“There!” he said, “let me hold that for you, over your nose and mouth.... Yes, just like that.... That’s capital. Now breathe it in”—he turned on the tap again—“breathe it in greedily in long breaths. And when you’ve taken twenty long breaths—mind you count them—just say ‘twenty,’ and we won’t bother you any more.”
The two nurses were still talking to each other in the window. One of them laughed at something the other was saying, and then took a step towards the table covered with a cloth, and stood with it in her hands. Mr. Brinton, meantime, was putting on a sort of white smock-frock over his waistcoat, for he had taken off his coat. Helen remembered having seen that sort of smock coming from the sterilizing room. But the other nurse still smiled to herself and rubbed the tips of her fingers together, like a girl enjoying something amusing. She was rather a tiresome girl, Helen thought; she had mentioned the other day that she thought it was unladylike for women to smoke, and she had distinctly “bridled” when the joke of Jaye being in love with Lady Grote had been hinted at.
The gas made a slight hissing. Jaye was breathing greedily, as he had been told to do, and the surgeon had not yet buttoned the snow-white cuffs round his wrist, when the doctor took a step forward, and pulled up one of Jaye’s eyelids.
“That’s all right,” he said.
The anæsthetist dropped the india-rubber mouthpiece and took up the wire mask. He sprinkled on it some of the contents of the bottle that stood by it on the floor, and laid it over Jaye’s face.
Mr. Brinton nodded to Lady Grote.
“Thank you very much, Lady Grote,” he said. “I thought we should have some difficulty with him. But he’s gone off now. I’ll send word to you when we shall want you again.”
Quite suddenly, Helen knew that it was not in the power of a decent woman to go away. She had promised Jaye to stop with him, while the operation was going on. She had meant to go away as soon as he was under the anæsthetic, but now she could not. She loathed the thought of what was coming, but she could not cheat that still, unconscious form that lay on the glass bed. She had made a promise.
“I shall stop, please,” she said.
“I would recommend you not to,” said Mr. Brinton. “We shall all be busy: if you faint nobody will be able to attend to you.”