You are losing your nerve--which is fatal in a nurse. Only the other day
you let fall and broke a basin at a most critical moment; and now, you
scream aloud on a trifling apprehension." He paused and glanced around
him. "Mr. Callaghan," he said, turning to our tall, red-haired Irish
student, "YOUR blood is good normal, and YOU are not hysterical." He
selected another needle with studious care. "Give me your finger."

As he picked out the needle, I saw Hilda lean forward again, alert
and watchful, eyeing him with a piercing glance; but, after a second's
consideration, she seemed to satisfy herself, and fell back without a
word. I gathered that she was ready to interfere, had occasion demanded.
But occasion did not demand; and she held her peace quietly.

The rest of the examination proceeded without a hitch. For a minute or
two, it is true, I fancied that Sebastian betrayed a certain suppressed
agitation--a trifling lack of his accustomed perspicuity and his
luminous exposition. But, after meandering for a while through a few
vague sentences, he soon recovered his wonted calm; and as he went on
with his demonstration, throwing himself eagerly into the case, his
usual scientific enthusiasm came back to him undiminished. He waxed
eloquent (after his fashion) over the "beautiful" contrast between
Callaghan's wholesome blood, "rich in the vivifying architectonic grey
corpuscles which rebuild worn tissues," and the effete, impoverished,
unvitalised fluid which stagnated in the sluggish veins of the dead
patient. The carriers of oxygen had neglected their proper task; the
granules whose duty it was to bring elaborated food-stuffs to supply
the waste of brain and nerve and muscle had forgotten their cunning.
The bricklayers of the bodily fabric had gone out on strike; the weary
scavengers had declined to remove the useless by-products. His vivid
tongue, his picturesque fancy, ran away with him. I had never heard him
talk better or more incisively before; one could feel sure, as he spoke,
that the arteries of his own acute and teeming brain at that moment
of exaltation were by no means deficient in those energetic and highly
vital globules on whose reparative worth he so eloquently descanted.
"Sure, the Professor makes annywan see right inside wan's own vascular
system," Callaghan whispered aside to me, in unfeigned admiration.

The demonstration ended in impressive silence. As we streamed out of the
laboratory, aglow with his