And Love is Lord of you and me!"

Just for an instant a dozen long-forgotten pictures lanced themselves
poignantly into his brain,--dingy, uncontrovertible old recitation
rooms where young ideas flashed bright and futile as parade
swords,--elm-shaded slopes where lithe young bodies lolled on green
velvet grasses to expound their harshest cynicisms! Book-history,
book-science, book-economics, book-love,--all the paper passion of all
the paper poets swaggering imperiously on boyish lips that would have
died a thousand bashful deaths before the threatening imminence of a
real girl's kiss! Magic days, with Youth the one glittering, positive
treasure on the Tree of Life--and Woman still a mystery!

"Woman a mystery?" Harshly the phrase ripped through the Senior
Surgeon's brain. Croakingly in that instant all the grim gray scientific
years re-overtook him, swamped him, strangled him. "Woman a _mystery_?
Oh ye Gods! And Youth? Bah! Youth,--a mere tinsel tinkle on a rotting
Christmas tree!"

Furiously with renewed venom he turned and threw his weight again upon
the stubbornly resistant crank of his automobile.

Vaguely disturbed by the noise and vibration the White Linen Nurse
opened her big, drowsy, blue eyes upon him.

"Don't--jerk--it--so!" she admonished hazily, "You'll wake the Little
Girl!"

"Well, what about my convenience, I'd like to know?" snapped the Senior
Surgeon in some astonishment.