quickened suddenly like a bud forced precipitously into full bloom.
“Oh, don’t--talk, sir,” she whispered. “Oh, don’t talk, sir! Just listen!”
“Listen? Listen to what?” laughed the Senior Surgeon.
From under the heavy lashes that shadowed the flaming cheeks the soul of the girl who was to be his peered up at the soul of the man who was to be hers, and saluted what she saw!
“Oh, my heart, sir!” whispered the White Linen Nurse. “Oh, my heart, my heart, my _heart_.”
Always beside me as I go my way This beggar, Time, walks with his outstretched palms, Demanding, not beseeching, of me alms-- Alms of the precious hours of my day.