tions from early morning to
mid-afternoon. He could do as well later in the day,--his nerves were
steady, and uncounted numbers of cigarettes did not make his hand
shake,--and he hated to get up early.

The staff had fallen into the way of attending Wilson's operations. His
technique was good; but technique alone never gets a surgeon anywhere.
Wilson was getting results. Even the most jealous of that most jealous
of professions, surgery, had to admit that he got results.

Operations were over for the afternoon. The last case had been
wheeled out of the elevator. The pit of the operating-room was
in disorder--towels everywhere, tables of instruments, steaming
sterilizers. Orderlies were going about, carrying out linens, emptying
pans. At a table two nurses were cleaning instruments and putting
them away in their glass cases. Irrigators were being emptied, sponges
recounted and checked off on written lists.

In the midst of the confusion, Wilson stood giving last orders to the
interne at his elbow. As he talked he scoured his hands and arms with a
small brush; bits of lather flew off on to the tiled floor. His speech
was incisive, vigorous. At the hospital they said his nerves were iron;
there was no let-down after the day's work. The internes worshiped and
feared him. He was just, but without mercy. To be able to work like
that, so certainly, with so sure a touch, and to look like a Greek god!
Wilson's only rival, a gynecologist named O'Hara, got results, too; but
he sweated and swore through his operations, was not too careful as to
asepsis, and looked like a gorilla.

The day had been a hard one. The operating room nurses were fagged. Two
or three probationers had been sent to help cleanup, and a senior nurse.
Wilson's eyes caught the nurse's eyes as she passed him.

"Here, too, Miss Harrison!" he said gayly. "Have they set you on my
trail?"

With the eyes of the room on her, the girl answered primly:--

"I'm to be in your office in the mornings, Dr. Wilson, and anywhere I am
needed in the afternoons."

"And your vacation?"

"I shall take it when Miss Simpson comes back."

Although he went on at once with his conversation with the interne, he
still heard the click of her heels about the room. He had not lost the
fact that she had flushed when he spoke to her. The mischief that was
latent in him came to the surface. When he had rinsed his hands, he
followed her, carrying the towel to where she stood talking