"Yes, I know." Aunt Jane nodded. "I'll go with you--when the time comes. We just go down the hall here a little way--to the elevator. The operating-room's on the top floor-- It's a nice, sunny, big room. And you'll have the ether in the room next to it. There's a lounge there for you to lie on and a nice comfortable chair for me." "Shall you go with me?" It was a quick word. "Yes, I'm going up with you. I go, a good many times, with folks that want me----" "Yes, I want you." The small face had grown relaxed; the eyes were clear and waiting. The unbleached nightgown, with the bit of coarse edging at neck and wrists, seemed a comely garment. Something had taken place in Room 5, for which scientists have not yet found a name. At ten o'clock Dr. Carmon would perform his difficult operation on the frail body of Mrs. John Pelton. But the spirit that would go under the knife was the spirit of Aunt Jane, smiling and saying placidly: "There, he's just come. That's his car tooting out here. Now we're ready to go." IX The room had a sunny stillness. The sun poured in at the window on the whiteness and on the figure lying on the couch and on the young doctor bending toward it and adjusting the ether cone with light touch, and on Aunt Jane rocking placidly in her chair by the couch. "You won't mind it a mite," said Aunt Jane. Her hand held the thin one in its warm clasp. "You won't mind.... Dr. Doty'll give it to you, nice. He's about the best one we've got--to give it." The doctor smiled at the words--a boyish, whimsical smile at flattery. He adjusted the cone a little. "Breathe deep," he said gently. There was silence in the room--only a little burring sound somewhere, and the soft creak of Aunt Jane's rockers as they moved to and fro. The door of the operating-room stood open. Through the crack Aunt Jane could see a round, stout figure, enveloped from head to foot in its rubber apron, bending over a tray of instruments. The great arms, bare to the shoulders, the exposed neck, and round head with short bristling hair, a little bald at the top, gave a curious sense of alert power and force. Aunt Jane had never seen a picture of St. George and the Dragon, or of St. Michael. She had scant material for comparison. But I suspect if she had seen through the open door of the operating-room, either of these saints fastening on his greaves--whatever greaves may be--and getting ready for the dragon, he would have seemed to her a less heroic and noble and beautiful figure than the short, square man, bending over his case of instruments and selecting a particularly sharp and glittering one for use. The young doctor leaning over the figure on the couch moved a little and lifted his head. "All right," he said quietly. He nodded toward the door of the operating-room. A nurse appeared in the doorway.