"There's Taurus!" she exclaimed, with gleaming eyes.
She was looking at a rather tall man, of powerful build, whose abundant hair was splendidly tinged with silver, and who was coming in with a very beautiful woman.
"Is that what you nurses call him?" I asked, recognizing one of the great surgeons of the world.
"Yes," she answered. "Isn't he wonderful? We're all in love with him, the mean thing."
"Kindly explain the adjective," I urged her. "Is it due to the fact that he protected himself against the wiles of a host of pretty women by marrying the sweetest one of the lot—with a single exception—to the utter despair of the remainder?"
"Did you ever hear him blow up his house-staff?" Dora asked me.
"I have heard that he could be rather strenuous at times," I admitted.
"Well, that's how he infringes on our rights," Dora informed me. "I have never heard him say an angry word to a nurse. He just has a way of smiling at one, as if he were beholding an infinitesimal infant totally incapable of understanding. The sarcasm of it is utterly fierce and the nurse goes off, red and shaken, and feels like killing him. Don't you think we've got just as good a right as any whipper-snapper of a new intern to be blown up?"
"Evidently," I assented. "It is an unfair discrimination."
"And yet we're all just crazy for him. You can hardly understand how the personality of the man permeates the wards, how he gives one the impression of some wonderful being who has reached a pinnacle, and remains there, smilingly, without heeding the crowd below that worships and cheers. And how the patients adore him!"