Abruptly in the doorway as though summoned by some purely casual flicker
of the Superintendent's thin fingers another nurse appeared.

"Yes, I rang," said the Superintendent. "Go and ask the Senior Surgeon
if he can come to me here a moment, immediately."

"The Senior Surgeon?" gasped Rae Malgregor. "The Senior Surgeon?" With
her hands clutching at her throat she reeled back against the wall for
support. Like a shore bereft in one second of its tide, like a tree
stripped in one second of its leafage, she stood there, utterly stricken
of temper or passion or any animating human emotion whatsoever.

"Oh, now I'm going to be expelled! Oh, now I know I'm going to
be--expelled!" she moaned listlessly.

Very vaguely into the farthest radiation of her vision she sensed the
approach of a man. Gray-haired, gray-bearded, gray-suited, grayly
dogmatic as a block of granite, the Senior Surgeon loomed up at last in
the doorway.

"I'm in a hurry," he growled. "What's the matter?"

Precipitously Rae Malgregor collapsed into the breach.

"Oh, there's--nothing at all the matter, sir," she stammered. "It's
only--it's only that I've just decided that I don't want to be a trained
nurse."

With a gesture of ill-concealed impatience the Superintendent shrugged