Nurse Rosemary waited. Her right hand held the pen poised over the paper. Her left was pressed against her breast. Her eyes rested on that dark bowed head, with a look of unutterable yearning and of passionate tenderness. At last Garth lifted his face. "Yours very sincerely, Garth Dalmain;" he said. And, silently, Nurse Rosemary wrote it.
CHAPTER XXII
DR. ROB TO THE RESCUE
Into the somewhat oppressive silence which followed the addressing and closing of the envelope, broke the cheery voice of Dr. Rob.
"Which is the patient to-day? The lady or the gentleman? Ah, neither, I see. Both flaunt the bloom of perfect health and make the doctor shy. It is spring without, but summer within," ran on Dr. Rob gaily, wondering why both faces were so white and perturbed, and why there was in the air a sense of hearts in torment. "Flannels seem to call up boating and picnic parties; and I see you have discarded the merino, Nurse Gray, and returned to the pretty blue washables. More becoming, undoubtedly; only, don't take cold; and be sure you feed up well. In this air people must eat plenty, and you have been perceptibly losing weight lately. We don't want TOO airy-fairy dimensions."
"Why do you always chaff Miss Gray about being small, Dr. Rob?" asked Garth, in a rather vexed tone. "I am sure being short is in no way detrimental to her."
"I will chaff her about being tall if you like," said Dr. Rob, looking at her with a wicked twinkle, as she stood in the window, drawn up to her full height, and regarding him with cold disapproval.
"I would sooner no comments of any kind were made upon her personal appearance," said Garth shortly; then added, more pleasantly: "You see, she is just a voice to me—a kind, guiding voice. At first I used to form mental pictures of her, of a hazy kind; but now I prefer to appropriate in all its helpfulness what I DO know, and leave unimagined what I do not. Did it ever strike you that she is the only person—bar that fellow Johnson, who belongs to a nightmare time I am quickly forgetting—I have yet had near me, in my blindness, whom I had not already seen; the only voice I have ever heard to which I could not put a face and figure? In time, of course, there will be many. At present she stands alone to me in this."
Dr. Rob's observant eye had been darting about during this explanation, seeking to focus itself upon something worthy of minute examination. Suddenly he spied the foreign letter lying close beside him on the table.