“Eternity?” “No. Among my other activities, I wired the parlor for electric light. The bride-to-be expects some electroliers as wedding gifts, and--” Wilson rose and flung his cigarette into the grass. “I wish to God I understood you!” he said irritably. K. rose with him, and all the suppressed feeling of the interview was crowded into his last few words. “I'm not as ungrateful as you think, Max,” he said. “I--you've helped a lot. Don't worry about me. I'm as well off as I deserve to be, and better. Good-night.” “Good-night.” Wilson's unexpected magnanimity put K. in a curious position--left him, as it were, with a divided allegiance. Sidney's frank infatuation for the young surgeon was growing. He was quick to see it. And where before he might have felt justified in going to the length of warning her, now his hands were tied. Max was interested in her. K. could see that, too. More than once he had taken Sidney back to the hospital in his car. Le Moyne, handicapped at every turn, found himself facing two alternatives, one but little better than the other. The affair might run a legitimate course, ending in marriage--a year of happiness for her, and then what marriage with Max, as he knew him, would inevitably mean: wanderings away, remorseful returns to her, infidelities, misery. Or, it might be less serious but almost equally unhappy for her. Max might throw caution to the winds, pursue her for a time,--K. had seen him do this,--and then, growing tired, change to some new attraction. In either case, he could only wait and watch, eating his heart out during the long evenings when Anna read her “Daily Thoughts” upstairs and he sat alone with his pipe on the balcony. Sidney went on night duty shortly after her acceptance. All of her orderly young life had been divided into two parts: day, when one played or worked, and night, when one slept. Now she was compelled to a readjustment: one worked in the night and slept in the day. Things seemed unnatural, chaotic. At the end of her first night report Sidney added what she could remember of a little verse of Stevenson's. She added it to the end of her general report, which was to the effect that everything had been quiet during the night except the neighborhood. “And does it not seem hard to you, When all the sky is clear and blue, And I should like so much to play, To have to go to bed by day?” The day assistant happened on the report, and was quite scandalized. “If the night nurses are to spend their time making up poetry,” she said crossly, “we'd better change this hospital into a young ladies' seminary. If she wants to complain about the noise in the street, she should do so in proper form.” “I don't think she made it up,” said the Head, trying not to smile. “I've heard something like it somewhere, and, what with the heat and the noise of traffic, I don't see how any of them get any sleep.”