"A week, a month; not longer."
"I'll take it."
"I'll have my partner——Would you care for any one else?" Ledyard asked.
"No. Since it must be, I put myself in your hands. I trust you above any one I know. Do your best for me, and in case I slip through your fingers I thank you now, and—good-bye."
Before any great event, or operation, Ledyard was supersensitive, highly wrought, and nervous. When he heard the announcement that day of the operation: "All is ready, sir!" he stepped, gowned and masked, into the operating-room, and was aware of a senseless inclination to ask some one—he did not know whom—to make less noise and to lower the shades. Then his eye fell, not on the dignified and serene head nurse, not on the other ghostly young forms in their places near the table, not on the anesthetist, nor young Travers, his partner, but on the nurse who stood a little apart, the girl he had selected in order to test her on a really great case. So radiant and inspired was Priscilla Glenn's face that it fairly shone in that grim place and positively had the effect of bringing Ledyard to the calmness that characterized his action once the necessity demanded.
"How is your patient, Doctor Sloan?" he asked the anesthetist.
"Fine, Doctor Ledyard. I'm ready when you are."
Then tense silence followed, broken only by the click of instruments and the curt, crisp commands. The minutes, weighted with concentration, ran into the hour. Not a body in that room was aware of fatigue or anxiety. A life was at stake, and every one knew it. It did not matter that the man upon the table was important and useful: had he been the meanest of the mean and in the same critical state, that steady hand, which guided the knife so scientifically and powerfully, would have worked the same.
The sun beat down upon the glass roof of that high room; the perspiration started to Ledyard's forehead and a nurse wiped it away.
From her place Priscilla Glenn watched breathlessly the scene before her. It seemed to her that she had never seen an operation before; had never comprehended what one could be. She realized the odds against which those two great men were battling, and her gaze rested finally, not on the head surgeon, but on his partner. Once, as if by some subtle attraction, he raised his eyes and met hers. Above the mask his glance showed kindly and encouragingly. He knew that some nurses lost their nerve when a thing stretched on as this did; he never could quite overlook the fact that nurses were women, as well, and he hated to see one go under. But this young nurse was showing no weakness. Travers saw that, after a moment, and dropped his eyes. But that glance had fixed Priscilla's face in his memory, and when, after the great man had been carried to his room with hope following him, when he could be left with safety to his private nurse, Travers came upon the girl standing by a deep window in the upper hall. He remembered her at once and stopped to say a pleasant word.