ustees"--she drew in a quick breath and put out a steadying hand
on the banisters--"you mean--they have given up the incurable ward?"

He nodded. His voice took on a more genial tone. He felt he could
generously afford to be pleasant and patient toward the one who had not
succeeded. "It was something that was bound to happen sooner or later.
Can't you see that yourself? But I am sorry, very sorry for you."

Suddenly, and for the first time in their long sojourn together in
Saint Margaret's, he became wholly conscious of the girl before him.
He realized that Margaret MacLean had grown into a vital and vitalizing
personality--a force with which those who came in contact would have to
reckon. She stood before him now, frozen into a gray, accusing figure.

"Are you ill?" he found himself asking.

"No."

He shifted his weight uneasily to the other foot. "Is there anything
you want?"

Her face softened into the little-girl look. Her eyes brimmed with a
sadness past remedy. "What a funny question from you--you, who have
taken from me the only thing I ever let myself want--the love and
dependence of those children. Success, and having whatever you want,
are such common things with you, that you must count them very cheap;
but you can't judge what they mean to others--or what they may cost
them."

"As I said before, I am sorry, very sorry you have lost your position
here; but you have no one but yourself to blame for that. I should
have been very glad to have you remain in the new surgical ward; you
are one of the best operative nurses I ever had." He added this in all
justice to her; and to mitigate, if he could, his own feeling of
discomfort.

Margaret MacLean smiled grimly. "Thank you. I was not referring to
the loss of my position, however; that matters very little."

"It should matter." The voice of the Senior Surgeon became instantly
professional. "Every nurse should put her work, satisfactorily and
scientifically executed, before everything else. That is where you are
radically weak. Let me remind you that it is your sole business to
look after the physical betterment of your patients--nothing else; and
the sooner you give up all this sentimental, fanciful nonsense the
sooner you will succeed."

"You are wrong. I should never succeed that way--never. Some cases
may need only the bodily care--maybe; but you are a very poor doctor,
after all, if you think that is all that children need--or hal