Sheila interrupted him. "I hope you weren't counting on too many minutes. I can see Miss Maxwell coming down the San steps, and I have a substantial feeling that she's looking for me to put me on another case."
"Couldn't we escape? Couldn't we skip round by the farm to the garage and get my car? You look fagged out. A couple of hours' ride would do wonders for you, and--Good Lord! The San can run that long without your services. What do you say? Shall we beat it?"
With a telltale, pent-up eagerness he noticed the girl's indecision and flung himself with all his persuasive powers to turn the balance in his favor. "Do come. You can work better and harder for a little time off now and then. All the other nurses take it. Why under the heavens can't a man ever persuade you to have a little pleasure?" Something in Sheila's face stopped him and prompted the one argument that could have persuaded her. "If you'll only come, Leerie, I'll promise to keep dumb--absolutely dumb. I'll promise not to spoil the ride for you."
Sheila flung him a radiant smile; it almost unbalanced him and murdered his resolve. "Then I'll come. You're the first man I ever knew who could keep his word--that way. Hurry! we'll have to run for it." And taking the lead, she ducked through the little door of the rest-house and ran, straight as the crow flies, to the hiding shelter of the farm.
But her premonition was correct. When she returned two hours later in the cool of a summer's twilight, with eyes that sparkled like iridescent pools and lips that smiled generously her gratitude to the man who could keep his word, she found the superintendent of nurses watching from the San steps for their car.
"All right, Miss Maxwell," she nodded in response to the question that was plainly stamped on the superintendent's face. "We've had supper--don't even have to change my uniform." Then to Peter, "Thank you."
The words were meager enough, but Peter Brooks had already received his compensation in the girl's glowing face. "It's 'off again, on again, gone again,' in your profession, too. Well, here's looking forward to the next escape." His laugh rang with health and good spirits.
Sheila stopped on her way up the steps, turned and looked back at him. The wonder of his recovery often surprised even herself. It seemed incredible that this pulsing, vitalized portion of humanity could have once been a veritable husk, hounded by a haunting fear into a state of hopelessness and loathing of existence. Life certainly tingled in Peter now, and every time Sheila felt it, man or no man, she could not help rejoice with all her heart at the thing she had helped to do.