"Damn having a chauffeur who gets drunk the one day of the year when
you need him most!" he muttered under his breath, as with the same
exquisitely sensitive fingers that could have dissected like a caress
the nervous system of a humming bird, or re-set unbruisingly the broken
wing of a butterfly, he hurled his hundred and eighty pounds of
infuriate brute-strength against the calm, chronic, mechanical
stubbornness of that auto crank. "Damn!" he swore on the upward pull.
"Damn!" he gasped on the downward push. "Damn!" he cursed and sputtered
and spluttered. Purple with effort, bulging-eyed with strain, reeking
with sweat, his frenzied outburst would have terrorized the entire
hospital staff.

With an odd little twinge of homesickness, the White Linen Nurse slid
cautiously out to the edge of her seat so that she might watch the
struggle better. For thus, with dripping foreheads and knotted
neck-muscles and breaking backs and rankly tempestuous language, did
the untutored men-folk of her own beloved home-land hurl their great
strength against bulls and boulders and refractory forest trees. Very
startlingly as she watched, a brand new thought went zig-zagging through
her consciousness. Was it possible,--was it even so much as remotely
possible--that the great Senior Surgeon,--the great, wonderful,
altogether formidable, altogether unapproachable Senior Surgeon,--was
just a--was just a--? Stripped ruthlessly of all his social
superiority,--of all his professional halo,--of all his scientific
achievement, the Senior Surgeon stood suddenly forth before her--a mere
man--just like other men! _Just exactly_ like other men? Like the sick
drug-clerk? Like the new-born millionaire baby? Like the doddering old
Dutch gaffer? The very delicacy of such a thought drove the blood
panic-stricken from her face. It was the indelicacy of the thought that
brought the blood surging back again to brow, to cheeks, to lips, even