"Yes. He has lain like this since. When he wakes is he to have it again?"
"H'm!" said the doctor, deliberating, his eyes on the patient's face. "We will, I think, halve the dose. We mustn't overdo it; he seems susceptible to the drug."
He lifted his eyes from the unconscious face of the patient to the weary face of the nurse, and, as if struck by what he saw there, studied it with attention.
"You are more than usually tired this morning, sister," he said. "You must go at once to bed when I leave."
"It is always difficult for me to sleep in the daytime. I shall not sleep to-day," she said.
"But you are tired?"
"Dead tired."
The doctor observed her in a minute's silence. Her fine, almost regal form, at which few men looked and turned away, drooped a little this morning, seemed—but that was impossible—to have faded and shrunk since yesterday. There was, however, no sinking of the white eyelids over the pale blue eyes which, set in her darkly tinted face, were a surprise and a joy to the beholder. The eyelids were reddened now, and held wide apart, the eyes shining with a dry feverishness painful to see.
"If you go on night-duty and do not sleep in the day you will be ill," said the doctor, gently.
"Not I," said the nurse, roughly.