its seeming effort to show against the forerunning of the sun
itself, had stimulated some half-buried perception within him to
sketch the painful little synopsis of an autobiography.

In spite of noises without, he drowsed again, not knowing that he
did; and when he opened his eyes the nurse was just rising from
her cot. He took no pleasure in the sight, it may be said. She
exhibited to him a face mismodelled by sleep, and set like a clay
face left on its cheek in a hot and dry studio. She was still
only in part awake, however, and by the time she had extinguished
the night-light and given her patient his tonic, she had
recovered enough plasticity. "Well, isn't that grand! We've had
another good night," she said as she departed to dress in the
bathroom.

"Yes, you had another!" he retorted, though not until after she
had closed the door.

Presently he heard his daughter moving about in her room across
the narrow hall, and so knew that she had risen. He hoped she
would come in to see him soon, for she was the one thing that
didn't press on his nerves, he felt; though the thought of her
hurt him, as, indeed, every thought hurt him. But it was his
wife who came first.

She wore a lank cotton wrapper, and a crescent of gray hair
escaped to one temple from beneath the handkerchief she had worn
upon her head for the night and still retained; but she did
everything possible to make her expression cheering.