"I don't suppose so. She's not going to work in this hospital any more."
The aviator spent a gloomy forenoon. Then he wrote some letters, called for Mrs. Blythe, and arranged with her for his departure from the hospital the next day.
When Belinda stopped at Room A-a the second evening to learn how he was getting on, the room was empty save for the attendant who was cleaning up. Sanderson had been gone an hour.
CHAPTER IV
A DECISION
There was a florist's box in Belinda's little sleeping room on the last day of her occupancy of it. She was almost afraid to open it at first, for she feared the card within might bear Doctor Herschall's name.
However, when she had opened it, the roses it contained, which had cost a dollar a stem, she distributed with lavish hand among the graduating class. That popular piece of fiction, just then being discussed by the book reviews, "The Flying Faun," with Frank Sanderson's autograph on the flyleaf, she hid away, showing it to nobody.
She was unable to put an accusing finger upon a single thing he had done or said that was discourteous. He was by no means one of those hybrid creatures—neither flesh, fowl, nor good red herring—known as "a lady's man." He owned to merely a natural gentleness in his conduct toward women; and by nature he possessed much of the cheerful awkwardness of a Newfoundland pup.
Belinda's instincts of motherliness—largely developed in all girls of her placid and sweet temperament—had really drawn her toward her patient at first because of these boyish traits. He seemed to her quite unspoiled; there was nothing artificial about him. If his glances boldly betrayed his admiration for his nurse, his lips uttered only the most considerate expressions of approval. He had never taken advantage of his situation as so many of her patients did. Miss Trivett was right. Beauty in a nurse is not always an asset.
Yet Belinda felt in her heart that Frank Sanderson had not been honest with her. Had she not overheard his brother's remark she would never have suspected the aviator of being a married man.