"You have kept it a good many years," she said, mockingly. "Keep it still."
Some blood was on her own hands—how could she have been so clumsy! They were all smeared with blood; they—horrible!—smelt of blood.
She flew towards the basin to rinse them, but before she could reach it, without a warning sound the door opened, and the matron was in the room.
With the tell-tale hands behind her back, Sister Marion stood before her, intervening between her and the bed.
"Your patient is strangely quiet all at once," the matron said.
"He is sleeping," said the nurse.
In spite of herself she had to give way before the matron, who now stood by the bed.
"It does not seem a healthy sleep," she said. "He has a very exhausted look. And why is his blanket tucked so tightly round his arms?" She waited for no explanations, but smoothed the man's ruffled hair and looked down pityingly upon him. "Even now he has a handsome face," she said. "Ten years ago he must have been as handsome as a god."
Ten years ago! Who knew how handsome he had been then better than Sister Marion? In an instant how vivid was the picture of him that rose before her eyes! The picture of a young man's laughing face—gay, winning, debonair. A dancing shadow was on his face of the leaves of the tree by which he stood, and on which he had carved two names—
With an involuntary movement she was beside him, looking down upon the unconscious face; and wonderful it was to see that all its lines were smoothing out, and all the marks of years of debauchery. Even the sallow hue of them seemed to be changing in his cheeks. Extraordinary that the healthy colour of early manhood should reappear in the cheeks of a dying man!