Miss Maxwell sank back heavily into her chair; her face showed plainly her battling between love for the girl, her sense of outraged discipline, and her anxiety over the decision she must make. Peter watched her with a sort of impersonal sympathy; the major part of his being had been plunged into what seemed a veritable chasm of hopelessness. He tried to pull himself together and realize that there was Dempsy to think about.
“What are you going to do?” he asked, at last.
“Do? You mean—about—?”
Peter nodded.
An almost pathetic smile crept into the superintendent’s face. “As long as you were here, anyway, it’s rather a relief to be able to confess that I don’t know what to do. You see, superintendents are always supposed to have infallible judgment on all matters,” she sighed. “I have never but once known Leerie to break a rule or ask for a special dispensation without a reason—a good reason. But I don’t understand what lies behind all this.”
“I do.” Peter fairly roared it forth. “She loves that man, and she’s afraid this might ruin his career if—if anything happened. Why, it’s as plain as these four walls and the ceiling above us. No woman pleads for a man that way unless she loves him better than anything else on God’s earth.”
“I think you’re wrong.”
“Why?” Peter strode over to the superintendent’s desk like a man after his reprieve. “I’m not just curious. I’ve the biggest excuse in the world for wanting to know why she has asked this. I love Sheila O’Leary. I love her well enough to leave her to-night with the man she loves, provided he loves her. But if he doesn’t—if he’s just playing with her, accepting her as a sop to his vanity, as a lot of near-famous men will with a woman—then, by thunder! I’m going to stay and fight him for her! Understand?” And Peter’s fist pounded the desk.
The superintendent smiled again. This time there was no pathos in it. “I understand—and I’d stay. You ought to know Leerie well enough by this time to know that she can fight for the right of anything, whether she cares personally or not, and more than that, even if she has to suffer for it herself. She’s the only woman I have ever known who had that particular kind of heroism. If she felt Doctor Brainard needed some one to stand up for him, I believe she could plead better if she didn’t care. And I’ve another, a better reason for thinking she doesn’t love him. She refused at first to be his surgical nurse. She didn’t consent until she knew that he had made that one of the conditions of his coming here; he stipulated that he must be allowed to bring his own anesthetist, operate without an assistant, and choose his own operating nurse.”
“And he choose her?”