“You know, in every operation, however slight, there is an element of danger to life.”
“Life! what do I care? I insist on your operating. Not another night shall pass——”
“As you will,” said Thénard.
“And now,” said Berselius, “make your preparations, and send me my secretary.”
At twelve o’clock that night, Maxine was seated in the library, with a book which she had been vainly trying to read face downward on the floor beside her.
Thénard, his assistant surgeon, and two nurses, had arrived shortly after ten. Operating table, instruments, everything necessary had been brought, set up, and fixed by Thénard’s own man.
Adams had no part in the proceedings except as a looker-on. No man could assist Thénard in an operation who was not broken to the job, for, when operating Thénard became quite a different person to the every-day Thénard of lecture room and hospital ward.
That harsh voice which we noticed in him in the first pages of this book when on entering the lecture room of the Beaujon he could not find his coloured chalks, came out during an operation, and he would curse his assistant to the face for the slightest fault or fancied fault, and he would speak to the nurses as no Frenchman ever spoke to Frenchwoman unless with deliberate intent to insult. When the last stitch was in, all this changed; nurses and assistant forgot what had been said, and in the ease of released tension, worshipped more than ever the cadaverous genius who was now unwinding from his head and mouth the antiseptic gauze in which he always veiled them when operating.
The clock on the mantel pointed to a few minutes past the hour, when the door opened, and Adams came in.