Anne shook her head, smiling faintly.
“Oh no, thank you, Miss Wilson. You have enough to do without taking care of me. But don’t you think I ought to stay up in case he should awaken again?”
She shivered slightly as she spoke. And the nurse led her out of the room and closed the door gently.
“You’re catching cold in this icebox,” she said peremptorily. “We have to keep the sick room quite cold, you know. But I’m dressed suitably and you’re not.” She touched the silken négligée with a mixture of scorn and longing. “Better get yourself a flannel wrapper like mine.” She smiled grimly. “Not beautiful, but useful, you know.”
With an undefined feeling of shame, Anne trotted obediently back to bed, accepting thankfully a cup of tea and the hot water bag insisted upon by Miss Wilson.
“You can’t afford to take any risk, and pneumonia is contagious, you know.” She tucked the blankets about Anne almost caressingly.
“You make me feel so useless and foolish going back to bed, when you’re preparing to stay up all night!” protested Anne.
Miss Wilson’s smile seemed oddly motherly upon her spinster-like face.
“That’s my business. We all have our duties, you know. And I guess you have more than done yours to-night.”
One more pat to the bedclothes, and she was gone. As the door closed behind her, Anne’s eyelids drooped. In a moment she was drifting on the same uncharted sea as Alexis Petrovskey.