“How cold you are!” she exclaimed, “and this room is like a frozen—frozen tomb,” she added. “You must get warm.”
“No, no!” said the voice, ending in a low, wailing moan.
The nurse looked curiously down at the face on the pillow. Scarcely anything was visible but two large dark eyes and two immensely long snake-like plaits of hair.
“Did you come in to-night? Are you waiting for an operation?” asked the perplexed nurse.
“Yes.” The voice was inarticulate again.
“How strange the day nurse or the head nurse did not tell me. I don’t know what to make of it, at all. You are sure you do not want any light or heat?”
The reply was so inarticulate that she bent down to listen. A faint odor turned her quite sick. She went out hastily into the corridor, leaving the door ajar. She was worried; nay, more, she was conscious of a feeling a trained nurse has no excuse for. She had a crawly sensation along her spine.
“I must be dreaming,” she said to herself angrily.
She went back to her chair and table, and, in spite of heaviness and sleepiness, listened for the bells with a qualm of absolute fright whenever the sound came from the end of the corridor.
At last, just before daybreak, the bell she was straining her ears for, rang again.