"You do not admire poetry?"
Doctor Denton ceased twirling one of my loveliest roses between his fingers, and leaned forward to lay it carefully across my nearest braid. Gravely considering the effect, he replied,
"Not as a steady diet."
I slipped my hand under my pillow and closed it down hard over a certain volume.
"I do not suppose that surgery and poetry are particularly compatible," I volunteered, with indifference.
He lifted the rose from my braid and regarded it silently. When he looked up, I was astonished to see a light in the Alaskan eyes which I never dreamed could live in so cold a climate.
"You're all wrong," he answered; "there's a tremendous amount of poetry in surgery,—beauty, too, and limitless romance."
I didn't know those words were in his vocabulary. A trifle stirred by his tone, I made a little moue of scepticism.
"Instruments—and white coats—and ether," I was beginning, when he interrupted me.
"And beyond them all," he finished, on a deeper note, "the poetry of healing!"