"Is it so absurd—under the circumstances?"
"You can sleep quite well if you only try."
She went out into the hall again, her chin well up. Then she hesitated, turned and came swiftly back into the room.
"If I do," she said rather breathlessly, "will you go to sleep? And will you promise to hold your arms up over your head?"
"But my arms——"
"Over your head!"
He obeyed at that, and the next moment she had bent over him in the darkness; and quickly, lightly, deliciously, she kissed—the tip of his nose!
IV
She was quite cheerful the next day and entirely composed. Neither of them referred to the episode of the night before, but Billy Grant thought of little else. Early in the morning he asked her to bring him a hand mirror and, surveying his face, tortured and disfigured by the orderly's shaving, suffered an acute wound in his vanity. He was glad it had been dark or she probably would not have—— He borrowed a razor from the interne and proceeded to enjoy himself.
Propped up in his chair, he rioted in lather, sliced a piece out of his right ear, and shaved the back of his neck by touch, in lieu of better treatment. This done, and the ragged and unkempt hair over his ears having been trimmed in scallops, due to the work being done with curved surgical scissors, he was his own man again.