Again, another day, after a bad night:
"I think you'd better go into the next room, Miss Glynn, and take a nap. I'd feel less brutally selfish if I could see your eyes calmer. Besides, being shut away here from all I'm dying to have makes an idiot of me. If you stay any longer, looking at me with those queer eyes of yours, I may break down and tell you all about it, just for the dangerous joy of easing my own soul by dumping a load on yours. Good God! Miss Glynn, such women as you should not be nurses; it isn't fair. I'd give—let me see—well, I'd give six months of my life—since Hapgood says I stand a fair chance for ninety years—to talk to you, man to woman, and get your point of view—about something. There are moments, after a bad night, when I think you women haven't had all they say you should have had. We men have been too blindly sure we could play your game as well as our own. Run now! If you stay another minute I'll regret it, and so will you."
"Shall I shake your pillow before I go, Mr. Huntter?"
"Yes. Thank you. You manage to shake more whim-whams out of the creases than you know."
He stayed her by a wistful, longing, and half-boyish smile.
"Say," he said, "you see you didn't run quick enough, and now I'm going to ask you something. You must have seen a good deal of women as well as men in your calling."
"Yes, I have."
"Seen them with their masks off?"
"Yes."
"What does love count for in the big hours of life? Does it stand everything, anything?"