“Are you an artist?”
“Yes. Obviously, you are a nurse?”
She nodded, and burst forth into a rapid talk, as if she had long been waiting for an opportunity to unburden herself.
“Just got off duty. See those lighted windows across the road? That is our hospital. Ah, I shan’t stand it much longer. Moans and groans, suffering, tears, madness—God! You know, it starts at twilight. As soon as the sun sets all the miseries get loose. Even the quiet patients become delirious and raise bedlam. And so till midnight. It will drive me insane. Give me a cigarette, will you? There is nobody around at this time.”
Her “shop talk” bored me. Silently I gave her a cigarette and a light, and watched her inhaling the smoke eagerly and intently. Her grey striped dress with the tight white apron outlined a light, slender body, a supple breast, and full strong arms. Her face was in the shadow, but my professional eyes noticed its lovely oval contours. The little white cap seemed toyishly small on the vast mass of disobedient hair. She flung away the cigarette, and turned to me:
“Thanks, stranger. Why don’t you say something? Ah, what a night! See the blue mist away there beneath the trees, and see that big oak—it’s like a tower. Gee, I am getting romantic. Ah, what a night!”
I was amused with her half bookish, half street-talk. Somehow she did not irritate me, as the rest of the people did, with her trivial remarks on things which I believed to belong exclusively to the realm of colors and music.
“Look!” She grasped my hand. “See the star falling? There, it dropped into the lagoon. Ah, I smell hyacinths, do you? Hey, if you are not going to say something, I’ll smash you!”
She snatched off my hat, threw it high up in the air, and, laughing loudly, ran away, dropping her cap on the grass. I picked it up, and pursued her. She was a swift runner, and we raced a long while across the wide lawn before I caught her. In the dim bluish light she stood at my side, a savage figure with stormy cascades of hair over her face and shoulders, with flashing eyes, open mouth, dilating nostrils. In my professional delight (I never lose my self-consciousness) I seized her by the waist and lifted her up above me. She waved her good arms and shrieked in joy, tossing her Medusa-head, arching her tense chest, quivering in ecstacy.