Office-hours were full ones that evening, and it was quite nine o'clock
before R.P. Burns, M.D. closed the door on the last of his patients. The
moment he was free he turned to Miss Mathewson, his office nurse, with a
deep breath of relief.

"Let's put out the lights and call it off," he said. "Run home and get an
hour to yourself before bedtime, and never mind finishing the books. Do
you know,"--he was smiling down at her, where she sat, a trim white
figure at her desk, an assistant who had been his right hand for nine
years, and who perhaps knew his moods and tempers better than anybody in
the world, though he did not at all realize this,--"do you know, I find
it harder to settle down to work again than I thought I should? Curious,
isn't it?"

"Not at all curious, Doctor Burns." Miss Mathewson spoke in her usual
quiet tone, smiling in return. "It is distracting, even to me, to know
that a person so lovely as your wife is under the same roof."

This was much for this most reserved associate of his to say, and Burns
recognized it. He regarded her with interested astonishment. "So she's
got you, too!" he ejaculated. "I'm mighty glad of that, for it will tend
to make you sympathetic with my wish to have an hour to myself--and
her--now and then. I'm to see my home to-night, for the first
time,--if--"

Steps sounded upon the office porch. Burns made a flying leap for the
door into his private office, intent on getting to his room and
exchanging his working garb for one suited to the evening he meant
to spend with Ellen. When he had swiftly but noiselessly closed the door,
Miss Mathewson answered the knock.