d when, at something after
eight, the door of the Wilson house slammed and a figure crossed the
street, it was not Ed at all, but the surgeon.

Sidney had been talking rather more frankly than usual. Lately there
had been a reserve about her. K., listening intently that night, read
between words a story of small persecutions and jealousies. But the girl
minimized them, after her way.

"It's always hard for probationers," she said. "I often think Miss
Harrison is trying my mettle."

"Harrison!"

"Carlotta Harrison. And now that Miss Gregg has said she will accept
me, it's really all over. The other nurses are wonderful--so kind and so
helpful. I hope I shall look well in my cap."

Carlotta Harrison was in Sidney's hospital! A thousand contingencies
flashed through his mind. Sidney might grow to like her and bring her to
the house. Sidney might insist on the thing she always spoke of--that he
visit the hospital; and he would meet her, face to face. He could have
depended on a man to keep his secret. This girl with her somber eyes and
her threat to pay him out for what had happened to her--she meant danger
of a sort that no man could fight.

"Soon," said Sidney, through the warm darkness, "I shall have a cap,
and be always forgetting it and putting my hat on over it--the new ones
always do. One of the girls slept in hers the other night! They are
tulle, you know, and quite stiff, and it was the most erratic-looking
thing the next day!"

It was then that the door across the street closed. Sidney did not
hear it, but K. bent forward. There was a part of his brain always
automatically on watch.

"I shall get my operating-room training, too," she went on. "That is
the real romance of the hospital. A--a surgeon is a sort of hero in
a hospital. You wouldn't think that, would you? There was a lot of
excitement to-day. Even the probationers' table was talking about it.
Dr. Max Wilson did the Edwardes operation."

The figure across the Street was lighting a cigarette. Perhaps, after
all--

"Something tremendously difficult--I don't know what. It's going into
the medical journals. A Dr. Edwardes invented it, or whatever they
call it. They took a picture of the operating-room for the article.
The photographer had to put on operating clothes and wrap the camera in
sterilized towels. It was the most thrilling thing, they say--"

Her voice died away as her eyes followed K.'s. Max, cigarette in
hand, was coming across, und